Move over Martha, Angelica's in town: Savvy 18th C. painter pre-saged feminism

Most of us assume that super stardom is a phenomenon of the last century, a product of the mass media catapulting actors, musicians, writers and other creative types into the public arena via branding through television, film, the Internet and tabloid-gorged pop culture. Though we're regularly bombarded with the ventures and visages of contemporary idols, both ersatz and authentic, and it all seems singularly moderne and cutting edge, it's not.

If we consider such ubiquitous marketing tactics to be the hallmark of post-industrial revolution communications, how then do we explain 18th-century neo-classical painting sensation and cultural über-icon, Angelica Kauffman, who had a similarly diverse and widespread impact on European society that women like Madonna, Oprah and Di have had on ours?

Though her fame wasn't manifest in the form of music videos, magazines, haute couture or talk shows, in the context of the late 1700s, Kauffman was, for all intents and purposes, Fortune 500, rock-star royalty. Her intellect and charisma was renowned and her imagery infiltrated elite echelons and everyday life in the form of lampshades, fans, calendars, architectural design, interior décor and teacups, which is all to say, she was an omni-mediated Martha Stewart in her own time.

Quoting an engraver of the day who was overwhelmed with orders for Kauffman prints, Dartmouth art history professor and Kauffman scholar, Angela Rosenthal, attests that, "The whole world was Angelica-mad." And Rosenthal — who will be delivering what is sure to be an absorbing presentation on Kauffman Wednesday at Brooks Memorial Library in Brattleboro — is the person to ask.

With a new, handsome 350-page book out — "Angelica Kauffman: Art and Sensibility," which just won this year's Historians of British Art prize in the pre-1800 category — Rosenthal is a fountain of details, personal and professional, about her subject, as well as captivating contextual insights that illuminate the academic and social climate in which Kauffman's star rose so dramatically.

When we spoke earlier this week, I was curious as to how it was possible that a woman born in 1741 could have possibly enjoyed such a successful career — which included painting portraits of kings and queens and establishing the Royal College of Art in London — when 150 years later women still were not being admitted to the Académie des Beaux-Arts in Paris.

Apparently, it pertained more to a serendipitous and somewhat esoteric shift in socio-cultural ideals than a sudden wave of progressive thinking. "This age of sensibility was associated with private, feminine virtues, emotionality and the language of the heart," explained Rosenthal. "Women were considered the experts of these virtues in that time and Kauffman was a skilled artist, a great businesswoman and very sociable. When people sat for her, they also wanted to talk to her."

Born in Switzerland, Kauffman lost her mother at age 16, and thereafter followed her Austrian father, a traveling painter, back to Italy, where she'd already spent much of her childhood studying ancient Greek statuary and masters of the Renaissance. She eventually fell in with the English "grand tour" crowd and, soon after being welcomed into Rome's Academy of St. Luke at age 22, she moved to London, where her reputation as an extraordinarily skilled painter and sublime conversationalist preceded her.

"She had already painted leading Shakespeare interpreter, mega-celebrity of the day, David Garrick," said Rosenthal. "She was known as 'the painter of Garrick.'" In those days, such accolades that linked artists to beloved figures of the stage or throne heralded immediate almost rabid adoration by the teeming masses

As one critic phrased it, Kauffman "burst upon the hemisphere of painting as a luminous wonder," with her widely celebrated romantic aesthetic, whose glowing palette and romantic subject matter seemed to intoxicate the viewing public, including royalty.

Her faithful reinterpretations of classical figures, grouped together using ancient devices of composition, poses and gesture, were set against verdant backgrounds and incorporated symbolic elements such as lyres, lambs and scrolls (the arts, innocence and education, respectively).

Kauffman's soft, peaceful portraits were not simply poetic odes to beauty and nature, they reflected the aesthetics and values of the period in pivotal ways that served to challenge the perception of gender roles and relations.

"Later in the 18th century, we had 'men of feeling,'" expounds Rosenthal. "It was a sentimental culture when the female voice appeared in literature with Samuel Richardson's novel "Pamela: or, Virtue Rewarded" and it transformed rough masculinity. Toughness and violence did not reign but, instead, emotional depth."

Even in light of this cultural swell toward the feminine perspective, Kauffman's monumental academic and professional accomplishments remain remarkable today when one considers that it was an age when few women achieved great success or distinction.

