ART REVIEW : Still Life or Not Still Life? : Painting: One thing for certain, UCSD professor emeritus Manny Farber’s works are not static.

Manny Farber is feisty. Last year, he refused to sit for an interview with a writer but inadvertently gave one anyway, under his breath, in quiet quips and quotes.

And now, he has scrawled a message in one of his recent still-life paintings, proclaiming, “One thing: these are not still-life paintings.”

True enough, Farber’s paintings--which are on view in a remarkable show at UC San Diego’s Mandeville Gallery and in a second, extraordinary exhibition opening Saturday at Quint Krichman Projects--are not still lifes in the literal sense of being static. Farber rigs his images with long visual fuses, mazes and inducements to wander so that the eye is never still in viewing them. But they do belong to the tradition of tabletop still lifes.

Farber has simply redefined the terms of that genre, just as he slyly took control of that non-interview. He has upended the table upon which still-life arrangements typically rest, and in so doing has upended the tradition itself, invigorating it with a restless energy, at times cerebral, at times gloriously sensual.

Farber just turned 75, and as professor emeritus at UCSD, he was chosen as the subject of an exhibition celebrating the UC system’s 125th anniversary. Gerry McAllister, director of the Mandeville Gallery, has limited the show to Farber’s so-called black-and-white paintings from 1985 to 1991, which actually contain other colors as well. At Quint Krichman Projects, which has two locations, the artist shows his newest works. These vibrant paintings prove that Farber continues to stretch his own limits and push the boundaries of what seems at first to be a limited pictorial approach.

In all of the works on view--and throughout much of his painting career--Farber has adhered to a fairly consistent schema. Upon relatively flat planes of color, he paints arrays of objects and notes, most of which correspond to the real props and products of his life. His former work as a film critic surfaced in paintings with cut-out silhouettes of movie cameras and written references to films and other critics. Other paintings have supported a vast selection of candy bars and toy train equipment.

In the black-and-white paintings on view at Mandeville, which range from about 2 feet square to wall-size, Farber fills the surface with images of fruits, vegetables, strips of rebar and masking tape, shovels, bones, papers, mousetraps, flowers and fish. He organizes these elements against a background of black-and-white squares arranged in checkerboard fashion or alternating in a row. Subtle shadows seem to lift some of the objects illusionistically off the painted surface; other forms lie there unnaturally flat, fueling Farber’s continuous tug-of-war between figuration and abstraction.

“Dig,” hanging at the gallery’s entrance, sets the tone well for exploring Farber’s work, each painting being an exercise in excavation. Strewn with shovels and uprooted vegetables, “Dig” alludes to the gardener’s craft of exhuming nourishing nuggets, sustenance from the dense, dark earth. It also suggests the archeologist’s task of sifting through clues to piece together a history, a narrative, a life.

Farber seems quite generous in doling out these clues, but he teases, as if relishing the tension that mounts on the border between public and private life. For instance, he will include in a painting a long description of a dream that hints of personal vulnerability and professional insecurity, but it will appear upside down and therefore grueling to decipher. He will write little notes about his wife, painter Patricia Patterson, his daughter, sculptor Amanda Farber, his professional peers and friends, but their identities are not fully disclosed for the uninitiated.

In one painting, he recounts a dream of giving a lecture to a class full of challenging students, “all of it taking fierce head work.” At times, Farber’s paintings require that same intense concentration to absorb the profuse amount of pure matter he provides. But it is rich labor, well-rewarded with insights into Farber himself and the process he undergoes to make art. He provides lists--of his and Patricia’s favorite paintings, of chores needing to be done in the garden, of recommendations to make life happier--and directives, such as “Slow down” and “Don’t outsmart yourself,” that seem intended to keep the viewer on track as much as the artist himself.

There is a contrived casualness to Farber’s work that keeps it fresh and complements its intellectual weight. The words, for instance, are not always heady ponderings, but just as often witty wordplays on a sandwich order (“Must mayo”) and offhand admissions (“Profusion: I like that word”).

Despite such flashes of candor, the black-and-white paintings feel controlled and cerebral compared to several of the new paintings at Quint Krichman Projects. In these works from 1991 and 1992, Farber indulges in a far looser style and a much more exuberant palette.

The new paintings may not disclose any more information than the earlier ones, but their tone is less guarded. In several of the works on view in Quint Krichman’s downtown La Jolla gallery, especially (those at the Miramar area venue tend to get a bit muddy), Farber unleashes a tremendous sense of passion and physicality. He retains the same basic pictorial structure of objects painted against a solid-colored ground, but replaces the black and white with searing green that ranges from mint to teal, or with a luminous, spectacular yellow.

He occasionally doubles the charge of these paintings by matching his lascivious use of color with erotic images from books of Indian art. In this context, his fruit and flowers take on a new dimension of sensuality, an intoxicating ripeness. Farber’s brushwork seems more aggressive here, too, less confined to its representational role and more free to float about in pure patches of cool, hot, seductive beauty.

As the titles of these works indicate, Farber is responding as much to the stimulus of other art as to nature’s own abundance. “About Looking” contains images of the artist’s own sketchbooks, and others (“Thinking About Turner,” “Turneresque”) refer to the chromatically brilliant paintings of the British painter J.M.W. Turner or the deep tones of the Spanish master Francisco Goya. Farber continues to divide the surface of his paintings, usually by a horizontal line across the middle, a vestigial horizon line from a traditional landscape or the definition of the tabletop in a conventional still life. Keeping that reference while blatantly defying its hold on his own vision endows these works with a quietly rebellious spirit.

Quiet rebellion may seem contradictory, but Farber is nothing but a master of duality. He returns again and again to subjects that are different on the outside than within: the smooth squash with its fleshy, pulpy interior; the dream, with its cinematic veracity cloaking private impulses, and painting itself, with its illusion of reality constructed out of pigment on a flat surface. Though Farber may--and probably will--say otherwise, these fascinating paintings do look like still lifes on the outside, but they act more like self-portraits.

* “Manny Farber: Black and White Paintings 1985-1991” continues at UC San Diego’s Mandeville Gallery through Nov. 1. Hours are noon-5 p.m. Tuesday-Sunday. A public reception for the artist will be held from 6-8 p.m. today at the gallery.

“Manny Farber: New Paintings” opens Saturday and continues through Nov. 7 at Quint Krichman Projects, 5270-B Eastgate Mall and 7447 Girard Ave. Hours at the Eastgate Mall location are 11 a.m.-3p.m. Saturday, and at the Girard location 11 a.m.-5 p.m. Tuesday-Saturday, or by appointment (454-3409). A reception for the artist will be held at both locations from 4-7 p.m. Saturday.