Lester Johnson at James Goodman

After moving from Chicago to New York in 1947, Lester Johnson gained early acclaim as an Abstract Expressionist of the "second generation." During the 1950s, however, Johnson's nonobjective canvases gradually gave way to an assertive figuration that has remained his metier to the present day. In a recent show that functioned as a mini-retrospective, 29 oils on canvas chronicled Johnson's shifting treatment of the human figure over the past four decades.

Dating from the 1960s, the earliest paintings in the show reveal the residual influence of the New York School. Typically working wet on wet, Johnson describes schematic male bodies with slashing brushstrokes, allowing excess pigment to drip and splatter across his canvases. Despite their loose execution, most of these single-figure compositions are rather stiff and hieratic. Crudely outlined heads and torsos are presented in simple, frontal poses and often resemble classical statuary more than living men. This is certainly apparent in Polyklitan Figure (1966), where a male nude is vigorously painted in grisaille against a white ground. Here Johnson circumscribes his expressionistic brushwork with thick, black contours that clearly define a muscular anatomy and suggest a contrapposto stance.

In the 1970s, Johnson all but abandoned painterly gesture for a crisper definition of form that brings to mind Max Beckmann. The generic male nudes also acquired more modern identities, as they now appear clothed in dark suits and bowler hats. Striding through multi-figure compositions, they consort with women who are dressed in contemporary garments. In Men and Ladies Walking (1973), for example, three large female figures crowd their male counterparts to one side of a rose-colored canvas. Assuming center stage like a troupe of cancan dancers, they expose enormous legs beneath vibrant, Pucci-patterned miniskirts that recall Nixon-era fashions.

Looking at similar compositions from the 1980s and beyond, one continues to notice sartorial details that betray specific historical moments and also indicate Johnson's growing interest in colorful, intricate patterns. But despite being garbed in fleeting fashions, Johnson's figures maintain a timeless monumentality. In People Passing #4 (1989), men in jeans and T-shirts and women in party dresses and high heels dance across a large canvas like hip young urbanites on their way to a disco. Yet this friezelike arrangement of rhyming bodies and limbs also invokes classical reliefs of ceremonial processions, endowing the painting's blithe subject with an unexpected grandeur.

COPYRIGHT 2005 Brant Publications, Inc.
COPYRIGHT 2005 Gale Group