This first comprehensive American exhibition and only West Coast showing of his watercolors re-establishes Turner as one of the most complex and contradictory artists England has produced. Circulated under the auspices of the Smithsonian Institution, it is intended to illustrate the extraordinary range and versatility of Turner’s genius. This it does, magnificently, insofar as 80 watercolors can represent an artist who is known to have produced some 19,000 of them during his long career. Emphasis is upon his lesser-known early and late periods, tracing his development from a mannered watercolor

The excellence of this annual is partly due to the juror, Tony DeLap, who abandoned from the start any attempt to produce another “Bay Area image” show and selected the work according to his personal taste. DeLap capped his selection by giving the top award to the most exciting painting in the show. John Richards mounted the exhibit so that the paintings complemented each other.

Ronald Davis took the first prize with a magnificent hard-edge optical illusion painting, titled Roll Your Own. Painted to suggest two drums covered with stripes and repeated motifs whirling in opposite directions, it

Like the War Department, the art world has its hawks and its doves. The doves like to talk about “lots of room for lots of styles and approaches,” while the hawks like to talk about “mainstream art.” The dove’s worst enemy is Walter Keane, while the hawk’s worst enemy is the dove. Kishi is the kind of artist that throws both camps into utter confusion. The doves like him for all the wrong reasons, while the hawks mistrust him because the doves like him so. The doves are astonished at the manner in which his paintings bring a joyous, zestful life into their living rooms; the hawks, while admiring

Northern California Arts, Inc., formed in 1937 as a service organization to promote art activities in the community, has had its ups and downs, swinging fitfully between “modern” and “conservative” styles of painting.

In this, its 10th Annual Open Exhibition, it goes conservative to the point of being reactionary. Apparently the artists noted the jury panel, comprised of Ken Morrow, Dr. Marcus Reitzel, and Robert Rischell, and the outmoded terminology, and submitted accordingly. Why, after 26 years, this organization still clings to the silly categorizing of its shows into modern and conservative

It is perhaps not surprising that a group show at this gallery of small, inexpensive works for giving should turn into a first-rate drawing exhibition. In many cases the real strength of the gallery artists lies in their ability to draw. Charles Gill, for one, nearly always draws well. There is a certain inherent strength in the way he breaks up a drawing from within to reflect the picture edge (in a manner so stylized as to make the comment ironic). Gill will draw a nude, and bisect the sketch with a horizontal line. Although nothing has really been interrupted, one tends to read the drawing

A continuation of last month’s group show, with individual replacements as pieces are sold or loaned. Keith Boyle, Geoffrey Bowman, George Miyasaki, Tom Holland, Kishi, and sculptors Charles Mattox and Robert Hudson, from Lanyon’s regular stable of artists, are represented, along with an intimate little wall show of delicate prints by Ryanosuki Fukui.

Boyle’s new direction seems to be toward brighter hues and harder edges, although he was never known for muted color and fuzzy shapes. Bird Feathers, his special offering here, keeps the bird in a green and embryonic condition, but the brilliant

In the almost endless space of this vast, plush gallery were shown paintings by such venerables as Arthur B. Davies, George Luks, Winslow Homer, Prendergast, Robert Henri, Bouguereau, Dufy, Modigliani, Matisse, Mary Cassatt, etc. The only work absent was the customary Renoir. The Homer was so frightfully dull-colored that it is shocking to think this artist ever painted anything that bad. The paint on the Arthur B. Davies nymph scene seems to have oxidized to a dull, dark rust; at any rate, something is drastically wrong with the color on that canvas. The Prendergast is not bad and the same,

One hundred prints by 20 contemporary Greek artists, representing a high achievement in the use of materials, an understanding of international expressions, and a paucity of individual initiative and imagination; and monoprints by a Marin County artist who has pressed this method about as far as it will go.

That the Greek printmakers, as represented here, have shown so little interest in developing any special national distinction is disappointing, although no one can deprecate their technical proficiency. Most of these exhibitors are well over 40, indicating that they have had time to make some

Magic realism involves a technique that has very little of the artist’s hand in it (in the sense of a signature). Its subject matter is the transformation or alteration of mundane things in the direction of the ironical or unexpected. The merits of this sort of painting lie in a highly literary and specific combination of elements, as in George Tooker’s subway paintings. Al Proom does not consider the implications of the style he has chosen. He makes little attempt to modify what he sees and the attempts he does make (such as slipping cards into a bunch of grapes) are often so minor as to be

Two small paintings by James Monte are the best in the show. Monte is currently concerned with symbolic doors, windows, entrances, i.e., with experiential subject matter as a frame, threshold or beginning. In these paintings Monte handles the problem of boundary and closure by painting a cluster of forms, breaking them off suddenly and starting other clusters. From this he obtains a magic box effect that is well and tastefully made. Gerd Stern shows a small relief sculpture poem, a wooden arch mounted on an aluminum sheet. Titled “Help,” the two ends of the arch are wrapped with semi-random

Mr. Lyras’ paintings in oil essay a flat, hard-edged primitivism made lyrical and moodful by refined nuances of linear syntax and dark luminous colors. Mr. Lyras is most successful in setting austere Byzantine figures against dark antique interiors or moonlit nocturnal landscapes. His work in the latter vein is reminiscent of Rousseau.

—Palmer D. French

Two small, round plaques by Faralla are the highlights of this exhibit. Faralla’s greatest difficulty lies in the fact that his framer’s scraps bear a strong superficial resemblance to Louise Nevelson’s furniture-components. Nevertheless, their art takes a totally different shape from each other. Nevelson is building systems; her sculpture is syncretic and morphological. It is sculpture utilizing all the depth it can muster given its limitations. Faralla’s work is almost exactly the opposite. His is an art of elegant surfaces, of an all-over rhythm; the high and the low points in any one of his

This is the usual run of bad to mediocre offerings that one has come to expect of “club annuals.” It should be noted, however, that not all of the artists represented are mere “Sunday painters” and that many are cap work than is shown here. Curiously, the painting and graphics sections are comprised mainly of examples of abstract expressionism, hard edged abstraction, “pop art” and very little “Bay Area figurative.” The sculpture is uniformly abysmal. Crafts fare best of all with some rather good examples of hand wrought costume jewelry.

—Palmer D. French

William Weber is an apparently successful painter with a highly flexible style that could be called semi-high-class-neo-fine-art illustration. Weber’s painting is not crass or glaringly ugly, but then it is not what one would call rich in plastic values either. It is like the best illustrations accompanying the fiction in women’s magazines. Weber is trying to be chi-chi and fashionable and the paintings blatantly that way come off best. He also exhibits several Amish scenes which are a bit too difficult to swallow. In the midst of all this Weber shows a rather sensitive portrait of a balloon-woman.

This apparent rummage sale of horrid little pictures, advertised as an annual Christmas show, is as crass an example of holiday merchandising as one can find. The less said about the “well known Bay Area artists” ignominiously willing to sell their signatures under a few daubs of paint on a minuscule “gift item” vases, the better.

—Palmer D. French