Bo Bartlett's paintings represent Academy style to the nth degree. So it has come to pass that the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts is right now exhibiting "Heartland," a show of more than 40 works by this favorite son (image, "Heartland"), that has the feeling of Norman Rockwell and the pigtailed, freckled blond on the Kellogg's cornflakes box.

The paintings are mostly huge things, unfit for any of the walls in my little ol' house, all painted beautifully. They aspire, with their size, to say something big. And some of them do. But many of them are just oversized.

Rituals

Given the religious themes of his paintings, it's no surprise that so many of his paintings are of rituals--the school reenactment of the three wisemen spotting the star in the East, weddings (and weddings and weddings), a female Christ post crucifixion, the obligitory snapshot after the Homecoming game of the three power couples on campus in front of the bonfire (image, "The Wedding").

Of that group of paintings, the school reenactment, which has a Norman Rockwell air of description and down-home folks, seems the least silly of the scenarios. It's pretty straightforward, and the children and their teacher, caught glancing one way or another, provide an image of a classic American experience through specific kids and a specific teacher.

Snapshots

That snapshot quality of moments frozen in time, glances and facial expressions trapped in the moment of a shutter snapping, also carries along "The Box," a picture of children dressing up in war memoribilia stored in a wooden box, and also carries "Sightland," in which a father takes aim with his rifle somewhere in the distance while the son's focus is on the artist or picture taker. I liked the modesty and reality of the storytelling in these two. They are bits of Americana.

Religion lost

But while Bartlett seems to want to be the Rembrandt and Caravaggio of the American story--the land, the culture, the ideals, the myths--he lacks the backstory of the Bible that Rembrandt and Caravaggio had as a cultural commonplace. Everyone knew back then on viewing a painting of Jesus coming down from the cross just what had happened. But what does it mean when a young woman is coming down from the cross? What does Bartlett's "Leviathan" mean? I don't know who this Jonah really is or why he's washed up on the coast posing on the all-too-real innards of the whale(image "Leviathan"). It just seems pretentious.

So do "Dreamland" and "The Bone," which also have a histrionic quality. "The Bone" just seems pumped up, the bone obviously a symbol of who knows what; and "Dreamland" has too many characters, too many costumes, too many ideas all painted too seriously. Fellini did the human comedy parade with a lighter touch (image left, "Dreamland").

In "Homecoming," the looming effigy of the devil, the two men looking away, the young boy, the three cheerleaders, the intense sunset sky, the convertible car, all seem to overwhelm the basic ritual, which stands quite nicely by itself. The painting is a kind of religious triptych, the three couples surrounded on each wing by three outsiders. But it's without the backing of the religious meaning and without the focus of one clear subject.

Humor helps

The Rockwellian caricature that works in the school play also contributes to the "Listeners," a picture of three blind men on a hay cart, their red-tipped canes dowsing like insect antennae for what's around them. The humor undercuts the otherwise ponderous big theme of humanity trying to listen for its place in the universe. The heroic cow icon in "The Calling" is leavened by its ridiculousness--without losing its meaning.

(The talismans encased in the frames like the windows in African nkisi figures--the cow's horn, the deer skin, the twigs in "The Calling," "Young Life," and "Heartland" respectively seem like too small a gesture for the competing canvas and frame.)

Specific details

"Painters Crossing," shows Bartlett's mentor Andrew Wyeth, standing close to his wife, Betsy, with model Helga Testorf standing apart behind them. The painting is provocative, the composition, with its rich furs and quoted landscape expresses wealth, privilege, success, inclusion and exclusion--not to mention a salute to Wyeth's paintings. The story is well-known enough to be accessible.

Other portraits that seemed especially good were "Ishmael" (above right) and of "Parents" (left) I love the way his mother closed her eyes in weary sufferance, and the way his father put his hands in his pockets, an expression of casual-seeming power--just one of the good ol' boys. Meanwhile, they're turned away from one another. "Ishmael," with his pea coat and wind-whipped hair has a timeless look that situates him in Flemish portraits of the 15th century, in "Moby Dick" and in the here and now.

Another simple success is "Lifeboat." The meaning is clear enough and the image, with its lost horizon and vertiginous waves, the wedding ring on a chain around the rowers neck, put me back into the existential boat in the waves in "The Triplets of Belleville."

I suppose what I'm saying is that the simpler Bartlett gets, the better he gets. The successes are individual and idiosyncratic enough to feel grounded in the kind of realistic painting he does so well. When he adds elements that feel too unrealistic, the story slips out of his grasp--and mine.

