A Textbook Take on Painting

In painting, it’s easier to advertise the transcendent than to produce it; easier to offer up mere flurries of strokes or generic symbols than pictorially eloquent forms. Bernard Chaet, however, is a painter who can extract remarkable expressions from fairly conventional means. Known to countless students for his classic textbook on drawing, the 83-year-old artist’s work is currently on view at two Midtown galleries. His expressionistic watercolors and oil paintings ply a well-worn course — views of the shoreline near Rockport, Mass. — but they possess two qualities that rarely merge so effortlessly: pictorial sophistication and a sense of mystical inquiry.His 21 paintings at David Findlay Jr. employ intense, broken colors in sinuous rhythms somewhat reminiscent of Braque’s Fauve period. Upon backgrounds of single, intense hues — variously red, orange-yellow, green, or violet — his marks establish the facets of foreground rocks, the position of distant jetties, and the glint of sun on water, creating deep, flooding spaces out of countless incidents of light. His compositions seem to wrestle with a conscious set of challenges: how to measure the sun’s vertical reflection against the ocean’s horizontality, or flights of space against densely textured planes. The great virtue of these canvases is that such events resonate as original, direct observations.Though picturesque in itself, Mr. Chaet’s method of attack always serves the larger purpose of honoring nature. In the foreground of “October Clouds” (2006), massive boulders — confections of yellows, ocher tints, and purple-grays — lean toward one corner, trailing in their wake a collection of smaller rocks that frame the ocean beyond. The setting sun has converted the water into an intense flux of broken-up lights, and at its far extreme, a cluster of orange-red clouds peers back from the horizon, energizing the vast distance between. Rather than merely taking inventory, Mr. Chaet characterizes objects with impulses of color and rhythm. Another especially dynamic work, “Cathedral Rocks — Yellow Sun” (2003–07), draws one’s eye rapidly across the sheen of water to a dark turquoise on the low horizon, from which clouds clamber lazily upward in curls of yellow-green and gray.Some paintings leave substantial parts of the colored ground exposed, a rather obvious reminder of the images’ abstract flatness, which lessens the singular impact of small moments within the large dramas of sky meeting earth. But elsewhere Mr. Chaet finds in nature his own, poignantly subjective truths. The ocean turns into a wall of shimmering pinks in “June’s Measure” (2003–05) — and, visually, it convinces as the luminous plane separating air and shore. The dark green contours of clouds and splintered rocks in “September Parade” (1996–2006) are hardly naturalistic, but they persuasively set off the water’s brilliant highlights. Elsewhere, stylized clouds loop strangely through bright, tattered skies, with a mystical aspect reminiscent of Marsden Hartley.Findlay’s exhibition also includes three fine still lifes. Though more modest in size and subject, they catch with sober intensity the impression of radiant blossoms, fallen petals, and stems refracted in glass vases.Babcock Galleries’ concurrent exhibition presents more than 20 watercolors spanning nearly three decades. In spite of their wide range of dates, most of these works tackle similar shoreline motifs with the same spontaneous approach. Surrounded by large irregular areas of pure paper white, his watercolor marks have more of an effect of floating, abstracted modelings, but in them nature still prevails. “Remains” (1979) lends vital dimension to the plunge from a foreground pinnacle to a tidal pool beyond, the water’s surface deftly conveyed by a mere two strokes of grayish-green. The most voluptuous landscape is “Yellow Sky” (1981), in which washes of intense blues, ochers, and yellows, covering virtually the entire sheet, contrast vividly with the sudden band of paper-white at the horizon.Babcock’s installation also includes three still lifes, all produced in the last dozen years. Each one depicts small fruits or vegetables scattered across a uniformly white tabletop extending beyond the paper’s edges. In a kind of pun on the materiality of images, the surface supporting these objects in life becomes equivalent to the paper support for their depiction. A portrait (1985) and a self-portrait (2004) also on display show the artist once again probing rhythmic structures, but, this time, perhaps a little too respectfully. They border on the cautious, and I found myself returning to the landscapes, which continually intrigued me with their spirit of engaged abandon.“Granite Pier” until November 21 (41 E. 57th St. at Madison Avenue, 212-486-7660);“Watercolors” until November 21 (724 Fifth Ave., between 56th and 57th streets, 212-767-1852).

A Textbook Take on Painting

A Textbook Take on Painting

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