EXHIBITS AT WILLIAM KING REGIONAL ARTS CENTER
By Sally Jordan (Southern Ledger Art Writer)
Abingdon, Virginia-"Look Here: Feast" from the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts "explores the relationship between food and art in cultures around the world," and the small, thoughtful collection of items forces the viewer to see somewhat disparate objects in a new light. A 19th century bronze sculpture by Antoine-Louis Barye of a boa constricting an antelope is in the same room with a pair of stunning Art Nouveau silver serving pieces, and an exquisite painting of an East Indian fowl hunt. "Feast" catches one off guard, because only one piece in the show depicts food that the viewer could actually eat on the spot-a lush array of fruit by Severin Rosen. (Braque's still life is too Cubist, and Chase's fish, though stunning, are too raw.)
Everything else in the gallery room is referential, whether through utensils, or mythology, or funerary worship. Intricately etched, ancient bronze Chinese urns which held ancestor-pleasing alcohol appear next to Mayan vessels that contained fermented chocolate. A small bronze fish which innocently ate a piece of Osiris' dismembered body swims through twenty-three centuries, safe-guarded by Isis' crown on its head. (Of special amusement to Southerners is a Peruvian clay vessel which pays homage to the mighty bean, painted as little warriors who march--or hop--courageously along.)
The most modern piece is the big, 1972 painting by Ralph Goings in the style of Photorealism. Burger Chef Interior depicts a diner sans customers or food, except for a cigarette machine and a Wonder Bread truck outside the window. Such Photorealistic ghost towns are haunting in their absence of community and point out a contradiction to the idea of "feast": society has achieved the technological savvy to allow Hopper-esque living-alone, silent, emotionally starved.
This bleakish aspect of modernity is in direct contrast to the adjoining gallery entitled "At the Table: The Material Culture of Food," which displays the tools that Southeastern artisans created for harvesting, storing, and consuming food. Early settlers were forced to be in community for survival, depending upon their neighbors, their wits, their strength, and the good mood of nature. A Thanksgiving or Christmas meal was not confined to several days' preparation, but to an entire season of planting, harvesting, and slaughtering; and the table, plates, mugs, silverware, and linens were all hand-fashioned.
The artifacts on display (baskets, furniture, utensils, tools) reveal the first-name basis that artisans shared with wood, clay, reeds, and iron. They were not removed from their physical culture as we are from the mysterious alchemy of synthetics-and plastics-making. We limp through a power outage; they used the power of fire, axe, and muscle to fashion these rough yet elegant, spare yet intricate pieces.
A modern counterpoint to these 19th century functional objects is the exhibition upstairs entitled "Of Earth and Mind: Contemporary Ceramic Styles of the Region." It showcases the work of six Southwest Virginia and East Tennessee artists who are "tradition conscious, yet highly attuned to the inherent evolution of ceramic aesthetics and styles...," and their vessels are, indeed, elegantly imaginative. Visually pleasing and technically confounding, they are good examples of the skilful artistry of contemporary ceramicists.
Finally, the august political past is on view in a gallery entitled "Virginia Collects: Art from Capitol Square," a presentation of thirty-nine sculptures and paintings of some of Virginia's exemplary legislators from the state's art collection. Thomas Jefferson's great desire was to inspire the American citizenry by exposing them to the Greek and Roman ideals of beauty. Such exposure, specifically to portraiture, sculpture, and classical architecture, was thought to be ennobling and enlightening, and if the entries in the gallery's guest book are any indication, the folks visiting this exhibit agree. More to the point, they are grateful to the William King Regional Arts Center for bringing to the region a fine museum.
The only facility of its kind in the area, it sits majestically atop a ridge and is elegantly housed in a former school dating back to 1913. Richmond's Virginia Museum of Fine Arts partners with WKRAC by lending first-rate pieces of the region and world, and the Center does invaluable community service by offering classes to adults, and outreach programs to the region's school children based on the rotating exhibitions. There is even a working studio where one may view the ongoing pieces of visiting artists (and smell the heady aroma of oils and turpentine!)
You can visit the current exhibits through January 7, 2007 (the contemporary ceramics will be on view until April 8, 2007), and learn more about the Center by going to www.wkrac.org.
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