Rosenthal finds the evolution and impact of Kauffman's achievements entirely pertinent to societal obstacles and inner messages with which women continue to wrestle today. "If it is held to be somehow something that women don't do, then women themselves hold this mores. It is a mentality of the time that we enforce — not just men who prohibit women from doing what they want to do, but the whole patriarchal culture. Certainly, Kauffman tried to negotiate this, she was trying to please and the ideal of femininity was regarded of the arbiter of this taste."

"German poet Johann Gottfried von Herder called Kauffman 'the most cultivated person in Europe,'" continued Rosenthal. "So if she had intelligent people sitting for portraits, she had to be polished, speak different languages, be charming and flattering without being too submissive. In portraiture you're on equal footing because the sitter is vulnerable in the hands of the artist and that equation was loaded in the 18th century."

Considering the stature of Kauffman's subjects, this dynamic must have been particularly thrilling for her and propelled her career forward at an unprecedented clip, into uncharted territory. "When Queen Charlotte sat for Kauffman," affirmed Rosenthal, "her patronage instantly went up."

Kauffman was at the center of a vibrant intellectual milieu populated not only by wealthy patrons and monarchs, but by fellow female achievers of the day. "She cultivated relationships with a fantastic series of creative women and she made monumental portraits, almost female Temples of the Muses, or Parnassus. Women would sit for Kauffman because she was this cultured woman with a heightened sensibility."

Eighteenth-century English painter James Northcote encapsulated Kauffman's influence more than 200 years ago in a letter he wrote to her dearest friend and colleague, Sir Joshua Reynolds, in which he said Kauffman had become synonymous with successful women in the arts.

Rosenthal considers the lessons in Kauffman's remarkable professional trajectory to be entirely germane to the continuing need for contemporary girls and women to be inspired and challenged. "It's important for 21st-century women to know about women of the past," she said. "It's great to see powerful, creative women who succeeded and contributed fundamentally to the culture."

At last year's bicentennial commemoration of her death, Kauffman's achievements were once again lauded when Austria went all out to honor its favorite female artisan and Rosenthal was clearly moved by the enthusiasm accorded her longtime academic subject.

"At the opening celebration, there were 800 invited guests, plus a documentary film about her and they put her portrait on the Austrian shilling and a new stamp," marveled Rosenthal, who delivered a talk at the event. "She's a national hero there."

In describing the festivities, Rosenthal reflected candidly on her own joy at seeing Kauffman so deservingly lionized. "Sometimes scholarship is a lonely endeavor between you and the work of art, so this was astonishing for me."

Angelica Kauffman's achievements are astonishing to anyone who explores them, as is Rosenthal's wisdom and zeal on the topic. Take advantage of her remarkable expertise by heading to Brooks Library on Wednesday — and bring your daughters.

Online: www.brooks.lib.vt.us

The gritty wonder fo Chris Bergson: Inventive yet seasoned blues comes to Bennington

Imagine it's a weekend afternoon, you're hanging out in your Brooklyn flat, maybe munching on an H & H bagel, and the phone rings and it's Levon Helm, cordially inquiring as to whether you might be able to hop in the car and drive up to his Woodstock, New York studio to sit in on a few sessions.

This is precisely what happened to guitarist and songwriter Chris Bergson, who at only 31 is the remarkably accomplished leader of the Chris Bergson Band, a quintet of consummate blues, country, rock and jazz musicians that in only a few years has earned high praise from colleagues, critics and fans alike.

One glance at the weighty list of luminaries and venues that populate Bergson's bio — Etta James, Norah Jones, The Blue Note and the JFK Center For Performing Arts, to name just a few — and it makes perfect sense that a music industry icon like Levon Helm would ring him up. That and the fact that when Bergson and his bandmates were laying down tracks for their latest album, "Fall Changes," just a few days before in Helm's recording studio barn, the man himself had wandered over and obviously liked what he heard.

During a recent conversation, I asked Bergson — who brings his band to North Bennington's Sage Street Mill on Saturday night — what it was like to hear those widely revered husky tones at the other end of the phone.

"When he first called I was totally thrown into it," he exulted. "It was 4 p.m. on a Saturday and I'd just gotten home from recording our album up at Helm's studio and he said, 'It would be great if you could come up tonight,' so I didn't really have time to get nervous."

Bergson's accelerated career seems to be saturated with similarly pivotal moments, the sort that can only come from professional connections borne of steadfast diligence, well-honed aspirations and profound talent. When I asked how he came to record the album in the hallowed halls where Helm's famous Midnight Rambles concerts take place, I wasn't surprised to find it was yet another link in that connective tissue.

