Today's regionalism is "vastly different from the down home sentimentalism of the regional school of painting" that dominated American art during the Depression in the 1930s, says curator Alan Gussow in his introductory text to "The Artist as Native: Reinventing Regionalism" at the Maryland Institute.
To judge by his show, he's both right and wrong.
Individually, there's little here that could be called sentimental. Gussow has brought together a group of about 50 works (mostly paintings) by artists who identify with their surroundings. This can loosely be called a landscape show, but there's a lot of variety and no treacle in it.
To be sure, there are somewhat standard fields-and-streams paintings, but even the warm farm scene of Sheridan Lord's "Summer" or the roadside trees in the snow of Tom Crotty's "Bunganuc Road" are painted with respectful restraint.
Judy and Doug Alderfer-Abbott's "Bridge over the Bushkill" gives us a nice comparison of man's work with nature's, and man comes off pretty well in the lovingly painted textures of the bridge. But there's nothing gooey about the picture.
Nor does Gussow confine his choices to traditional landscape. There are cityscapes, including Marcia Clark's view of Manhattan, "Grey Morning." There are abstracted treatments, notably Kazuko Nagao's "Seeds Are Delirious," Dan Namingha's "Hopi Ceremonial Dance" and Gussow's own beautifully accomplished "Summer Garden: High Heat, High Humidity." And there are works as remarkable for their paint handling (Mary Koneff's "Broken Land") or their light (Emily Nelligan's "Cranberry Island, the Pool") as for what they depict.
Despite one or two gimmicky pictures, Gussow has brought together a show of accomplished works, demonstrating that landscape painting is alive and well in this country, and that sense of place needn't be trite.
Take this show as a whole, however, and there is a strain of sentimentalism in the deeply nostalgic depiction of a virtually unspoiled America. We live in a land of rotting cities, of creeping suburbanism taking over what's left of the country's natural beauty.
But with the exception of Janet Culbertson's "Designated Site 2, Crab Creek," in which a painting of a stream flanked by woods stands in the middle of a sea of rubbish, you won't find anything ugly about America here. Clark's Manhattan is as rosy as if it just stepped out of a 1950s Doris Day comedy.
That' fine; nobody is obliged to depict the ugly side of our world. And when a lovely show such as this takes us away from all that, we can be grateful for the relief. But if this is the new regionalism, to claim it's unsentimental is nonsense.
ART REVIEW
What: "The Artist as Native: Reinventing Regionalism"
Where: Fox Building, Maryland Institute, College of Art, Lafayette and Mount Royal avenues
When: 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Mondays through Saturdays (to 9 p.m. Thursdays and Fridays), Noon to 5 p.m. Sundays, through Dec. 18
Call: (410) 225-2300