Northwest Cubism: Fascinating Facets

``Northwest Cubism: The Heritage of Cubism in the Pacific Northwest from the 1920s through the 1960s,'' at the Tacoma Art Museum, 1123 Pacific Ave. through March 31. 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Tuesday-Saturday; noon-5 p.m. Sunday. (272-4258) Admission: $2 adults, $1 students and seniors; free Tuesdays.

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Welcome to the other Northwest School. Northwest Cubism, as revealed in a current exhibition at the Tacoma Art Museum, took its cue from the European masters of early 20th century - not from the Asian traditions that inspired such painters as Mark Tobey.

Paintings by cubist pioneers Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque have echoes in more than 40 works sought out for the show by curator Erika Michael. One of the most rewarding aspects is that she has located numerous pieces by little-remembered women artists in the nearly half-century - the 1920s through the '60s - covered by the exhibit. Michael also supplies an introduction to the ``cubist periods'' of significant Northwest artists still active today, including Guy Anderson and George Tsutakawa.

As developed by Picasso and Braque around 1910, cubism concerned itself with geometric relationships, allowing the artist to express multiple views of a subject on a single flat surface. A man playing the accordion, for instance, could be reduced to angles and facets bearing little relationship to the musician's pose in ``reality.'' Cubism put the ``modern'' in modern art.

Cubist ideas remained scandalous to supporters of traditional art long after the creation of such masterpieces as Marcel Duchamp's ``Nude Descending a Staircase'' in 1912. In the catalog essay for the exhibit, Michael includes a quote from the Vancouver Star in 1932: ``Modern art is a menace to any country whose citizens call themselves sane.''

Far from representing a menace, the Northwest Cubists provide relatively restful visions for late-20th-century eyes. Take ``Composition No. 26'' (1944), by Maude Kerns. Spheres and cubes strike a delicate balance on crossing, translucent planes against a soft, deep indigo background. The eye is drawn into a dance with form and comes away refreshed.

``Ships at Quiet Anchor'' (1948), by Bertram Binning, sets veils of canvas in receding formation. Masts and rigging appear in the upper right-hand corner, formed dot-and-line like a study in perspective. Another typically Northwest scene abstracted into cubist form is an untitled 1939 oil by Lawren Harris in which foothills cluster beneath a windswept mountain peak.

If you're familiar with the development of cubism, it should be pretty easy to identify the varied sources of the imagery: Here's Wendell Brazeau creating ``Still Life With Bottles'' in 1967, with a collage effect similar to Picasso's ``Bottle of Suze,'' from 1913. There's Bernard Geiser, in 1945, assembling fish tails, nets and buoys into ``Marine'' with a flair that resembles ``The Portuguese,'' painted by Braque in 1911.

For some of the Northwest Cubists, representational painting remains just a brushstroke away - especially when the subject is religious. The floating, superimposed volumes in a 1945 painting by Jacob Elshin are well-suited to its title, ``In My Father's House There Are Many Mansions.'' The bulk of the technique is cubist, but Christ's head is painted in quite traditional style.

Similarly, Ebba Rapp's ``Madonna,'' from around 1940, uses ancient symbols in a Cubist context. One hand of the Virgin Mary strokes a cuddly ``lamb of God''; the other indicates the cross on which the willing sacrifice will be offered - a cross that at first glance is just another suspended geometric plane in the composition.