San Francisco Examiner
Tuesday April 30, 1991
David Bonetti

SFAI graduates, show draws on presents of mind
Different approaches aim to revitalize status of painting

Paintings byJanis Provisor and Didi Dunphy," at the San Francisco Art Institute, demonstrates that, in era of post-modern criticality, intelligent painting is not an oxymoron. Since the rise of pop art and minimalism, the painting medium, which once occupied the undisputed pinnacle of the hierarchy of the arts, has been knocked off in theoretical game of king-of-the-mountain, leaving sculpture and photography its equals.

This aesthetic revolution took painters by surprise, for the most part. They continued as if nothing had happened, often painting themselves into corners, or, if conscious of the challenge, floundered out, not knowing exactly how to respond. (Of course, there have been painters such as Brice Marden and Sean Scully, who have continued to produce painting as if this great tradition continued, uninterrupted.

Provisor and Dunphy, both SFAI graduates, belong to a younger, tripper generation that accepts painting¹s reduced statue, but brings to it a critical intelligence that aims to revivify the medium. Their double show is perfect for an art school, where students who are engaged in experimentation can see that painting without gimmick or apology is as viable a possibility for them as photo-text work and performance art.

Some object that Dunphy's paintings are nothing but gimmicks, but they confuse gimmick with concept. In her paintings, Dunphy acknowledges that Marden¹s example is impossible for her. She writes that her work "attempts to reconcile an admitted passion for historicized modernist forms with a conscious intention to make contemporary work that is critical of those same forms."

Dunphy is showing three paintings from what she calls the "expressionist" series. Actually, there is nothing expressionist about them at all. They are as much a construction, using quasi-industrial processes, as Gerhard Richter's abstract paintings of the '80s‹the most cynically intelligent paintings of the decade.

Dunphy's quasi-industrialism is definitely cottage scale. She's of home-based, hippie capitalism, to "high" art purposes. The large (7 1/2 by-6 1/2 foot) canvases, made of procion dye and glazed over with a highly reflective varnish, are rapturous. They are far more beautiful stretched over stretcher bars than over the chest of a Haight Street hippie reeking of patchouli oil.

Like Richter, Dunphy¹s nonexpressive process allows for a wide variety of effects, mainly in terms of color experience. "AE #102" is bright and happy in its clear yellow, orange and red tonality with aquamarine and green contrasts. "AE #106," by contrast, is moody. A slightly off-center blue-green burst is surrounded by burgundy and maroon fields of murky, brooding color.

These are the paintings Morris Louis would have painted had he lived to paint a fourth series. The obvious reference to '70s color field paintings connects Dunphy's newest paintings with two earlier bodies of work that also mined recent art history. Dunphy painted monochromatic fields, interrupted by zippers sewn into the surface, literalizing Barnett Newman's "zips." In the "stripes," she made stripe paintings uncannily reminiscent of Kenneth Noland's‹except Dunphy sent her specifications to an awning maker who produced them complete with aluminum frame and decorative scalloped edge.

In her provocatively witty works, Dunphy has combined a Duchampian irony about authorship, self-expression and fabrication with Clement Greenberg's deadly serious aesthetic about painting as "high" art. In her "expressionist" paintings, the combination has allowed her the opportunity to make knock-out gorgeous paintings as well. The test of her ingenuity‹as for Noland and Greenberg¹s other favorites‹will be how she follows them up. They failed, let's hope she succeeds.

Provisor's painting is not as conceptual as Dunphy's, yet she has looked outside formalism's closed system to traditional Asian painting for ideas to reinvigorate what remains, for her, a Western conception of painting. In "Parachute" (an abstracted look upward into a flowering fruit tree), giant near blossoms and small far blossoms are collapsed into a single plane, guaranteeing the picture's flatness and alloverness‹sine qua nons of serious formalist painting.

Provisor's work also evinces an interest in organic imagery that has been a theme in recent quasi-abstract painting, in work by painters as different as Terry Winters and Bill Jensen. Microscopic views of cellular patterns, seed pods ready to burst, burgeoning and decaying plant life are the subjects viable in her patterns.

Provisor's goal seems to be to redeem decoration as a respectable goal for painting. She combines shimmering metallic surfaces, intricate linear designs, patterns piled upon patterns in a luxurious and sensuous improvisation. "Decorative" is a term often used to dismiss abstract painting. Provisor reminds the viewer that decoration has a distinguished modern lineage that includes both Matisse and Klimt.