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Lukacs’ work open to

diverse interpretations

From page 32

postulates the existence of Eden without Eve.

At the Hefiel Gallery, Peter Aspell, in Beyond Primitive which opened Oct. 15. likewise extem- porizes on the bieak prospects of eternally egoic man, a hapless creature who must, in the artist's words, ‘‘stili express love in various ways in a world controlled by fear and death.”

Though both these artists take a broad view of human nature, each does so from within the narrow limits of his own idiosyncratic vi- sion.

tukacs’ all-too-earthly Paradise is populated exclusively by homosexual skinheads of an idealized physical caste so specific that, but for slight variations of skin color, they are almost indis- tinguishable from one another.

Like clones imprisoned in a hy- pothetical storybook realm, the world they inhabit is a curnposite of pop-art and faux-naif landscapes that draw on influences ranging from the technical awkwardness of Slavic peasant paintings to the refined mannerisms of Persian miniatures.

The effect when it succeeds compositionally -—— which is gen- erally but not always the case — is to evoke some remote and timeless realm as a backdrop to the alternating parabies of sexual alienation and sensual oblivion being played out in the foreground of the paintings.

These works are most potent where their meaning is most transparent, whether it is the priapic escapism of Sheltering Himself from the Storm o7 the rough camaraderie of Stretching the Body.

The two paintings which may well be the finest works of the series and which clearly embody the artist’s intent with greatest honesty and economy, namely Heat and Light (burning love) and Daybreak,are nat even displayed in the exhibit presumably in def- erence to the local constabulary’s role as sentinels of public morality.

A wide range of symbols abound in the dozen massive works that are displayed, some of them pow- erful and controversial like the swastika and the rising sun motif utilized in Adam and Steve or Amorous Meeting ta substantiate the ambivalent sexual allure of vi- olence and power, some of them trite to the point of being down- right silly such as the proliferation of bunny rabbits of every descrip- tion to ascribe, we assume, qualities of virility and promiscuity to the central figures in Lukacs’ homoerotic pageant.

Many of the images chosen by Lukacs have a poetic sug- gestiveness that seems so uniquely personal, or at times even random, that they are open to the most diverse interpretation — not unlike a Rorschach test or the images in a surrealist poem.

In Preparing a Bed of Flowers, for example, the observer is con- fronted with the allegory of Saint Sebastian’s martyrdom played out as if it were a Skinhead Pieta complete with orange sunset, swarm of wasps, threatening sickle, Wonderland’s Cheshire cat, and intimations of tragic retribu- tion wreaked on a flashing Lao- coon with writhing serpent.

Is all this to represent the mar- tyrdom of gays at the hands of an increasingly unsympathetic straight culture? Such symbolic overkill does little tu clarify the artist’s vi- sion.

In Beyond Primitive, Peter Aspell

brings an apocalyptic dimension to his revelation of “the eternal sexual dilemma” which, rightly or wrongly, he perceives to be no less immune to change than the human eye is immune to its own sell-destructiveness.

In the Fully of Man paintings we are provided an essay on human sexuality which, though less sen- sitive to nuance than Lukacs’ series (and precisely because it is non-erotic in intent), is no jess preoccupied with the paradox of sin and man’s fall from innocence as typified in all post-primitive cultures,

These are dark works fraught with spectres of despair and unreason. They are obviously the labor of a man less concerned with the frailties of sensuality than with the shortcomings of common sense,

Unfortunately they are also fraught with compositional ir- regularities that compromise their force by failing to intensify their focus.

Unlike the Ancient Landscape series which immediately preced- ed thern, and which are also on display here, they suffer the lack of cohesiveness that a flatly abstracted compositional

44 Both artists rely heavily on printed texts in their evaluation

of the human

condition. 99

framework would have provided.

Only the Study for Colossus (Aiter Goya) benefits from such unity of focus.

In regard to their almost obsessive preoccupation with the foibles of human nature, these are both highly ambitious exhibits which have much in common though technically they are very different.

Both artists rely heavily on printed texts in their evaluation of the human condition, Both portray the withdrawal into sensual obli- vion and the loss of innocence in its larger context as central com- ponents of their differing though justly disturbing visions.

Whatever one may say of the overall success of the individual works in these two shows, a rather novel trend can be seen emerging in the very simultaneity of their exploration of figurative sensuality and humanly philosophical themes.

in the confrontation of issues that in our times threaten man’s very existence — and these have more to do with the failings of human nature than with techno- logy — games of impersonal abstraction may be increasingly perceived as useless baggage.

No less in the realm of art than in that of science, philosophy, or religion, mankind's very salvation may once again hinge on his abili- ty to make himself the exclusive focus of his own analysis and speculation.