Head shots

Jon Petro's in-your-face faces

by Leon Nigrosh

JON PETRO: RECENT PAINTINGS
At the University of Massachusetts Medical School Gallery, 55 Lake Avenue North, Worcester, through June 27.

Jon Petro has captured our attention again. More than a year ago, we examined a series of portraits completed during the moments he wasn't working 60 hours a week for the family produce company. At the time, he had begun devolving traditional portraiture by minimizing the full-length figure, torsos, and busts. He also used himself as a model for a number of these works, comparing himself to several well-known historical painters.

Since that pivotal exhibition, Petro has produced a completely new body of works, 30 of which are on display in the UMass Medical School gallery. He has continued with his deconstruction of conventional portrait painting by presenting us with just faces -- large canvases of close-up faces, and less. And he has also continued his interest in historical paintings and figures by including a number of them as subjects in his brilliantly colored and riveting works.

A prime example of this direction is Petro's blocky rendition of the glowering visage, Ujean, a close-up inspired by Eugène Delacroix's 1837 self-portrait. Here we see Petro's interpretation of the young artist's burning intensity as he offers a haughty stare. Gone are the foppish collar and coat used in the original painting to represent the Bohemian life, instead we see the early symptoms of the sickly, haunted recluse that Delacroix was eventually to become. (Just between us, I think the face looks like Edgar Allan Poe's.)

The classic painting of George Washington by Federalist portrait artist Gilbert Stuart (1755-1828) receives similar treatment at Petro's hands. Large, pink, and close-up from only eyebrows to chin, the canvas forces us to concentrate on Washington's rather awkward and homely nose. Even Leonardo da Vinci's most famous 1503 sfumato portrait is regenerated in reds and greens from the bridge of the nose to the top of the head to become Petro's doleful Sona Lisa.

In Picnic, Petro takes his close-up historical images about as far as he can go, showing us just a bit of hair and a single eye. Yet for those with even the slightest knowledge of art, this eye was obviously inspired by Édouard Manet's 1863 painting Le Déjeuner sur l'Herbe (Luncheon on the Grass) with its controversial subjects -- a female nude enjoying the afternoon with two clothed young men. It should be noted, Manet got his inspiration from a 1520 engraving by Marcantonio Raimondi, who had copied The Judgment of Paris, a painting by Raphael (1483-1520) who, in turn, used elements appropriated from a relief sculpture found on the side of a 3rd century Roman sarcophagus.

Augmenting these mesmerizing paintings is a phalanx of 20 pencil drawings ripped directly from Petro's 11x8" sketchbooks, several of which are studies. For instance, two versions of Ujean are included, one very close to the original 19th-century self-portrait and the other with more Petro flair. Though intended as explorations for larger, finished works, these drawings can easily stand on their own. Each is rendered with layers of cross-hatching, shaded and toned with different hard or soft grades of graphite. There is a resolute quality to the pencil strokes, as if each mark was thought out before it was placed, creating a depth and vitality not often found in quick sketches. The drawing for Eyes and Eyes #2 has a soulful, meditative look that translates into the cropped canvas images. And the drawing for The Sobering Madeline captures the religious rapture found in the original painting, The Repentant Magdalen, by El Greco (1541-1614), which hangs in the Worcester Art Museum.

Petro almost did not include his four most recent paintings, which were completed just before the show was to open. These images have taken Petro in a new direction, and while still recognizable as portraits, they are not nearly as inviting as are the others on display. They have a certain forbidding quality to them because of their tonal darkness and visceral paint strokes. The extreme close-up of the animalistic face in Chen (Albanian for "dog") kindles visions of the '50s Vault of Horror comics. But crop out the yellow eyes and the painting becomes a totally abstract composition -- which brings Petro one step closer to his stated goal of "getting back to pure abstraction." Until then, his parade of in-your-face faces will continue to captivate our imagination.

The gallery is open daily from 9 a.m. to 8 p.m. Call (508) 856-2000.