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22 Thursday, October 9, 1975 THE SOHO WEEKLY NEWS Pop's Second Coming MONA DA VINCI JAMES ROSENQUIST (Leo Castelli Gallery, 4 East 77th St., through Oct. 18): Probably the less said in or about Pop Art, the better. James Rosenquist's new "drawings" hardly show us anything we haven't seen or heard a thousand times before from one source or another. The drawings are done on rectangular sheets of white paper, framed behind reflective plexiglass surfaces. If a drawing fails to hold your attention, you can at least observe the movements of the people behind you in the gallery. Incorporating paint and collage, Rosenquist's basic repertoire of primary colors provide arrayals of spirals and solar flares bursting from sun-shapes, with a spattering of Pollock thrown in for effect. Rosenquist's political drawings are loaded with sentiment, a sort of Pop-politics indulging in cliche, ex post facto associations that are stale as yesterday's papers. One drawing attempts to immortalize John F. Kennedy by using memento mori reminders of his assassination. On the left, a triangular, cropped section of the American flag in grays and black, is bordered with black crepe fabric. The center is a puddle of diluted black paint resembling chiffon, with a small hole punched through the paper. These are obviously referenced to Jackie's widow's veils and the bullet shot, but uniting them like this smacks of a certain ambivalence in Rosenquist's meaning. The immortalization effort takes place on the right with a stenciled back-half of a Pegasus merging into the shape of J.F.K.'s famous rocking chair. Done in 1975, the work lacks the relevancy it might have had if Rosenquist made this kind of statement ten years ago. Most of the drawings use a tripartite composition that is symmetrically balanced, rather than a serial arrangement. Large, folded paper egg shapes are placed on a central axis line drawn down the middle of the paper, balanced on either side by enlarged, overlapping paper-clip forms. As a visual metaphor, Rosenquist seems to be making signs that hint he's taking a more nuclear or cosmic, astronautical world-view. In "Wind and Lightning," we're treated to a bit of chinoiserie. A page from the Wall Street Journal collaged onto the drawing says, "a Red thrust/a real threat." A bolt of lightning splits apart spray-painted, folded paper circle, a ladder shape is diagonally painted over the newspaper, and a bright red, Chinese calligraphic symbol that Alloway would possibly find significant, sum up the overly simplistic associations Rosenquist again makes about complicated issues. Pop Art advertises itself and nothing more. As signed art, former billboard painters like Rosenquist could finally gain personal fame and fortune by selling "here today, gone tomorrow" messages transcribed for the art-buying public. Such a totally extroverted art depends for its success on the surface pitch aimed at the impulse buyer looking for instant satisfaction, not lasting meaning or values. There's nothing wrong with this necessarily. I just enjoyed the experience of seeing what caught my eye in Rosenquist's new drawings, because that's the whole point of any spontaneous, impulsive moment. One either shrinks back to stop and think the matter over before deciding whether it's a good thing, or grabs the opportunity in the moment for whatever it's worth. I'm glad I chose the latter, since at the new Rosenquist show, that's the most obvious thing to do. AL CAPP, "Dog Patch, U.S.A" - 15 Limited Edition Graphics (Circle Gallery, 961 Madison Ave. at 78th, through Oct. 11): The difference between a "divine comedy" and a secular tragedy is like trying to draw comparisons between Giotto's Arena Chapel frescoes and the American comic-strips. About all one could say about this vast difference is that the gods always have the last laugh on us, their biggest joke of all. One of the forefathers of Pop Art is probably Al Capp, who's now having a graphics show featuring Li'l Abner and the whole Yokum Social Set. Capp's balloon quote pointing to his signature on the announcement says, "The American comic-strip is as unique, as vigorous and as precious an ART as American Jazz!!" Well, American jazz does have roots, but they're from another continent as we all know. Apparently, Capp has decided to capitalize and retaliate on what Pop Art did to eradicate his career as a leading newspaper comic-strip artist in the Sixties. I guess there's no reason why Capp can't jump into the gallery circuit, since the student lecture circuit didn't consider him very funny as a stand-up comic-strip speaker. Bitterness and resentment carry on for just so long; and if you can't beat them, you might as well join them-which is exactly what Capp is doing. His new series of graphics have all the familiar Capp caricatures, including Fearless Fosdick, Mammy Yokum, Marryin' Sam on Sadie Hawkins Day-the entire Yokum society brought up to date with even a trace of women's lib thrown in. The running strip of the old comics have been stripped to the Pop style of conveying the whole narrative message in one picture. Capp's little works are miniatures compared to the grand scale of Lichtenstein, and "dotless." What they say is really drawn from the dregs like Daisy May declaring, "Ah is liberated," while Abner announces, "Ah is hongry." But perhaps Capp's Pop-Nostalgia art is less pretentious than Lichenstein's blowing-up the comic-strip genre all out of proportion to what it actually is. Originally, cartoons were rough preliminary sketches for full and complete works of art. Because America only acknowledges two centuries in its history, is it any wonder we're still bogged down with the problems of the cartoon stage in the art process? ALICE FORMAN (Phoenix Gallery, 939 Madison Ave. at 76th, through Oct. 10): Alice Forman's lush, verdant still life paintings in her one-woman show at the Phoenix Gallery are quite stunning and beautiful. Complex arrangements of potted plants, porcelain bowls and vases containing garden flowers and fruit, harmonize with the sumptuous wall patterns and shawl-covered tables. Forman's compositional fluency in every painting is a joyous celebration of nature's organic abundance brought indoors. The luxuriant patterns flow and intertwine with a visual rhythm, similar to medieval French tapestries or exotic Oriental carpets. Yet each object is naturalistically distinct and clear. Her use of color is warm, sensual and earthy. She blends the objects with their environment so that figure and ground are two-dimensionally perfected and united. Forman's expressive still lifes offer the viewer a marvelously full, visual experience. HECTOR ESCOBAR (Gruenebaum Gallery, 25 East 77th St.): The young Columbian painter, Hector Escobar, is showing powerful, monumental images of abstract female nudes in his first U.S. exhibition. He uses mainly earth colors and flesh tones with black accents heightening the dramatic effect of the basically minimal, static forms. A somber mood pervades each work, causing the bulk of the images to appear laden with immense physical gravity and an almost metaphysical silence. The ponderous figures are set in barren, empty rooms. A small, square-shaped patch of blue occasionally allows the daylight to enter the dark interiors While Escobar's strong use of contrast dominates most of the paintings, he also experiments with white on white, making the figure only spectrally discernible. His work suggests a myth-seeking formalism. His consolidations of statuesque figurative images with abstract structural elements define a disquieting sense of space and human alienation. [[image]] Seriograph by All-America's cartoonist [[image]] Hector Escobar's "Three Nudes"
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