The Philadelphia Inquirer from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania • Page 114

i 91 THE ART NEWS PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER, SUNDAY, MARCH 22, 1970 At New York Galleries Pastels Stand Out In Pittman Exhibit THE celebration of Ilobson Pittman's 70th birthday has prompted an exhibition in his honor at the Mc-Cleaf Gallery, 1713 Walnut st. (to April 11). And a welcome occasion it is. For, despite his widespread influence as a teacher of painting and art appreciation and the long-established fame of his own work, there have been but two Hobson Pitt- Primitive Exhibit Pays Homage to Museum Chief man solos locally in the past 23 years, including this one. North Carolina Museum held the artist's only landmark retrospec- tive show in 1963.

The current exhibit features 34 pastels in which the flower still life theme is developed and explored extensively and exclusively. Pittman has always pursued his individual mode the flower Victoria Donohoe 9 4 4 51 "Seated Figure of a Standard Bearer," Mexico, Aztec, 1100-1520, sandstone, 31 inches high, in exhibit at The Museum of Primitive Art, New York. "Roses in a White Vase' pastel by Hobson Pittman, in his exhibition at the McCleaf Gallery, 1713 Walnut st. The show, through April 11, is in honor of his 70th birthday. Delaware Valley Art 6 Victorian Washington' Tour ft a M'A' fQn: A.

P. Wed. -Sat. 9 A. P.

Sun. 1-5, free to the public, to April 19. Two opportunities for area artists to enter juried shows are at hand this week. March 25 April 1 are the entry deadlines for the "Small" Oil Paintings" exhibit to be held at the Plastics Club, 247 S. Camac st.

(call Ki 5-9324 or LO 7-0381 for further information), while March 26 and 31 are the delivery dates for the seventh annual painting and photography contest titled "Montgomery County Does Its Thing," sponsored by Upper Merion Cultural Center (call 265-9G55). Best of Graphics Prizewinners in the current juried graphics exhibit at Cheltenham Art Center are Bea Berlin, Anne Youkeles, Yoho Haru and honorable mentions to Susan Berger, Judith Ingram, Daniel Dall-mann, John Formicola, Neva Hansen, Libby Newman and Burton Wasserrr an. Awards went to painters Audrey Salkind and Ronald Shaw and to sculptors Myrna Bloom and Richard Liberman at Aliens Lane Art Center's "12th Annual Award Exhibit." Lillian V. Lee, Myrna Bloom, Nancy Grigsby, Rose Brein Finkel took prizes at Upper Merion Cultural Center's current "7th Annual Open Show," with honorable mentions going to Carole Silverman and Gertrude Fish-man. Mary Henderson, a local artist, is exhibiting this month at the Art Students League, New York.

VICTORIA DONOHOE By CHARLOTTE LICHTBLAU THE Museum of Primitive Art is showing some magnificent pieces of pre-Columbian sculpture, pottery, gold jewelry and weavings which are on loan from the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Great as these works are, each in its own way, the exhibition through May 10 has a far more contemporary and personal core than these ancient and forever meaningful primitive works. That core is focused on one of the greatest museum personalities of our century, the late director of the Museum of Modern Art, Rene d'Harnoncourt. Indeed, the exhibit ought to be called "A Tribute to Rene d'Harnoncourt." For along with selections from d'Har-noncourt's writings and commentaries, the exhibit includes 100 of his drawings of individual art objects and perspective Installation sketches. There is also a continuous slide projection of exhibits which d'Harnoncourt directed and designed.

The Museum of Modern Art's greatest period was during d'Harnoncourt's most able directorship from 1949-1968. Though d'Harnoncourt was known by many as the great personality he was (he was so tall he literally towered over every art event he was involved in) few who knew him were aware of his drawings. These d'Harnoncourt executed on simple loose-leaf sheets which he kept in a school folder. Well Executed The drawings are modest and unpretentious, yet extremely well done and intelligently executed. They are handsomely placed on the page and reveal a great sense of design.

D'Harnoncourt's media were as modest as the paper he used mostly pencil, colored pencils, ink and sometimes a little water color. Nonetheless, these drawings can be considered as minor works of art, though d'Harnoncourt' did not consider them as such but simply as exercises of comprehension. That he was also a "natural" as a public relations man becomes clear when one considers his background. Born in Vienna in 1901, the son of an aristocratic fam- Twin-Bill Exhibit, featuring blown glass by Erwin Eisch and work in other media by five award-winning alumni, Philadelphia College of Art, Broad and Pine sts. (March 23-April 18).

