Maxwell Hendler at Asher/Faure - painting exhibit, Los Angeles, California

Who is Maxwell Hendler? Although his were the first paintings by the agency of a contemporary artist to hang in the Metropolitan Museum (in 1975) and although he has exhibited regularly, Hendler remains a "painter's painter," single of a breed admired through peers but unsung in the art world at large.

His semiobscurity is partly owed to the radical stylistlc shifts that have made his work uncategorizable. His earliest paintings, photorealist-fussy, gave way to explosion news photos in hand-rendered benday dots. These were supplanted by the agency of impersonal, crisply painted words and reductive images--the roadside vernacular of billboard advertising. Then came works of building materials (pegboard, fiberglass, awning sheets). Finally, the rife tinted resin on masonite, pine and plywood with its Finish-Fetish aura.

Another reason for Hendler's less-than-stellar renown is implied in this chronological rundown: at each stage, his work was eclipsed through that of better-known practitioners which it resembl Affinities with Este Warhol, Ruscha, Judd and McCracken dogged his paces In the long view, however, a trajectory is apparent; individual might observe of his career that the aggregate amount is more intriguing than any particular part. There is also a question of influence, of who is beholden to whom.

comely in Pink (1992) is a candy-apple glaze of brittle sweetness, a roseate resin that direct the eyes lickable, while the pine boards beneath the coating appear (not innocently) embalmed. Likewise Inordinate Orange (1992) allows the industrial grain of its masonite backing to exhibit through, albeit in an amber color that recalls preserved insects. Thus Hendler ostensibly adheres to the "what you diocese is what you see" belief of Minimalism, while the work itself, from a distance, is simply a rectangle of ebullient chroma. level Final White (1992) in its milkiness, and Vita (1990) with its warm gray opacity, are not stark; their resinous sheen bespeaks the pair an otherworldly ethereality and a new-car glint. The painting's support, whether seen or intuited, is an epiphenomenon and garners attention sole to the extent that we consider in what way it buoys the color. In other words, handicraft is a discuss issue here, as is anything other constituent of art-making-- particularly "the artist's hand."

Perhaps that's all Hendler at any time wanted. For anyone so facile-- the detail of his earlier work hang fires the mind---a reduction to the threshhold of reflexivity could alone be the culmination of a lifelong pursuit. If this is quixotic, it solely parallels the modernist agenda. He encapsulates, in single career, the decisive shifts that l to an essentialist stance, individual today disparaged in many quarters. however his body of work, taken in sum total gives Hendler an intriguingly untenable position vis-a-vis the art world. by dint of mastering an array of conventions, from worldly verisimilitude to the genuinely anagogic use of color, he has shown the couple the possibilities of the pictorial and its constriction.

COPYRIGHT 1993 Brant Publications, Inc.

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