David Levine: Escapes
Forum Gallery
745 Fifth Avenue at 57th Street,
212-355-4545
February 12 to March 20, 2004
By MAUREEN
MULLARKEY
A version of this
review was first published in The NY Sun, March 18, 2004
David Levine Martha
Stewart (with Golden Eggs) 2000
watercolor & pencil on paper, 14 x 11 inches
Dickensian in temperament,
David Levine wields a wicked pen. Part moralist, part entertainer, he
lampoons presidents, political contenders, literati, and cultural icons
with equal verve.
On view are 40 caricatures
from The New York Review of Books, The New Yorker and Time. The NYRB
has been publishing Mr. Levine's widely imitated line drawings since
1963. Levine is a born satirist with a genius for portraiture, suggesting
personality traits through exaggeration of telling details, observed
and invented.
Architect Walter Gropius
hunches uncomfortably against the geometry of one of his own Bauhaus
chairs. Howard Stern's face emerges from a page crowded with hair, the
luxuriance spreading over armfuls of money. Martha Stewart (c. 2000)
is a blonde goose atop a mound of golden eggs. Likenesses are densely
rendered with the bold, convincing pen strokes that have earned Mr.
Levine the affectionate title "King of Cross Hatching."
None of Levine's hard-edged
burlesques prepare you for the the sensuous satisfaction of his paintwork:
the matte charm of his oil handling and the virtuoso refinement of his
watercolors. Caustic humor gives way to unexpected gentleness in the
paintings.
David Levine Back 2002
watercolor on paper, 11 x 8 inches
Courtesy Forum Gallery
There is something romantic,
even courtly, in Mr. Levine's approach to the human figure. He depicts
ordinary people with great tact. Alert to color and mass, Mr. Levine
assembles motley Coney Islanders into a rhythmic arrangement of contrasting
patterns and tonalities. In "Boardwalk Ascent and Descent"
(1966), the movement of golden-toned crowds up and down stairs resonates
with suggestions of Tiepolo's angels in flight. Vuillard hovers over
Levine's paintings of garment district workers. Eakins breathes on the
figure of an elderly man, leaning over his clothing press. Degas' seamstresses
and washerwomen insinuate their presence, as well.
Mr. Levine's aptitude for
specificity, so crucial to caricature, is the mirror image of his talent
for abstraction. An eye for essences is central to both exaggeration
and abridgement. An adroit editor, he controls the course of pooling
pigment to suggest omitted detail. "An Embroiderer" (2003)
illustrates the power of watercolor in the hands of a painter responsive
to the idiosyncrasies of the medium. "Back," a small watercolor
of a seated nude, is a lovely evocation of the tones and weight of flesh
using the most economical means. A brooding image of the Coney Island
roller coaster against an unlit sky is an elegy for more than seaside
amusement.
Irreverent toward power and
topical celebrity, Mr. Levine paints with deep regard for art history
and for his betters. There are fewer of them than you might think.
