Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, March 1, 1992 TAG: 9202270220
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: E-8 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: KATHLEEN NOLAN
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Well, yes and no. "Abstract Icons" is a show that will offer surprises to many visitors, depending on their expectations about what "abstract" and "icon" mean. But this is an exhibit that will reward a visitor's efforts, for it is one of the most thoughtful and coherent shows I've seen at the Roanoke Museum of Fine Arts, and many of the works are visually very exciting.
Recognizing the challenges that abstraction poses, the show's curator, Mark Scala, has provided useful informational panels next to each artist's work; Scala is also the author of the thoughtful exhibition catalogue.
The 40 works in the show are all abstract in the sense that their artists did not set out in a direct way to depict the known world. Instead, the artists take their inspiration from more personal sources, although many of them use forms that originate in geometry or biology.
The paintings, mostly small pieces, are all very recent works by eight artists in the Richmond and Washington, D.C., areas. So the paintings tell us what abstraction is like now in our part of the country at a time when painting the figure is very much in vogue in the big-time art scene.
Abstraction is hard for people to like, even a half century and more after it came into wide use. Human beings apparently instinctively take pleasure in likeness for its own sake. Aristotle wrote about how a painting of a dead rabbit, not inherently a very enticing subject, could be enjoyable because of its likeness to the original.
I have gained a new respect for representation in art as the parent of a small child, watching with fascination as a drawing, a photograph and a stuffed toy are all linked with their doggie prototype.
Yet I think that this is a show that will appeal even to people who usually have trouble with abstract art because these are tightly composed, carefully crafted paintings in which it is easy to see the artist's mind at work.
Perhaps the most interesting artist in this regard is Washington painter W.C. Richardson, who uses complex geometric forms that scintillate with kinetic energy. I was particularly taken with his 1989 work, "Perfect Timing," which places an intricate, dynamic web of geometry over a richly textured background. Richardson's work, like that of most of the artists in the show, is pared down and intensely focused. This is abstraction in the tradition of the strict grids of Mondrian, rather than that of Pollock's exuberant waves of color.
Echoes from the past also are heard in Davi Det Hompson's sculpture-like wax panels. These pieces, with their streamlined volumes, like that of "Sam," or the heavy geometry of the wonderfully secretive "Herm," recall both the early 20th-century sculptor Brancusi and the mystery-laden ancient art that inspired him.
But why icons? As we usually think of them, icons are portraits of saints, presented in static, stylized poses. In the Eastern Christian tradition they were thought of as embodying the presence and power of the figures they represented.
Like the man at the information desk, I initially had trouble linking these figureless panels to that tradition. But I think I see what Scala means when he says that these abstract paintings also refer to meaningful things beyond themselves and that like icons they use visual clues to tell us that their subjects are not part of the known, concrete world.
Certainly these works are icon-like with their air intense concentration and single-minded focus. This is especially true of the work of Washington-area artist Rebecca Kamen, who squeezes small abstract landscapes, pierced by geometric shapes, within massive aluminum frames, each rock-like form presented as a single, isolated vision.
And like icons, many of the paintings in the show have the sense of working within a prescribed formula. Kevin McGrath, for example, uses unmodulated bands of color on overlapping wooden panels, as in "Caelian." In his paintings the sense of space that the panels provide is contradicted by his flat stripes, much in the same way Byzantine icons contrasted real and supernatural space.
"Abstract Icons" is an intellectual experience that is also visually pleasurable. The museum is to be congratulated for assembling a show that demonstrates the richness and allusiveness of contemporary abstract art.
"Jack McCaslin: Recent Works"
In the museum's Bridge Gallery there is a small show of work by Jack McCaslin that is the first of a series of exhibitions by contemporary Virginia artists.
McCaslin, a professor at James Madison University, produces works in gouache, a water-based paint, that are so finely finished that they look like silk-screen prints.
McCaslin's paintings resemble Pop Art of the 1960s in that they draw their imagery and style from contemporary popular culture. In McCaslin's case, he uses newspapers, advertisements and apparently Chinese illustrations as his source material. His paintings are more complicated spatially than Pop art; the surfaces of his paintings are layered with broad brush strokes of color that overlap his central images. McCaslin's combination of static, visual "found objects" and loose, painterly layering creates an interesting tension between the personal and the collective aspects of art making.
Kathleen Nolan, who holds a Ph.D. in art history from Columbia University, is a member of the Hollins College art faculty.
ON EXHIBIT: at the Roanoke Museum of Fine Arts: "Abstract Icons" through April 25; "Recent Works by Jack McCaslin" through April 5 in the Bridge Gallery. Open Tuesday- Saturday,10 a.m.-4 p.m.; Sunday, 1-4 p.m. Center in the Square, Roanoke City Market. 342-5760.
by CNB