I can't, to this day, connect with most color field paintings. They seem austere, argumentative, and closed off from discussion. I like art to ask questions and invite dialog, but color field painters seem to write manifestoes that pound home points and dispel all questions.

On the other hand, I have always loved the voids of color created by James Turrell. (Olafur Eliasson's color field environment at Arcadia as well). One of the things those artists offer is an experience so open you can interpret it variously. It's you and the void, just think what you will.

I was reminded of Turrell when I was flying over Michigan at 35,000 ft., and the world outside the window seemed to divide itself into two, equally unreal-looking realms -- blue, intense and sweet, and white, soft, thick and fluffy.



The fields of color divided precisely but there was a brushy, almost painterly aura to the atmosphere where they touched each other. I knew it was sky and clouds but it became more -- and less in a way -- a kind of dreamy, atmospheric cinema, abstract and concrete at the same time.

The scene didn't last long as we zipped along and soon the clouds parted as they do.



But, as sometimes happens, another plane was in the vicinity. I didn't see the plane clearly, but I saw its exhaust trail -- a black gash in the white skin of the clouds.

A Barnet Newman zip painting coming to life right there in the sky!

I'll take Turrell over Newman any day but I may have to go stand in front of a Newman again and see if there's room for me, too, in the painted atmosphere, like there was room for me in the sky.

If Buzz Lightyear headed toward a space station, he'd no doubt land on one of Michael Greathouse's sculptures (right, "Tomorrow Never Comes").

Greathouse, who is showing his work in the back room of Vox Populi this month through October, creates the what-is-it-shapes that bring to mind my son's old Star Wars toys, except Greathouse has had the good sense to get beyond basic gray. Furthermore, the shapes have a blocky toy look--with shallow knobs and protrusions that make me think of Lego creations.

Colored in vivid Pop colors, these objects have all marks of hand-craftsmanship and idiosyncracy removed, to give them the character of die-cast factory perfection (left, "Over and Out").

Turns out, that's a lie. They're unique, they're made of wood, and then they're painted.

So that's what it seems the work is about--the lie of techno-perfectability; the lie of the impersonal, factory-built product; the lie in the valuation of multiples over unique things; and the lie of a rubber ducky for every tubby--the lie of the utopian consumer culture.

The quirkiness of the shapes is the first hint that all is not what it seems. And the cheerful toys-for-boys quality keeps the pieces from falling into a dreary didacticism (right, "There is no Comfort in the Truth"). The space station content makes me think there's also so criticism here of intergalactic imperialism--do we really want to conquer Mars and then live there? What kind of life is that?

The pieces stand in stark contrast to the quirk-less, modern, factory-made sculptures of Donald Judd, for example (left). The questioning of Modernism and all that it implies is a big topic, and somehow Greathouse has done it with some subtlety and humor.

That's enough on Slought. I feel as if our coverage of the show was somewhat unbalanced because all the writers went as a class, so the same pieces got attention over and over. So here's my final sally at it and then no more, because the show, while it offers a bunch of artists who are not the usual suspects, is not worth this much space.

I just want to point out that my friend Ditta Baron Hoeber's wonderful book, "Movie," hasn't been mentioned (I mean the "wonderful," and not because she's my buddy). It takes some white gloves and a little bit of time to browse its pristine pages, but there are several things I really love about this piece:

One is how it is a story within a story, a photographic tale of Hoeber's son, Julian, who is an art luminary in his own right, making a movie. The shots are unexpected, deliberately off-kilter images that focus on surprising juxtapositions of people and the claustrophobic room in which they are working.

The other thing is the extreme preciousness of the presentation with enormous white mattes framing the small, oddly framed shots, a somewhat ironic commentary on the contents and the pop-culture phenomenon of movie-making and its seat-of-the-pants process. The small size of the photos is also a commentary on the large size of the movie screen and how it absorbs our lives and vision.

In the modest location of the book on a shelf, with its modest size, it sits in intense contrast to a gigantic, photographic installation also about framing, by Intellectual Property, "Frames of Referents." The piece shows a construction site--or maybe it's a large building's infrastructure--and sites it within a framework that suggests framed-out walls. Then there's a plaque on the wall that allows words to further frame it. But I don't find what's being framed a really interesting commentary on the world in which we live, or on art.

I also want to mention that Lydia Hunn's "Shit/Snow/Sand," which we ">reviewed in the Shovel Show at Highwire Gallery, has a more compressed installation here at Slought that doesn't do the piece service.

