It is curious that group shows displaying a gallery’s stable are so rarely a rewarding experience for the pedestrian. Although open competitions and juried exhibitions show about the same selectivity and diversification, there is something about the commercial exhibitor’s review of his own artists that mysteriously belittles the best while emphasizing the worst.

The selection mounted by the Feingarten Galleries certainly has its ups and downs, perhaps even more than its share of ups, yet one leaves the premises with a mild sense of dejection probably inspired by a secret wish that the selection had been in other hands. One cannot quarrel with the representations of Carl Morris or Arthur Okamura. Morris’ “White Field” and “Primal Source” are both splendidly composed pictures with a wealth of mature investigation in evidence. Okamura continues to enthrall with his formalized Orientalism applied to poetic landscapes such as “Moon Mergings” and “Night River.” No one else on hand measures up to these two, though Douglas Snow’s serenely simplified landscapes, “Horizon Lines” and “Plateau” are welcome fare. Craig Sheppard is adept at the sponged and smear type of watercolors in which he searches for uninteresting visages while Cecil Casebier’s mundane subjects are so carefully balanced as to be starkly rigid, and Elias Friedensohn produces unnecessarily monumental compositions of featureless dignitaries and nudes in settings devoid of imagination. Others on hand are Kalman, Gottchalk, Hershman, Lentine, Guereschi and Marcus, all in lesser roles.

––Curt Opliger

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