Star Tribune from Minneapolis, Minnesota • Page 32

2C TuesdayNovember 1 1 1986 Minneapolis Star and Tribune Viet Nam Continued from page 1C Nov. 2, 1967 Don't worry about a thing. I don't think we'll run Into much trouble here. Some guya have been here seven months and seen nothing. Before leaving for Constitution Mall IMS good times they shared together? Dad is taking out his handkerchief and wiping his nose.

Mom is standing back a little, almost as if to let us experience the moment alone. I hear a little girl ask her mother, "Who's dying?" Her mother answers, "All 1 these people." She is referring to the names on the wall, but could just as well be talking about those of us who have come to see them; we are all dying a little inside. May 24, 1968 (105 days) Well, I don't think have to go to the field in August because we have more men than we're authorized. That'll mean only about 70 days left k) tioiu. Omo I tTtu3 It home by Labor Day.

Miss you lots, but it's not much longer now. Dad wants to find the names of other men from the Iron Range, where he and Mom live, who died in Vietnam. We look them up in one of the directories: Lauren Dale Huerd, Joel Gary Anders, Ronald Monte Fraser, Richard Arne Koski, Craig Stanley Munich. He caresses each name with his fingers. Late the next night, Dad and I go back to the memorial.

The wall is even more moving at night, shroud-: ed in darkness, with lights that resemble candles illuminating the names engraved into the black granite. There are few people here now, but at the bottoms of many of the panels are notes flags, and flowers left by earlier visitors. It Is more solemn, more lonely here at night. In a way, more representative of the Vietnam War and not only those who died in it, but those who came home and couldn't talk about it. June 20, 1968' This concerns your son, Sgt.

Rich-ard Robert Antonovich. The Army will return your loved one to a port In the United States by first available military airlift. We stop again in front of Richie's name, letting our fingers follow the letters of his name, an almost uncontrollable reflex, a parting touch. Then we move on and do the same with the names we had located terday. it has been a long day, and we head off through the darkness.

The wall had drawn us together, had allowed us to work through some of the grief that still lingered after 18 years. But it had also provided us with time, time, as it turned out, to say goodbye not to Richie, but to each other. was the last time I would see Dad he died suddenly five weeks later. Vlcki Stavlg Is a free lance writer who Uvea In Bloomington. Spectre Continued from page 1C i know what he meant at the time, but now I know very well.

It's repeating yourself. It's Rambo One, Two Three or whatever. "You can call it sincerity, you can call it plagiarism, you can call it integrity, but when a painter finds his style, it's his, it's rare. You may not like what I do. That isn't necessary.

I'm not trying to influence or to change taste. I'm merely presenting 1 my point of view. "Decorating and the arts are not an CXaCt SdmiCd, Ummi'K Gun, feu ever I say or do is only Jay Spectre. But when you did go to see a Hitchcock film, you didn't see a musical. You went there to have an anxiety attack.

And when you went to see Fred Astaire, and nothing thrilled 1 you quite so much, that was glamour, glamour, glamour. "And when you get Jay Spectre, you get what I believe in, and that's the 20th century." Spectre, 57, recognized by the Smithsonian Institution as one of the eight top designers in America, was In Minneapolis over the weekend to introduce his first furniture designs for the Century Furniture Co. He i calls the collection "a distillation of 20-century design," incorporating designs from before World War I I through Art Deco and the present day. "My collection has to do with com-r fort," he said. (He refused to be ij' interviewed in his room at the Hyatt Regency because he didn't feel comfortable there).

"It has to do with now, today, the 20th century, how I see the last 86 years and how I interpret them as a bridge to the j'r 2 1st century. "It's an amalgam of 20th-century designs, scaled for today and the i materials of today and colored for today." Who is it aimed at? "That has worked out so strangely. We have an enormously large young audi- ence. I thought our audience would be an older audience, in their 30s, maybe even people whose children grown and are doing a house in the Sun Belt or a condominium in Palm Springs or Vail. "But young people seem to have identified with it even more so, and we're not getting price resistance to the items.

That again was a very important concept, that this was not an ego trip but that this furniture was designed to sell. My goal, my desire 4 was that the furniture salesman on the floor would want to own my and the Vietnam Memorial, I call a friend from my high school days, who now lives in Annapolis, Md. Although they live less than an hour' 8 drive from Washington, her husband, a Vietnam vet, refuses to go see the memorial, she says. But KB Iws aboil it. Yfiiofi I aaA tawuiii her reaction to it, she replies with one word: Panic.

We get off the subway a few blocks from Constitution MaH. We carry on a constant stream of conversation, talking about everything but where we are going and why. I wonder what Dad is really thinking and feeling, but I don't ask him. We are so much alike emotional recluses, you might call us finding it easier to share in someone else's sorrow than to lay open our own pain. Finally, there it is.

