Big Shocker

The build-up was impressive: Rico Lebrun, who at 51 is among the nation's most respected artists, devoted five years to planning and painting a giant triptych entitled Crucifixion; it was well received by his Los Angeles neighbors, and last week Manhattan's choosy Museum of Modern Art had the picture on show. The work itself turned out to be something of a shocker.

An elephantine 16 by 26 ft., it is actually not a Crucifixion, but a Descent from the Cross. Brilliant draftsman that he is, Lebrun has defined every shape dramatically, but they are all ugly, including the figure of Christ, and many are menacing as barbed wire besides. The color is a dirty near-monochrome, was used by Lebrun in the hope that a film short would be based on his picture. It has the glaring light and the wriggling shadows of a flashbulb photograph.

Christ's crown of thorns marks the mathematical center of the composition, but not the spiritual center. Lebrun has chosen to hide Christ's face entirely and to put above His bowed head the face of an anonymous ghoul, a monster that seems to set the overall tone.

The critics were more than kind. "Extraordinarily powerful and moving," one wrote. Another praised it as being "in the pictorial language of a 20th Century painter who is aghast at man's inhumanity to man." Lebrun's technique is clearly 20th Century, since it derives from Picasso's Guernica--done in 1937. That tormented masterpiece has a less pretentious theme (the bombing of a Spanish town) and a saving element of compassion that Lebrun's lacks.

But for all its lacks, Lebrun's triptych does have great force--enough to compete with war pictures and even neon signs. That may well be the reason for its critical success. Fifty years ago, critics were so intent on judging an artist's skill that they misjudged such unskilled but forceful painters as Gauguin and Van Gogh. For better or worse, a lot of modern critics now rate forcefulness first.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.