"Helm's daughter Amy is the wife of my sax player and as I got to know her she said we should come up and check out her dad's studio," Bergson explained. "I'd been up to a couple of Rambles and Levon is among my biggest influences so to actually record there was an honor."

Bergson's music is inspired by numerous genres and icons, from The Band — Helm's legendary rock collaboration with Rick Danko, Robbie Robertson, et al. — to Delta bluesman Muddy Waters, jazz icon Miles Davis and even those demi-gods of folk-rock, the Grateful Dead.

I figured this appreciation of the past and such multifaceted sensibilities must have had beginnings that started long before Bergson was old enough to get into most music clubs.

"I'm very grateful that my parents exposed me to a lot of jazz and blues when I was very young. They were big music lovers and took me to hear a lot of greats like Miles Davis and Dizzy Gillespie," he recalled. "When I was in fifth grade, for my birthday they gave me records by Albert King, Muddy Waters, Thelonious Monk, Davis and they had a lot of jazz LPs."

Having started playing guitar at age 7, Bergson studied jazz in earnest, all the way through high school. "I moved to New York City when I was 18 and it was an exciting time, when there were a lot more jazz clubs than there are now."

With a band that brings vivid perspectives from varied musical traditions, Bergson is able to integrate his formal training with other types of music that have greatly influenced him over the years. Indeed, the Chris Bergson Band is anchored by some mighty impressive resumes. Saxophonist Jay Collins tours with country rock great Gregg Allman, keyboardist Bruce Katz regularly works with Helm and bluesman John Hammond, Tony Leone brings his percussion expertise from bluegrass gospel band, Ollabelle, and bassist Chris Berger has performed with folks like Maynard Ferguson and Richie Coles.

Bergson exudes a respectful wonder when speaking about his bandmates and the breadth of experience they bring to his songs. "I'd always been really into different kinds of blues, like Muddy Waters and The Allman Brothers, so it's come full circle because this band has such a diverse background. Jay Collins tours with Allman, but he can turn around and play incredible jazz like Eddy Harris, so we draw on a lot of different styles."

"Fall Changes" is a dense and delicious case in point. Nearly every song is a rich slab of musical strata, with ragged street-smart rock, raw Delta anguish and fluid jazz coloring, all sewn together by Bergson's forceful, sandy voice. With what seems like a few extra decades from the school of life packed into wise, forthright phrasing, his delivery is an inviting balance of boyish energy and slightly world-weary reflection.

Often collaborating with lyricist Kate Ross, Bergson writes solid, piquant tunes that can be intimate and sultry or cynical or brash, and that are always embedded with just the right ratio of hooks, spaces and untethered solos.

His improvisations have an unpredictable and compelling edge, like heated discussion between maestro and instrument. After an expressive, masterful, melodic debate, he'll lean into the mike as if returning to the lyrics then suddenly gets tugged back to playing as if the conversation wasn't quite over.

"The music has a lot of room for improvisation," Bergson attests, "but we don't want to have anything gratuitous, not solos just for the sake of solos — the goal is to serve the song. With this band, the songs are rarely exactly the same from night to night and the improvised element keeps it fresh."

Everything on the new album has room for both composition and exploration, with gritty social observations peppered by moments of poignancy. Often infused with themes of despondency and hardship, some tunes are thoughtful inner contemplations while others read like urban poetry.

In "Gowanus Heights" — which British music arbiter Mojo Magazine put at No. 5 on its 2007 playlist — the pathos is torn right out of a Bukowski notebook:

The junkie blonde and her tough brunette
Counted up their money to see what they'd get
Out in pajamas on a Saturday night
Just cruisin' 'round waitin' to feel all right

The Chris Bergson Band also has the musical mettle to tackle landmark tunes such as "Are You Experienced" from an entirely innovative angle, in this case with a glittering, sax-woven interpretation that impels us to lend a more earnest ear to Jimi Hendrix' lyrics.

In taking on someone else's tune, Bergson manages to honor the core vision of the songwriter while still pushing into unexpected, innovative territory. On their previous album, "Another Day," his song "Three Sisters / Death Letter" is an eloquent homage to Son House, yet more sparse than the original and exquisitely crafted.

With roots that wrap gently around the heritage of his Delta elders, Bergson branches intrepidly into eclectic directions, with nods to Eric Clapton, Van Morrison and Creedence Clearwater Revival along the way, and a strong current of Stevie Ray Vaughan running through every limb.

When he asks if we've "ever been experienced" and then warns "Well, I have" — we believe him.