A black wall that slowly rises from the ground. It's quiet here, almost too quiet. People are walking slowly along the wall, searching for names. They are all ages and speak a variety of languages. The children look a little bored, only slightly curious about the thousands of names cut Into the stone.

At each end if the wall are large books that list not only each name on the wall, but also thir location. We don't have to page through the book. Mom knows roht where to go: panel 58 west, line 21. February 1968 I spent last night at Kontum. They can us up there an the time now 'cause we did such a good job when the heavy fighting was going on there.

I'D sure be glad to get out of here. A guy sees some unbelievable things here. Some I won't care to recall. I'm sorry. shouldn't write about the war, but there Just isn't anything else right now.

The wall totally consumes me. My senses block out everything else, everything but that name Richard Robert Antonovich. My brother and my best friend. Just 20 years old when he was killed. He'd be 38 today, just a year older than 1.

1 wish that my husband and my children -could know him, could see his eyes light up when he laughed or watch him conduct an imaginary orchestra as he so often did when he wasn't making his own music. I wish that we could sit again at the piano and sing old songs together. The memories come flooding back: Secrets we had shared, pranks we had pulled on Jim and Ron, our younger brothers; and the times he danced with me, not because he felt he should or that no one else would ask me, but because he wanted to. He was my big brother, my protector, my friend. He liked me and I adored him.

I wonder who else has come here looking for his name. And when they found it, did they gently run their fingers over it as Dad is doing now? Have any of his Army buddies stood here and shed some tears for him or smiled at the memories of some Holston Continued from page 1C It's possible, of course, that the November viewership surveys the results of which will be available in early December could prove October's an aberration. Channel 5 is understandably downplaying the importance of the October audience measurements because its 10 p.m. news started late 10 times as a result of ABC's baseball playoff telecasts, which were not particularly hot tickets. On the other hand, Channel 1 1 has made gains at 10 p.m.

in spite of the foul iimi tvwC'tt piMMO-itum Ciuut rests in its early-evening shows, not in the 9 p.m. series such as "1986" and "Hill Street Blues" that lead into the 10 p.m. news. And there's no disputing the steady upward march of Channel 1 1 's 10 p.m. numbers.

Channel 1 18 share has more than doubled since October 1983 while Channel 4's share has dipped slightly and Channel 5's has dropped by a third. If the 10 p.m. statistics indicate a growing active preference for Channel 1 1 '8 hearts-and-flowers presen- V. tational style, however, why isn't Channel 1 1 doing better in other parts of the day? The standings at 5 p.m. and 6 p.m., for instance, showed little change from the late summer ratings survey.

Channel 4 was first, Channel 5 was second and Channel 1 1 was a dis-tant third. Channel 1 1's Bass said that it's harder for his station to make progress at the earlier hours because its relatively younger viewers often aren't home from work in time to watch. If that's the case, the only thing that could produce sizable gains at those hours for Channel 1 1 is wholesale unemployment. Channel 5 might console itself with the knowledge that it showed ratings strength at various other times throughout the day. Oprah Winfrey's new syndicated talk show, for instance, leaped out of the starting gate, running up a 35 percent share in the Nielsen survey.

And the first hour (7 to 8 a.m.) of ABC's "Good Morning, America" trounces all comers until Phil Donahue comes along at 8 on Channel 4 and throws his weight around just as emphatically. Channel 5 also got good mileage out of its 3 p.m. "Good Company," which rolled over "The Newtywed Game" (Ch. 4) and "Magnum, P.I." reruns (Ch. 1 1).

ABC's stable of soap operas also performed impressively for Channel 5. In prime time, NBC's amazing "Cosby Show" proved that its capacity for audience-growth still hasn't peaked. Overwhelmingly the most popular show in the Twin Cities, "Cosby" had a 38 rating and a 62 share in both the Nielsen and Arbitron surveys and an average audience of almost 900,000. NBC's "Family Ties" was the second-most-popular evening show, followed by NBC's "Cheers," CBS' "60 Minutes," NBC's "Night Court" and CBS' "Dallas," which rolled over its new competition, NBC's "Miami Vice." In fact, although NBC is cleaning up in prime time nationally, the evening lineups of NBC and CBS had virtually identical numbers in the Nielsen survey in the Twin Cities. In the Arbitron study, CBS was No.

1 in prime time. Other ratings highlights: "Newsday," Channel 4's bold attempt to put a local news magazine in the soap-dominated afternoon, did quite well in its first ratings period. In the Nielsen book, "Newsday" was a respectable third in its 4:30 to 5 p.m. weekday slot, with a 15 percent share; "People's Court" (Ch. 5) was first with a 24 share arid "M'A'S'H" was second with a 21.

