Art Reviews

"Inbound Detroit" (1982) by Lowell Boileau reflects the artist's view that Detroit's faltering automotive industry has caused "a basic anxiety" in the city.

"CITYSCAPES"

FROM BELLE ISLE PICNICS TO HOMELESS DOGS, FIVE LOCAL ARTISTS CAPTURE DETROIT ON CANVAS

BY JOY HAKANSON COLBY

PHOTOS OF ARTWORK COURTESY OF XOCHIPILLI GALLERY

Artists are talking about Detroit. Edward Levine: "Challenging.... It could be the city of the future."

Lowell Boileau: "It's on a transitional edge."

Don Jacot: "There's so much history." Stephen Goodfellow: "Visually exciting." Jerome Ferretti: "Lots of diversification."

Note that not once do these artists use words like "handsome" or "gracious" or "comfortable," perhaps because they see Detroit as none of those things. Besides, qualities such as "tough" or "gritty" or "energetic" are considered more paintable today. Detroit, of course, has those attributes in abundance.

STEVE HAINES/The Detroit News

"I have a feel for the place (Detroit)."

-Lowell Boileau

These five painters are all Detroiters by birth or by choice, and say they are fascinated by Detroit as a subject. Levine and Ferretti are natives who lived elsewhere and returned. Boileau was born in Port Huron and came to Detroit in the mid-1960s from Swaziland, where he served in the Peace Corps. Jacot was formerly a Chicagoan, but now says he prefers Detroit. Goodfellow, born in England, has lived in Nigeria, Denmark and Mexico. He now maintains studios in New York and Detroit, which he admits has a hold on him.

These artists all exhibit - though not together - at the Xochipilli Gallery in Birmingham. "I did not intentionally try to bring together a school of painters with Detroit as the subject," says gallery director Mary Wright. "It just happened. At some time in their careers, all five have been called "realists," a label so broad it doesn't mean very much. They might begin as reporters, tying their paintings to a specific sight or situation that actually exists in Detroit. But the strength of their pictures relies on individual interpretations rather than how closely they stick to the facts. Even Jacot, the most literal of the five, has been known to move buildings around when it 

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(Image):"I see the dog as an urban survivor. "

- Edward Levine

HAROLD ROBINSON/The Detroit News

(Image): "Freeway Lament" by Edward Levine, one of the city's leading painters. He spent two years studying the city's homeless dogs.

"Night Game" (1984) by Jerome Ferretti. This watercolor is one of two paintings by the artist on Tiger Stadium.

WILLIAM T. ANDERSON/The Detroit News

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"I lived in California for awhile and found it boring."

-Jerome Ferretti

DJACOT 84

(Image): Don Jacot's "Down on Woodward" (1984), one of a series of portraits of Detroit in transition.

DUANE BELANGER/The Detroit News

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66 If something jumps out at me, I paint it. "

helps accomplish his purposes in a painting.

- Don Jacot

So why did they choose Detroit as a subject? Levine admits that he once thought artists had to be in a special place to paint landscapes. "Then I realized it was Monet's vision that made the gardens he painted in Giverny
(France) wonderful - not the place itself. I decided to make a statement about Detroit, about the visual situations I knew."
He spent two years studying the city's homeless dogs for his series, Dogs of Detroit. "I see the dog as an urban survivor," Levine says. He compares strays to bag people: "You don't see them until you see them, and then you're always aware of them."

Both Levine and Boileau describe Detroit as "a city on the edge." Boileau sees it as "the transition between the industrial and post-industrial eras," while Levine believes that what happens in Detroit may be prophetic for other urban areas.

Boileau says "I have a feel for the place" when asked why he paints Detroit. He believes "Detroit's meaning is in question," referring to the faltering auto industry, and seeks to reflect the resulting sense of anxiety in his work.

Goodfellow did a series of paintings of Belle Isle, concentrating on the idea of a playground on the border between two nations. For him, the island is "an extraordinary jewel on the Detroit River."
He also says he prefers Detroit's heterogeneity - perhaps even chaos to the visual order of, say, New York. "In walking down a Detroit street, you'll see three or four disparate things that really make an impression. In New York, you see so much of the same that nothing registers."

Ferretti, a former bricklayer, agrees. "I lived in California for a while and found it boring because it was so homogenized. In Detroit you get diversification."

Jacot is making a "serial portrait" of Detroit, showing the old city passing and a new one emerging. "My problem is that I have a taste for older architecture," he says. "Old buildings are coming down and not being replaced. That means Detroit's history is disappearing."
Perhaps, on the surface, Detroit as a subject can be harsh, even homely. But each of these artists has a sharp eye for revealing the moods that lie beneath appearances.

As Levine says, "I don't want to make ugly pictures. I want all my paintings to have an intrinsic beauty."

ED BAILEY/Associated Press

"A Detroit street ... really makes an impression."

- Stephen Goodfellow

(Image): Stephen Goodfellow ("Belle Isle") views the island as a playground on the border between two nations. His technique involves hosing down the canvas between color applications.