I am mentioning both Hoeber and Hunn because I think the reviews ended up gulaging them because they weren't newcomers to the Philadelphia scene.

Another artist I feel has been overlooked who I'd like to mention in the show is Michelle Posadas, for her photos of scenarios in which the people wear giant papier mache masks that reveal everyday people and their lives as deeply weird.


And finally, Ruth Shenkman's tiny collaged images have a how-did-she-do-this finesse. Like Hoeber, Shenkman uses the giant matte to focus in on the smallness of her work.

Others in the show include Keiko Miyamori with a typewriter meets nature piece, Michael Barker with a neon Bruce Naumann ripoff, David Webber with a sound/mechanical piece, Beth Blinebury with body-issue photos, Diane Liason with amber-coated books, Mary Kate Maher with an installation about infrastructure, Lucy Russo with photo collage, Alicia Keller with a stretched string piece that doesn't bring to mind Fred Sandback, Jeff Meyers with a what-is-it sculpture, Morgan Craig's painting of a complex, architectural strange space.

What I liked best about this show was its departure from the usual suspects.

Post from Alex Tryon


[Editor's note: This is an excerpt of Tryon's post about a single piece in the Slought show “Back to Front: Emerging Artists," other posts here and here.]

In Ben Volta's video, "Airplane Hymn," a woman in a white dress stands motionless, holding a clear umbrella over her head. Paper airplanes begin to fly in slow motion toward the woman, yet she remains unharmed. The sound is warped so each paper airplane hits the ground with intense volume. Some 3,500 airplanes, courtesy of collaborating artist Billy Blaise Dufala, are launched off the balcony.

Above the woman’s head is a sculpture of pages from the Bible folded into origami. The woman, Lois Volta, is singing. Conversation from the artist explains: “During the launch I asked my sister Lois to stand with an umbrella and sing an old hymn ‘It is Well with My Soul.’” This song, unheard except in the faintest of undertones, gives the woman a new sense of power.

Singing a famous hymn of peace within one’s soul and beaming as a symbol of tranquility, the woman does not shy away from the threats and challenges that reach her.

--Alex Tryon is a student in Colette Copeland's art writing class at the University of Pennsylvania

Post from Sarah McEneaney

If you've got an interest in the challenge of creating site specific art work, three artists in three different disciplines will talk about their very different work at Moore College, Wednesday, Sept. 29, 7 p.m.

Local dancer and choreographer Leah Stein (whose recent cemetery-sited piece "Cornerstone" was a hit at the Philadelphia Fringe Festival) will show video of her provocative site-specific performances, including a recent piece made for a train station in Poland.

Poet and playwright Fiona Templeton will present documentation of her most recent city-wide play, "L’Île," which took place in Lille, France in the summer of 2004.

And sculptor Janet Zweig will show slides and describe some of her recent public art projects, including "Impersonator", a sentence generating flip-sign in New Mexico, and "Small Kindness, Weather Permitting," a series of interactive installations created for the new Hiawatha Light Rail Line in Minneapolis, Minn. (image top, "Your Voices" by Zweig at a high school in the Bronx).

Presentations will be followed by a discussion and question/answer session about the mechanics and challenges of site-specific work.

The event is free and open to the public.

--Artblog contributor Sarah McEneaney has a show coming up Nov. 4 to Dec. 11 in New York at Gallery Schlesinger

The Art in City Hall's "Voices and Visions" exhibit is a celebration of Philadelphia's Hispanic heritage through the art work of nine local artists born in Latin-American countries.

The paintings of Henry Bermudez and Isabel Urdaneta stand out for their fine craftsmanship combined with the dreamy quality of their vision.

Bermudez, a native of Venezuela, who we have mentioned before, most recently in Roberta's post on a mural collaboration that includes Frank Hyder and Paul Santoleri, offers paintings of all-over tropical vegetation and weird people and magical creatures. They work has a bit of a Unicorn Tapestries flavor mixed with a Magical Realism sabor. The painting at the top mixes American eagles with Native American power and Hispanic decorative sensibility, and "Il Viajio Rojo della Madonna" (right) draws in religious and ritualistic powers.

Urdaneta, also from Venezuela, uses symbolism that has a charming, illustrational quality again mixed with Magical Realism and hot colors. The work that comes to mind that I've seen most recently is the work of Cuban artist Fuentes Ferrin who I posted about this past First Friday. While Ferrin maintains a child-like point of view of chunky humans in a giant world, Urdaneta comes across as a grown-up woman in a dream world (image left, "Azucar").