Alumni are Jacob Landau, S. Nicholas Burpulis. Eugene Feldman, Arthur Flory and Arthur Sawyer. "1st International Graduate Student Print Exhibit," juried by Ivan Karp who is gallery director of O. K.

Harris Works of Art, Moore College of Art, 20th Race sts. (to April 18). Artists are from Rhode Island School of Design, London's Royal College of Art, San Francisco State, London's Central School of Arts Crafts, University of Illinois, Vancouver's Douglas University, University of New Mexico, Tulane, and University of Michigan. Burton and Claire Silverman, sculpture, Kenmore Galleries, 122 S. 18th st.

(to April 8). Three Solos and a Trio, fea- March 31. AN INVITATION is extended to the public to subscribe to an elaborate "Non-Tourists' Tour of Victorian Washington, D. a first of its kind, co-sponsored by the Philadelphia-based Victorian Society in America and Washington's Latrobe Chapter of the Society of Architectural Historians on April 4 and 5. The two-day outing has been organized to honor Sir Niko-laus Pevsner, the dean of art historians who is chairman of the Victorian Society in England.

Sir Nikolaus is currently in Washington giving this year's series of Mellon lectures at the National Gallery of Art. The city of Washington has many Victorian building complexes unfamiliar to visitors. This tour will take subscribers to many otherwise inaccessible Victorian buildings, public and private. Sir Nikolaus will accompany the tour on Saturday, and will give the group a special lecture Sunday at the restored Ford's Theater. The list of places to be visited is a long one, starting with breakfast in Washington, a walking tour, bus tour, lunch, bus tour, reception; followed the next morning by Sir Nikolaus' lecture and a final bus tour.

A single ticket covering both is S20; Saturday only is $18.50. For further information or a brochure contact the Victorian Society in America, national headquarters, The Athenaeum, E. Washington Square (MA 7-4252). March 30 is the last day for reservations. Art Alliance Mrs.

Mary Harriet Eldrcdge Benton, a former journalist, has been elected to succeed subjects and oil paintings of familiar intimate nostalgic Carolina Victorian mansion interiors and sunlit gardens not an uncommon achievement. Here he continues to zero in on the complexities of one particular theme contrary to the current trend to ignore rather than explore the extensive possibilities of still life composition. His pastels are of quality that allows them to stand secure apart from any momentary isms. The newer pastel colors are purer, and his compositions a little looser than his work of earlier years, but his light tonalities remain basically the same. The artist has joyfully embraced what he sees in Nature, showing his freedom from academic ties, and working largely from memory.

The realism of poetry defines Hobson Pittman's sensitive portrayals. Noel Mahaffey's "new realist" figure and cityscape paintings at Marian Locks Gallery, 1822 Chestnut st. (to April 4) are expressive of man's melancholy isolation in his contemporary environment. In each picture we are intensely aware of the atmosphere created by the presence of someone or something in a setting, yet the figure or building has been wrenched from that setting and is centered as an isolated element (a glorified cliche) against a flat expanse of bright color. Refined Craftsmanship Besides reflecting a pop-sensibility toward the environment, Mahaffey's pictures also show a refined sense of craftsmanship.

His best painting represents two men holding a catfish. There's also one serial subject, intrig-ing because it has the opportunity to create changing impressions according to the viewpoint. Joe Barbieri's oils at Vendo Nubes Gallery, 8620 Germantown Chestnut Hill (to March 31) verge on the super-real, with side excursions into plain romantic-realism. Barbieri seems to be engaged in a search for significance that goes beyond just his handling of materials, forms and the colors themselves. Evidently he desires some contrast outside reality, with life itself.

His work has an active optical quality, sharp silhouettes, lively color rhythms, and an insistent linear pattern running through certain compositions such as his memorable "Schuylkill Expressway" painting. Much of his subject-matter relates to Italy. There is intensity, some individuality, but little sense of dread or menace here. Lorraine Alexander in an exhibit of collage painting at The Little Gallery, 211 S. 17th st.

(to March 25) has laid tissue over colors, giving her compositions a bleed-through quality of gentle luminosity and evanescent-through-vivid hue. iler random configurations luxuriate in a sea of all-embracing hot pinks and yellows and stained-glass blues. An exhibit of Eastern European art from the Philip I. and Muriel Berman collection of Allentown (where Ber-man is Hess's department store president), comprises over three dozen paintings on view at Provident National Bank, Broad and Chestnut sts. in the first and second floor public exhibit areas (to April 3).

