Oil & Martinis

Woodstock, N.Y. is one of the nation's prettiest, homiest and most distinguished art colonies. Its steep hillsides, near where Rip Van Winkle boozed with wilderness ghosts, are patched now with fallow fields. Each "farm" has its barn, and almost every barn conceals an artist's studio. Last week a little of the harvest from those barns was on exhibition at the Woodstock Artists Association Gallery. It made a conservative but sunny display. Most Woodstock painters seem to like picturing pleasant things in more or less understandable fashion. (Advance-guardists go elsewhere, chiefly to East Hampton, L.I. and Provincetown, Mass.)

The show--organized to benefit the Woodstock Artists Welfare Fund and its "Rest Room Building Fund"--drew contributions from dozens of citizens whose reputations, and prices, are sizable. The townspeople paid $25 a ticket to drink to its success and take home a Doris Lee lithograph of plump bathers in a black pool. Four winning ticket holders got a good deal more: their choice of any painting or sculpture in the place. The fortunate four picked Anton Refregier's crisp figure piece, Boy Drying Rope, a lush little still life by Sigmund Menkes, a thickly sketched townscape by Eugene Ludins, and Carl Walters' ceramic dog. The dog--an inconsequential thing done perfectly--was the best of the lot.

When the hum of mutual compliments and tinkling of glasses had died away, it looked as if the gallery would soon have funds for not one but two rest rooms. To some Woodstock's gaiety seemed too close to complacency--none of the big names had produced works for the occasion that were important, or even particularly adventurous. Grumbled Abstract Sculptor Herman Cherry: "Cocktail parties . . . flourish like poison ivy in this vicinity." But most Woodstock artists find that oil and Martinis mix well enough, and that art need not be great to be worth while.

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