ART AND NATURE: THREE POINTS OF VIEW

INTIMATE WILDERNESS
MAINE LANDSCAPES BY JOEL BABB
On View at Bates College Museum of Art, Olin Arts Center in Lewiston, Maine
From October 25 to December 29, 2002

TRANSFORMING SILENCE
TRANSLATING LIGHT
Wilfred E. Richard, Ph.D
On View at Bates College Museum of Art, Olin Arts Center in Lewiston, Maine
From September 6 to December 29, 2002

CHARLES CODMAN
THE LANDSCAPE OF ART AND CULTURE IN 19th-CENTURY MAINE
On view at the Portland Museum of Art in Portland, Maine
From November 7, 2002 through January 5, 2003

By Laurie Meunier Graves

In Maine, the woods are always at the edge of our vision. Even in Southern Maine, jokingly referred to as the banana belt, the woods are never far away. Sometimes we see them as a green blur as we speed along the highway. At other times, when we walk, we see them as less of a blur but still as an impression of color. Seldom do we look closely, and this is true of the rest of nature as well. Preoccupied with our lives, we only catch glimpses of trees, animals, and the countryside.

At the Bates College Museum of Art and at the Portland Museum of Art, there are three exhibits by artists who have looked closely at the forest, the shore, and the countryside. With varying degrees of success, they have captured what most of us miss.

Joel Babb’s luminous paintings fill the first floor at the Bates College Museum of Art. There are landscapes, still and serene, of the woodlands and a few paintings of the coast. His large pictures of the forest are especially fine. They have great feeling and draw the viewer into a shaded, mysterious world. Mr. Babb has caught the patches of cool essence, punctuated by bursts of color, of the Maine woods, and many are filled with the golden light that comes so often at the end of the day. They show that moment in time when the viewer stands in the forest. Except for the rush of water, all is deceptively quiet. The animals are hiding, waiting for the viewer to leave, and the stillness is merely an illusion, a pose.

Somehow, the smaller forest paintings are less effective and seem almost drab by comparison.

Downstairs, tucked into a small space at the end of a gallery, is another exhibit worth seeing. This exhibit consists of photographs taken by Dr. Wilfred E. Richard, and they were taken in Maine, Atlantic Canada, the Arctic, and the Antarctic. Whether the pictures are of puffins, flowers, the moon, or a junco, they all have a piercing clarity.

There are also some that are awe-inspiring. One photograph is of two miniscule tents pitched in a river valley surrounded by immense cliffs. There is also one of rock outcroppings that look like ancient gods. In both, the powers of nature make humans seem puny and insignificant in comparison.

Then there is Artic Chromatic, a photograph of a village in Greenland. The houses are painted in bright colors—red, yellow, green, and blue—and are perched on the side of a cliff. Stairs and walkways are built onto the side of the rock, and everything seems to be at a slant. But laundry hangs on lines, and toys are scattered around some of the houses. It’s an arresting image of the precarious and the homey.

Dr. Richard’s work, unlike Mr. Babb’s, does not draw the viewer in. Instead, they place the viewer at a distance, even when the shots are close-ups. However, this distance is not detrimental; rather, it is an advantage. It forces the viewer to take a step back and really look at what is being photographed.

At the Portland Museum of Art, there is an exhibit of Charles Codman’s nineteenth-century landscapes. This exhibit “traces his development from an ornamental artist to Maine’s premiere painter of landscapes” and features such items as mirrors and fireboards, which were “decorative panels placed in fireplaces in the summertime.”

Mr. Codman’s decorative art is attractive enough, but it is painted in the flat style of the times. His landscapes have some of that flatness; they are peopled with stiff figures who have few features and no emotions. The trees and the countryside fare a little better, but they are infused with a lush light I’ve never seen in the natural world. Perhaps it’s the light of the romantic imagination, but somehow it just doesn’t work with those wooden people. And the trees are just plain odd, familiar and unfamiliar at the same time. In all fairness, the landscapes do have a symbolic, allegorical feel—small humans against the grand background of nature—but despite the lush light, the paintings manage to be a little dull. They don’t draw in the viewer, and there is no particular clarity. Instead, they are remote.

However, I suspect this is due more to the style of the times rather than to the lack of skill of the painter. Mixed in with the landscapes are three portraits that are as fine as any by John Singleton Copley. Mr. Codman’s Self-Portrait is especially good and is full, dark, and moody. But all three are strong and vivid.

According to a placard at the museum, “Portraits by Charles Codman are rare and do not appear to have been a major aspect of his work.” This is certainly a shame, because judging from the three in this exhibit, this is where his talent shines forth.

Yet taken with the exhibits at Bates College, Mr. Codman’s landscapes are not without merit. They do present a view of nature separate from Mr. Babb’s and Dr. Richard’s. The three form an odd sort of triangle of the romantic, the personal, and the finely examined. All three are aspects of human nature, and all three involve intense observation, partly real and partly imagined. To these artists, the natural world is not just a mere blur, an afterthought, the way it is with so many people. Those of us who are not in the visual arts would do well to keep this in mind.
 

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