KAREN WILKIN
451
Some of the painting exhibitions this spring offered some reassurance.
Paul Resika, at Graham Modern in March, and Robert Berlind, at Ruth Siegel
in April, made it clear that it is still possible to paint figuratively, without gim–
micks, appropriation or irony, and end up with pictures that seem relevant
and arresting. Resika's simplified views of a pier in Provincetown and
Berlind's elongated groves of trees were very specific, but only nominally
about their presumed subjects. Instead, they were about the tradition of
painting and the power of pigment on canvas to stir us.
Resika's main theme was a group of waterfront buildings, rendered
from viewpoints that varied only minutely. (I kept thinking ofMorandi's rows
of bottles and boxes.) The tall dockside structures were instantly recogniz–
able, but neutra]jzed, like Morandi's domestic bric-a-brac, so that intense but
atmospheric color took over and buildings, sky and water existed primarily
as brushy, colored planes. It's neither figuration disguised as abstraction nor
the reverse, but simply intelligent, economical use of a configuration thor–
oughly familiar to the painter, yet still provocative to him. The cumulative
effect of Resika's series was perhaps even stronger than that of any single
picture, since I found myself checking each work against the others, to see
just what the painter had done, how each image had been altered. The pic–
tures with least anecdotal detail came off best, probably because they made it
most apparent that Resika trusted his sense of touch and color to carry the
burden of his perceptions, but in general, the pleasure afforded by these solid,
tightly focused works was considerable.
Berlind has been painting "portraits" of trees since he spent a year near
an ancient oak forest in Provence. Back in the United States, he has contin–
ued to explore the motif, substituting a very American sense of vastness for
the intimacy of his French pictures. In the latter, which seemed to nod at both
Courbet and Constable, Berlind confronted us with dense, contorted limbs and
massive trunks, seen from impossible viewpoints, as though we were
hovering in the air at the level where branches started. His recent American
pictures place the viewer at the bottom of groves of tall , slender trees,
looking up, head tilted back so far that all sense of the ground plane is lost.
Often, he accentuates this effect of disequilibrium by placing the image on a
tall, narrow canvas, squeezing the field of vision still further. The most suc–
cessful painting in the show, however, was large and squarish, so that image
and shape were at odds with one another. The cool, autumnal light of this
picture, too, was less immediately ingratiating than the glorious effects of
some others, while rough, rapid paint handling also separated it from its fel–
lows. I was told that this was the most recent work in the show, which was
good news.
By subverting his own strategies, Berlind ended up making a far