Online: chrisbergson.com

Zoots suits and saxophones: Big Bad Voodoo Daddy shakes it up on Mt. Snow

They say it is the journey rather than the destination that really matters, but that credo sure didn't apply to my strange and circuitous route in discovering the pleasures of top-notch big band music.

It was the mid-'80s and I was a punky college student working towards a nebulous degree in multi-media and interdisciplinary arts — hair white, pink, black and spiked, crucifixes dangling from multi-pierced ears and no doubt the regulation snarky attitude. Having been a tap dancer for many years before adopting my rebel uniform, I'd decided to create a fabulously irreverent final project for my performance art class by integrating tap — a classic, revered medium — into a raw and raucous theatrical extravaganza comprised of loud music, bad poetry, annoyingly bright strobes and the sound of breaking glass provided by a goggled classmate stationed at a shard-filled trash can backstage, sledgehammer in hand.

I'd practiced for weeks, hoping to perfect my perfect storm against traditional theater, memorizing every measure of the music and every disgruntled triple time-step. On the big night, the curtains rose and I began tapping across a blacklit stage — which proved absolutely no point since I was attired in de rigueur gothic black — as Frank Sinatra's dulcet tones sang "I've Got You Under My Skin" through cheap speakers that rattled when the Nelson Riddle Orchestra built up to its mid-song, horn-heavy crescendo (cue sledgehammer).

What I couldn't admit to myself was that during all that rehearsing, I'd fallen in love with Sinatra and the entire big band sound. I hadn't tapped in front of an audience since leaving the troupe I'd been with a few years before and even then it was usually to the fairly sparse accompaniment of our ragtimey pianist. This business of shuffling to Cole Porter's heady lyrics, Sinatra's debonair voice and the blustery sound of a jazzy orchestra was a new sensation.

Not too long thereafter, my housemates began sticking their heads into my room with quizzical looks wondering what the heck this symphonic, unabashedly brassy racket was emanating from my room on the fourth floor of our otherwise renegade Haight Street digs. No more was Jane's Addiction, Iggy Pop or The Clash thundering through the halls, it was Glenn Miller, Benny Goodman, Tommy Dorsey and, of course, the great and powerful Mr. Riddle.

"Swing," I remember saying to John, our rarely seen roadie roommate who was usually out on tour with bands like Metallica and Iron Maiden, but who'd come home long enough to snarl "What the —— is that?" down the hall. An incredulous grunt and a slammed door, followed by his attempt at battle of the turntables, was his only reply. No matter — swing sounds even better on headphones.

Something about Glenn's sultry sax harmonies, Benny's buttery clarinet, Tommy's jaunty trombone and Nelson's barely tethered volcanic arrangements had duly displaced the crunchy walls of sound that usually held up my musical sky and it freaked me out as much as anyone else. I found myself browsing the dusty "Standards" sections of funky old record stores and coming home with heavy platters by everyone from swing icons like Artie Shaw and Teddy Wilson to lesser known, more contemporary groups like the Squirrel Nut Zippers and Royal Crown Revue.

As luck would have it, soon after I discovered the latter, they happened to be playing King King, a renowned L.A. nightclub, when I was there visiting a friend. I'd never been to a live swing show before, but one pounding bar of "Hey Pachuco" and a quick look at the band's gangster pinstripes and wide-brimmed fedoras, not to mention the sea of nimble dancers doing the jitterbug on the floor beneath the stage, and I became an instant devotee.

As luck would again have it, the same band was appearing at Slim's in San Francisco the day after I got back, so there I was again, gazing up at them like any self-respecting groupie would be, only this time I was also trying out the Lindy hop in a skirt as tight as the horn section. Ah, those were the days of shifting musical allegiances, morphing fashions and seriously confused hair. Gone was the black and pink, for I'd become more of a Marilyn-esque jumpin' jivette, pretty much over night.

This, however, was no passing phase — well, musically anyway. In my opinion swing remains one of the most energizing, high-caliber and ageless genres in American music, one that galvanizes generations and inspires future musicians. With a grade school son practicing clarinet every day, I've been spinning my vintage vinyl more than usual lately, so those elder hep cats like Goodman and Shaw can show him exactly what that "licorice stick," as they call it, can do.

Better still, this Sunday night we all have a rare opportunity to don our finest duds (think "Some Like It Hot" meets "Double Indemnity") and indulge in a night of gutsy and gusty swing-era bravado in the illustrious form of Big Bad Voodoo Daddy. An eight-piece musical mob that hails from the left coast, these guys promise to rattle the rafters at the Grand Summit Hotel's Ballroom at Mount Snow, with original tunes, smokin' musicianship and dazzling collective charisma.

