Contemporary
Landscapes
Forum Gallery
745 Fifth Avenue at 57th Street
212.269.5436
This review was
first published in The New York Sun, August 26, 2004
By
MAUREEN
MULLARKEY
Israel Hershberg
City Center, Jerusalem 1990-91
oil on linen, 47 x 49 inches
Courtesy Forum Gallery
In August, galleries
hang casual fare for accidental tourists, put their feet up and wait
for fall. All the more reason, then, to applaud Forum Gallery for a
vigorous selection of contemporary landscapes. Each of its twenty-plus
paintings, drawings and watercolors is worth the viewing.
Go first to Israel
Hershberg's "City Center, Jerusalem" (1990-91). Painted from
a hi-rise window, the view drops precipitously in the foreground, gradually
fanning outward toward surrounding hills. Color intensity accumulates
at the base of the vantage point, gradually dimming into the myriad
indescribable neutrals of a sustained haze. The painting is saturated
with mood and the fragility of its moment.
Hershberg makes
no secret of his admiration for Antonio L¢pez-Garc¡a, the
great contemporary Spanish realist. Hershberg's composition paraphrases
L¢pez-Garc¡a's
"Madrid desde Torres Blancas" (1976-82); his sense of light
derives from the same contemplative patience and austerity. More than
a professional nod, Hershberg's cityscape expresses the reverence of
a painter who recognizes his own soul in the sensibility and work of
another. Such empathy, expressed on an almost preternatural level of
achievement, is rare in contemporary painting.
Robert Bauer's small
landscape of southern Spain and three gossamer drawings make a fine
accompaniment. They share Hershberg's humility before the visual world
and his unconcern with fashion. Bauer's landscape drawings are particularly
compelling for their receptivity to the abstract mysteries of depiction.
Silvery hatchings in hard pencil travel lightly over the paper, caressing
the subject more than describing it. Sudden dark notes, made by the
sharpened point of a softer lead, tether near-immaterial marks to the
singularities of a locale.
Craig McPherson's
haunting monochrome pastel on canvas is based on Edgar Thompson's historic
photos of American steel works. Points of light punctuate the atmospheric
sfumato of manufacture rising from clustered smoke stacks. Think of
Seurat descending into Pittsburgh at its industrial height. Certain
persuasions might interpret this as a sulfurous vision of hell; to me,
it is elegiac and poignant.
Joseph McNamara
frames the haze of sundown through the strict geometry of a dry dock.
Fading light in the distance is captured in pale pinks and violets that
weave, deepened and enriched, through the bedarkened greens and blues
of the foreground structure. It is a more sophisticated excursion into
the uses of color than the bravura exuberance of Brian Rutenberg's "Until
2" (2002) that hangs nearby. For all its palette-knifed dash, Rutenberg's
kaleidoscopic charm is ultimately less satisfying than McNamara's quieter,
more deliberate analysis of his motif.
Davis Cone's meticulous,
brashly colored Art Deco picture houses strike the right balance between
homage to cultural artifacts and wry recognition of the transience of
Style Moderne. (Have fun finding his signature, hidden Where's-Waldo
style within the image.) Tula Telfair 's "Early Utopian Ideals"
(2003) is lovely to look at and a good choice for anyone who prefers
the idea of landscape-their own mental image of the sublime-to the disconcerting
specifics of real places. Based on reproductions of 19th century American
landscape painting, it has a bookish feel to it. But that is fine if
you love books, too.
