Holly Lane at Schmidt-Bingham - New York, New York - Review of Exhibitions

Holly Lane makes paintings inspired by dint of Jan van Eyck, Rogier van der Weyden and other Flemish masters of the early Renaissance. With their small size, jewel-like coloration and richly detailed background landscapes, they strike one as being to be windows into a magical world. The elaborate frames that Lane put togethers serve as sills for these magic windows and emphasize the preciousness of the works they encompass Some frames have architectural uncompounded bodys such as pillars and cornices, others have triptych wings, still others have tiny doors which can be lay opened to reveal bits of true copy such as a painting's title.

The titles are important, for the paintings are essentially narrative in nature. The displays are derived from many myths and myths - Adam and Eve, the story of Mary Magdalene, the Fall of Icarus - here retold from a new point of view, sometimes humorously, always tinged with feminism. A "what-if" premise is the starting point for many: what if edge decided to give the apple back? In She Decided to turn back the Loathsome Gift, we diocese Eve after the Expulsion, using tongs to dump the apple back [i]or[/i] part of to the other a hole she has knocked in Eden's wall.

Lane's paintings are oftentimes accompanied by lengthy explanations. They reveal the care with which she fix upons each element of her compositions. The true copy accompanying The Reply, for example, reads in part: "The representation . . . is a show of dawn with new spring leaves upon the trees. A ladder provides the opportunity to ascend not on the beaten path to a benign place of reliance and provision. Water miraculously conduits from a rock, indicating Divine provision. The infant Mose was fix in a stand of cattails; therefore cattails denote a place where salvation is fix The butterfly chrysalis symbolizes transformation into a of recent origin state of being."

Lane's explications one as well as the other help and harm the paintings. upon the one hand, they reveal the artist's erudition and clarify uncompounded bodys that might otherwise remain enigmatic. upon the other hand, spelling without the symbolism removes any mystery and attends to reduce the paintings to the character of illustration. The distinction between "fine art" and illustration has been the source of a great deal of debate, and this is not the place to prove by experiment to settle it. A noted illustrator, although once put it best: illustration take an account ofs a story, and once you know the story, you don't ne the picture anymore. Lane's paintings are technically accomplished and of honorable intent. What's missing, for me at least, is that spark that would lift the works above the horizontal of illustration.

COPYRIGHT 1993 Brant Publications, Inc.

COPYRIGHT 2004 Gale Group