Visual Arts
D-L Alvarez

Decorative Candles

Stephanie hits the burnt orange lamp base with a fssst of Windex. It looks like a huge translucent gourd. She finds its asymmetrical shape to be warm, certainly worth the extra effort required to clean about the bulbous pimples of glass.

This interior is sprinkled throughout with hints of nature. But here nature is perfected, cleaner lines, more vibrant earth tones and made to endure. The waist-high cabinet on which the lamp rests celebrates the natural grain of wood, but is protected against a clumsy guest by a quarter-inch of acrylic coating.

A model of modern living space‹contemporary craft work arranged with Japanese sensibility. Stephanie's objets d'art are perfect accents. Over the granite fireplace, a brass sunburst clock; in the foyer, a macramé wall-hanging which incorporates dead branches and ceramic beads in its weave. Above the cabinet, Stephanie's favorite, a cast-iron wall relief sculpture of Don Quixote approaching the windmill. All in the metal's natural black, it captures the simplicity of a Picasso sketch. But moving out from the white stucco wall it takes on the sort of life only objects can hold.

Fashionable Attire

Then Stephanie hears a noise from behind her. She turns to find her friends Janis Provisor and Didi Dunphy.

"We just let ourselves in² says Didi in a lime-green cocktail dress.

"Yes² echoes Janis. She wears a fashionable pant-Suit accessorized with plastic grapes. "Oh² says Janis, "Wherever did you get such an exquisite lamp!"

At this, she kneels on the carpet before the cabinet and peers up through the orange glass. "Look² she says. "See how beautifully it distorts Don Quixote."

Nervous and excited, Stephanie runs off to the kitchen to make some cool drinks for her company. Didi situates herself in a butterfly chair near the kidney-shaped coffee table.

On the table is a coffee table book about Abstract Expressionism. Didi leafs through the expensive book and smiles when she comes across photo reproductions of expressionist paintings. She is familiar with the publishing company. They employ an army of women who hand sew each binding and paste each reproduction into place.

Didi runs her fingers over the text which attempts to relate the lives of these painters, almost all of which are men, with their work. She thinks of the researchers who tried to organize these lives into sentences. She thinks of typesetters, printers, layout artists and decisionmakers.

She thinks of all the room for chance.

There is a quote from Jackson Pollock about how the "active/masculine" art of creating is a purer medium than the "passive" act of observing ‹that common male echo of greater/ lesser-thanisms which want to place everything into a competitive field.

That a movement so obsessed with abandonment and "the truth of the gesture" could be interpreted into a relatively tame and accessible format was a feat and an art. That such a feat is also a fetishable object which has been mass-produced makes it rich with glittery irony.

Lessons to Be Learned

Janis takes a Polaroid of the lamp-abstracted figure and props it up against a plastic mushroom deodorizer just as Stephanie returns with three glasses of iced tea with lemon slices.

"There are lessons here," says Janis, "about art history and organic form."

Stephanie looks befuddled. "In the photo or in the air freshener?" she asks, and it is not a stupid question. Both are versions of nature so fixed in their contorted states as to be unrecognizable in the context of the "great" outdoors.

Without looking up from the book Didi says, "Did you know that air fresheners don't eliminate bad odors but simply deaden your sense of smell?" With an eyebrow pencil she underlines the words "gaudy" and "tasteful."

Stephanie doesn't notice. She is holding the Polaroid up to the light. "I like it," she says, "it's pretty. It reminds me of the cover of this album I have called Music of Spain."

"That's what's missing," says Didi. "Where's your stereo? I'll put on something groovy."

The paintings of Janis Provisor and Didi Dunphy will be on view through May 8 at the SF Art Institute's Walter/McBean Gallery (800 Chestnut St., 771-7020), and I'd encourage you to drop in. Stephanie, however, will not be there. She is a fictional character with little to no life beyond this review.