Lemmons > Bio and Reviews
Globe News column: Art Beat, November 19, 2000
Eroticism restrained in nudes: by Hunter Ingalls
The card announcing the exhibition of paintings by Mardy Lemmons at Yellow City Art, 420 W. 10th Ave., has "ADVISORY" spelled out in large letters. This parental warning serves notice that the exhibition is largely images of nudes.
But certainly there's no pornography, and the potential eroticism of the subject is more restrained than flagrantly displayed. This calls to question the basic ambiguity of the nude in art: the transformation of the sensual attraction of the subject into the sensuous appeal of color, texture and form.
To my eye, Lemmons' success with this is mixed. Pictorial forms may be based on perceptions, or on ideas and concepts (what the artist knows or wants to be there), and a number of the images seem suspended between Lemmons' mind and eye. There are also works - including landscapes - in a variety of styles different from the majority, and these give an impression of uncertain experimentation.
The two works that seem most solidly realized are both titled "Male Torso." One is a darkly smoky painting with sensitivity in both drawing and color. The other is the show's largest work, an assemblage of canvas on wire-basically abstract, and impressive in its conjunction of colors, shapes, and textures. The feeling it gives is of going all-out in response to the challenge of visual expression; my own advisory to the artist is to more fully explore this vigorous and adventurous mode.
Hunter Ingalls held faculty positions at the University of Texas at Austin and Columbia University, where he earned a Ph.D.