Expect full-on swank, with broad-shouldered suits, silk ties, muted trumpets and an upright bass that's just gotta have a machine gun stashed inside it. With spirited and suave leader Scotty Morris at the helm wielding a dangerous Gibson and velvety bootleg voice, Big Bad Voodoo Daddy offers an energizing, melodious dip into the days of mobsters and speakeasies.

Having started out as a jazz trio in 1989, the band's name was bestowed upon them when blues guru Albert Collins signed a poster for Morris, "To Scotty, the big bad voodoo daddy …" Within a few years, its ranks had more than doubled and they'd become a central force in the swing revival of the 1990s, honing an authentic sound with piano, drums, trombone and a stick of licorice added to the mix.

Having cut six acclaimed CDs that are crowded with fun, fierce tunes like "Zig Zagitty Woop Woop", "You, Me and the Bottle Makes Three Tonight" and "Go Daddy-O," BBVD is one talented posse of professionals who command a bandstand with sharp, dastardly aplomb.

So whether or not you're doing it up proper tonight for Valentine's Day, on Sunday grab your baby — and if you don't have one, come anyway as there are sure to be willing Lindy's hoping to Hop — because this kind of zoot-suited, wing-tipped, badass big band doesn't roll into town too often.

Al Capone once said, "I am like any other man. All I do is supply a demand." Though their product is slightly less nefarious, it's every bit as addictive, for Big Bad Voodoo Daddy supplies what is a staunchly loyal, universal demand for music that is entirely elegant and a little old-fashioned but with a delightfully sinful edge; to wit, the perfect romantic evening.

Bristling with humanity: The primal grace of painter Sean Scully

Brutal. Emphatic. Melancholy. Argumentative.

These are a few of the terms with which Irish painter Sean Scully recently described his massive, layered abstractions during a talk at Dartmouth a few days after an expansive exhibition of his work opened at the Hood Museum.

Unlike many artists who prefer to let the work speak for itself or for whom the very notion of attempting to articulate its meaning with language is antithetical to the process, Scully sinks his intellectual teeth into discussion of his art with the same might and hunger that he puts into the making of it.

Addressing a house so packed with disciples that the college had to set up a live feed in an off-site hall across the green, Scully candidly and fervently elucidated a comprehensive overview of his work, starting with the sharp-edged, geometrically patterned early canvasses from the 1970s and bringing us to his more brooding panels of the present.

The show, which runs through March 9, fills the entire top floor of the Hood with 23 paintings ranging from book-size to mammoth, as well as a room containing a few of Scully's photographs and a documentary video of the artist in his element.

"The Art of the Stripe" was organized by the Hood Museum with no subsequent venues slated and is a rare convergence of some of Scully's strongest works, sagely curated and presented in a flow that fluently conveys the evolution of his personal, poetic and plastic sensibilities.

Fittingly, the first piece our eyes find at the top of the stairs is a pivotal work from 1987 called "Precious," one of the last paintings Scully made containing stripes extending from one edge of the canvas to the other before he began working primarily with the finite bands of color that have come to be emblematic of his distinct aesthetic.

Contained in a 72-inch square are six wide horizontal stripes, alternating red and white, with the center of the canvas inset by a smaller painting of thin horizontal and vertical strips of black and white. At first glance a straightforward exploration of pigmentation, depth of field and line — with the inner image optically receding and hues dimmed as if by age — the inexorable force of the painting emerges slowly, its outer border becoming a swath of a mammoth flag while patterns within suggest prison garb and a jail-cell window.

Here Scully's stripes sound an initial alarm, as if warning us to stay back, yet as we approach and see that the white is not an institutional clean, but a shifting patchwork of pale grays and creams, there is a fragility that inevitably pulls us in. That it was inspired by fearful childhood memories of sailing across the Irish Sea during his family's move from Dublin to England is evidence that Scully's layering has profoundly emotional dimensions as well.

The captain pacing back and forth across the deck, the post-WWII mines which randomly obliterated boats on a regular basis and the unnervingly opaque fog that Scully described are all contained in this ostensibly reductive piece. "Precious" is about familiarity, family and survival and exemplifies the depth in all of his work.

While discussing the period when he made this painting's predecessor — a far more restrained yet equally potent version, rendered in a vivid, sour palette six years prior — he was characteristically veracious.

