Musea Art Review #56 A Fantasy, The Untold Studio Secret
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Title: A Fantasy, The Untold Studio Secret,
Portrait for Barley
What is it? Book , an illustrated fantasy of
painted figures coming to life.
Technical Quality: Good. 91/4": by 81/2" picture
book is well made with very nicely reproduced color and
b/w illustrations Book design and illustrations
by the author, cover design and graphics by
Marvin Krieger with the author.
Innovative Quality: Above average. The painter tells
a story of how his painted characters come to life, leave
their paintings, and explore the studio. What's
innovative is the series of oil paintings that show
these pixies mischevious adventures.
Review: Author Donald S. Vogel was better known as
an impressionist styled painter, and the founder of
The Valley House Gallery in Dallas "the first gallery
of importantce in the South and Southwest that dealt with
major 20th century art". In 1992 the gallery published
this painting fantasy.
The story is slight, lite, and playful, with the oil painting
illustrations as the star of the book.
Story: The painter realizes that some of the characters in
his paintings seem to have lives of their own outside his
control. These mini nude men and women step out of
their paintings and scamper across his studio, or they
emerge out of tubes of paint with 1 person per tube, or
they climb into other paintings of his. Overall they get
into mischief. One female pixie , Barley, hides in his
paint box on a painting trip to the shore. When the
painter opens the box , he finds Barley and paints her at
the beach. The final painting shows little Barley gazing
at her portrait.
Beyond the story are the series of 28 oil paintings that
illustrate the action (plus 11 drawings that were not as
impressive to me as the oils). The paintings could stand
alone and tell the jist of the story by themselves. As a
series of impressionistic story paintings, I think they are
quite acomplished.
Some of my favorites are:
5 pixies emerge from paint tubes.
3 pixies, the top two standing on the shoulders of the
person below them, with the back of a canvas behind them,
and half of the huge face of the painter behind it.
The pixies investigating the picture frames.
The pixies investigating a stack of drawings.
Numerous paintings of pixies stepping into or climbing
out of other paintings.
Here's one example in detail. We see a painted canvas
of yellow/gold positioned on a slant from lower left
to upper right with the ground all around it, in brown.
8 pixies are dancing and cavorting inside
the gold painting within the painting, while 2 more are
stepping into the painting and one is coming around
the corner of the canvas.
Throughout all the oils, the compositions are good.
Coloring is good. Figure drawing skill is ok -
it reminds me of the less structured works of
Vuillard or Bonnard. And finally fantasy element and
storytelling ability are very good with a sense of
wonder and fun throughout.
.
Overall a charming series of paintings that raise an
average fantasy to a very special one.
I would love to see the complete series of paintings and
illustrations in one gallery show.
Note his dedication: "To my friends - both real and
imaginary - mostly the painted ones who have made all
things possible.
Contact Info: Valley House Gallery, Dallas, Tx.
www.valleyhouse.com
Overall Grade: 6.5
Grading system: 9-10 Highest grade - Life's work of
a master (ex. Collected plays of Shakespeare, collected
symphonies of Beethoven) 8-9 Single best work of a
celebrated master's career. 7-8. Best work of an era or
genre or decade. 6-7 Best work of the year. 5-6 Very
good. 4-5 More good than bad. 3-4 Average amount
of good = amount of bad. 2-3 Mostly bad with some
redeeming parts. 1-2 Nothing redeemable. 0-1 So bad
it is offensively bad and outrages the reviewere for
taking up that time in his life - just awful.
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alt.zines or see our website or e-mail me.
Tom Hendricks tomhend...@cs.com
http://musea.digitalchainsaw.com