Mere Misery

The white-haired boy of the Paris art world is Bernard Buffet, a dour, 23-year-old recluse. His paintings are miserable in mood, dingy in color, austere in composition and lifeless in essence. Yet he sells almost everything he does, for fat prices--and rake-thin Artist Buffet paints upwards of 100 canvases a year.

Last week a Paris gallery proudly displayed three mural-sized Buffets representing the Flagellation, Crucifixion and Resurrection of Christ. Each was spare as an Egyptian frieze, ominous as a nightmare. Haggard men in black swimming trunks and bony women in black dresses posed stiffly and grimly against dirty white skies. The resurrected Christ hung desperate above his tomb, his winding sheet napping from his sides like bat wings. "I defy any man," wrote one enthusiastic critic, "not to feel moved almost to sickness before these works."

Buffet's ability to nearly nauseate has earned him a sport car, a manservant and a country place in Provence. Despite the subject matter of his new show, Buffet is not particularly inclined to religion. He is, according to his dealer, "an indifferent--far from being a mystic or a monk." The point of Buffet's art seems to be merely that man is miserable.

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