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38 San Francisco Chronicle Sat., Feb. 10, 1973 [[Image]] Caravaggio's "The Denial of St. Peter" Three Shows at UC Art Museum A Brilliant, Original Talent's Rough Bronzes By Alfred Frankenstein Bronze and cords of various fibers are the substance of art for Barbara Chase-Riboud, an exhibition of whose work is now to be seen at the university of California Art Museum. Ms. Chase-Riboud is an American now at work in Paris; this is her first showing on the west coast and apparently her first solo exhibition. It demonstrates a very brilliant and original talent, but one which is in danger of falling into formula. The bronze sections of Ms. Chase-Riboud's sculpture are great, heavy, rough-surfaced things, rather like the forms some sculptors make by crushing sheets of metal together; in effect, though, they more closely resemble sections of eroded earth tilted downward as if on the edge of the sea. CONCEPT These triangular, downward-tilted shapes are not, to be sure, the artist's only concept in bronze; some of her metal forms resemble crowns and some are like vertical strata in rocks, but whatever the total shape, the bronze is folded and roughly fitted, like some phenomenon produced by the most relentless and powerful of natural forces. Out of each bronze shape falls a flow of cords, of silk or wool or some other fiber, knotted, rope-like, or resembling freely tangled skeins. The fibers and the metal are always perfectly integrated at the point of their juncture and their highly exceptional relationship seems the most natural thing on earth. You can get philosophical about this if you want to–soft versus hard, mobile versus immobile, and so on–but such philosophizing may not be necessary. Some of the passages in fiber suggest African masks, which is probably deliberate, since Ms. Chase-Riboud is black, but she has carried the motif far beyond the stage of simple ethnic reflection. The UC Art Museum also has an immense exhibition of its recent acquisitions, more than 100 of them in every conceivable medium and representing almost every conceivable period and tradition in Western art. You can't attempt to review a show like that, but you can tell people it is there and that it is well worth seeing. There are many old-master drawings and prints and numerous prints by modern masters as well. A grant from the National Endowment for the arts enabled the museum's Committee for the Acquisition of Afro-American Art to enrich its holdings. (I didn't know the museum had a Committee for the Acquisition of Afro-American Art; one suspects it has very few counterparts elsewhere.) A large number of contemporary paintings and sculptures, many by Bay Region artists, are also part of the show, including works of Ed Moses, Deborah Remington, Cheryl Bowers, Charles Ross, William T. Wiley, and many others. I have two favorites among the woorks [[works]]. One is a set of panels by Charles Ross recording the action of sunlight focused through a magnifying glass on white paint on ten successive days. It is one of the few pieces of conceptual art I have seen that is also a beautiful object. My other favorite piece here is Nancy Graves' painting. "Pacific Floor, 150 Miles Out." Look at it sideways and it will go through a remarkable sea-change. Finally, one must record that the UC Art Museum has a large show of Oriental rugs from Western collections. This is described on the title page of its catalogue as "a comprehensive exhibit of notable Turkoman rugs, along with 15 examples from Persia, Turkey, the Caucasus, and China, selected by Emmett and Murray Eiland." I know just enough about this subject to know it is murder for anyone but an expert to talk about it. All a non-expert can venture to say is that the rugs are very beautiful and that the catalogue prepared by the Eilands is most illuminating.
