A trick of the light

AT THE GALLERIES

On a wall at the Musee d’Orsay in Paris hangs an image that is so

familiar, it has become an icon of popular culture: American artist

James McNeill Whistler’s “Arrangement in Black and Gray No. 1: The

Artist’s Mother,” known to most as simply “Whistler’s Mother.” An

older woman dressed in black with a peaceful countenance sits in an

upright chair, hands holding a fine linen handkerchief in her lap,

her velvet- slippered feet on a short stool. The wall behind her is

occupied only by a small, white-matted landscape painting, with

another just out of frame, behind her, to the right.

On the wall at the William Merrill Gallery here in Laguna hangs an

amusing homage to Whistler’s skill with color, and to the power of

his simple image: Greek artist James Shilaimon’s “In Spirit” (42x47,

mixed media on canvas). The gray wall with black baseboards is the

same as Whistler’s study. The chair is the same (or as you would

imagine the chair, obscured in the original by the voluminous dress),

as is the short stool. But Mrs. Whistler has departed the room,

leaving behind her fine white handkerchief and black velvet slippers.

She remains present “in spirit,” and in the form of the charcoal

cartoon of her profile that has taken the place of the landscape in

the white-matted frame on the wall.

The reference to Whistler is apropos for Shilaimon. Whistler’s

paintings had been received with bafflement from the art

establishment of his day because of their lack of narrative content.

His off-center subjects, strange color palette and

Japanese-influenced compositions were wholly modern “studies” rather

than representations, meant to display the artist’s skill with paint

in the same way Chopin’s “Etudes” exhibited the pianist’s masterful

technique. Shilaimon’s “In Spirit” updates Whistler’s study in black

and gray by making the original painting part of a playful narrative,

post-modern and self-referential. It is a brilliant way to study a

study.

It also serves to underscore the other paintings in the gallery,

part of an exhibit running through the end of the month. They, too,

are studies -- and nearly all of them share this self-referential

quality, the artist looking at art. Almost every canvas or panel has

a painting incorporated into its content. A set of 6 interior

studies, all 14x12, all contain small paintings, including Vermeer’s

“Girl with the Red Hat,” (“Interior Study No. 8”) which is

overlooking some brown chairs. But is it there as a nod to another

master of color, or merely to enliven a rich range of browns with a

splash of cardinal red? The answer here, and elsewhere, seems to be

both: It is an exhibition of skill.

“Homefront” (50x40, mixed media on panel) is a complex composition

that involves a view of a room’s doorframe that looks down a hall.

The hall contains a spiral staircase that leads both up into light

and down into darkness. The point of view is from a room with walls

split horizontally, a wash of sky blue above, brick reds below. It is

also split vertically by a black line that is the doorframe to the

other room. A table holds a bowl of five red pears, richly detailed.

But above the bowl, hanging on the wall, we see a portion of a

painting of a single green pear. The “painted” pear is larger than

the pears on the table, as if it were more important than the “real”

pears. The room beyond the stairs is also half red, but above is a

wash of yellow, tinged with burnt sienna and black, a remarkable

color, too beautiful for a wall. But of course, it’s not a wall. It’s

a painting of a wall.

They are, then, fictitious rooms, the expressions of an artist

fascinated with the effects of light. A single composition can

contain light from a direct source, diffused light, refracted and

reflected light, all operating simultaneously and in unnatural or

composed ways on many shades of yellow, orange or even white. Shadows

are directed around the room from many sources, as if they were

characters in a play.

It is as if Shilaimon is placing light to change the colors in the

rooms he paints. “Shapes and Shadows” (48x72) is an impressive

execution of color. The wall opposite our point of view contains an

oversized painting in a style very different from those around us, an

expressionist piece with much impasto work, composed of greens and

tans. The surface of this painting looks almost as if the brush

stokes were script, as if careful study would reveal a text. But the

room around it is painted using Shilaimon’s preferred method of

layering oil over acrylic, with heavy use of glazing. This gives the

color a kind of transparent intensity, and minimizes the appearance

of brush strokes, the opposite of the depicted canvas.

The contrast is impressive. But the real subject in “Shapes and

Shadows” is the play of light on all the reds, yellows and browns.

Ostensibly, it must be coming from the adjacent room. But shadows

beneath the frame of the picture reveal an invisible overhead source.

The wall in the next room prominently figures a light socket, with a

trailing cord whose sole purpose seems to be to display a twin shadow

from light coming from yet another direction. It is a maze of

perception.

Light is the doppelganger of color in Shilaimon’s paintings:

Shadow is its chief signature, after all. They are intelligent,

witty, and keenly executed, evidence that a study can breathe the

open air of modern expressionism.

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

criticism. She teaches at Saddleback College.