From The Studio

'Sea Change'

ROSE C.S. SLIVKA

It is Joan Mitchell's "To the Harbormaster," a masterpiece of oceanic force, that first comes to mind in thinking about the Parrish Art Museum's "Sea Change" exhibit. This group of 32 works, focusing on the relationship of artists to the Atlantic, spans some 125 years to the present, reminding us of the East End's unique heritage of art history.

Torrential and tumultuous, constantly cresting yet totally composed, rising, rolling, receding, the Mitchell work embodies the very spirit of "oceanicity" - a term invented by the show's curator, Klaus Kertess, to describe the intent of his broad and varied selections.

They include works reflecting not only his own very clear tastes but also all other possible points of view, a very Klaus Kertess approach.

Star of The Show

Yet one cannot escape the fact that Joan Mitchell is the star of the show. She outshines most of her Abstract Expressionist contemporaries, in-cluding a Willem de Kooning oil hanging nearby.

This large painting (about 6 by 10 feet) - abrupt, slashing strokes; vivid and compelling color - is one of the last works by a painter who simply got better as she got older (although she was one of the best to begin with). It was done in 1991, the year before her death.

Yet despite its title and all its "oceanicity," "To the Harbormaster" ultimately seems to lead me into a garden, as most of her works do. Mitchell's titles rarely clue you in to what the painting may or may not be about. Instead, like de Kooning's, they reflect what she happened to have been thinking when the time came to give it a name.

Intense Energy

The genius of this abstraction is an essential kinship with the action, the violence, the serenity, the excitement of all nature, in the largeness of its scope, in the intensity of its focus.

The artist immerses the brushstroke in the pigment with an energy impelled, in the end, in her passionate hand, by its own force. In a sense, the painting takes over the painter. Like the ocean, it enthralls, compels.

Above all, it essentializes the feeling without giving way to visual metaphor, in contrast to other abstractions in the show. James Brooks's 1951 "Blue Scroll," for example, in all its blue and beautiful floating, becomes dangerously illustrational.

De Kooning Work

The de Kooning, of broad, horizontal strokes, largely blue and white with an underscoring of yellows and blacks, is a somewhat uncharacteristically illustrational surf-like image.

Untitled and undated, although the master is said to have been seen working on it in the early '80s, one suspects it may have just preceded de Kooning's change in style.

It is not representative of his earlier period of painting, the period that had such a great influence on Joan Mitchell's work.

Pollock, Ossorio

This is an exhibit of many Abstract Expressionist gems, including Jackson Pollock's 1947 maze of lines and drips called "Phosphorescence" and Lee Krasner's 1966 "Siren," a spirited movement of paint in organic forms and fast brush- work.

The Alfonso Ossorio assemblage "Land and Sea," constructed in 1968, is a sculpture of pier pilings and whalebone, somewhat related to the theme of the exhibit.

The inclusion of Mark Rothko and Adolph Gottlieb, with their overwhelming and hypnotic color and mythic symbology, complete the show's Abstract Expressionist era.

Luminous Man Ray

The other work I would have been happy to go home with is "L'Etoile de Verre," a tiny gem just 9 by 12 inches, by Man Ray, an assemblage on sandpaper done in 1965, partly photographed, of a strangely luminous night horizon.

The earlier paintings are direct and deeply charged with feeling, such as those by the 19th-century luminists Martin Johnson Heade and Ralph Albert Blakelock.

The mysterious drama and spiritual vision of Winslow Homer and Albert Pinkham Ryder are followed into the 20th century by a diversity of works, each and every one of breath-catching power.

Marin, Avery, Porter

There is John Marin's calligraphic, linear marvel of strokes in a combination of drawing and painting, an incomparable Marsden Hartley beach scene, and a gorgeous Milton Avery of a single white wave, as well as great pieces by Max Ernst and Joseph Cornell.

Fairfield Porter's lyrical "Blue Landscape" and Jane Wilson's "Wind Over Water," a marvel of green monochrome in a seascape horizon, are memorable.

A number of young painters are represented as well, including Malcolm Morley, Vija Celmins, and Carroll Dunham, each taking a different tack on an endless subject.

Lichtenstein's "Seascape"

Roy Lichtenstein's 1964 "Seascape" is a cerebral satire on the horizon as a subject - a mutation of reds, yellows, and tans in a Benday lyric of graduated dots that is, as always, brilliant.

Frank Stella's 1981 "Stubbs's Supper," in a reference to "Moby Dick," is a shaped conjunction of materials, equally brilliant in his chosen limbo between painting and sculpture.

The Parrish exhibit will run through Nov. 15.