Barbara SiegelThe subjects are pigeons in Barbara Siegel's new show titled, "City Dwellers," but don't let that keep you away. For though you might not have much fondness or use for pigeons in your walk through the city, Ms. Siegel transforms them and the experience of looking at them in these paintings. They're not the disease carriers messing up statues and window ledges with their spotted white droppings that we've been semi-conscious of. And they're not seen against the ordinary greys and whites of city buildings that we, in at least recalling, envision. On the other hand, they're not portrayed as valiant. They are, simply, the subjects. The object is making a painting and this is where the pigeons are lucky since it is the environment of an extraordinary painting they inhabit. These "city dwellers" perch on sills or in little corners of a concrete and glass landscape that the artist is a particular adept noticer of. The compositions zero in on pigeon zones as seen from the bird's perspectives. Overall, the compositions are very photographic, that is, it is as if we're viewing the scenes through a telephoto lens that enables us to observe and frame a point we wouldn't see quite the same way from the street or even a window. In some, the entire composition is taken up by a close-up view that slightly distorts the perspectives as a long lens would and focuses in on details we might not have noticed or have taken for granted. In others, the close-up is so close that the scale has enlarged the pigeons to almost monstrous proportions. They seem quite harmless as usual, though. At the same time that we're adjusting to these new spatial relationships, we're given a new realm of color, also. It's as if suddenly we were able to fine tune and enhance the colors visible in the street; as if with computer graphics she took the image and pulled it toward a cartoon enrichment. Using oil stick she keeps the paint dry and thin so the rough texture of the canvas permeates the entire surface. The images are built up from strong dabs of paint that delineate form and expose the geometric. The textures are finely worked to a marbleized pastel effect. It's like a new pointillism with depth achieved through a crafty and marvelous use of differing textures juxtaposed rather than the simpler illusion of receding lines. There's an optical mixture as in pointillism, also, with complimentary pairs of colors placed together so each intensifies the other. From painting over a black surface, a luminosity is created. Floating down across the surface of the entire painting are odd little dabs of mixed colors that might be said to be loose feathers. Floating as they do right at the picture plane, they assist in giving the illusion of more depth to the realistic scene "behind" the canvas surface. It also imposes an artificial presence that I wouldn't mind having removed from one or two pieces. To have this device continually used in every composition is a little tiring. There's no variation or possibility of variations. These colored dabs are a self-conscious device that, seen so often, imprison the paintings to a single idea. The tolerance for these artificial limits is much briefer than the endless possibilities of pigeons in the secret or public places they inhabit or soar to. Besides, we're also getting architectural details we might not have appreciated enough and weird perspectives with which to reassess our environment of concrete canyons, tiled plains and windowsill precipices. The paintings bare the grit and share the glory. (Arts, April 1986) |