Some Ideas Work, Some Don't

 Last week I saw two arresting exhibitions, one from an internationally famous filmmaker and one from a local artist whose work is being bought by an increasing number of regional museums. The first makes films showing the misfit, the “differentâ€� individual triumphing over mediocre, venal, “normalâ€� society. The second tries to paint what he sees in his dreams.

   Joe Goodwin maintains a studio in his Pittsfield home and shows his vivid paintings frequently. Now at the Hotchkiss School’s Tremaine Gallery he is exhibiting 27 works (plus five additional little “desk exhibitâ€� pieces which rotate daily) as “Explorations of the Unconscious.â€�  

   Goodwin takes in people and objects and landscapes, filters these through his mind and, he says, his dreams. Then he paints. He uses acrylic on canvas or linen. Both may or may not be painted with a background coat, but the linen always yields a rougher, more layered final picture.

   The artist may have taken his college introduction to Jung a bit too seriously.  The dreamlike pictures speak more of cosmology and astronomical physics than psychology. The canvases are filled with clouds and swirls of green and yellow, blue and pink, frequently against blue or gray backgrounds. There are squiggles of more arresting color here and there and sometimes purposeful drips. There are also pictures that reference surrealism: wheel-like circles, out of round or bent a little against an indeterminate background.

   Goodwin’s work is colorful and provoking without being overly cerebral. The opening reception is scheduled for Jan.16, from 4 to 6 p.m., and the show runs through Feb. 3. 860-435-3663.     

   If Goodwin’s show is pleasant and rewarding, “Tim Burtonâ€� at the Museum of Modern Art in New York is disappointing. The invention in Burton’s films — “Edward Scissorhands,â€� “Beetlejuice,â€� “Sweeney Toddâ€� — are not found in this enormous show of his non-cinematic art.

   Hundreds of drawings, sketches, props, sculptures and costumes are crowded into too-small galleries with little, and often unhelpful, identification or commentary (which one can hardly read or spend time with in the midst of hundreds of visitors milling around the galleries rather than looking at the art). The drawings are mostly derivative (Gorey, Sorel). Burton’s own captions — when there are any — are usually not funny or even amusing. Even his topiary deer in the museum garden doesn’t say anything about art the way a Jeff Koons dog does; it’s just a topiary deer.

   All of which demonstrates that what bewitches us in Burton films — technical ingenuity and imagination, colorful beauty, eccentric characters brought to life in marvelous performances by great film actors — doesn’t translate to fine art.  And why should it?  Burton’s films are art enough. Through April 26; 212-708-9400.

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