Hashish Amid the Smog

On a clear day in 1956, Jack Youngerman, a Kentucky-born painter, then 30, returned to the U.S. after nine years in Paris. As his ship entered New York Harbor, he was struck by the bright sun glinting on the water and the skyline. "It reminded me of the Middle East," he recalls. "I had made several trips there while I was in Europe. Its fascination for me had something to do with clarity and voluptuousness, a preoccupation with perfumes and running water, a hashish atmosphere instead of the heavy barrooms-and-whis-ky Rubens atmosphere of Europe. Now I was struck by the similarity of the light in New York. The light in Europe is hazy. I had forgotten how it is here."

Twelve years have passed, and though Youngerman has undoubtedly seen as much Manhattan smog as blinding sunlight in that time, he has progressed steadily toward realizing his Middle East-inspired ideals of clarity and voluptuousness in paint. The measure of his success may be taken from the 45 ink-and-acrylic paintings that go on view at Washington's Phillips gallery this week (see color opposite). His forms are abstract; but as the artist points out, the Arab also gilds his mosques and minarets with nonrepresentational decoration. Over the years, Youngerman has consistently enlarged, unloosed and simplified his own bannerlike designs, intensifying the colors until his latest canvases almost seem to palpitate on the wall.

The Image Is Primary. Although devoid of specific subject matter, Young-erman's paintings are usually symmetrical, fraught with enigmatic suggestions of plant and animal shapes, the rhythm of waves and the exuberance of flame. To many, his work suggests a latter-day Georgia O'Keeffe. Like her, he is attracted to "organic form, relating to living things in general." He will occasionally sketch leaves, is fascinated by color photographs of fish and Oriental paintings of insects. But picking up a wineglass in his studio, he says, "This doesn't interest me as a form. It's marked by history, geography, society. I'm interested in the universal, not objects."

To increase the tension of his flaring abstract forms, Youngerman recently abandoned historically approved vertical or horizontal canvases, began experimenting with diamond shapes. He finds that they have a symmetry of their own, and also create "relationships between the image and limit of the canvas in a satisfying way." Nonetheless, unlike other painters working with unconventionally shaped canvases, Youngerman still believes that "the shape is secondary to the image on the canvas. Some people think that abstract painting is dead. I think it's hardly been explored."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.