Resolutely Gay

Manhattan's waning art season put forth a bright, belated bloom last week--a 57th Street show of sophisticated, slaphappy paintings by Writer-Illustrator Ludwig Bemelmans, 53. Done mostly with gouache, "because it comes in charming little French jars and doesn't smell," they spoofed and also celebrated the drifting, uppercrust, good-time world that Bemelmans inhabits. Their style mingled childlike cheer and simplicity with penknife stabs of caricature.

A blocky, bubbly ex-Tyrolean, Bemelmans has turned out a score of illustrated books, has won a snug niche in current popular art. His firmly funny India ink lines are backed by broad, patternmaking blobs of color that are cool as summer showers. He is like Raoul Dufy, James Thurber and Peter Arno tossed into salad and marinated in strong dark beer.

Bemelmans moved to the U.S. in 1914, joined the Army and volunteered to work in a Government insane asylum. "I expected those people to stand on their heads and make funny faces," he recalls. "Instead, it was most depressing; it changed my whole life. I decided anything at all would be better than that." Since then he has been resolutely gay. He lives in Manhattan, explains that the city never gets him down "because I regard it as a curiosity; I don't let myself get caught in the wheels." Waving his arm at the cluttered little table where he writes and paints, Bemelmans happily cries: "This is all play, you know."

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