This title was digitized by the Museum of Contemporary Art of Georgia (MOCA GA).
About Contemporary art/southeast. (Atlanta, Ga.) 1977-1980 | View Entire Issue (Aug. 1, 1980)
glazed surface becomes a limited field for playfully complex subtleties of reflected light from neon and other commercial signs. The coloration is warm, but in spite of the explicit recording, “Extra Dry" might be subtitled “extra cool." The subject of “Extra Dry” is dcpthless space, light, and reflections, all contrasted and interdependent. Photography provides invaluable assistance and control for the technical realist. To realize “Extra Dry" Beyer worked from photographs and slides, generally multiple views. Slide projection augmented by freehand drawing followed. Visual information was selected, then emphasized, simplified or elimi nated, resulting in a distillation of images. In these thematic concerns and technical approaches the artist is in league with Richard Estes, Robert Cottingham and what is practically a school of reflection painters. Reflections from urban surfaces abound in the work of another technical realist, Joseph Pitts. “Red BMW,” 1978, continues Bayer’s glazed mirrored world from an equally unemotional disposition but captures reflections during the day. Sections of late- model cars parked in a nondescript urban setting are seen as if in a brief encounter by a passing motorist. “Red BMW” might be termed a traffic vista, an all too familiar fragment of the city environment. Pitts, a native of Oxford, Mississippi, presents twentieth century nature as the city and its standard izing manifestations. The new nature presented is not motivated by a spirit of urban optimism which inspired earlier American artists such as Louis Loz- owick, Joseph Stella, Prestin Dickinson and Hugh Ferris. The automobiles glimpsed are not custom- designed art objects like those found in Clarence Mcaselle’s “Sunday in the Park,” or in the equally meticulous representations by photo realist Tom Blackwell. The autos in “Red BMS” are impersonal objects. “Red BMW” began as a one-man photography session of possible subjects from multiple views and was followed by an editing session of slides and pho tographs. At times Pitts studied the slides in an inverted manner in a search for such elements as repetition of color and surface tension. This practice is comparable to one used by Malcolm Morley who painted “postcard” imagery on canvases which were placed upside down, or to Chuck Close's technique of painting immense portraits in horizontal zones, beginning in the top left corner and eventually arriv ing at the bottom of the work as in “John,” in pro gress, 1972. All together, these methods address a democracy of surface and composition, a legacy per haps from Abstract Expressionism. When slide selec tion was narrowed to a few similar views, the slides were projected and drawn off, and editing of compo sitional segments continued. The working slides and often prints of the photos were retained for a time near the painting as it progressed, but were then put away, as Joseph Pitts related in a telephone interview. At that point the arena of interest became the surface and its composition, which in the completed state produces disquieting relationships of tension. “Red BMW” presents a forgettable slide of urbanity but is not forgettable as a painting because of its sensuous surface, among other factors. For Michael Rogers, a Memphis, Tennessee, paint er, inclusion in the technical realism show may seem quite incorrect for his “Untitled.” I his work with its startling illusion, in fact, visual deceit, would seem to belong to the trompe I'oeil tradition. Yet, detective work into Roger’s attitudes does not support a trompe I'oeil intention. His “Untitled,” 1978, resulted from an attempt to make the real (a clever illusion of an actual piece of paper and tape) coexist and juxtapose with the unreal (a painted illusion of nondescript material imme diately accepted as a painted illusion). The images were chosen because in the artist’s opinion they were part of the student painter’s environment which is taken for granted -still life props and debris. For this and other recent paintings, the artist was influenced as much by reading as looking. Kulterman’s New Realism was read, reflected upon, and even appeared in an earlier painting by Rogers as a still-life object. “Under the Influence," 1978, shows the aforemen tioned book laying Hat and open to black-and-white reproductions of Chuck Closes’s portraits of friends. “Under the Influence” was autobiographical but may indicate the far-reaching effects of print media art information on many of the other technical realists working in the South. I he sculpture in the plastic realism part of the ‘Extra Dry," by Albin Beyer, 1976, 45Vi -V 33'A. oil on canvas. show refers to both a technical stance and to an immediately implied distance of artificiality. The first impressions gained by beholders of “plastic realism" may revolve around the malleable character of the works, but this reaction evaporates upon realization that freedom of form has been throttled by self- imposed limitation of mimicry. For example, “Rain Spout," 1978, by Judson Wilcox, Birmingham, Ala bama, resembles the metal or plastic drain spouts on the exteriors of most homes and commercial build ings. This is true in its physical dimensions (100" x 12" x 15"), its monochromatic color, and its grooves or fluting. When placed against a brick wall in a gallery, one might expect water to flow front it onto the floor. “Rain Spout” is shiny and appears metallic but, in terms ol guttering apparatus, is not functional. It is a summary statement of the thousands of urban arti cles confronting people in daily, contemporary society, which arc not considered interesting or aes thetic by most.
