ART REVIEWS : FROM A RIOT OF QUILTS TO STILLED LIFE

Exhilarating pinnacles and devastating abysses of feminist consciousness are the real subject, if not the stated theme, of tandem exhibitions at UCLA’s Frederick S. Wight Gallery. “The Artist and the Quilt” trills its celebration of female empowerment in brilliant displays of needlework, while “May Stevens: Ordinary/Extraordinary, A Summation 1977-1984” beats a dirge for the waste of women’s talent and intelligence.

In Stevens’ exhibition of 19 paintings, photo collages and other graphic works, the New York artist compares the sharply contrasting lives of two women who have affected her profoundly. One is her mother, Alice Stevens, who was forced out of school by childhood poverty, oppressed by a domineering, bigoted husband and finally retreated to mute madness, sitting out decade after decade in a nursing home. The other is Rosa Luxemburg, a Polish/German revolutionary leader and theoretician who was murdered in 1919.

Luxemburg rages with vitality even after death; the elder Stevens silently vegetates while living. These two extreme examples of tragic waste have inspired a searching examination of a relatively ordinary artist’s options for her own existence. The force that finally fuels this art is neither Luxemburg’s tumultuous energy nor Alice Stevens’ lethargic isolation but the way they have possessed May Stevens. Appalled by her mother’s fate, Stevens has chosen a woman she never met as her spiritual mentor.

She discloses the two women’s impact on her in a small show that has the aura of memories. Black-and-white artworks dealing with Luxemburg recall scrapbooks, old photo albums and journals (written in German and English). Images are reduced to ragged silhouettes or grainy enlargements of fading photographs, accompanied by fragments of text.

As various critics have noted, these works are dry, almost painfully brittle, like fragile old newspapers and letters. It’s a characteristic that suits the subject, but Stevens gets her juices flowing more convincingly in large paintings. Here are shadowy demonstrators with poster images of their leaders, in a gray canvas, and Luxemburg’s funeral procession portrayed in two more richly painted works. Stevens takes a high vantage point, looking down on waves of people and painting them as relentless forces of history.

This same steam charges the paintings of her mother. In “Go Gentle,” a sort of summary of Alice Stevens’ life, a sweet young thing fades into a family group, then bursts forth as a heavy, grasping old woman before falling back into oblivion.

Finally, “A Life” presents Alice Stevens as a lumpy, androgynous form, dressed in institutional garb and seated like an oversize potato on a folding chair. She gradually withdraws through a state of despair to a point of near invisibility. If there’s a more moving visual portrayal of human vacancy, I haven’t seen it.

Walking from these darkly brooding paintings to “The Artist and the Quilt” is like traveling from the Soviet Union to a tropical marketplace in a split second. The quilt colors blaze, the textures quiver, the flowers bloom and you can almost hear the sound of folk music and chattering voices.

As it turns out, the chore of getting this show together wasn’t all orchids and coconut shakes. It was a seven-year ordeal fraught with squabbles, misgivings and financial problems, but the result is joyous. Sharing space with May Stevens makes it appear even more so; the joy is also magnified because the show follows Judy Chicago’s “Birth Project,” recently exhibited in this gallery.

While Chicago’s needlework production suffered from the cultish domination of one artist with a misguided fixation, “The Artist and the Quilt” benefits from the talents of 18 (mostly well-known) artist-designers and 16 quilters, who are given equal billing. About 80 others contributed to the labor of love and pricked fingers.

Contemporary quilts, including these, have their problems. One is their general failure to live up to historical models. Another is a breakdown in translation from one medium to another. Charming as it is, Alice Neel’s quilt portraying her little granddaughter in white panties and a floppy hat is not as good as the original painting of the same subject. Isabel Bishop’s photographic screen-printing of girls walking is almost impossible to decipher. And abstract designs by Charlotte Robinson and Alice Baber don’t seem well suited to fabric.

Despite such disappointments, the exhibition is a must for anyone interested in contemporary quilt-making. Though most of the artists produce quilts that could be functional, they make adventurous use of techniques and materials.

Designs based on traditional squares range from Elaine Lustig Cohen’s crisp geometric pattern (inspired by a book of geometry for women) and Lynda Benglis’ satiny field of kites to Faith Ringgold’s gallery of her Harlem neighbor’s faces. Betye Saar’s exquisite “Fantasies” quilt throws the grid to the wind and sets a delicate array of fans wafting into its borders.

Other artists treat the quilt as a rectangular pictorial format for portraits, family stories or declarations of rising female power. Ellen Lanyon’s work takes a mystical turn as it peels back a floral spray to reveal a cloth hand holding star-crossed papers.

There are many stories behind these quilts--tales of whole families contributing to their making and of the ideas that inspired their imagery. One of the most trenchant explains Marilyn Lanfear’s purposely mismatched wedding quilt that works as a metaphor for marriage. The two halves (representing husband and wife) button together in the center, but there’s no way to connect them smoothly.

The irony of the project, as noted by curator Charlotte Robinson, is that artists finally liberated from women’s crafts have returned to quilting to celebrate their freedom. Their choice has to be considered a political decision, for no matter how gentrified and fashionable quilts have become, they are loaded with the weight of women’s domestic history.

May Stevens’ art is on view through May 19. “The Artist and the Quilt” closes Wednesday, when Stephanie French presents a slide lecture at 4:30 p.m. at Dickson Art Center. French is manager of cultural affairs for Philip Morris Inc., which has purchased the quilts for its permanent collection.