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)
than colossal because, after exposure to the work, one retains a haunting after-image. Who is the women dressed in the fashion of decades past, with jutting elbow and perturbed expression, standing near the front of a dated, dented, blue pick-up? Why is she standing there? Dunn’s explanation of her paintings throws some light on these questions. “My paintings pocket time. They are about people I know, about myself and our personal experiences. Recreation of realistic experiences is important to me. With often forgotten, everyday experiences, such as a fleeting glance, a flirting smile or an underlying tension between two strangers, I hope to achieve a representation of past and future human interaction,” she explains. More recent data suggests that the girl is a personal friend of the artist. At Dunn’s direction, the girl dressed in a non-current style and was positioned in front of the artist’s truck, which in turn had been parked in a small urban center. The friend helped Miss Dunn complete a memory picture of a vignette from not one, but several small, Southern towns over a period of years. These towns, and the “often forgot ten, everyday experiences” observable on street comers and in stores, become time pockets for Dunn. Not interested in nostalgia, she reacts instead to dis crepancies in the pace of life she experienced in Europe, as well as in the densely populated coastal states in this country, and most recently, in Southern communities. For her, time seems to have stopped occasionally in the South. “Girl in a Shrimp Dress,” as with a few other works in Southern Realism, could probably be placed in more than one category. Emotionally, the mood of the work is one of empathy tinged with a mild dispas- sion or distance. The paintings categorized as techni cal realism, however, have about them an attitude of almost blatant dispassion. Technical realism is one of the varieties of new realism which appeared in the late 1960s, which were characterized by a return to the use of recognizable imagery and, thus, to “normalcy” for many people. The literalness and presence of things is undeniable, but new realist attitudes are relatively neutral toward the objects painted. A noteworthy example of new Realism is Richard Estes’ painting, “Grand Lun cheonette,” O/c, 1969. The following comment of Udo Kulturman in New Realism applies to Estes’ work: “The realists today in fact are strongly bound to the anti-figurative tendencies of the ’50s and ’60s and have often developed from them.” In technical realism, objects are starting points in the development of subject material which is often surface or construction oriented. Formal problems of abstraction sustain most of the new realists; meta phor and emotional description do not. The objects chosen and the artists’ perception of them are not incidental. They are an honest reflection of contem porary culture which is increasingly urban. The sub jects, usually banal and mostly outside the realm of art, include such things as transportation systems, mass media, fast food outlets, indistinct and arbitrary views of urban skylines or individual buildings, and even commercially processed, old master reproduc tions. The technical realist works in this exhibition underline the practitioners’ involvement with photo and mechanical technology. Frequently used aids include air brushes, varieties of cameras, lens combi nations, overhead projectors, films of different color ranges, and varying film development processes. Photography has become practically indispensable for technical realists and links contemporary realism to selected developments in the art of the ’60s, as does the concern with abstraction. Notes Udo Kulturman in New Realism, “Warhol’s photomechanical method has had an incalculable significance in opening the way to new possibilities of experiencing reality. His total oeuvre is certainly the most important basis for the expansion of contem porary realism. Warhol established the concepts and practices on which one could build a new and modern realism.” Awareness and exploitation of photo graphy is employed by technical realists in image selection (especially those which are frontal), crop ping, shallow modeling, abstract color, and abstract composition. The use of sophisticated technology, combined with a dispassionate attitude toward subject matter (or object matter), implies an urban frame of refer ence. I'hc subjects represented by the technical real ists in the show are essentially urban: architectural "Girl in a Shrimp Dress," by Catherine Dunn, 1977- 78, 120" x 81" oil/canvas. (Poster illustration) facades from cities, including a theater marquee and an office interior, portions of automobiles, a still life of containers for mass-produced commodities, com positions based upon aerial photography and the snapshot, and nature, or landscape, as seen by an urban mentality. Most of the technical realists do not think these subjects are beautiful but paint them because they sustain forrnal interests. Albin Beyer’s “Extra Dry,” 1976, with its neon-ad- derived title, is part of a series of works dealing with urban night imagery. It is also an example of formal interests combined with a dispassionate approach. The Athens, Alabama, painter has an interest in arti ficial colored light and its noctural reflections in store front windows. “Extra Dry” possesses the fecundity, richness and precision of certain Dutch Baroque still lifes. Sustained observation reveals a compositional surface which continually refers back to itself, that is, to the plate glass of the windows and door. The K
