The Mysterious Worlds of William Scharf

Born in 1927, William Scharf came of age as a painter when ornamentation was the last thing an artist wanted in his work. In the heyday of Abstract Expressionism, being serious meant following the tenets of the New York School, which required abstract paintings to be spontaneous improvisations, the messier the better.

Vigorous painterly gestures were the signature of authenticity. One whiff of mannerism, or just a hint of the decorative, was enough to send hard-liners over the edge.

From the look of “William Scharf: Paintings, 1984-2000” at Pepperdine University’s Frederick R. Weisman Museum of Art, this New York artist never was a hard-liner. Nor was he a soft touch.

At once hedonistic and disciplined, his brazen paintings are nothing if not promiscuous. The best ones mix the dynamism of gestural abstraction with sensual rhythms of decorative patterning, sometimes souping up the stew with cartoonish symbols and flourishes so ripe they belong in a dandy’s fantasies.

Scharf paints on canvas, paper and panel, always in acrylics. But the surfaces on which he works do not determine the visual tenor or emotional sweep of his abstract images. Size does.

The 46 paintings in his eye-opening show come in four sizes: tiny, small, large and gigantic. If that makes it sound like he’s a clothing manufacturer and not a painter, think of his works in terms of the scale implied by the following objects: keyholes, books, windows and billboards.

In Scharf’s talented hands, each group follows a logic all its own, giving form to experiences not found in the others. If not for the vibrant, high-keyed palette of all of his paintings, and the Baroque manner in which many of them play bolts of dazzling brightness against expanses of light-swallowing darkness, you might think the four groups were made by different artists.

Inch for inch, Scharf compresses the most space into his paintings on paper. Each of the 18 measures only 9 inches high by 4 inches wide. Looking at them feels like peeking through a keyhole at the mysteries of the universe.

The microscopic and the macroscopic cross paths. Glowing orbs, circled by radiant lines, could be cells or planets. Swatches of velvety black sometimes seem to open onto infinity. At other times they seem to be shadows cast by the organic forms that slither and float in shallow space. Adorned with a wild variety of appendages, most are also covered with dots and stripes, recalling fantastic sea creature and circus acrobats.

The sense of weightless fluidity suggested by Scharf’s smallest works is given fullest expression in his paintings on wood panel, which are about the size of an open book. Giving him more elbow room, but retaining the intimacy of handheld objects, these 12 works steal the show.

They take viewers far beyond the ordinary pleasures of biomorphic abstraction, infusing this often overworked type of painting with fresh vitality. Across their modestly scaled surfaces, Scharf struts his stuff, applying paint with aplomb.

In one, he makes a fluffy blob of pink, lavender and white appear to be a fleshy cloud, a dreamy vision that any sensualist would love to get lost in. In others, he lays thin films of paint atop one another, creating the impression that the image is breathing. Sometimes he uses the opposite end of his brush, scratching rudimentary lines into the wet paint. In a few exquisite instances, he has handled his brush with such delicacy that he appears to have been tickling the paint, causing it to quiver, as if against its will.

Scharf’s 16 paintings on canvas do not maintain the intensity of his panels. The 12 window-scale ones experiment with styles derived from other artists. Some of the more abrupt compositions look like discordant fusions of paintings by Stuart Davis, Wassili Kandinsky and Marsden Hartley. Others, which are more feminine and much more intriguing, do a good job of melding Jules Olitski’s early works with those of Odilon Redon. Luminosity is their best feature.

In contrast, Scharf’s four mural-scale canvases have the graphic quality of cartoons. Installed in the main gallery, they recall visits to aquariums, where thick panes of glass are all that separate viewers from a watery world inhabited by powerful creatures.

Designed to be seen from far away, their broad expanses of solid color have the punch of billboards. Rather than luring your eye in for close-up caresses, they treat it like a pinball, bouncing it around their energized, crisscrossing compositions. Strange as it may seem, Scharf’s large paintings have the presence of studies, exploratory exercises he undertakes in preparation for his small works. Bigger is not always better. But America’s fascination with size probably has something to do with how little known Scharf is. Organized by the Phillips Collection in Washington, D.C., this is his second solo show on the West Coast (his first one took place in 1969, at the San Francisco Art Institute).

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“William Scharf: Paintings, 1984-2000,” Frederick R. Weisman Museum of Art, Pepperdine University, Malibu, (310) 506-4851, through Dec. 2. Closed Mondays.