Modernism in Check

Think of Modernism in its heyday and you tend to think big: Big statements, big departures from earlier art stances, and maybe, though not necessarily, big in gesture and execution. But what one finds in the deceptively calm show at the Carnegie Art Museum in Oxnard is Modernism in half portions, revealing something of the poise behind the fury.

“Modernist Prints, 1900-1955,” a show from the Syracuse University Art Collection, presents soft-spoken, generally small-scale prints by pillars of European Modernism as well as many Americans whose trans-Atlantic inspirations are plain to see. This intriguing cross-section of work adds up to a glimpse beneath the blurry maelstrom of thought in the first half of 20th century art.

Some artists seen here are better represented than others in the print medium, compared to what they are best known for. The twisting lines and forms of Fernand Leger’s “machine Cubist” style are small and sparse in the small 1920 “Composition.” The print appears as a skeletal facsimile of the charm of his paintings, as is the case with America’s great hipster Cubist Stuart Davis’ “Anchor.” This piece, done in 1936, is all about rhythmically entangled lines stripped of color, an important element of Davis’ fizzy paintings.

Abstractionist pioneer Kandinsky’s “Kleine Welten VII” is a color lithograph with microcosmic blips of visual energy against black, with a fragile quality that balances the rational and the enigmatic. French painter Raoul Dufy’s “Odalisque” from 1935 is an etching with traces of his familiar light touch, but drawn with tiny slash marks instead of his seemingly weightless painting effects.

Picasso’s “Numa being taunted by Pythagoras” from 1930 is a spare line drawing, reflecting more the artist’s Classicist interests than his Modernist instincts. Its faint impression demands close-up scrutiny, while the non sequitur of tomatoes in the lower corner jars the viewer pleasantly.

George Roualt’s 1928 “Incantation,” sans the artist’s familiar palette, is all about dark outlines which, in his paintings, frame and mythologize the elements of color and figure. One misses the palette even more in Pierre Bonnard’s “Les Boulevards” from 1900. Bonnard was a born painter, a poetic wizard with a brush, and this piece serves only to emphasize that fact.

Upstairs at the Carnegie, the American modernists--usually Euro-minded to some degree--are gathered in a series of print works from these shores. We are tempted to read specifically American issues into the imagery, even though it leans toward the nonrepresentational. Abraham Hankins’ “Billboards,” for instance, is a rough construct of uneven geometric blocks, but the piece, done in 1949, can be seen as a comment on the changing landscape and traffic patterns of postwar America.

The encroachment of urban life and sensibility finds its way into these pictures in sometimes strange ways.

John von Wicht’s “City” from 1952 is a color lithograph in which a vague convergence of line and subtle color swatches--assembled into an interlacing and tension-building maze--creates one form of an urban metaphor.

That is vastly different from the cool, Charles Scheeler-like precision of Karl E. Fortess’ 1953 piece “Cityscape.” In Fortess’ work, logic rules over chaos, and its balance of forms seems to reflect a neat, seductive grid rather than a collision of wills.

The Euro-American connection is given a local spin with the inclusion of a piece by famed German-born artist Herbert Bayer (1900-1985). This intuitively diversified artist rose to fame as part of the Bauhaus movement, fled Hitler in the late 1930s and spent his last years in Santa Barbara.

Bayer’s purposefully meandering career included work in architecture, photography, sculpture (his “Chromatic Gate” stands vigil on Cabrillo Boulevard in Santa Barbara), corporate design and, among yet more endeavors, printmaking. His 1948 lithograph, from the “Seven Convolutions” series, is a simple and pleasurable enough image, an abstraction of curving lines and pinkish washes, in which design and intellect merge.

For the naturally multimedia artist Bayer, making prints was a perfectly natural inclination, not a lesser art nor a warmup exercise.

That may, in the end, be the underlying message of this fine, small show. Printmaking is one of those art forms that has buzzed beneath the noisier events of 20th century art and deserves a closer look from our 21st century perspective.

DETAILS

“Modernist Prints, 1900-1955,” through May 20 at Carnegie Art Museum, 424 South C St., Oxnard, 385-8157. Thur.-Sat., 10 a.m.-5 p.m.; Sun., 1-5 p.m.