Full Moon

Painter Jim Moon's rich fantasy life

by Leon Nigrosh

JIM MOON: PAINTINGS At the Danforth Museum of Art, 123 Union Avenue, Framingham, through August 29.

It's not easy to categorize Jim Moon's paintings. For more than 50 years he has painted in his own style, ignoring the trends of his contemporaries. Because he lavishes his panels with a spectrum of vivid colors, his work certainly does not fall into the Minimalist mode. It's obviously not Abstract Expressionist, because his compositions are populated with readily recognizable architecture, creatures, and people -- or so it seems. Moon's paintings may come closest to Surrealism in figurative explication, but they are straightforward, without all the heavy psychoanalytical gobbledygook that Dali and his coevals attached to theirs.

The only way to understand Moon's paintings is to see them for yourself. Twenty of his most effective and enigmatic works are on display at the Danforth Museum of Art. Rather than take us to a particular place or time, Moon's paintings create timeless, mystical worlds by mesmerizing us with their shining colors and dreamy vistas. To add to the mystery, none of the works has titles; that would direct our attention away from what we would perceive as the paintings' intentions.

Therefore when we view his large panel of a harlequin on a yellow horse, we have to search the entire work for clues. Is it significant that the female nude looking in a mirror is about to put on lipstick? Do the chickens and monkeys play a significant role? And what's that off in the dark distance of the forest?

The panel depicting a fallen Icarus may be easier to comprehend. The painting appears to be of two entwined lovers, but we see a broken and battered male, pierced by wooden staves, being cradled by a young woman in a sea of red poppies and white feathers. We can see Daedalus safe on the ground in the distance, but who, or what, are the four other winged figures still cavorting in the sky? In this painting, like all of the others, the foreground, background, and the details are rendered with the same well-drafted precision. And in many cases, it is Moon's attention to the details that creates the greatest fascination.

In one of Moon's oval panels, the center of attention is a nude young man standing in another field of blooming poppies, holding a young goat in his arms. The composition is almost equally divided between the red of the flowers and the green of the background trees. The bountiful tree branches and leaves are rendered as faithfully as the poppy stems and leaves. All seems fairly ordered and ordinary, and will remain so -- until you finally notice the tiny detail of the nude female petting a blue rhinoceros.

What are we to make of the bright red painting of the blond nude with castanets furiously dancing with two blue monkeys before a large mirror held by two green males? And what is that dribbling stuff reflected in the glass?

And so it goes, each picture is laden with detail, obscure references, and bizarre juxtapositions of seemingly realistic images -- like the lines of laundry that weave their way through several of Moon's paintings only to burst into flame in one panel, or to provide support for a monstrous yellow serpent in another. Yet, the works are not without humor. In one of Moon's beach scenes, a male figure appears as a hollowed-out winter scene in the middle of a hot, sea-shell strewn sandy beach, sitting spread-legged behind a strategically placed obelisk.

If Moon's work were to be equated with some previous artistic mentality, he is most comfortable being associated with Italy's quattrocento, and with the 15th-century artist Giovanni Domenico Tiepolo whose beautiful gods and goddesses populated pretty landscapes. "I like the capricious quality, the ironic, amusing delight in his work." he says. "They're beautiful expressions of beautiful places done without pretension." Add a healthy measure of the fantastic, and the same could be said of Moon's own paintings.

The museum is open Wednesday through Sunday from noon to 5 p.m. Call 620-0050.