Camera with a Soul

For years now, Aaron Bohrod has been biding his time, waiting for the day when the dazzle of abstract expressionism will die away and large numbers of people will appreciate his resolutely realistic paintings of symbol-laden still life. His wait may be ending. The pendulum of public taste started to swing back toward the figure, and words like "realism." "craftsman ship" and "beauty" are appearing again in art criticism. A show of what Bohrod has been doing while he waited opened last week in Chicago, and 20 of the still lifes on view--most no bigger than a phone book--have already been sold at prices ranging from $750 to $2,750.

The "Do Not Touch" signs beside the paintings in the gallery were put up to discourage visitors who are sure that some of Bohrod's realism is collage. Though he denies being a trompe l'oeil painter, Bohrod stands as an eye-fool tower of strength to other long-thwarted realists. To jeers of "get a camera," Bohrod replies that the camera is a wonderful eye, but it has no guiding brain, heart or soul.

And no camera could record a scene like Still Life with Paper Moon: a mutilated doll stares blindly at a Nevelson-like collection of wooden chair legs and newel posts, one of which supports an abandoned bird's nest, while a paper ball--the kind that used to pop out of old-fashioned valentines--dangles above. Flaking paint, wood grain, wormhole and lathe scar are meticulously recorded in sharp focus, yet there is an eerie, aching loneliness about the scene that no camera could ever convey. In Lady Fair the mood is pure fun. with its symbolic scrap of lace, a well-gnawed spare rib. and a blonde lock pinned on a brocade background along with a tattered French postcard (a small leaf has been taped in place for the sake of modesty), a reproduction of Ann Pollard, an anonymous American primitive painting of an old woman, and a snippet of Picasso's wall-eyed female Face. Of these oversized miniatures Boh rod says: "It just takes a small brush and a big mind."

As far as Bohrod is concerned, abstractionism has had it. Says he: "There never was any real love for the idiom, and now the art world is bored to tears with it. Not. of course, the abstract painters themselves, who with a minimum outlay of talent and energy have had their fun for a long time, . nor the dealers who have made money out of it. nor those museum people who have committed themselves so deeply that no graceful or easy exit is open to them."

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