San Francisco painters Wally Hendrick and Sam Tchakalian are being shown in limited retrospective fashion at the Fine Arts Pavilion in Balboa. It is a curious exhibition, both for the juxtaposition of artists and, in the case of Hedrick, for the selection of works. The well-illustrated catalog, with essays by Fred Martin and Gerald Nordland, offers scarcely a clue to the mystery.
Fred Martin’s respectful essay on Hedrick must have been written with the advance purpose of conciliating a baffled audience. He is certainly aware that Hedrick’s work cannot possibly be taken seriously in the way which he seems to be advocating. Of the 17 mystifying works, the majority are outright abominations. Hedrick is usually classified as a funk artist (there is, indeed, a pyramid of rusty beer cans in this selection). He has also been termed a Surrealist and a negativist. Since he chooses neither to comment on nor to promote his own work, one cannot be absolutely sure how it is to be taken. Nevertheless, in the case of the emblematic paintings such as For Service Rendered or Chalice of 1959, we have to conclude that the affront is intended. Hurry Up It’s Time—an ornate clock—is so terrible that it’s almost good. That Hedrick cares not at all for posterity is evidenced by the condition of his work: Orb of Power, among others, is badly warped from having sat in a leaky shed. Two lumpy black horrors are dedicated to a war, or at least a nation, belonging to what he calls his Viet Nam Series. Napalm Sundae is an innocuous circular design in black and purple. In the Klee-like J Me et Cat of 1957, representing the artist with wife and cat, Hedrick proves that he is not utterly invulnerable to the delights of good painting. Possibly he delights most of all in the fact that his oeuvre is a hopeless conundrum. He is difficult to ignore even at his worst, but the praises sung for him, even in these pages, seem inordinate.
Tchakalian is represented with four collage-paintings done between 1959 and 1962 and eleven large recent paintings. There are some notable examples of the artist’s best work among the latter group. Tchakalian is continuing in the “pure painterly” vein of the New York action painters. He works in a large format, manipulating his pigments either with a heavily-loaded palette knife (Pat Brown, Green Spot; 1966) or with vertically “dragged” brush-strokes (Orange Juice, 1966; North Atlantic, One Time Sid; 1967). Enough Green of 1963 is a large kelly green canvas with a short swatch of white paint knifed on from the left edge. The white is impure, with touches of green, blue and yellow. In Blew One (1964) thick gobs of brown and white paint are dragged onto the textured blue ground in coarse, Gottlieb-like calligraphy. Tchakalian has been compared with Clyfford Still: Orange Juice justifies the analogy, but suffers, too, in contrast. As a group, these paintings almost make up in resolution what they lack in imagination.
—Jane Livingston
