Max Benjamin's Purposeful Work

---------- ART REVIEW ---------- "Max Benjamin: Oil Paintings & Pastel Drawings," Foster/White Gallery, 311 1/2 Occidental Ave. S. until Jan. 2 (closed Dec. 25 and Jan. 1). Gallery hours: Monday through Saturday, 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m.; Sunday 12 noon to 5 p.m. 622-2833.

The huge four-room survey of 40 oil paintings and pastels by Max Benjamin at Foster/White Gallery in Pioneer Square is an excellent introduction for new viewers who might be unfamiliar with this artist. Benjamin has lived on Guemes Island near the U.S.-Canada border since 1959.

Benjamin's greatest strengths and weaknesses are on view. Crusty, persistent and stubborn, his work is maddening to some, exhilarating to others; at the very least, Max Benjamin cannot be ignored.

He may live on an island, but Benjamin gets around. With shows over the years in New York, Stockholm and Los Angeles and two museum retrospectives (Bellevue Art Museum in 1984, Whatcom Museum in 1987), Benjamin's prolific activities can often obscure the true nature of his art: turbulent Northwest landscapes and weather filtered through Cubism learned in the 1950s from French-trained professors Walter Isaacs and Ambrose Patterson at the University of Washington.

Overinstalled to the point of satiety, the Foster/White survey reveals an old-fashioned craftsman masquerading as a regional modernist. Deft brushwork, solid linear underdrawing and impeccable composition are combined with modulated, rational colors that never clash or offend. With abstracted scenes of churning wind and water, Benjamin tames nature into art by dint of his overwhelming virtuosic control of paint.

But are the paintings too controlled? Spanning the years 1966 to the present, this exhibition demonstrates an absolutely assured sense of purpose. Plan and power, not emotion or doubt, win out over and over, becoming a bit intimidating after a while. Even the underpainting, or "pentimento," is clearly corrected, never smudged.

Only in the pastels, almost uniformly blue and green, do we sense any intimacy of touch or hesitation. They are his most human works.

The oils exude a godlike authority that is both exhilarating and possibly worrying. Part of the terrifying conviction of this art comes from the sealed-off, highly varnished surfaces. However dazzling the color or ingenious the land/horizon/sky configurations, the glossy surface shuts one out, forcing the viewer to stand back and revere - or reject.

Interim art critic for The Seattle Times in 1965, this highly articulate and cultured man ironically touched on a problem that may affect him today. Knocking the UW art faculty, he warned that "the craft (can) master the man and the end result is pure decoration, which grows richer and sweeter and ultimately turns to fat."

Now 65, Benjamin's virtuosity may become his own undoing. Still, there are riches to be had here. "XLIIB," a 1979 painting in the SAFECO collection, places a white triangle in a blue-green storm. A new work, "CCXXIX," with its central leaf or insect head, hints that representational likeness may be returning. And "CCXXIV" has a deep black inverted triangle anchored around gray and red.

Building on these and learning from the darker confidences of the earlier works on view, Benjamin should do more than secure his place in local art history. A little more ragged life and a little less burnished image might be in order.

(Copyright 1993, Matthew Kangas)

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