In the Arbitron headcount, "News-day's" 20 share was good enough for second place behind "M'A'S'H," which had a 24 share. "People's Court" had a 19 share in the Arbitron book. 1 Staff Photo by Tom Sweeney Jay Spectre paused in downtown furniture, or at least a piece of it." Can the salesman afford to? "Absolutely. Some of my chairs are as inexpensive as $400. Anyone with a good job today can afford my furniture and my fabrics.

"All our furniture is soft to touch. Here's a bed that's almost like a wing chair," he said, thumbing through a collection of pictures. "It embraces you. It's hard wood but it's soft to the touch, with no sharp edges." Spectre, a bachelor, maintains an apartment in New York and a home in New Canaan, where one of his neighbors is movie director Joseph About Mankiewicz and one of his closest friends is actress Claire Trevor. His family was in the retail furniture business, so "all this was second nature to me.

I started decorating windows, doing luggage inventory, sweeping up and being the best teen-age furniture salesman in Frankfort, Ky. It never occurred to such 19th-century Minnesota artists as Alexis J. Fournier and Nicholas R. Brewer, both of whom achieved national reputations in their lifetimes. A St.

Paul native schooled In Paris, Fournier was deeply influenced by the French Barbizon painters, whose idyllic landscapes were avidly col lected by wealthy Americans. Brewer, best known as a portraitist, founded a dynasty of Minnesota artists that is still active; his grandson Richard Brewer is a Minneapolis painter and another descendant, Stephen Brewer, has paintings of Canterbury Downs and the University of Minnesota Centennial Showboat in the Beard show. "There is a tremendous demand for American Impressionist paintings now," said Bartlett. "Arid work by the first echelon of those artists Childe Hassam, William Merritt Chase and Maurice Pendergast has become so expensive that the second echelon is becoming attractive to collectors." Minnesota is one of several regions that produced a strong second echelon. Simitar enclaves developed between about 1890 and 1920 in New England and Indiana; near New Hope, and around Laguna Beach, Calif.

Impressionist painters of those areas are now attracting the same sort of renewed interest that Fournier, Brewer and other Min-nesotans are drawing. The appeal of these regional impressionists is based in part on the fact that their work is still affordable; paintings in Beard's exhibition range from $35 to $10,500 with the average in the $200 to $2,000 range. Good paintings by second-echelon artists are often hard to come by, because they are not well documented and are sometimes owned by people who have inherited them without recognizing their value. Thomson and Bartlett typically draw their stock from a variety of sources: They exchange "want lists" with dealers around the country; place ads in the magazine Antiques, a primary source for the trade; bid at auctions, and occasionally acquire paintings from "pickers" people whose livelihood is picking up things at estate sales and peddling them to art and antique dealers. They have even acquired paintings from people who called them after finding a yellowing label from the original Beard gallery on of an old picture.

It took Bartlett about six months to gather the more than 250 paintings in the centennial show. Most of his finds resulted from letters and visits to certain galleries and collectors. The effort paid off handsomely, according to Rena Coen, professor of American art history at St. Cloud srfr v4 mrnmmm Minneapolis. me to do anything else.

"I had no training, though. I taught myself. I worked for one of the top designers in Louisville for a while and then went to Europe. I was a camera. I am a camera.

That was another influence not only the movie, but the author (Christopher Isherwood). "I've been a camera all my life, so I was either watching or photographing. I'm completely self-taught, from the School of Hard Knocks. "We started this conversation talking about comfort. I think the lack of comfort in the world today, the lack of dignity, the things we're subjected to through the media, on the streets, through film, at airports, have to be an influence on the way we perceive our environment.

"The conveniences that we want around us, the shelter and the security. The security. Very important. Yes, all that is an influence on the way we eat, the way we dress, the way we perceive each other, where we sleep and who we sleep with." State University and author of the most extensive book on the early history of Minnesota art. "They've done a good job of capturing the spirit of the times and getting some really outstanding examples of the kind of art that was produced here," Coen said.

One highlight of the exhibition is Fournier's luminous 1916 painting of his own home overlooking Minnehaha Creek. Called "Mother of Pearl," the painting is an opalescent scene of lilac moonlight shimmering on a snow-covered landscape. On loan from a private Minneapolis collection, the painting is one of the artist's most famous works but was, -for many years, believed to be lost. The exhibition complements it with another view of Fournier's house by Emit Ahlberg, an autumnal scene in gold and green with chickens scratching in the fallen leaves beside the cottage. Ahlberg was a friend of Fournier, but a much less talented artist although Fournier's house obviously inspired one of his best efforts.

