Heaven and Earth: The Figure in Religious and Secular Art

Through May 12

Vanderbilt University Fine Arts Gallery

23rd and West End Avenues

Hours: noon-4 p.m.

Mon.-Fri.; 1-5 p.m. Sat.-Sun.

For information, call 322-0605

Spirit of the Land: American Regionalist Paintings, 1925-1950

April 14-16

Williams American Art Galleries

4119 Hillsboro Rd.

Hours: 11 a.m.-7 p.m.

Opening reception 5:30-10 p.m. April 13

For information, call 297-2547

In its latest exhibition, Vanderbilt’s Fine Arts Gallery tackles a topic as old as art itself—the representation of the human form. Art devoted to this subject could easily fill the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, but the intimate university gallery does an admirable job of hitting the highlights without overwhelming the viewer with too many time periods, artists, or styles. Still, there are over 50 works on display ranging from Etruscan pottery, medieval wooden crucifixes, and Renaissance etchings to Impressionist oil paintings, Art Deco bronzes, and contemporary mixed-media works. ”I’m always looking for new ways to interpret the [university’s] collections,“ says gallery director Joseph Mella. ”The human figure is such a timeless subject that I knew I could use it to link works from several of the collections.“

Mella chose most of the items from the university’s Fine Arts Gallery Collection, including some pieces from the Samuel H. Kress Collection of Renaissance Painting. The show is augmented with several books from the Historical Collection of the Eskind Biomedical Library. Though the university also has a significant Asian art collection, Mella chose to limit the exhibition to Western art because of space and focus considerations. ”I started going through the Western collections and paring them down,“ he says. ”I knew I wanted to include certain artists, and I also wanted to do something with the Biomedical collection, since the study of anatomy influenced the study of the human figure in art.“ Works by such well-known modern artists as Picasso, Chagall, and Giacometti as well as Impressionists Renoir, Camille Pissarro, Berthe Morisot, and Childe Hassam are included in the show, as are rare anatomy books from the library’s collection.

The works in the exhibit follow a sort of historical time line, Mella explains. Moving to the right after entering the gallery, the viewer sees works from the Renaissance period, including two pieces depicting St. Sebastian, a Roman soldier who achieved sainthood after being flayed to death for his Christian beliefs. In fascinating contrast to these 15th- and 16th-century oil paintings is Jim Dine’s 1990 view of the saint, which hangs alongside them. Dine’s lithograph of St. Sebastian alludes to Renaissance traditions in the subject’s pose but adds a modern spin in its stark, stylized black-and-white approach to the arrow-pierced figure.

The exhibit moves through several sub-themes as well as chronological periods. The figure as an instrument of religious instruction occurs throughout art history and is illustrated here in such items as a German Pieta dating from the mid-1400s. ”This is an important piece in the show because it conveys the humanity of the Christ figure in a frank and even frightening way,“ Mella says. The alabaster sculpture does so by offering a much less idealized version of Mary cradling a dying Christ than the well-known one created by Michelangelo, for instance. This mother of Jesus, by an anonymous artist, is stout of figure and plain of face, and her grief is not pretty in any way. Her dying son likewise is ordinary-looking and appears in the throes of a painful death rather than in saintly transition to heaven.

Another sub-theme is the danse macabre, or dance of death, a medieval tradition that imagines Death as a skeleton leading people to their graves. Three early-20th-century prints by European artists explore the theme in chilling visuals of humans struggling in vain with the skeletal specters of their own mortality.

The exhibition also reflects upon the ways in which the representation of the human figure in art has changed ove the centuries. ”For a long time, artists depicted the figure anatomically, culminating in the works of the Renaissance,“ Mella says. ”After that, the figure was used primarily as a vehicle for conveying religious or classical teachings. Even though the popularity of the human figure in today’s art comes and goes, we can’t seem to get away from it. There’s a continuous desire to depict the figure because it’s a way of looking at who we are.“

Close to home

A special exhibition and lecture series at Williams American Art Galleries in Green Hills this weekend offers another way of looking at who we are, as Americans at least. The show features 60 regionalist paintings from the late 1920s through the 1940s that address the American rural and urban experience of those decades. ”There is a mood about these works that takes you to a different time—one when there was a greater sense of neighborhood and of being united in the American identity,“ says gallery owner Jim Williams.

In the case of Ohio regionalist Kenneth Wood’s 1944 ”Italian Tavern,“ one of the key works in the show, that other time and place is a winter’s dusk in World War II-era Cleveland. The large-scale oil on canvas depicts a working-class neighborhood, with the lights from the watering hole shining like a beacon of warmth against the dreary winter sky. Now-vintage cars line the street, and lights from the surrounding homes and a solitary street lamp also create a feeling of a simpler, safer time.

The best-known proponents of American Regionalism include Thomas Hart Benton, Grant Wood, John Steuart Curry, and Charles Burchfield, but many other artists were significant contributors to the genre, according to Williams. ”Contrary to the more narrow definition of American Regionalism, these paintings were created not just in the Midwest or Southeast but all over the country and in the cities.“ He cites Saul Kovner’s 1946 ”Hot Summer Night“ as an example. The work, which is featured in the show, depicts a typically urban scene of the pre-air-conditioning era—a group of New York City apartment dwellers trying to catch a breeze on the roof of their building one sweltering summer’s eve.

As an educational component of the exhibition and sale, noted artist and scholar Michael Hall will present two gallery talks on the subject of American Regionalism. Hall, who is curator of ”Illusions of Eden: Visions of the American Heartland,“ now showing at the Columbus Museum of Art, will discuss regionalism in the context of both the Columbus museum and Williams gallery exhibits. The one-hour talks are scheduled for 7 p.m. April 14 and 2:30 p.m. April 16 at the gallery, which is located above Talbot’s in Green Hills.