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PARTISAN REVIEW
simplified frontal "imagery" and an emphasis on materials and facture that
seem very Catalan. His new paintings are roughly brushed, gridded
structures whose cage-like images sometimes suggest architecture seen
close up and other times imply ambiguous expanses. I liked Lledos's
foursquare, direct canvases better than his more fluid, artful works on
paper, but I enjoyed his evident pleasure in his materials in all of his
work. How thin or how dense paint can be, the way it retains the
memory of how it was put down, are as crucial to the structure of a
Lledos painting as changes in tone or color. His large canvases are as
much about how it feels to drag a brush full of paint from top to
bottom of a band of color as they are about any kind of allusion, but
they never degenerate into simple manipulation of material. And there's
conviction in the paintings that is a welcome change from the worldy–
wise cynicism of the new abstract painters at Sidney Janis. This is not
Lledos's first show in New York, but it is certainly his best to date.
A tantalizing selection of work from Latin America was shown at
Arnold Herstand Gallery in November. The works ranged from Carlos
Alfonzo's vigorous, gloomy abstractions, reminiscent of his pictures in
the recent Whitney Biennial, to Miguel Angel Rios's collaged
constructions, where corrugated cardboard became the building unit for
fantasy architecture. Some of the work seemed familiar - the sort of
surrealizing narratives you can find almost anywhere that a European,
rather than a North American, model dominates - but other paintings
were truly surprising, with overtones of a strong vernacular tradition very
different from our own. Sergio Vega's encaustic improvisation on a
playing card image (or was it a tarot card?) was a fresh combination of
lush surface and sleek, restrained image that became more assertive and
provocative the longer one looked; the dense ground seemed about to
devour the meandering figure . I am always abashed by how little I know
about Latin American art. It probably has something to do with
my
speaking no Spanish, but it also has to do with the dearth of serious art
from the region shown here. It's a peculiar phenomenon, given the
visible and growing Hispanic presence in the United States. I can't say [
was bowled over by everything I saw in the Herstand show, but it was
all worth taking seriously - deeply felt, straightforward, and apparently
committed.
It
made me curious about the context from which these
artists emerged.
Painting may have dominated the fall season, but several sculpture
shows were noteworthy. Anthony Caro showed recent table pieces,
known as "Cascades," at Andre Emmerich Gallery in New York and at
Annely Juda Gallery in London, as well as a group of large-scale works
of the past few years at the Tate Gallery. In the Cascades, Caro reminded
us once again of how he constantly reinvents himself by reexamining old
