From Muralists to Monsters

originally published August 20, 2008

As the summer winds down and a new UGA semester gets into gear, an array of art can be found around town that ranges from the work of brand-name historical artists at the Georgia Museum of Art (GMOA) to that done by the hand of a local child at Five Star Day Café.

South of the Border: Perhaps to welcome its new neighbor - the massive and labyrinthine art school - but certainly to mark its expansion, the GMOA has put out a lot of the good stuff from its permanent collection, including some big names - Matisse, Bonnard and Dufy to name a few - as well as some regional favorites and a room of paintings and works on paper from the European Renaissance and Baroque eras. Many of these selected works from the permanent collection will be put on long-term display when the new, 30,000-foot addition to the GMOA is completed in two years' time. Also on view is a traveling exhibition from California, “Everett Gee Jackson/ San Diego Modern: 1920-1955,” that traces the American artist’s career from his Impressionist beginning to his mid-century Modern style. Indeed, one can see the trajectory of much of the first half of the 20th century within Jackson’s oeuvre that bears the traces of the influence of the American Regionalist and Mexican muralists. Accompanying this traveling exhibition is a selection of in-house paintings, prints and drawings from both Mexican muralists David Sisqueros, José Clemente Orozco and Diego Rivera, as well as a wide-range of artists they influenced.

Freshly Picked: Tucked away in one of the museum’s smaller galleries is a collection of new acquisitions donated in honor of late UGA art history professor Andrew Ladis. Reflecting his own extensive collection of art and his intellectual and artistic contributions to the GMOA, there are examples of American paintings, prints and drawings from the 20th century; a delicately-rendered small red-chalk drapery study from a Sienese late-Renaissance artist; and a still from one of Jim Herbert’s black-and-white films, featuring two nude youths who look as if they could have been lifted from classical statuary.

Child's Play: For an entirely different art experience, be sure to see Ayla Dartez’s paintings collectively titled "Nepotism in Art?" on display at Five Star Day. Since Dartez is a six-year-old artist, it is fair to assume that she did not come up with the title of her solo show, but rather that it might reference the fact that she is the daughter of the owner of the local restaurant. According to the people at Five Star, the very young Dartez is not without strong opinions regarding art - she despises pattern in paintings (apparently she immediately disliked local artist Lou Kregel’s neat geometric paintings that were up last month and requested that they be taken down).

Dartez’s disdain for pattern is obvious in her energetic and multi-hued paintings and drawings, and often she elects to incorporate glitter or pre-fabricated appliqué shapes that play off of her chaotic compositions. My favorite is an assemblage of painted sheets of paper on the back wall of the restaurant that looks like a catalog of nine wildly colored sunsets. Yet, a two-headed girl - one head happy, the other a dark blue, grimacing face that hangs off the figure’s blocky body like an afterthought - certainly raises some probing questions about notions of the essential self. For another review of Dartez’s work, see what Han Vance has written at http://www.hanvance.com/.

A Stitch in Time: Lea Purvis’ work at Espresso Royale this month reveals a more calculated approach and devotion to pattern than her very young contemporary. Purvis’ work is based in drawing and draftsmanship, although she seems to favor thread in her works on canvas over more traditional and less labor-intensive choices such as graphite or ink as a medium. Her intaglio prints of solitary rabbits are the most conventional of her work and are rendered with a naturalistic but minimal style that echoes the linear, almost graphic quality of her embroidered work on unprimed, raw canvases. Appropriate to her chosen medium of thread, the works are far more decorative and abstract than her prints. Yet, tying the embroidered drawings and prints together is her recurring motif of animals, almost all bunnies with the exception of a single fox. Distinguishing her work on canvas from her prints is her use of stylized floral designs that provide semi-abstract environments for her animal protagonists.

Sea Change: For another take on the animal kingdom, see Joe Havasy’s show, “A Selection of Paintings of Things That Make Me Happy” at Transmetropolitan. It seems that sea creatures, monsters and mythical animals make the artist happy. A strange hybrid - half-plant, half-animal seahorse - floats in a weirdly hued sea of crimson and yellow bubbles (see image of “The Mysterious Leafy Sea Dragon"); his version of Godzilla attacks a city whose citizens' screams are expressed through countless dialogue bubbles with explanation points coming from the burning and collapsing buildings; an animal that I’m guessing is a narwhal with a creepy smile stabs an innocent-looking penguin with his long horn and ensanguines the painting with synthetic-looking bubbles of bright red blood; and a unicorn trails a bright rainbow across two separate canvasses. Up through the end of this month, the paintings possess Havasy’s characteristic blend of treacle tempered by a dose of blood and guts that will be familiar to anyone who keeps up with his weekly comic. Although Havasy incorporates his interest and talent for dry humor and illustration into his paintings, the works depart from his comics in subtle ways, and this group of paintings seems full of smart contradictions. For example, as always Havasy’s imagery is graphic and linear, but in these pieces his brushwork is thick and apparent, although it also seems automatic and formulaic. Additionally, all 10 of the paintings have ornate, although probably pre-fabricated, frames that further play off - and complicate - the comic-strip-inspired aesthetic of the paintings themselves. Havasy also has a show up of older paintings entitled “We Have No One to Love Us” at the Alps Jittery Joe’s through Aug. 15.

Oops: Finally, I have to apologize to an artist from the last Art Notes - Chance Fiveash - who so convincingly painted portraits of girls that I mistook him for one. By the way, if you missed his work at Walker’s last month, be sure to check out his website, www.chancefiveash.com.

Rebecca Brantley