[Sidebar] May 10 - 17, 2001

[Art Reviews]

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A select group

Bell Gallery showcases its treasures

by Bill Rodriguez

Matisse's "Portrait of a Young Studio Assistant"

If RISD didn't have its impressive Museum of Art down the hill, Brown University's David Winton Bell Gallery would likely be a full-fledged museum itself, instead of a space in the List Art Center. Nonetheless, as well as curating or co-sponsoring shows that sometimes receive national attention, the gallery has an admirable collection of its own, as exhibitions of their Harry Callahan photographs and Frank Stella prints have demonstrated.

Drawing from the gallery's more than 4000 works, Selections from the Collection is running through May 28 and offers an interesting sampling from the last six centuries of Western art. Almost all the selections are prints, though the collection includes other media. The photography holdings are extensive enough that a separate show is planned for the future.

The artistic techniques, temperaments and messages on display here are as diverse as a playful self-portrait of Robert Arneson sticking his tongue out at us in tight close-up, and a grim illustration for visionary William Blake's 1825 Book of Job, God hovering as close as a lover.

The contemporary and modern inclusions, grouped separately, are a varied lot in other regards as well. At one extreme is the whimsy of Arneson's colorful and open-ended lithographic comment (on the fuck-you responsibility of artists; on the inevitable snarkiness it leads to; etc.). Also at that end of the radical-subject-matter spectrum is Hannah Wilke's Chewing Gum (1975), three collages with dozens of studies of that material, obsessively manipulated into the same tiny folded form, in different scales and color combinations. Whether the offering is more erotic or whimsical depends upon how obvious you regard either the labia variations or the choice of medium .

Several Pop artists show the flag here, such as Tom Wesselman and his 1965 fascination with primary colors and tan lines, Nude. There is the familiar Mao Tse-tung silkscreen of Andy Warhol. More interesting is a simple but rewarding Roy Lichtenstein still life of a lemon and glass of water, the conventional genre subject in such contrast to his comic book style. Rather than one of his more common ironic send-ups of, say, romance, we get a reminder that he appropriated technique as purposefully as subject matter: he shows the light refraction of the water breaking up and merging a portion of the fruit with background lines as observantly as any Cubist ever did.

A favorite of mine was Clara Clara I (1985) by Minimalist Richard Serra, who is primarily a sculptor. About eight feet long and given the entire side of a partition, it rewards the lingering eye with the shadows falling from the ragged edges of what first looks like a stark and pure black rectangular field against white background. But when you move in closer, the surface shows itself to be richly textured, like black stucco troweled against a wall.

Particularly interesting are prints by artists we think of mainly as painters. So Edward Hopper's familiar solitary subjects inform the image of railroad tracks with a man merging into the dark background. If we recognize the welter and interplay of lines in a woodcut as typical of Wassily Kandinsky, we can admire how the swirl is rescued from chaos without the softening effect of color. Similarly, the Marc Chagall etching below it, The Coachman Selifane, had to characterize in black and white.

The main ringleaders of the usual 20th-century artistic suspects are here, from Picasso and his minotaurs to a whole cadre of German Expressionists. Two female studies by Matisse are such striking contrasts in use of line that they could be in the nearby RISD Museum exhibition on the subject. (Don't miss "Drawing the Line," on display through July 1. There's a breathtaking Tiepolo, used to exemplify his "flying pen" technique, a peaceful portrait that seems composed from a dust storm, a masterpiece of precision within fluidity.) The simple lithograph Le Dos (1914) shows the spare outline of a seated nude, from the back, as powerful a use of negative space as a Japanese sumi-e brush drawing. In a similar spare technique, Matisse's Portrait of a Young Studio Assistant is a head done in minimal broad, inky strokes; the exquisite touch is that the nose was made with a drier brush, so that wispy lines formed next to it, simulating shading while lightening the heavy line.

Speaking of Tiepolo -- a rather staid example is on display here -- the above shows that there is plenty of interest here even without the Old Masters, who are thoroughly represented by a Rembrandt landscape, a Dürer crucifixion, a Hogarth portrait, and a Daumier caricature. These 116 works chosen from the Bell Gallerycollection are the cream of the crop and not to be missed.

An informal discussion with Prof. Kermit Champa will be held in the gallery on Thursday, May 17 at 5:30 p.m., and there will be a gallery tour on Saturday, May 26 at 1 p.m.

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