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COPYRIGHT 2002 All rights reserved. Reproduced by permission of The Condé Nast Publications Inc.
The poet John Ashbery once remarked, "From the moment that life cannot be one continual orgasm, real happiness is impossible and pleasant surprise is promoted to the front rank of the emotions." He might have been talking about the art of Jane Freilicher, who has been a good friend of his for half a century. Sensual ardor damped down by ironic resignation is something that Freilicher's paintings share with Ashbery's poetry. Both induce an urbane and intelligent pleasure, of a sort that I associate with T. S. Eliot's often quoted comment about Henry James: "He had a mind so fine that no idea could violate it." Ashbery, of course, is a much acclaimed literary figure, famous for the soaring abstraction and pitch-perfect vernacular of poems whose meaning is anyone's guess. Freilicher, whose landscapes and cityscapes haven't been in fashion for even a moment of her long career, has a narrower expressive range, and she works in a medium in which there is no obligation to make paraphrasable sense. Still, she is a wonderful, absurdly underrated painter.
Two shows at the National Academy of Design make the best possible case...
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