Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The = (GA)

December 10, 2006<= /span>
Section: Arts & Books
Edition: Main; The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Page: <= span style=3D'font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Geneva'>K6

VISUAL ARTS: 40 years= of good ideas
Drawings' subjects, style pass the test
= JERRY CULLUM

For the Journal-Constitution

REVIEW =

= "Drawn in Georgia"

= Through Jan. 20. 10 a.m.-6 p.m. Mondays-Fridays; 11 a.m.-4 p.m. Saturdays. Museum of Contempo= rary Art of Georgia at SunTrust Plaza. <= st1:address w:st=3D"on">303 Peachtree St., Lower Lobby. 404-881-1109. mocaga.org

= Verdict: Excellent for more reasons than expected.

= "Drawn in Georgia" is a different kind of drawings show.

= When collections manager Lisa Dewberry Thrower selected the works for "Dr= awn in Georgia" from the Museum of Contemporary Art of Georgia's permanent collection, she set out to explore the range of the medium. That means the sort of thing we're now used to: Graphite can be used for a lot more than simple pencil= sketches, and even sketches turn into fascinating full artworks.

= That would be reason enough for a show, but it's not what's most striking about this one. Surveying 40 years of work by <= st1:place w:st=3D"on">Georgia artists, Thrower has given us not just diverse style but surprising subject matter.

= Wayne Kline's 1968 lithograph "11/11/68," for example, gives us not j= ust excellent composition but forgotten history. Kline mixed and matched newspaper headlines and photos from the first Veterans Day after Richard Nixon's election, and the news is not necessarily what we remember from t= hat conflict-ridden year.

= Lev Mills' 1970 "Something's Coming," on the other hand, is a superb evocation of a transitional moment in the civil rights struggle, overlayi= ng blocks of color on images of Martin Luther King Jr., the March on Washington and= other images. They all still resonate, thanks to Mills' brilliant arrangement. = It confirms, to borrow what Ezra Pound said of poetry, that good topical art= is news that stays news.

= The same might be said of Lily Friedlander's amusing or sharply pointed combinatio= ns of newspaper stories with her own drawings. They echo the social concerns= of 1991, but the metaphoric implications of the headline "Man Who Got W= rong Heart Improves With the Second" is timeless.

= Likewise, King Thackston's "Deconstruction of Amer= ican Icons" series only improves and takes on more depth with time. His meticulous graphite drawings of vintage photographs of the construction of such monuments as the Lincoln Memorial and the Statue of Liberty get their conceptual impact from being presented as moments in those icons' imagined disassembly.

= Other drawings are less fraught with ideas, but there are surprisingly few completely abstract works in the exhibition. Even the typically minimal drawings of the legendary modernist Edward Ross, such as "Untitled (= Pelikan ink drawing)," feature such images as = the bottle that contained the ink with which the piece was drawn. =

= Of course, the abstract uses of concrete images are varied, and after Marcia Cohen's grid of them, you may never look at open safety pins the same way again. The same goes, of course, for Philip Carpenter's now-classic "Untitled Wrenches," in which the humble tools take on heroical= ly detailed proportions.

= There are ample old favorites here, such as Glenn Eden's witty evocation of a bygone day of traveling salesmen, or the "Museu= mscape" that the recently deceased Benny Andrews produced specifically for MOCA GA. But Thrower has intelligently highlighted such often overlooked artists as Eula Ginsberg, whose 1994 "Girl Fun"= and "Girl Play" etchings are simultaneously alluring and slyly subversive.

= And Thrower does well to point out that the most recent drawing in the show, a 2005 "God Doll" piece by Ruth Laxson, is by an artist born in 1924. Laxson's vision of= the world is as ambitiously fresh as any hot young art star's, but a good deal more questingly intelligent.

Her demonstration = of what can be accomplished in the course of a career is a good metaphor for= the arc of MOCA GA's history: Like Laxson<= /span>, the museum goes from strength to strength.

<= /p>
Brazil, Benjamin Jones
Copyright 2006 The At= lanta Journal-Constitution