The Santa Fe New Mexican from Santa Fe, New Mexico • 52

Invitational show resists classification Realisms reliance on nostalgia hits deep chords By Ellen Berkovitch The New Mexican R'i 36 invited artists this year. Painter Milo Duke creates elaborate narratives to describe his painted conjunctions of Toy Stoiy-like characters cavorting on flying scrolls in midsky. Monuments to Missing Doodads demonstrates Dukes sparrow people flapping over a flying scroll-carpet embossed with symbols including arrows, nimbuses, and trees. You cant help but think of icons on a computer screen or of high-tech animation. Iconography and animation happily coexist in Dukes Looney Tunes scenes that take some of their mysterious lore from Mayan cosmology.

You just have to realize the word icon" has many meanings including entities to be worshiped and those little graphics that let you journey through the deep space of your computer. Heidi McFall is an emerging photorealist who so far only has made portraits of women and female children but plans to let a few men and boys into the McFall oeuvre soon. Working from photographs, McFall imposes grids onto her canvases, capturing the silhouetted heads and lively expressions that make her work compelling. Portraiture is one way to get really close to a stranger without having to worry about rules of engagement. Youll want to stand nose to nose with McFalls women.

Constance Ehrlich takes a close look at bras and lacy underpants still life for the Cindy Sherman era. John Rise's method stands in marked contrast to Ehrlichs. Where hers is emblematic of the strange idolatries of pop art, Rise depends on classical symmetries for his wood-colored paintings. In Rises Allegro an egg nestles in a carton. Another egg sits on a piece of sheet music and supports a pencil.

All those items sit on a table. detail of an Illustration of Red Hot, oil on linen, 12 Inches, by Constance Ehrlich ealism calls to mind art historian Frederick Turner's admonition. Writing in Harpei magazine several years ago, Turner offers that popular wisdom holds we should pay attention to the future because thats where well spend the rest of our lives; Yet, Turner writes, you can sqy the same about the past, and for the same reason. The paradox is purposeful. Turner means that most of the perceived futuristic innovations in the visual arts first appeared in the distant past.

Generally speaking, realism is retro. Realist painting can be irresistible because its retro material easily evokes sentiment and nostalgia. The fact that nobody is immune to those emotions doesn't necessarily make for good art. But realisms reliance on big-ticket nostalgia can hit some deep cultural chords. Ticture an image of a hand tapping a spoon against the shell of a hard-boiled egg.

Or a Ferris wheel against a gauzy sky. Or a carnival performer wearing vamp boots and can-canning across a stage in a scene reminiscent of Cabaret. Unlike in real life, the dancers come-on on canvas is guilt-free. Realism can come perilously close to illustration. Think of a cover of Saturday Evening Post, or conjure up one of illustrator Maynard Dixons Western views juxtaposing a craggy cowboy and a stony mesa, with a swath of valley in between.

The realist picture is a window that has a pretty long history to look out on. That history begins with representation, which first raised its realistic head in the 14th century when Italian painter Giotto began painting vividly emotional and psychological figures and achieved three-dimensional representation on a flat surface. While you hardly see aspirants to Giotto today, you do see faithful acolytes of some of the early northern painters. All you need do in certain circles is utter the name Jan van Eyck to incite a mental picture of bedding Portrait, van Eycks 1434 portrait of the Arnolfini wedding. In the painting Mrs.

Arnolfini, luxuriant in green, lays her long-fingered hand across her very pregnant belly. Her husbands right palm is raised. Her palm lies face up in his other hand as they receive the sacrament of marriage. The convex mirror on the wall behind the couple reflects not only them but also two tiny figures standing between them certainly the painter van Eyck, and probably his assistant, captured in the process of capturing the scene. Fast-forward 400 years and arrive at Gustave Courbets seminal Stone Breakers of 1849.

Courbet proclaimed in 1855 that he felt the title of realist was thrust upon" him. But 16 -July 20( 2000 Below, 11 continued on Page 18 03 he wore that mantle nevertheless. Realism" on the surface seems an easily descriptive label. It looks so real, hey, it must be realism. But many variations circulate beneath that apparently straightforward definition.

No sooner do you generalize about realism than you observe that the artists who practice it tend to resist easy classification rather than follow generalities. The fowl may swim and the fish may fly in todays canon of realist artists. Those unexpected twists are what make the seventh annual realism invitational Real Illustrations which opens with a reception from 5 to 7 p.m. today, July 14, at van de Griff Gallery a good look at the state of the forms inside the form. The show continues through Aug.

3. Gallery director Klaudia Marr is curating the realist invitational for the fourth year. The gallery in a sense inherited the event from van de Griffs previous owner, Jay Fletcher. Fletcher had sponsored an annual look at photorealist painting, a label that describes painters who depend on photographs to compose paintings with verisimilitude. Last year we started to bring in artists who are not as well-known emerging artists and that has helped sustain the show," Marr said in an interview at the gallery.

Marr said the show comprises the work of WHAT Group show Realist paintings WHEN Opening reception 5-7 p.m. today, July 14 Exhibit through Aug. 3 WHERE Van de Griff Gallery 668 Canyon Road INFO 988-2100.