The show includes a dozen works by Fournier, several small pieces by the popular children's book illustrator Wanda Gag, 10 paintings by the influential University of Minnesota art professor Cameron Booth, and numerous paintings by such well-known 20th-century Minnesota artists as Clement Haupers, Otto Moilan and Elof Wedin. Like their predecessors who followed the Impressionists, they were deeply influenced by European styles. Haupers painting of himself and a girlfriend on the banks of the Mississippi in spring demonstrates a comfortable mastery of Cubist techniques, while his nude-bathers canvas is a lively synthesis of Gauguin's and Picasso's styles. Wedin is similarly adept in applying Cezanne's planar style to still lifes and land- scapes of the Hopkins hills. Though Beard gallery generally does not represent living artists, the show includes works by several accom- plished living Minnesota painters who prefer a basically representa tional style.

Mike Lynch's fine painting "The Nightwatchman" is a somber portrait of his father. Jo Lutz Rollins' limpid "Landscape Foothills" reaffirms her status, at 90 years of age, as one of Minnesota's most skillful watercolorists. And Bela Petheo's "Beach at Caneau" is a subtle orchestration of light, shade, color and form into a complex and very beautiful composition. Among the show's unexpected and very pleasant surprises are two lively seascapes by Cadwallader Washburn, a long-lived member of the Washburn-Crosby milling dynasty who died in 1965 at the age of 99. Is Your Child Caught In A Failure Chain? We can help yoar child do better in school and see how much fan learning is.

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Thomson, 68, was a partner in the Twin Cities real estate firm of Rees, Thomson and Scroggins for more than 40 years. After retiring in 1979, he cided to turn his art-collecting hobby into a business. f- The Beard gallery was still in opera-- tion then, run by Joseph Walton, who had purchased it after Hairing-i ton Beard's death in 1940. It wasn't until 1983, after Walton had retired, that Thomson was able to bring the business back into the family. Following his grand-uncle's lead, Thomson specializes in American art i that has "an identifiable form and 1 has endured the test of time." A refreshingly outspoken man, Thorn-'.

son says he's not interested in "II-' histrator art" or what he calls "ni- cey-nice painting." i "You know it when you see it. This, for example, is not art," Thomson said, rising from his desk and point- ing to a painting of a white clap-: board house in a garden on a sum- mer afternoon. "A painting has to have life and feeling," said gallery director Allan 1 Bartlett, tacitly agreeing that Thom-: son's example was a pleasant enough illustration but a lifeless painting. "That's especially true in modern art, but it is true in our period, too." Thomson and Beard are particularly interested in a type of late 19th-century American painting whose roots Thomson traces to a famous 1886 exhibition in New York City. The now included nearly 300 ex- amples of French Impressionist paintings, among them 23 by Degas, 38 Renoir, 48 by Monet.

Accord- ingtb Thomson, the show inspired American artists who had previously been painting in the more detailed i and naturalistic style of the Hudson River School to shift to Impression-r ism a looser, more fluid manner emphasizing the play of light on wa- ter and form. I' "From that point on, American paint- ind changed," Thomson said. "It's a landmark event and it just coinciden-tally happened in the same year this gallery opened." A hundred years later, the influence Of that exhibition still can be seen in Beard's centennial show: The art ranges from inoffensively pretty pk tores to distinguished paintings by "The Late Show with Joan Rivers," on KMSP-Ch. 9, didn't exactly blow away the competition at 10:30 p.m. But Rivers' gabfest, up against "Nightline" and reruns of "M'A'S'H" and "The Jeffersons," achieved a 10 percent share of audience, which is quite respectable.

The other new syndicated talk show Channel 9 is carrying, David Brenner's "Nightlife," fared less well. Brenner's show, competing with the 10 p.m. newscasts, had only a 3 percent share. "Wheel of Fortune" continued to spin gold for Channel 4. The syndicated game show gobbled up almost half the 6:30 to 7 p.m.

audience each weeknight. 100 Years off Minnesota Art Whr! The Beard Art Galleries, -1112 Nicollet Mall, Minneapolis. Whcni Through Nov. 29; weekdays 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.; Saturday 10 a.m.

to 2 p.m. Tickets: Free. fteviswi The Twin Cities' oldest art gallery celebrates its centennial with an eclectic and often charming show of more than 250 paintings, drawings and other works by some 80 Minnesota artists who brought Impressionism, Cubism and other European styles to the Midwest during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. JAN ILL, R.E Certainly you should do something about those unfeminine facial hairs. They are conspicuously un-pretty on even the fairest of faces.

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