“Very Early Pictures”

The curators at leafy Arcadia University, just north of Philadelphia’s city limits, have been quietly pursuing a world-class program for seventeen years, and “Very Early Pictures,” a show of sixty contemporary artists’ work from their childhood years, is a typically idiosyncratic affair. It’s beyond satisfying to reflect on the intense black crayon-wrought curves of 10-year-old Marlene Dumas’s bathing beauties, 8-year-old Martin Honert’s well-behaved lads in neat hose and tucked-in shirts, or the sadistic romance of Julian Hoeber’s bride and groom in tears (executed age 5). The show does have a problematic relationship with its own novelty value: The thematic conceit of a haphazard hang with colorful placards of cut construction paper for wall text is overbaked and quickly a drag, while the unexplained volume of certain artists’ works over others inevitably highlights art unobtained, ideas uncompleted. And listing Wim Delvoye on the list of contributing artists, only to have his 2003 publication Early Works propped open in a vitrine, will not do. But these seem minor qualms when one is faced with Glenn Ligon’s kindergarten ledger, an oversized a is for apple workbook that the young boy filled out in record time, causing his amazed teacher to suggest that his knowledge of the alphabet might make him better suited to a private school. The roots of the artist’s impulse—his imagination, ambition and eye—splay forth from this impossibly mundane artifact, resonant with information and emotion.