Influences close to home

AT THE GALLERIES

The concept of artistic schools is a complex one. Even truly original

art does not occur in a vacuum; and the subtle threads of influence

that surround the making of a painting can reach back many

generations.

It has been a difficult struggle for American artists, then, to

create a truly American art, one free of the heavy weight of European

influences. Similarly, and locally, California artists often struggle

to define themselves as independent from East Coast claims on style.

But the true nature of sophistication and complexity involves

absorbing those influences and transmuting them into unique

expression. The work of Laguna Beach artist and native Californian

Marc Whitney has influences that reach from both Europe and the East

Coast. He is an alumnus of America’s oldest art school, the

Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts; but his paintings of household

interiors exhibit a relationship with the French intimist Pierre

Bonnard (1867-1947).

Like Bonnard, Whitney paints the rooms of his own home. Even his

gallery, named after him, has the feel of a home, with muted yellow

walls and scattered furniture. But Bonnard, in his turn, was

influenced by the bright primitive palette of Gauguin, and the woven

brushwork of Monet. Whitney has pared these influences down,

simplifying brushwork, composition, and color. “Unmade Blue Bed”

(14x18, oil on linen) shows all the beauty of late morning California

light in muted sage greens and fruitwood browns.

The bed has the air of being long empty. The rich blue-violet

sheets and our close proximity to the subject give the folds of

fabric a numinous quality, as if they themselves were the source of

the light.

The several bed paintings currently on view are all fairly rapidly

executed, showing bare surface under the paint-a distinctly American

approach. The choice of surface itself-linen-adds a wry wink to a

painting of sheets. In “Unmade Bed-Side View” (16x20), the sheets are

a simple white; but they in turn are a canvas, an opportunity for

eastern sun coming through the unseen window. The rolls of the duvet

and piled pillows are like hills, with deep shadows and bright peaks,

the landscape of intimacy.

A larger canvas, “Living Room View” (30 x 24), has a more careful

blending of color. It is a simple, lived-in modern scene. The sofa is

inviting and warm. The glass coffee table reflects light from the

window. Three windows behind the sofa frame a landscape so

impressionistic, it is almost unrecognizable: a blur of blue and

green that must be the outdoors. Here, however, the gaze is directed

within; the oranges and browns of the furniture are more distinct and

important.

What makes this distinctly American is a fascinating question.

Close at hand in the gallery, tucked into a corner, are four small

paintings by another former student of the Pennsylvania Academy (also

America’s oldest art museum and dedicated to collecting American

painting). Giovanni Casadei’s work, however, glows with the careful

craftsmanship of the Italian masters, the influence of his native

country. Still, they bear the same intimacy and mystery contained in

Whitney’s canvases, the American flair for the casual. There are hats

and bottles, briefcases and cups scattered on his tables in quiet

disorder.

All four paintings are oil on paper. The surface is flat, with

many layers of paint conveying a great depth that belies their small

size. “Still Life on a Red Carpet” (6 3/4 x 11) is a nod to the

Renaissance convention of putting valuable Persian rugs on the table

instead of the floor. But the composition is modern, sparse. The rug

is patternless, and chiefly functions as a vehicle for the light red

hue in the room. In “Teapot & Dry Flowers” (6 x 10), a flash of

yellow suggests the bloom, but every object is suffused with

peach-tinted air. Details are secondary to the relationship between

color and light. The white vase is merely a suggestion, the flowers a

flash of magenta. A bare window frame emerges from blending shadows

in the distance.

Casadei shares with Whitney the emphasis on the spontaneous

moment, the quiet islands in our home that we tend to overlook. “Dry

Flowers in the Light” is a distinctly uncomposed composition, with a

hat, bottle, and vase each resolving to varying degrees, spread out

on the tabletop. We can discern the entire room behind the vase: the

chair back, the fireplace against the opposite wall. The painter

seems to be seated himself, working at eye-level with his subject.

But what is important is the quality of the room, the hazy colors and

forms that you could easily walk by without noting how lovely they

are in the afternoon sun.

Casadei, like Whitney, is describing the miracle of the everyday

in the moment the painting. It seems to me that it is a particularly

Californian quality to feel such attraction to light on linen or the

beautiful lines of a briefcase, here where light itself is the most

important attribute of the landscape.

* BOBBIE ALLEN is a poet and writer who has taught art theory and

criticism. She currently teaches at Saddleback College.