ART REVIEW : Drawings Grapple With Big Questions

In an era when happy housewives are beginning to replace briefcase-toting super-women in advertising imagery, fewer college students are labeling themselves liberals and the Supreme Court is reconsidering landmark cases dealing with civil rights and abortion, it isn’t surprising that a corner of the art world also has gone back to “traditional” (read neo-conservative) attitudes.

Yes, academic figure rendering is making a comeback. Madden Harkness’ serious-minded mixed-media drawings of nude figures--on view at the Art Institute of Southern California through Feb. 10--look somewhat like giant aquatints and frequently incorporate reworkings of figure types borrowed either from Renaissance art or Rembrandt’s inexhaustible repertoire.

The Pasadena artist actually works on the matte-surfaced sides of sheets of transparent drafting film, employing blurry erasures, turpentine washes and strokes of paint to muddy the waters of her fine-line, realistic drawing style.

Some of the drawings offer a curious blend of Old Testament fraternal discord and remorse with New Testament visions of suffering and saintliness.

In “His Dark Blood,” a man extends his torso and twists his arm in a Michelangelesque posture to drag away the skeletal body of another male figure. In “The Offering,” a bulky, splay-legged man with baleful eyes holds out the body of a gaunt Christ-like figure.

For the most part, the figures in Harkness’ drawings exist in a nocturnal nowhere-land. A few of the drawings contain patches of light punctuated with sparse, finely drawn trees reminiscent of certain of Rembrandt’s etchings. One of these landscape moments appears in “In the Everchanging Light,” which features an awe-struck hefty fellow sunk on one knee and a haloed woman (a canny arrangement of drips and washes creates the effect) who appear to be riveted by an unseen miracle.

But the real test of Harkness’ emotional power occurs when she performs without the safety net of Old Master figure types or situations hallowed by their repeated exposure throughout the history of Western art. Exposed on the high wire, she is still feeling her way.

“The Promise” has a disjunctive appearance that seems at once contemporary and old-fashioned, reminding the viewer of the Old Masters’ frugal habits of making numerous unrelated sketches on a single sheet of paper.

The motley cast of characters in this drawing--each emerging from a blanket of darkness--consists of a Madonna-like figure, a baby cradled on a disembodied knee, two adults in fetal postures, an unsteady striding man and a disembodied gesturing hand.

There is a disconcertingly psycho-babble quality about this conjunction of imagery, however. What’s the matter with the poor guy? Was he driven nuts by his rotten Catholic childhood?

Uneven though it is, Harkness’ small body of work on view shows a contemplative mind at work, attempting to grapple with big questions of life and death. Joined to a sturdy graphic technique, such an approach holds considerable promise.

Mixed-media drawings by Madden Harkness remain on view at the Art Institute of Southern California, 2222 Laguna Canyon Road, Laguna Beach, through Feb. 10. Gallery hours are 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. Mondays through Thursdays, 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Fridays, and 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. Saturdays. Admission is free. Information: (714) 497-3309.