Odd Nerdrum: New Paintings
at Forum Gallery (745 Fifth Avenue, 212. 355.4547) June 4 to July 30
Gretna Campbell (1922
- 1987) at Tibor de Nagy (724 Fifth Aveune, 212.262.5050) June 3
to July 3
Bill Scott: Process and
Continuity at Hollis Taggart Galleries (48 East 73 Street, 212.628.4000)
May 18 to July 9, 2004
This article first
appeared in the New York Sun, 10 June 2004
By MAUREEN
MULLARKEY
Odd Nerdrum Five
Singing Women 2004
oil on canvas, 79-7/8 x 147-5/8 inches
Courtesy Forum Gallery, New York
An Odd Nerdrum exhibition
is like a pastiche of old B-movies. Remember Louis L'Amour's "Heller
in Pink Tights:" A rag-tag theatrical troupe wanders the frontier
struggling to survive. So too, the cast of Mr. Nerdrum's costume epics.
His generic post-catastrophe landscape conjures up "Spacehunter:
Adventures in the Forbidden Zone." Every day is The Day After Tomorrow
in Nerdrumland.
Oscar Wilde said it took
a heart of stone not to laugh at the death of Little Nell. It takes
lights lowered to catacomb wattage to discourage merriment in front
of Mr. Nerdrum's special effects: that histrionic nosebleed, wolf-skin
wardrobes from George Caitlin's Indian gallery, the ghosts of Paintings
Past and omens of artistic anguish.
His stock role of The Artist
as Exemplary Sufferer takes its cue this year from Mel Gibson. "Second
Birth" (2004) presents the Second Coming of himself as Christ.
Antonello da Messina's haunting bust-length image of Christ crowned
with thorns, a 15th century panel, is stamped with Mr. Nerdrum's features
and set to resurrect from a lunar tundra.
Seabiscuit drew crowds recently,
so expect a horse. "Horse Bath" (2004) gives us a white one,
homage to Rembrandt's "Polish Rider." Head held at an unnatural
angle, the goofy rider looks to be mimicking Balthus' portrait of Baroness
Rothschild. "Flock" (2004) has five naked men and a boy in
a simian crouch, like chimps posing for Jane Goodall. The crown of thorns
on each head is a portentous absurdity that lends credence to Mr. Nerdrum's
claim to have studied with Joseph Beuys.
"Five Singing Women"
(2004) arranges five females on their backs, suggesting notes on a staff
that ends with a half-note: another naked boy. All mouths are open,
in song or rigor mortis? The women's coverings-part sleeping bag, part
shroud-slip off at just the right places. Breasts and beaver shots carry
the day. "On The Boat" (2004) teases us with a threadbare
couple, straight from some sagebrush saga, watching the distant approach
of a phantom boat. The ark of salvation? The lifeboat from a lost starship
seeking The Big Trail? Analogies are mixed but that happens with Odd.
His repertory of New Old
Master showmanship camps in full feather past the footlights. Nothing
here supports its own publicity as a Rembrandtian critique of modernity.
Mr. Nerdrum is a parodist. That his parodies are mistaken for prophecies
is a testament to P.T. Barnum's grasp of public credulity and appetite
for spectacle. In the end, failed prophecy is a form of nostalgia. It
is dispiriting to see fine technique lavished on an art running on empty.
Gretna Campbell
Gravel Pit, Stillwater 1980
oil on canvas, 32 x 46 inches
Courtesy Tibor de Nagy Gallery
Gretna Campbell's plein-air paintings are a gracious antidote to sham
solemnities around town. They are on display in New York for the first
time in eight years. It is a welcome event. Concentrating on work from
the 1970s and '80s, the exhibition features landscapes of the Maine
coast, rural New Jersey and the south of France.
Ms. Campbell came of age
among a generation of painters respectful of the achievements of Abstract
Expressionism but confident that depictions of the natural world remained
timely and significant. She was a realist in the best sense, faithful
to the physical pulse of what she observed yet not subservient to appearances.
The apparent spontaneity
of the work belies the rigorous studio preparation that preceded outdoor
painting. Ms. Campbell drew on site, mapping details of the locale:
the juncture of planes, the nodal points of her composition. Transferred
to canvas, this initial linear schema was painted over in the studio
with broad expanses of color chosen for chromatic interaction with the
final paint layers improvised on the spot.
The pleasure of her work
is in the variety and complexity of its color and the lush, textural
weave of brushstrokes. Details of the local scene-a rocky shoreline,
the slope of a field or angle of a trellis- are the raw material for
a pictorial architecture built on the reciprocal effects of one color
upon another. She worked boldly with brush and palette knife but the
result is fastidious and transparent. The gestural energy of action
painting enlivens an intimate sympathy for natural settings.
Specific shapes are loosely
rendered while the sense of light and air is vividly realized. A snow
bank resonates with touches of blue, delicate pinks and ochres. That
distant haze, where sky and hill tops meet, reveals gentle modulations
of viridian, cerulean, violet and yellow. "Along the Banks of Cranberry
Cove" (1984) is a riveting dance of variegated greens interknit
with supporting mauves, tender browns and golds.
The eye has work to do in these subtle, sophisticated paintings.
Bill Scott Ranuculus
& Poppies 2003
oil on canvas, 35 x 50 inches
Courtesy Hollis Taggart Galleries
Bill Scott has no garden;
so he invents his own. And what a high time he has in it.
Mr. Scott is an abstract
painter working withing the Philadelphia colorist tradition that follows
the lead of Arthur B. Carles, one of the most spirited of the early
American modsernists. This is hs first exhibiton with Hollis Taggart.
With vivacity and a crazy
quilt inventiveness, he evokes the retinal sensation of flower fields
in a rambunctious patchwork of color segments. Depositing paint in abstract,
lozenge-like shapes, Mr. Scott makes deft use of the see-through capacities
and textures of oil paint. Pale tones are glazed over with darker ones;
contrasting colors appear beneath the surface of each seemingly nonchalant
swatch. Desultory dark lines traipse over the canvas, unifying disparate
patches, much like the overstitching on traditional quilts.
Emotional range is keyed
to the coloristic one. With the exception of "Night Garden,"
Mr. Scott's chromatic scale emphasizes smiling colors. Candied pinks
pushing toward fuschia, ingratiating yellows and spring greens predominate.
The work is unapologetically decorative, delightfully so. It would be
cranky to wish for more metal amid the charm. Seduction is enough.
