Oregon daily emerald., January 12, 1973, Page 8, Image 8

Review of the Arts
ART
Imaginary Gardens With Real Toads
Philip Behymer is an artist whose paintings are, to barrow
Marianne Moore’s phrase, “imaginary gardens with real toads
in them.” This Mend of artifice and reality gives his paintings
scraped and discolored, the stone is quite ordinary. Taken from
And power is the right word to use. Bey Inner’s show at the
University’s Museum of Art is a stunner.
Directly on the right in the roam in which Befaymer’s work is
exhibited, a stone is floating in a perfect blue sky-an artist’s
sky The intense blue at the top gradually softens and pales as
the eye descends. But the stone is not an artist’s stone, not the
polished, smooth, archetypal stone of Brancusi or Arp. Pocked,
scraped and discolored, this stone is quite ordinary. Taken from
its own context and placed in a painting, however, it commands
attention-it dominates the painterly space that surrounds it.
In another canvas a fish floats just under a rusty gear. A
woman fwtiveiy touched the fish and backed away.
“I had to be sure the surface wasn’t filmy,” she confided; “the
damned thing looks so real.”
Like the Surrealists, Behymer elevates the ordinary to art,
and releases the eloquence of common objects by placing than
in nan-logical but emotionally perceived relations.
Unlike the Surrealists, many of whom chase objects in a
random, “aikamatic” manna, Behymer selects his objects
very carefully. Fish, birds, wheels and stones are among the
most ancient shapes and human symbols.
According to Jung, wham Behymer claims as an influence,
stones are frequent images of the Self because they are com
plete and unchanging Stones also symbolize the deepest and
simplest experience. Jung would say that Befaymer’s other
objects have similar histories, are also rooted in some part of
our most ancient memory.
Ifcefoyma insists that his objects are not just symbols,
mat tney also exist as separate and uniquely individual things.
“An object must first be real before it can be an ar
chetype, before it can express something universal and
eternal,” he said.
So far Behymer the surface of things is extremely important
the innumerable, minute differences that distinguish members
of the same gnq>. Finally these objects that are first just
themselves and then archetypes become what Behyma
“cosmic self-portraits,” enabling us to see, in Blake’s phrase,
“eternity in a grain of sand.”
And Behymer manipulates these objects for many different
effects. In one small, humorous painting, a daisy hangs over a
horse’s turd. Bitten by insects and past its prime, the daisy has
begun to wilt, but the horse’s turd is near to perfect.
Behymer suggested that another painting makes what he
called “almost too cynical a statement.” Its lush blue
background space opens at the bottom into a small, arching
rainbow, a promise. Just above it is an egg shell, a part of a
beginning But dominating the beautiful, serene space is a bird
that bangs mid-air. He is a seedy old bird whose bruised and
damaged body is tautly stretched across the canvas, with ex
tended wings and claws reaching down. His head slopes gently
over
“He is crucified,” explained Behymer. Many will un
doubtedly disagree with Behymer's evaluation of the painting’s
statement After all, as Crazy Jane said to the Bishop, “Fair
and foul are near of kin. And fair needs foul. ”
Most of those who see the exhibit will without question agree
with Richard Paulin, director of the Museum, who rated
Behymer an “excellent artist, both technically and
aesthetically.”
“Behymer is a painterly painter whose work is a unique
combination of magic realism and surrealism,” Paulin con
tinued. “The incongruity of his symbols may bather but it
doesn’t fight you. His paintings work, they are believable.”
At their best, Behymer’s paintings re-invest common objects
with magic and wonder. We can turn oinetves inside out, and
see the world with fresh eyes. In another context Werner
Haftmann spake of this expanded vision.
“From a dried-up mud puddle, from a clod of earth in our
path, the aged face of the earth peers out at us, and in a
fragment of stone we read the sorrowful tale of our cooling
planet.”
The Behymer show opened last Sunday and will close the Mth
of this month. 36-year-old Behymer received his Master’s
degree from the University of Oregon in 1971. He has exhibited
his work in one-man shows through the Northwest. He is now
living with his wife and four children in Vancouver. Washington.
