Art: Music in Landscape

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The Whitney Museum's annual exhibition of contemporary American art, on view in Manhattan last week, included one picture each by 145 painters. Nine out of ten exhibitors, many of them formerly figurative painters, had joined the abstract expressionist ranks. Despite some brilliantly decorative items, their combined effect was as loud and dreary as a bowling alley from the pin boys' viewpoint.

Amidst this fashionable glare of paint, Charles Burchfield's Early Winter Twilight seemed somber, unassuming and timeless. Burchfield, 66, who has been ill and little heard from in the past few years, has recently recovered his health and turned out more than 30 watercolors in the last year. Twilight was begun 16 years ago, finished six months ago. It dramatically celebrates the slushy black winter climate of the Buffalo (N.Y.) region where Burchfield lives. "The sky is the leading actor," Burchfield explained. "I was trying to express the threat of winter coming. There is a single light in the farmhouse window, showing that somebody is preparing supper or that they've had supper."

In Walter Pater's famous, puzzling phrase, "all art constantly aspires towards the condition of music." Abstractionists often make this an argument for dispensing with subject matter, as pure music does. But Burchfield, an ardent hi-fi fan, imbues his landscapes with musical qualities while keeping them close to nature. From the grace notes of its stiff-frozen weeds and goldenrod to the black surge and sudden blazings of its sky, Burchfield's new picture eloquently sings.