"In the early '80s, I started to make paintings compositional and sculptural because I felt that painting had argued itself out," he insisted. "It was a question of what to do after the perfection, the elegance and the austerity of minimalism reached its zenith."

The earliest pieces in the show reveal the beginnings of this inner dialogue that had Scully fully immersed in the possibilities of the stripe as a versatile visual device before he shed the limiting vestiges of the period and pushed forward to a more vociferous means of limning and coloration.

Just as Rothko's field paintings take on greater depth of meaning when we explore his early surrealist interpretations of mythology and Hans Hofmann's later abstractions become yet more vibrant in light of his interior still lifes, Scully's more recent works are duly illuminated by the empirical soil from which they grew.  It was during a 1969 trip to Morocco when bold strips of color used for rugs and tents harnessed Scully's verdant curiosity, infusing his entire direction with a methodology he deems "if not radical, somewhat ornery."

The stripe, it turns out, is one historically loaded term — rooted in the German "die Strieme" or "mark on the body" — going back as far as biblical references to the lash and enduring numerous periods of patently nefarious connotations since.

In his 2001 book, "The Devil's Cloth: A History of Stripes and Striped Fabric," Michel Pastoureau asserts that the stripe came to signify membership in "certain categories of reprobates or outcasts," including jesters, whores, derelicts, dissenters and those already ostracized by society for perceived satanic associations based on appearance, nationality or legal status.

Thirteenth-century Paris looked so suspiciously upon Palestinian Carmelites who came into town wearing brown-and-white striped habits that the uproar resulted in Pope Boniface VIII banning stripes theretofore in all religious attire. Even animals were not exempt from pejorative connotations, with tigers as suspect as traitors.

While it is a compelling notion to think that Scully's stripes are roiling with the same dastardly implications that labeled miscreants and villains, his own explication of motivations and meaning shed a far less sensational — yet extraordinarily brilliant — light upon what has been more than four decades of building luminous and lugubrious patterns with oblong segments of color.

More psychology than stigma, Scully's gravitation toward the stripe reflects an inner struggle, a relentless battle between forces with which we are all familiar, but that he continually excavates, examines, weighs and questions in the context of heavily worked, pigment-laden paintings.

"I paint in a way that is somewhat insecure," he attested at Dartmouth. "Color can include a sense of doubt and my earlier paintings can be saturated with it, overloaded, where there's a reference to Phil Spector's Wall of Sound."

This raw candor infuses his work with a poignant nakedness that often hides beneath the bravado of monumental scale, insistent borders and vociferous, earthy hues. From afar, the heroism of Scully's largest pieces fills the room with a visual swagger constructed of bulky, deep-toned blocks crammed tightly into epic expanses that assume the omnipresence of urban congestion, towering stone walls or brawny river embankments.

"Dakar," from 1989, is one of many such canvases that Scully assembled by screwing thick, linen-wrapped stretchers together into Herculean puzzles, each section an oversized, aggressively painted tablet in and of itself. The last of its kind before his return to traditional single-stretcher paintings, it is a prime example of the complex fusion of pictorial vigor, experiential reference and emotive weight that inhabits Scully's entire oeuvre.

"It refers to John Coltrane's album called 'Dakar'," he explained. "There is a lot of sensuality in my work that I attach to elemental drawing. They're glum and there can be a sense of menace. I believe in the idea of a universal language and I'm quite sure I'll never give that up."

The balance Scully strikes between this salty ferocity of spirit, tacit vulnerability and multi-layered denotation is a product of the spatial tension he creates through crucial choices of palette, gesture and composition. Throughout the exhibit, we are drawn toward each painting by a cool, ubiquitous magnetism, but at close proximity, an abiding tenderness and reverence becomes palpable, if not intoxicating.

In "Holly," a 2004 series of 15 paintings hung in chapel-formation, one large altar-piece stationed at the end of the room reveals, upon close inspection, overtly gentle variations in brushwork, with thin veils of bright hues shifting and glowing like embers beneath muted, ragged-edged slabs.

With symphonic, dynamic rhythm, "The Art of the Stripe" is a potent, eloquent presentation of Scully's remarkable ability to make paintings that are at once ominous and tranquil, blunt and meditative, initially harsh and ultimately seductive. Even his most hulking fortifications evoke an enigmatic inscrutability no less fraught with uncertainty and hope than we simple viewers.

Scully, of course, twigs it. "There is nothing to solve, just arenas of experience. Energetic, life-affirming, red-hearted paintings covered in melancholia, like their author."

Online: www.hoodmuseum.dartmouth.edu

Annie: annieguyoncommunications.com