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)
Southern Realism Today: Moving Awav fmm^ Sentimental RuraUsm by Tom Dewey II Southern Realism, a traveling visual arts exhibition organized last fall by the Mississippi Museum of Art in Jackson, reflects the expanding boundaries of real ism in Southern sculpture and painting today. There is a more urban or cosmopolitan spirit in Southern realism than ever before. The expanded scope of realism is reflected in the five sub-categories into which the exhibition has been divided. “Traditional realism” implies objects and experien ces painted from sentiment. “Technical realism” pres ents urban objects painted dispassionately, reflecting an awareness of the avant garde and a primary inter est in surface abstraction. “Plastic realism” refers to a refinement of technical realism and includes objects reinterpreted for their formal qualities and then fab ricated in three dimensions. “Magic realism” refers to objects painted faithfully but arranged to suit appar ently unnatural laws. Finally, with “actualism,” actual objects—usually non-art objects—appear individually or in assembly. The largest number of works in the show fall into the technical realism category; this reflects the pre dominance of this kind of art in the works submitted ■ for selection for the show. Up to one-third of all the work submitted belonged to this category. The pre dominantly urban subjects of technical realism show up in the other categories, too, suggesting a trend toward urban concerns in contemporary Southern art. Contemporary painting and sculpture categorized as traditional realism have as their subjects the land and landscapes, rural dwellings and out-buildings, humble objects from everyday use, and candid por traits of people, recorded in an almost reverently descriptive manner. The images are characterized by a mood of poetic revelation, by the comforting reas surances of time-honored associations, and by a love of describing surfaces and textures. A representative work is “Beans, Beets and Peppers,” 1979, by Rex Robinson, an Owensboro, Kentucky painter. This glowingly rich, acrylic paint ing of canning jars, a family trunk and wicker rocker may seem sentimental. Robinson, however, is obviously attached to the objects of a simple life, rather than sentimental about them. He says, “Regardless of the fact that it (painting an idyllic rural life) is easily accepted and overly done, I strive to reflect it as honestly and appropriately as I can. Evil lurks when sweet romanticism or even gross realism becomes too extreme.” Robinson’s caution bespeaks a moral commitment to his subjects, not at all unusual in traditional real ism. It is a motivation tied to a fear of losing objects or lifestyles of Americana. Robinson’s painting reflects a desire for the preservation of the changing details of everyday life, rather than an appetite for “dailiness” and triteness. “For the past four years, I have concentrated on a Tribute series dealing with classic aspects of the pres ent, especially those in jeopardy of extinction or dete rioration. I recently documented a cross-section of the people and land of a seven-county, western Ken tucky area in a collection (hat will remain on perman ent display in public buildings across the region,” Robinson explained. Whether or not art can preserve a threatened atti tude or lifestyle is debatable, but at least such pheno mena can be documented. Toward that end the paint ings of Alabama artist Catherine Dunn address what she terms “time pockets,” that is, locales or vignettes endangered by urban standardization. Dunn’s “Girl in a Shrimp Dress,” the exhibition poster image, is larger than life size. The 10’ by 6’6" painting would merit examination even if it were less "Beets. Beans and Peppers."by Rex Robinson, 1979, 26Va x 29V* acrylic and watercolor.
