Payne Paintings

Local artists tend to dominate such famed annual shows as those of Chicago's Art Institute, the Pennsylvania Academy, Manhattan's Whitney Museum. But no Virginians are invited to the Richmond Biennial. Before they can be hung, they must be declared worth hanging by an out-of-State artists' jury. Two years ago, only five Virginians got hung. Last week, in the second Biennial, the local boys did better. Sixteen out of 181 had survived the critical stares of Jurors Guy Pene du Bois, Frederic Taubes, Paul Sample, Antonio Martino, Judson Smith. With 90 other survivors of the 1,424 contestants, they joined the 105 invited artists.

Luckiest exhibitor was no Virginian, but 21-year-old Alan Brown of Scarsdale, N.Y. Artist Brown, who wins his bread by designing wallpaper, had never even had a one-man show. An unknown painter rarely wins top prize at a major exhibition. Last week slender, blond, excited Alan Brown did. His Still Life, a swirling, subtly colored miscellany of newspaper, bottle, sticks of wood, pitcher, sprig of sumac, autumn grasses and a bird's nest, shared top honors with the Crucifixion, of thin, intellectual Manhattanite Fred Nagler. Both got John Barton Payne medals, and the Payne Fund bought their paintings for the Virginia Museum.

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