THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, December 24, 1995 TAG: 9512220075
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E5 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Art review
SOURCE: BY TERESA ANNAS, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 106 lines
Norfolk artist Fay Zetlin, who died in 1988 at age 82, had as strong an impact on the region's art scene as any figure in the second half of the century. Only a few others made as deep a mark; the roster includes painter Charles Sibley, found-objects artist Wally Dreyer, and critic Dick Cossitt.
Of these, only Sibley - Zetlin's chief mentor - is still with us.
Zetlin was considered by many to be the soul of the art scene. Put her in a room with people, and the fresh-thinking intellectual could be counted on to raise the level of conversation. At a gallery opening, Zetlin would be the one to spur rigorous dialogue about the reason for the gathering - the art.
Zetlin walked her talk, too. A petite woman, she was a prolific creator of monumental art. Even her late work that was smaller in scale - created via microfiche and color copier machines - had a heroic demeanor.
The first of two area shows honoring her life's work is on view through Jan. 14 at the Peninsula Fine Arts Center. Called ``From Heron Lane: A Tribute to Fay Zetlin,'' the Newport News exhibit focuses on her painting. A second exhibition on Zetlin opens Jan. 19 at Old Dominion University Gallery.
Zetlin was a powerful artist, one of the strongest ever to work in this area. Her work is in the permanent collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art and The Chrysler Museum of Art. Still, she deserved more of a national reputation.
For the Peninsula show, curator Deborah McLeod opted to feature pivotal images, clarifying the turns Zetlin took in her art. Arranged chronologically, the art suggests a narrative.
Her paintings convey a version of Creation, from the fiery rumblings in a woman's gut to a close encounter with the blazing outer limits. The tale relates both to Zetlin's own creative growth and to her vision of the cosmos.
The show opens with two canvases from 1956 - just a few years after she began painting at about age 50.
These early works glimmer with Zetlin's potential. She had immediately hit on a bold and personally expressive mode. The small horizontal paintings depict a social setting and a still life, and are rendered in a way that recalls Cezanne's decisive brush strokes.
Her use of complementary colors, and her obvious effort to balance cool and warm hues, foreshadowed a trait of her mature art.
By 1957, her still life fruit was levitating. Four airborne pears look nearly as solid as Surrealist Magritte's floating castle.
Next, a 1960 oil painting depicts an abstract figure in a beige haze. The work is all atmosphere. The simplicity of the image makes the viewer notice the one small area of color - a fire that is smoldering, emitting flames from a slit in the gut.
Significantly, the figure is seated at the mouth of a dark space, such as a cave. This is an image of emergence, and it's hard not to see this figure as Zetlin.
She had been experimenting for a few years with non-objective images. At this point, she made the big plunge into complete abstraction.
In works like ``Gemini'' and ``Origin nos. 1 and 2,'' the subject would seem to be cell division. First, there's one, then two, then four. The organism grows and becomes more complex, as did her art.
``Two Blue Shapes'' (1963) features a circle over a square. The simple image could be seen as a kind of statement of purpose: to present the yin-yang balancing of opposites that makes the world go 'round. That balance finds a visual metaphor in her art through form and color.
Calligraphy, which eventually became a potent visual source, makes an early appearance in her 1966 ``Blue Ground.'' The image is a field of deep blue, cut through by a ribbony arc on which is painted indecipherable calligraphy.
A poet and an avid reader of literature - she once wrote book reviews for The Virginian-Pilot - Zetlin had a great respect for the written word.
A 1965 circle canvas features a glowing gold field of color, disturbed only by a snaky line winding around a vertical post. Again, the wiggly line is the yin, the straight line the yang. The image also alludes to a symbol of the medical profession. Zetlin's late husband, Arnold, was a physician.
There's yet another possible interpretation. The coiled line may represent what Hindus call the kundalini, a kind of palpable creative energy that moves up the spine.
And then, out of the deep, velvety blue - POW! A great force catapults from the still pool of the unconscious, bursting through the placid surface.
Her undated painting depicts a great, blinding ball of white fire that fills the canvas, spraying sparks into the sky. There is a crack in the fiery orb; it looks as though it holds a human fetus. Curator McLeod certainly sees it as an embryo.
In the 1970s, Zetlin took up the air gun as a painting tool. She was less interested in the brush stroke, and more interested in creating a surface texture that suited her increasingly cosmic subject matter.
With the air gun, she could achieve soft veils of color, or coat large sections in a zillion tiny dots of color. This is arguably Zetlin's classic phase. The color is dramatic, and glows from within in sections.
The perspective of these works is peculiarly suited to the second half of this century. Imagine you are in a space ship approaching two celestial bodies, which are close to bumping one another. A strange glow emanates in the space between their curved edges, as if an electrical field is activated by their proximity.
Zetlin fixated on this image for years. By 1985, three years before her death, she had moved in even closer to the electricity. Now, the space between orbs looks like a gateway, inviting you to adjust your eyes to the brightness, and the heat, and pass through. ILLUSTRATION: Photo
``Iconic Blue'' by Fay Zetlin illustrates her 1970s style: using the
air gun as a painting tool.
by CNB