by Charlotte Smith

Reprinted courtesy of the Free Times. ©1999 Free Times Inc.

James M. Steven, a USC Department of Art professor, has completed quite an undertaking in his exhibit Recent Works and Collaborations. His show is massive. His religious-based paintings alone would make for a solid exhibit on their own. Added to the mix are his collaborations with friends, professors and former students. Block off some time.

The Alphabet Soup series was done with Tom Stanley and together they chose words by chance that corresponded to letters of the alphabet. Many of these pieces serve as a comical play on word and meaning, a la Dada. Yesterday (found object) is a two-day desk calendar One of the pages is that of the previous day. Steven's Good is a digital work with small frames with three rows of four images. In the first row is chocolate cake, eggs, bacon, and sausage, fried chicken, and a banana split. The next row is beer, cheesecake, and a strawberry shake. The concept is easy-- just "good" food. Like Claus Oldenberg's soft food sculptures, this is Americana the edible.

Done in brown and reds, Male and Female addresses the concept of ideal beauty. While this is not a new discussion in art, Steven's and Anne Boudreau's interpretation is creative and amusing. Eight rows of three squares comprise the male, i.e., Adam, and the female as well. Each square is done separately to form the larger-than-life image. Adam's arm is a photograph and his torso is painted. His eyes, which are adorned with glasses, are from a painting by popular Eighties artist Eric Fischl. Eve, with apple in hand, is smiling. What ingenuity to see her smiling. Surely in order to convince Adam to eat the apple, she did not have the usual foreshadowing frown.

The most powerful and haunting images are from The Moment it Turns Into Color. It is a collage work of paintings and poems done with English professor and poet Ed Madden. He wrote the poem after the memorial service for Matthew Shepherd, the University of Wyoming student who was killed because he was gay. In the first piece Madden writes:

Everyone knows The Wizard of Oz is a favorite of gay men, although the reasons why are less clear. The tragic Judy Garland thing is part of it -- who can forget that the Stonewall riots erupted the evening of her funeral, all the queens of the city deciding that they just couldn't take the hassle anymore?

Pages from The Wonderful Wizard of Oz are xeroxed onto the work. There is a picture of Dorothy looking up at the scarecrow on the fence, with the caption "Did you speak"? asked the girl, in wonder." Ironically, a passerby who saw Shepherd's body tied to a fence said they thought it was a scarecrow. The scarecrow did speak, and Dorothy removes him from the fence. The last image is the most unquieting. A bit above the center of the canvas is a red barbed wire and a clothed figure attached to it. Images of the ancient Greek statue Kouros serve as a field. A large orchid looms above the body. While the sexual connotations of flowers are obvious, Madden asks in one work, "What bloom springs from the blood of a young man slaughtered for his love of other men?" A good question. The scarecrow and Shepherd certainly had different fates. This series has the ability to draw upon the viewer's attention and proclaim a statement. To glance for five seconds and walk to the next work should not be possible.

Steven's own paintings focus on juxtapositions, such as those of pain and pleasure, and spiritual and the secular. Such varying themes are often within a single work. And while Steven has addressed the themes before, his approach is new. The works are bold and the colors are rich and bright with reds and golds. The paintings are a 20th century spin on the Italian Renaissance. His mixed media canvases are a story of anguish and affection. La Porta features a self-assured nude male in the doorway. In the lower right-hand corner a man has a halo that extends below his shoulder. His body is riddled with spears, similar to St. Sebastian. A third man sleeps above the doorway. The men's eyes are blank, similar to those of statues. The canvas is divided by differences in colors. On the left white strokes are washed in brown and the strokes form a triangle. Adjacent is orange and yellow slashes of paint. Purple outlines the wounded figure. The lying man rests atop a reddish magenta line.

Kudos to the McKissick Museum for exhibiting works that may be considered risqué. One would not necessarily expect university museums to forgo such weighty subject matter. While Recent Works and Collaborations will not cause a mayoral threat, the university is brave in displaying such works. Steven's art is not created to shock nor is it about bravado. It is about truths and questions which in turn display his and others ability to communicate.

For the virtual experience of the exhibition, go to http://www.cas.sc.edu./mcks