Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, May 27, 1990 TAG: 9005240479
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: E12 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Kathleen Nolan
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
His leadership role in the arts is widely acknowledged. He served as the first director of the Roanoke Fine Arts Center, the predecessor of the present museum, and as a teacher and shaper of tastes in Roanoke. He was the means through which abstraction became familiar on a personal level to the many fans who have followed his career.
The show includes some 100 works, mostly paintings, that span 50 years, with the majority coming from the 1960s and '70s. In a retrospective exhibition of this scope, a viewer should be able to trace the evolution of an artist's career, to look for patterns over time - recurring visual themes or types of subject matter - and, if the viewer is historically minded, to see how the artist fits into broader developments in the art world.
In other words, from a retrospective, an interested viewer should gain not only an appreciation of an artist's work, but also an understanding of the shape of his career and an insight into the creative process.
All of this is possible in the Yeatts exhibition, but it is harder work than it should be, given the way the show is installed. Unlike most retrospectives, in this show the works are not consistently arranged chronologically, and only occasionally are they grouped thematically, as with a small series of landscapes.
The problem is compounded by the lack of labels accompanying the works. Presumably for practical reasons, given the size of the show, the works are identified only by number. The numbers are cued to a chronological checklist, which does allow a viewer to eventually piece together the show, as several conscientious visitors were doing while I was there.
What emerges is a rich body of work that reflects Yeatts' sustained involvement in the creative process. Yeatts, as an artist, seems to draw inspiration equally from the ART KATHLEEN NOLAN natural world and from his own interior resources.
In any retrospective, the early works are revealing. The very earliest pieces included in this show, Nos. 1 and 2, are two lovely academic studies from 1940 that demonstrate the strong draftsman technique and knowledge of illusionism that underlie many of his later works.
Works from the 1950s include competent portrait heads and, more interestingly, early experiments with landscape. A small series of impressionistic pastels, Nos. 5, 6, 8 and 11, suggest the changing moods of the Blue Ridge, while No. 4 offers an early example of abstract forms derived from the landscape, a theme that has preoccupied Yeatts throughout his career.
Some works from the '50s and '60s reveal an obvious debt to abstract expressionism in their free-flowing forms and heavy layers of paint, such as No. 7, "Quarry," or No. 41, "Parkway Landscape." But in general, Yeatts version of abstraction is much more structured, with an underlying grid, often visible, always implied, that recalls Yeatts' training and practice as an architect.
The fragmented forms that are superimposed on this grid often suggest the female figure, another recurring theme in Yeatts' work. Many of the paintings from the '60s and '70s participate in this approach to form, among them No. 58, "Blue Line," and No. 60, "Falconer." In a group of paintings from the late 1980s, the grid reappears, this time holding in check the explosive force of energized particles, as in No. 91, "Ice Flow," No. 92, "Pendulum," or No. 93, "Rock Face."
Despite the shortcomings of the installation, the combination of continuity and experiment that marks Yeatts' work will make this an enjoyable show for a wide range of viewers. It will be a special pleasure for his many longtime admirers, like those who crowded the gallery the Saturday morning I saw the exhibition.
by CNB