KAREN WILKIN
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sional world of deep space and strong contrast with the reality of thin
color on a two-dimensional surface. That is, of course, as simple and as
complex a notion of what painting is as anyone could formulate. (It
kept Diebenkorn's hero, Matisse, fully occupied for his entire life as a
painter.) John Elderfield's essay in the beautifully produced Whitechapel
catalogue is a provocative discussion of this endlessly challenging concept.
As he did in his splendid piece in the
Matisse in Morocco
catalogue,
Elderfield sensitively probes the tension between the literal material from
which art is made and the artist's perceptions. Diebenkorn's work
appears to test the expressive possibilities of a mysterious zone somewhere
between the stuff of art and intention, between the fact of paint and
illusion, however veiled. The seriousness with which he has addressed this
formidable task for the past thirty years can elicit only profound respect
and admiration.
The challenges Diebenkorn addresses in his work are, I suspect, what
Frances Barth means when she speaks of "the big questions." Certainly
her exhibition at the Tenri Gallery in September and October would
bear out this assumption. Barth's recent work grapples with seemingly
contradictory conceptions of the canvas as inviolable expanse and as
window into illusory space. In her best works, she warps and twists
space, apparently as we look, seducing us with an elegant touch across
the surface, and then leading us effortlessly into a fictive landscape. It's
like having a limitless view spread at our feet and being able to fly out
into it. I don't mean to suggest that there is anything tricky or facile
about Barth's paintings, nor that there is anything literal about her im–
agery. Quite the opposite . Her references are acute but fleeting, like
things seen in dreams. Barth's pictures are intelligent, thoughtful impro–
visations that seem to pit the history of Western illusionism against
Western modernism, with a suggestion of Eastern space thrown in for
good measure - not to mention a powerful sense of personal, if word–
less, narrative. All of this is a very clumsy way of saying that they are ex–
tremely individual, sometimes puzzling pictures that reward our atten–
tion. Economical in color, with a plentiful use of white that somehow
reads as space, modest in size, Barth's canvases are rich and satisfYing.
A notably different notion of what painting can be, albeit from an
artist of completely another generation, was offered by Philippe Daverio
Gallery's "Mark Tobey in the 1950s," in October. Tobey's hermetic, in–
ward-turning pictures are neither commentaries on the world nor on the
conventions of painting itself, but private meditations. The selection at
Daverio was outstanding - mostly small paradigmatic pictures from what
are often regarded as Tobey's best years . In some, the celebrated "white
writing" - his automatist scrollings of white line - coiled across the
page, fraying off at the edges, like textiles crocheted out of light. It was
