Small But Enduring

Still-life painting is perhaps the mildest form of art. While expressionists leap from pique to pique, and abstractionists zero grimly in on private voids, the still-life artist tidily rules a table-top world of unmoving, everyday things. Chances are he paints in a sitting position, slowly and with quiet enjoyment, never spattering his cuffs. Like mushrooms, his work prospers in a cool, humble atmosphere and appeals chiefly to gourmets. Still lifes are bound to be overshadowed by the products of more ambitious painters. Yet they sell well. Table-top worlds make reassuring, easy-to-live-with pictures.

Last week Manhattan's lolas Gallery was showing one of the nation's most successful young still-life artists: Richard de Menocal. Small watercolors, mainly of food and flowers, the pictures were both exact and relaxed. Menocal had arranged his objects casually against solid black or bright backgrounds and made them glow by means of many superimposed glazes. His art celebrates small but enduring things: the coolness of sliced cucumber, the blue dusk shade of cornflowers, the pungency of spilled paprika, the gleam of a lily or a linen handkerchief. On opening day more than half the pictures were sold (at $200 to $500).

Still-Lifer Menocal is a banker's son, born 35 years ago in Boston. He studied art at the Boston museum art school, served as a gunner's mate on the U.S.S. Massachusetts during World War II, came to Manhattan to work as an illustrator for Conde Nast publications. Today he lives by his still lifes, painting steadily in a Manhattan studio. His style is still evolving, he says, and "lies somewhere between the subjectivity of Jean Chardin and the objectivity of Cezanne."

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