Jose Ali Paz's "Dulce Cana de Azucar" (right) captures the dignity of workers and the rhythms of their labor. Paz also is from Venezuela and also is a muralist. In his work, the realism and joy and rhythmic qualities of daily life are what stand out.







Ana Uribe's portraits of Narberth, sport wild, out-of-control tree branches that have a safety-net, nest-like feel that I liked (left). I personally prefer Uribe's large murals that she did for the Mural Arts Program, however, to these small canvases. Uribe is from Colombia.





Also Mexican Brujo de la Mancha's talismanic little sculptures made of discarded objects have some zing (right, "Brujo Valador"). This cross between a fly and superman and the artist himself, whose name means witch, was especially charming.

Other work include's work by three Colombian natives, Alberto Becerra (tender portraits and prints), Ruben Bermejo and Gina Maria Echeverry.




Puerto Rican Virginia Sanchez, a.k.a. Aina Lode, has a portrait of a sexy red bloom called "Alma Tropical" (left).

All of these artists touched me with their yearning for the tropical and cultural world of their past, a sense of community gone. The show us up until Oct. 15, and exhibition hours are Monday to Friday, 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.

For fans of Paul Santoleri's murals, his frieze inside the entrance of the Walnut West Free Library, may seem relatively modest. The $60,000 commissioned piece, which is part of the Percent for Art Program, doesn't have the vertical space required to totally capture the swooping perspectives that characterize so much of Santoleri's work, but, even so, Santoleri achieves a bit of a rollercoaster take on the University City neighborhood's Victorian buildings. The library will open to the public with a ribbon cutting ceremony Saturday at 1 p.m. Maybe I'll see you then (image, details of Santoleri's frieze and my husband Murray. Check out Murray's story on the library's restoration today in the Philadelphia Inquirer; sign-in info: name, lrrf; email, libby@rosof.org; password,lrrfartblog).

Two wildly different approaches to nature and landscape can be seen simultaneously this week at Locks Gallery, one approach from local painter Diane Burko and one from New York artist Alyson Shotz.

Burko has long been photographing pristine nature from the air and then returning to her studio to paint. Other aerial-view locales she has painted over her long career include the Grand Canyon, Hawaii and Pennsylvania waterways. On her down-to-earth side, she's painted landscapes from the Wissahickon (see the frieze at the Marriott Hotel on Market Street for this) to Giverny (image top, "Godafoss 5", and right, "Aldeyjarfoss #1").

Her most recent bird's eye views are of Iceland, and the end results, renditions of water, rock and land, are direct descendents of Frederic Church (image left, Church's "Scene on Catskill Creek") and the sublime tradition of landscape painting. The only hint that all is not sublime are the stubborn rocky outcroppings that suggest, at least to me, look-at-me-I'm-here intrusions in a world of gloriously painted water. My penchant for symbols sees the water and the greenery as nature, the rocks as humans or the artist.

That these paintings are being made simultaneously with the work of Shotz is the shock.

Shotz's paintings are also swimmy, but the landscape as we know it is suggested by painty, computer-distorted psychedelic swirls and cartoony plant reproductive organs suspended in resin. These images are as much drawn as painted, and their materiality is not so much about the brush stroke as about the layers, some drawn, some painted, some printed, suspended in the pool of resin. (Alas the shadows and depth do not show in the photos). (Image, "Cross Section").

Shotz, by the way, is a 1987 RISD grad with an MFA from the University of Washington, and she has shown from coast to coast. She works in a number of media, and at Locks is also showing rubbery sculptures of cartoony plants on life-support systems (check out the IV tubing and yellowing leaves), expressing concerned with human intervention with natural, genetic processes (image left, "Still Life").

While I loved looking at this ultra-hip work, its layers, its references to Georgia O'Keefe and Loony Tunes(the flying drops of water, the animated forms, the Olive Oyl plant life) and psychodelia, I couldn't help but reflect on how screwy--and yet appropriate--it was for someone concerned about bioengineering and mutations in the gene code to be working with resin. Oh horrors!

Burko's Eden will survive for who knows how long (humanity is bound to expand to even the most inhospitable of regions). Shotz is looking at Eden once it has been messed with. But they both express something quite similar--an acknowledgment of a threat, and an awe of nature.

Try to get to Locks before Burko comes down at the end of the week so you can see both these artists simultaneously. The pairing is definitely food for thought on whither landscape painting.

It's a Jewish holiday--lots of time to think about what to post next. Back on Sunday. (Roberta's still out of town.)