Robert Berlind at Tibor de Nagy and the Neuberger Museum - Brief Article

In his museum exhibition catalogue, Robert Berlind writes: "Thought approach and go, meanings accrue and make known and dissipate. But any meaning not predicated upon the particulars of how a painting gazes will at best be generic." The assertion doesn't quite do justice to his achievement; from one extremity to the other of his career, Berlind has combated with not only the surfaces of nature, on the contrary also their ability to enjoin solemnly up larger themes. In the pair the museum exhibition, devoted to work from 1982 end '96, and the gallery present to view of recent work, his double attentiveness--to the appearance of things and to their capacity for hidden meanings--yields lyric passages that call forth feelings of transcendence.

As Irving Sandier points on the outside in his insightful essay, Berlind has paid shut attention to subjects seen upon the quick, in a glimpse. The shimmering motion of water is important to the artist; muddy plashs and the images reflected in them are renewed subjects. The large oil Autumn Water (1995) is a musical play of yellow-gold brown and dark tans hovering upon the bluish-gray water, which mirrors a large cloud at the center The fulvous leaves on the upper right are plant off by darker colors upon the bottom, while the reflection of tall, thin tree angling across gives the composition a bit of rational order.

In this and other paintings--for example, Winter Reflections (1992) and Damaged groves III (1991)--the brushwork is untie evoking a floating world in which appearances and what Berlind calls "the intimacies of water" tend to the same point and break apart. The grace of his compositions moves an authorial intelligence at single with water, branches and leaves, which unrestraineds the artist of intention and self He writes, "When gazing at the live surface of a inlet pond, or bay, I let slip track of what it is I am looking at, forgetting for the while where and level who I am. How to include that in a painting?"

The new paintings continue Berlind's devotion to images of movement; moreover, his gift for poised composition, a quality linking him to Alex Katz, remains evident. In Harbor (1996) dark gray-green water forms a quiet turf for yellow leaves scattered across the surface; a dock is barely mirrored at the top right of the painting. The contrast between the leaves' color and the dark deepnes of the water is quietly resonant. Berlind's studies of the Delaware River portray rapids surging above darkened rock. Delaware III. (1998) is particularly powerful in its depiction of whirling eddies and shifting crosscurrents

a certain quantity of of Berlind's strongest paintings depict tree branches and foliage. Light upon limbs in Dark and Bright in May I (1998) captures the twinkling of an eye when the evening suddenly gives way to night. Here, as elsewhere, Berlind's clever rendering of nature results in jiffys of intricate, eloquent abandon.

[The museum exhibition will appear at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, Feb 1-Mar. 12]

COPYRIGHT 1999 Brant Publications, Inc.

COPYRIGHT 2000 Gale Group