Raoul Middleman at C. Grimaldis - Baltimore - painting exhibition - Brief Article

Landscapes far outnumbered the other motifs in this exhibition of Raoul Middleman's paintings. The Susquehanna Flats (2000), a scene of the expanse of vegetation leading to the river, reveals big bristles exuberantly wrestling thick oil paint into tangles and knots. Painted? Maybe whacked and blasted is a more accurate description of the volcanic vigor of the weighty pigment. Middleman's compositions are sound and classic, and the naturalistic color pleasing. However, there is an understain of reddish umber that leaks around the forms and masses. This is sometimes distracting. It is a consequence most likely of the breakneck speed essential to Middleman's goals of approximation and freshness. In Before Rain (2000), a panorama of a rolling farming valley backed by distant haze-clad mountains under threatening and roiling clouds, the expressionistic handling conjures an emotional beauty. The best of the landscapes meld nature's rough and tumble with the rough and tumble of the paint to rich effect.

For some people, Middleman's landscapes are merely substrata to his really important work: the multifigured set pieces. These works dominate this show in scale and compelling presence. Two well-known local models, Mary Anne and Charlotte, are memorably featured. Charlotte takes the cake in Her Show (2000). This painting links Middleman's imagery to both the proto-expressionism of late Lovis Corinth and the full-blown Expressionism of Oskar Kokoschka. But Middleman brings to it a brazen flamboyance--an American bite that caricatures and distorts, a giggling and hilarious irreverence. Charlotte stands draped in a brightly patterned robe that is opened in the front; her left hand is on her hip exposing boldly her ample short body. Behind her are a striking trio of theatrically shady characters. To her left, a club-carrying, middle-aged black man in a fedora looks warily offstage. Directly over her left shoulder, a redheaded witch glumly stares straight at the viewer; in the deep distance a musician in bright yellow coveralls dances wildly. Everything, including the fish and lemons on the floor, has been painted with the usual bang and thunder, adding up to a wild drama that we won't soon forget.

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