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Sunday,
July 18, 2004
BY
ZACHARY LEWIS
"Alexander
Calder and the
Natural Cycle"
and "Inner
Circles," two
loosely connected
new exhibits in
Harrisburg's
Susquehanna Art
Museum, derive their
power from the
strength of the
circle as a timeless
artistic form.
Neither
does so in a forced
or didactic way.
Both shows leave
aside academic
lessons to offer
pure enjoyment of
art for art's sake.
In
the case of
"Inner
Circles," the
shape is literally
the theme. It
appears in nearly
every work by seven
living,
Philadelphia-based,
artists: David Foss,
James Fuhrman,
Michelle Marcuse,
Antonio Puri,
Vincent Romaniello,
Eleanor Schimmel and
Tremain Smith.
Circles
are everywhere in
the Calder show,
too, but they serve
less as a theme than
as a diving board
into the
philosophical and
intellectual ocean
behind the work.
It's
nice to see Calder
honored so
prominently at the
Susquehanna Art
Museum. After all,
his work is greatly
appreciated in
Harrisburg. Much of
the show, including
the only mobile, is
on loan from local
private collections.
There's even a city
street named after
him.
Those
who know Calder only
for his gigantic
steel animals and
his hanging
sculptures (one of
which rotates
gracefully above the
main lobby of the
Philadelphia Museum
of Art) will be
surprised to find
almost nothing of
the sort in
"The Natural
Cycle."
This
show introduces the
far lesser-known,
two-dimensional
Calder, the
lithographs,
gouaches, and
tapestries that
typically don't
attract as much
attention as the
immense public
installations.
All
of them carry the
Calder imprint:
bright colors,
primary shapes
(including circles)
and patterns. And
even though they're
relatively small,
Calder still wants
you to think big --
well beyond the
seemingly limited
spatial dimensions
of the medium.
Unless,
of course, you're
looking at something
like "Snail and
Fish." That's
where he's just
after a smile, the
same reaction he
probably wanted from
his children when he
constructed an
ingenious set of
toys for them.
The
sole example here of
Calder's kinetic art
is a small but
exquisite mobile
whose red-painted
steel leaves might
once have been the
scraps from a larger
work.
Each
stem rotates
independently but is
connected above and
below to another
just like it.
Spinning in response
to the gentlest
currents, the piece
traces invisible
circles in the air
and resembles a
mathematical
fraction that could
go on indefinitely,
much like the ratio
between the diameter
and circumference of
a circle.
Calder's
work in this show
seems effortless and
spontaneous, as if
anyone skilled with
metal could
duplicate it, which
couldn't be further
from the truth. By
contrast, much of
what's in
"Inner
Circles" makes
quite clear the
skilled, intense and
probably messy
physical effort
behind it.
Tremain
Smith's beeswax
paintings were
perhaps the most
labor-intensive of
the bunch. They are
also some of the
most complex
visually.
Their
thick,
semi-transparent
gloss permits views
above, below and
through the surface
onto patterns, some
of them circular,
scratched on
earth-colored
backgrounds. Like
Calder, Smith wants
to (and does) convey
an almost spiritual
transcendence,
something far beyond
the obvious.
Michelle
Marcuse makes use of
comparable
techniques but on a
lesser scale. Her
preferred surface
tends to be small
cubes of masonite or
wood panel arranged
in some domino
pattern.
Though
beautifully
executed, the pieces
feel needlessly
cramped, as if the
artist wanted to do
something grander
but arbitrarily
confined her ideas
to 6-inch squares.
Wispy titles such as
"At the Edge of
the Sky" and a
barrage of confusing
art-speak do little
to save them.
Nor
is there much to
take from a group of
cloudy,
pastel-colored
vistas by Vincent
Romaniello. Dotted
with thumb tacks and
string and given
titles such as
"The Beauty of
Hope" and
"Passing
Through," they
might just float
away.
By
contrast,
"Sixty Quests
Begin," by
James Fuhrman, isn't
going anywhere. This
small, semi-circular
arrangement of
densely packed steel
wedges, embodies
pure physical mass
the same minimalist
way Yin Yang
symbolizes infinity.
Fuhrman,
seemingly the only
artist in the group
to have picked the
circle as the
ideological starting
point, complements
the U shape with
full circles in a
set of meditative
brush drawings he
calls "Enso."
Three
imposing, wall-sized
paintings by Antonio
Puri evoke a similar
impulse, the urge to
sit, stare and
absorb what such
mammoth gestures
have to say.
Fiercely
abstract, the
paintings will yield
as many different
reactions as there
are viewers. Their
quality, however, is
not likely to be
disputed.
One
is a giant red
bull's-eye splashed
with flames of red,
green and white. Its
opposite is a long
canvas painted cool
blue with darker
blue circles. The
composition,
speckled with
decorative beads and
slightly rippled in
places, resembles
the still surface of
a pond.
Rarely
is there time in a
busy schedule to pay
a second or third
visit to an
exhibition.
"Inner
Circles,"
however, along with
the tribute to
Pennsylvania's own
Alexander Calder,
offer abstract
visual experiences
worth repeating if
at all possible.
ZACHARY LEWIS: 255-8266 or zlewis@patriot-news.com