The ensemble demonstrates that the Bermans have an ever-alert eye for diverse responses to the "Behind the Iron Curtain" locale, for they have collected these lively works over a long period. Most generously represented by far are the Yugoslav artists with International Style abstractions and representational paintings that include a series of maudlin clowns. Hungarian artists make the most memorable showing with their oil paintings of peasant life, including Szabo's strong naturalistic full-length portrait of a man, Kurucz's spare low-key views of a collective farm in winter, as well as landscapes painted with more gusto and a freer brush such as Door's and Benyi's, and in a latter-day French Impressionist vein. Several Russian lithographs round out the unusual display. Grace Anglada McCracken and a group exhibit are featured at Woodmere Art Gallery, 9201 Germantown Chestnut Hill (to April 3).

Mrs. McCracken's small figure paintings and landscapes produce images that are simultaneously controlled yet spontaneous. Maurice Freed shows bright, sunny, straightforward, unworried Portuguese travel scenes in oil. Charles Child, a new face on the local scene, paints Nature forms. His best paintings, subtle yet distinct and possessing a certain gravity, are crossed with energies of shapes and colors.

Flickering collage elements in August Feld's pictures function abstractly, while in her figure work, collage materials sometimes are used to produce a sense of life from the outside world. Tandem Exhibit at Alliance Edmund Ferszt and Stuart Saks are exhibiting in tandem at the Philadelphia Art Alliance, 251 S. 18th st. (to March 22). Using the gun of the skilled airbrush artist, Ferszt gives his paintings a machine look which belies the otherwise biomorphic bent of these big simple involuted and interlocking roseate shapes.

Such canvases are clever of their kind, if illogical. Saks combines photography with acrylic plexiglas. An exhibit of Tibetan "tankas" and Indian and Bali-nese paintings from the 15th and 20th centuries is featured at Zodiac Gallery, 913 Montgomery Narberth (to March 28). In Tibet it was the custom to make religious paintings on cloth or paper to be mounted on brocade and used in the temples for meditation with incense burning before them or else to be carried in processions. Several typical examples show an infernal divinity as the central dominant motif, a reminder of suffering in this world.

The artists were by no means free from foreign influences, but created works dependent for their conog-raphy on Indian models. Balinese tempera paintings of recent origin, mostly village scenes, have a bolder and more vigorous approach that contrasts with what appears to the layman as the hazy lyricism of the older religious pictures. Jim Dine's graphics and Lee Friedlander's photographs are featured in an exhibit at Garick Fine Arts 1811 Pine st. (to early April), centering around a portfolio of black and white etchings and photos they produced together last year. London's Petersburg Press published them and included supplemental material, some of it in color.

It's a sophisticated show that is very much of the moment. 5 to 8, Sat. 11 to 3. 9 4 ei v- Jt great personality with tremendous scope and breeding. Those interested in museum work and curatorial positions will gain a great deal of insight by a close study of the current Museum of Primitive Art exhibit.

Mordechai Omer installed the exhibit, together with Ludwig Glacscr, curator of the Department of Architecture and Design of the Museum of Modern Art. Omer is the author of the forthcoming book, "Rene d'Harnoncourt: His Art of Installation." This book will feature many of the drawings described herewith. It would be wonderful if the Museum of Modern Art, with its big viewing facilities and spaces, would follow up this excellent but small scale show with a more comprehensive tribute to the director to whom it owes so much. The Museum of Primitive Art is at 15 West 5tth st. Hours are from noon to 5 P.

Tuesday through Saturday, and from 1 to 5 on Sundav. hibit," regional show juried by Paul Keene, Jim Lueders and Erna Stenzler, Aliens Lane Art Center, Aliens lane and McCallum st. (March 22 with a 2-5 P. M. reception to March 2S).

Tuvia luster, exhibit by a Rumanian-born sculptor resident of Haifa, Israel, who has had eight solos there and is now visiting this country, Chester County Art Association, W. Gay st. and N. Bradford West Chester (March 22 with a 1-3 P.M. reception to March 29).

Jana Exner, an exhibit of photographs titled "Man's Environment" made by a Czechoslovakian artist during her three-month photographic tour across the United States last summer, Academy of Natural Sciences, 19th and the Parkway (March 22 with a P. M. opening to April 24). RS 34th Street below Spruce CRAFTSMEN '70 to April 2nd triennial crafts exhibition. The region's best modern crafts.

