The
American Artist
"Philadelpia Scores"
by Robert I. C. Fisher
Artistically,
Philadelphia has always been fertile aesthetic territory. From the innovative,
probing realism of such nineteenth-century masters as Thomas Eakins to
famous collectors like the Wintersteens, the McIlhennys, and the Arsenbergs-
among the first Americans to break the ice by buying Monets, Matisses,
and Duchamps-the city along the Schuylkill has always played off the contrast
between its traditionally staid origins and its ongoing interest in the
new. That interest was splendidly reaffirmed in "Contemporary Philadelphia
Artists: A Juried Exhibition," a recent show (on view April 22-July
8) , at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
This exhibition was the largest of three
regional shows funded by the William Penn Foundation as part of Philadelphia
Art Now. a three-year project designed to enhance the visibility of area
artists. The show ranged from paintings to video installations and included
photography. sculpture. and craft-%--the work of 129 artists selected
from over 2,000 applicants. Like Philadelphia's most famous citizen, Benjamin
Franklin, the exhibition was both suave and homespun.
One of the virtues of a juried show is that
the works on display are on the credit side of the ledger, for, judged
by a panel of experts, they have all passed muster. With such distinguished
members as Anne dHarnoncourt director of the Philadelphia Museum of Art;
Marge Goldwater, curator at the Walker Art Center; Howardena Pindell,
a printmaker and former curator at the Museum of Modern Art in New York
City; and AlIan Stone, a New York City art dealer, the quality had to
be high. Among the artists touched by the wand of vested authority were
numerous realist painters, and at the exhibition's opening, it was the
work of these artist-Bo Bartlett's Transcendent Function, Renee
P. Foulks's Entombment:Fitful Sleep. Mark Bullen's Gibbons.
and Randall Exon's Mutatis,Mutandis that attracted some of the
largest crowds.
If anything, this show proved how "regional
art"- concept that has recently come in for some serious drubbing-has
been assimilated to a national scene. Video installations, conceptual
photographs, and abstract sculptures all revealed that the various tides
of the New York City art scene are vigorously washing up along the banks
of the Schuylkill. Indeed, there was little difference between such art,works
and those on view in New York City's SoHo or Fifty-seventh Street galleries.
Yet with the realist paintings, one could perceive a Philadelphian presence.
Evocatively, almost disturbingly with a heavy interest in the dramatic
not to say. theatrical-these works (several of which are illustrated here)
seem to be imbued with the spirit of Thomas Eakins.
In the end the very number and varied tastes
seen in 'Contemporary Philadelphia Artists" reveal that this city
has an an scene as stable and as spirited as it has ever been. The Philadelphia
Art Alliance, the Painted Bride Art Center, the Tyler School of Art, the
Institute of Contemporary Art, and the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine
Arts are just a few of the components that comprise the city's artistic
vitality. For out-of-towners, the show was a promissory note on our future
interest in the art of Philadelphia.