Four Painters, Then and Now

One of the first exhibition posters I bought after moving to New York City in 1970 was an Edward Avedisian from the famous Robert Elkon Gallery: An intense yellow sphere and a smaller, green one hung against a night-blue background. Sort of a blunt, minimalist, visual precis of Van Gogh’s “Starry Night.”

So it is good to see even a few pieces of Avedisian’s work in “Four Artists, Two Phases,” the slightly precious but intriguing new show at the Tremaine Gallery at Hotchkiss. While the show’s conceit — early and later works from artists with ties to nearby New York state — is intriguing, there is too much recent and too little early work to fully appreciate the artists’ development.

Avedisians, early and late, greet you as you enter the Tremaine. To the right is an untitled watercolor from 1965, half of an intense orange and yellow sphere against a red-washed background. Right away you see the artist’s early characteristics: the saturated tones of color- field painting, bold composition, and even a touch of Pop’s let-it-all-hang-out exuberance.

On the left hangs “Red Car” from 2000. After leaving New York City for Hudson, where he lived until his death in 2007, Avedisian developed a representational style and often referred to his earlier, abstract work as “period” pieces.

“Red Car,” with its blunt shapes of car and shadowy figures, still represents the artist’s feeling for color, scale, relationship and surface. The landscapes on view — Avedisian constantly painted his environment and surroundings after moving to Hudson — are direct and flat and rough, with colors that surprise and often sing. He reminds me of Marsden Hartley’s Maine, but without his heroism. He is laconic to a fault.

Randy Bloom from Tivoli, NY, is the youngest (and only woman) in the show. Her earliest picture, untitled from 1993, shows five thick, brightly colored globs of acrylic randomly placed on a gray and white, cross-hatched surface. The picture is arresting in the inexplicable way abstracts sometimes are. Perhaps it is the unexpected joy and rowdiness that seems to burst out of the painting.

Bloom’s later works show color-field influences in the blocks and shapes she places erratically on intense, sometimes bordered backgrounds. These pictures — there are three — almost resemble aerial views of landscapes or those schematics of furniture placement so beloved by interior designers: Here is the sofa, here the table, there the side chairs. The most interesting shows three geometric shapes — red, olive and turquoise — against a blue background. But your eye is drawn and cannot leave a tiny squiggle of thick, bright orange paint in the center of the picture. Almost as if a tiny goldfish died while swimming through the blue.

Clark Murray from Rhinebeck, NY, is a widely known sculptor and painter whose work was first noticed in the mid-1960s. His work is in the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and in several major Houston collections, including the DeMenil. A single example from that period, untitled 1967, is a black-painted trapezoid of steel. Minimalist, rigorous, mysterious, tough. Several later works on exhibit are softer.

In hazy landscapes, Murray places strong block-shaped buildings — almost like Monopoly houses and hotels — against simple blocks of color representing trees and grass and sky. The colors are musty, except for a burst of bright green in one especially good picture, and speak of solitude and poetry.

And then there is David Crum from Millerton, NY, whose wife is president of the Art Museum Partnership and who curated the show.

Crum’s early work in the exhibition is “Soker Slides” from 1991. Three trapezoidal shapes — blue-gray, red, brown — lie on a diagonal gray and white grid that grows darker as it moves from top to bottom. The downward angle gives the piece a feeling of movement and saves it from seeming too derivative.

Crum’s other three paintings are serial and all from 2010. Bright, thick paint is placed — or dripped perhaps — in both wide and narrow vertical lines so that the pictures look like printouts from electrocardiograms. The strong colors — purple, red, yellow, green — vary, but the effect of the three pictures is the same: loud, repetitious, hypnotic.

“Four Artists, Two Phases” continues at the Tremaine Gallery at The Hotchkiss School through March 4. Call 435-3663, or go to hotchkiss.org.