Crafts demonstrations I to 5 p.m., March 22, April 4, 5, 18, 19. Crafts film; 1:30 3:30 p.m., March 28, April II, 12. PAFA ANNUAL to April 26 Annual show, Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts Fellowship, paintings by outstanding alumni. ADMISSION FREE. Daily and Saturday 9 to 5, Sunday I to 5, Tuesday to 10 p.m.

Closed Monday ily which had served the Hapsburgs for many generations, his early years coincided with the last ones of the Austrian Empire. The cultural milieu of his youth included an old and very solid tradition which decayed into fin-de-siecle refinement of artistic sensibility. This over-ripeness of culture in turn brought forth the most important artistic revolutions of the early 20th century and the new fascination with primitive art which was to preoccupy d'Harnoncourt to the end of his life. Rare Combination Unfortunately, it is also this rare combination of gifts and dedication which is lacking at the MOMA and other important New. York museums today.

Administrators and public relations men can be trained, but they can do no more than an adequate job. Rene d'Harnoncourt was a turing one-man shows of water colors and acrylics by George Gansworth and photoprints by Arthur Hillman (March 25-May 3), silver jewelry by "Manette" (March 24-ApriI 26) and a group display by sculptor Kwan-Mo Chung, painter Lawrence G. Johnson and printmaker Mickie Rosen. Philadelohia Art 4Ili3no 91 ISth ct (with an 3 reception! sin at "ContempOrary Black Artists," national traveling exhibit of 50 paintings, graphics, sculptures and lightworks which run the gamut from academic to avant garde. New Jersey State Museum, Cultural Center.

W. State Trenton, N. J. (to April 26). Artists include Avel DeKnight, Romare Bearden, Jacob Lawrence, Betty Blay- ion, Kicnara muu, 10m Lioyu and Sam Gilliam.

"2d Annula Exhibit," featur- ing work by members of the local chapter of the National Forum of Professional Ar tists. Municipal Services Building concourse, 15th st. and Kennedy blvd. (cur rently). Indoor-Outdoor Sculpture Exhibit, group show selected by James Sterritt who heads Temple University's sculpture department, on view at Chestnut Hill College, Chestnut Hill (to March 31, for its arts festival).

Crafts Group Exhibit, featuring work from the "I Know What I Like" Gallery and "World Control Studios," at World Control Studios Gallery, 30 Maplewood ave. near Germantown and Chelten aves. (to April 3). "12th Annual Award Ex- James Kirk Merrick who is stepping down as executive director of the Philadelphia Art Alliance. Merrick wlil stay on as assistant to the Art Alliance president for one year? The new executive takes over the reins April 6.

Miss Harriet Eldredge, as she prefers to be called, is the daughter of former Art Alliance president Laurence II. Eldrer'ge. A three-quarter-length portrait said to be of the famed 18th-century American painter Benjamin West and attributed to his contemporary, the English portrait painter Sir William Beechey, has been given to Swarthmore College by Mr. and Mrs. Leo Heaps of London as a gesture of Anglo-American good will.

The college owns paintings by West but, until now, had no oil portrait of him. West is believed to have been born in a house on the campus, designated several years ago as a national historic landmark. Beechey ranked after Sir Thomas Lawrence as the leading fashionable portrait painter of his day. The Philadelphia Print Club announces publication of "Crossroads," a color etching by the well-known printmaker Rudy Pozzatti, which has been numbered and signed in an edition of 40. Craft demonstrations sponsored in conjunction with the current "Craftsmen '70" exhibit will be staged at the Civic Center Museum by Temple University's Tyler School of Art on March 22, 1-5 P.

M. and by Moore College of Art on April 4. 1-5 P. M. The exhibit is open Tues.

9 S620 Germantown V- kS': i ART AUCTION THURSDAY, MARCH 26th, 1ST0 AT 8 P. M. AT RICKSHAW INN City Line Ave. Schuylkill Expressway, Philadelphia EXHIBITION DAY OF SALE FROM 7 P.M. ORIGINAL OILS WATERCOLQRS LITHOGRAPHS ETCHINGS WOODCUTS MANY OUT OF PRINT GRAPHICS COLLECTOR ITEMS ALL EXQUISITELY FRAMED MANY FAMOUS ARTISTS INCLUDED Conduced by.

CHARLES J. LOMBARDO FREE ADMISSION 'The Rock Group" an oil by Joseph Barbieri in his exhibition at the Vendo Nubes Gallery, Chestnut Hill, through.