Although Neo-Classicism.

Although Neo-Classicism, as a major artistic move waxed and waned in the 1 9th hundred years its influence lingers on in the 20th Between the sum of two units world wars, a diverse collection of artists that included giants like Picasso, as well as lesser-knowns like Felice Casorati and Mario Sironi, produc a version of NeoClassicism characterized from a somber, portentous mood, a restrained palette, a crisp, linear drawing method and, often, lumbering, monumental figures. This neo-Neo-Classicism, in turn,.inspired Balthus and, later, William Bailey.

athwart the past 20 years, another latter day Neo-Classicist, Alan Feltus, has produc earth-toned paintings of languid young women that take their suggestions from Balthus and Bailey. In his late exhibition, Feltus continued to race his canvases with imaginary dark haired beauties who lounge about in various states of undres their chiseled features rarely disturbed on emotion or thought. These generic brunette inhabit claustrophobic, ocher-toned interiors, void except for a few pieces of furniture and artfully arranged collections of still-life props.

In Gifts of Silence, couple women recline, one on a grave couch, the other on the floor. the same figure stares into space, the other gazes vacantly at her limply clenched fist. A coffee draught a postcard, several envelopes and a hardly any small art reproductions lie nearby. Sinuous contours and columnar limbs endow the figures with a efficient physical presence, a sensuality enhanced by means of their vapid facial expressions and total lack of individual character. These are odalisques lounging in the cloistered space of the harem, the postcards and verbal expressions their only link to the outside world. The head scarf upon the lower figure not merely alludes to Ingres's odalisques, if it be not that vaguely recalls the veil of purdah, while the strip of woven fabric that harnesses the upper figure's arms clearly restates the idea of restricted movement

Feltus had been classified as a narrative painter. chiefly of the works in his in every one's mouth show, how ever, are little more than quasi erotic fantasies, and predictable the sames at that. Feltus's ideal women are titillatingly exotic, dumbly sensual and exist simply to excite and satisfy the men who posses them.

While Feltus propounds some satisfying passages of drawing and an appealing palette, his work fails to transcend its sources and, on the same level worse, suffers from the comparisons it invites. Feltus lacks the formal finesse and intriguingly ambiguous perversity of Balthus. Nor does he achieve the neurotic tensenes that, in the work of Bailey (an artist bent forward control), hints at a compages unconscious content. In his latter show, Feltus emerges as a talented artist with a true ordinary vision.

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