-Regina O'Neil
FILM
The Discreet Charm of Luis Buneul
Luis Bunuel’s snide religious spoof “The Milky Way” (1MB)
was dwwn here last week by the University Film Society and it
seemed like the clumsy work of a master half asleep, especially
in contrast with Buouel’s newest and sleekest satire, “The
Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie.” Half allegory and half
dream fantasy, ‘The Milky Way” has the mark of Bunuel’s
magic-the eerie and disorienting quality of an endless night
mare. Two pilgrims attempt to travel to Santiago, a reputed
baiy (dace, and their trip involves one odd encounter after
another as they cross boundaries of time and place in the trance
like iUogic of dreams. “The Milky Way” is an ambitious film,
aiming its wit broadly at church and society, but it is hardly a
success next to Bunuel’s better efforts; largely due to its esoteric
humor and its narrow, bitter theme.
Few things, of course, can be more powerful than that unique
combination of mockery and message which characterizes
many great films. No question about intention: the great movie
maker wants to teach us about ourselves; but the method in
successful satire farces us to recognize a reflection of the
audience on the screen and it is this recognition which
frequently makes the film both comic and memorable.
Luis Bunuel has been a master at just this, poking fun at his
worldly audience while be tirelessly drives home his message.
And the perversity of his humor coupled with the deadlines of
his message probably lies behind the popularity of his movies
among those well versed in Mack Manor. For the unprepared,
Bumel can seem brutal, and strangely, vaguely disturbing, but
sophisticated fans concede that when he is successful, when his
method works, the effect can be devastating and entirely ad
mirable.
It has not been my experience to enjoy Bunuel’s films in the
past and the earnest, heavy-handed nature of “Viridiana” and
the boring, anti-ecclesiastical jokes in “The Milky Way”
seemed to spoil some of the humor and originality of the film
Charm” is imbued with all the Bunueiisms that have become
superb: fast-paced, surprising, ironic, a showpiece.
A bright, color movie made in French, ‘The Discreet
HCharm” is imbued with all the Bunueiisms that have become
familiar to his regulars: anti-clericalism, anti-middle-class,
anti-kitsch and anti-church. But added to the aura of perversity
and rebellion we have come to expect is a new element of
slapstick and abandon which sends the proper kind of audience
into semi-hysterical laughter.
Five middle-class characters, perfectly played and perfectly
cast lead us through their suffocating daily rituals »i»H a series
of awful nightmares, disturbingly familiar in farm »nd cleverly
placed to completely confuse the careful detail of Bunud's
middle-class realities and the surreal settings of dreams. In
sequence our heroes are guests at a formal dinner. (They are
constantly preparing to dine.) 1116 host fails to show, but no
matter, discretion and etiquette are the specialty here, and this
includes looking away as the prim but near-sighted butler slides
two plump, over-cooked chickens onto the rug, dusts them off,
and returns them to the table The atmosphere builds, thing*
appear more and more illogical and frightening until the guests
suddenly notice that they are on stage, the curtain is pitting
back, an eager, opening-night audience applauds, and “my god,
what am I doing here?” one of them pants, his eyes wide and his
forehead perspiring, “I don’t know my lines!”
The timelessness of dreams and the dreariness of bourgeois
life are effectively inter laced. Useful too is Bunud s Skewing
darkly comic violence, which is almost too sinister to properly
appreciate during the first half of the movie. Once it has proved
to be a slapstick, a harmless kind of violence, like the weird self
immolation in “Harold and Maude,” it becomes Punch ’n Judy
funny, and with some minor exceptions, a successful device.
“He may look dead,” we think calmly, “bid we’re onto this film
and this is just a dream.” Or a nightmare, depending on your
identification with the part. ^ y
While the characters in “The Milky Way” get to be predic
tably banal in their malicious, animal ways, the bourgeois in
The Discreet Charm” never cease to be coy and satirical.
Perhaps credit goes directly to the actors. Or perhaps Bunud
hunself has turned bitterness into charm and his present attacks
on society have moments of subtlety which previous movies had
neither sense nor self-mockery to expend. Either way “The
Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie” is a glossy product designed
for the witty and well-educated—who will find it a bit easier to
get the message from so familiar a theme, so far away a setting.
-Debby BaUris