Combining Man & the Monument

After World War II, the cheapest space for artists in New York was to be found on the decaying Lower East Side. One of its original "Bowery boys" was Lester Johnson, now 47; just as he felt himself on the verge of painting "the Perfect Picture" -consisting of three abstract squares -the guy with the punching bag in the gym down stairs started. "I sat there bouncing," he recalls. "I reached a dead end with my painting."

So Johnson shifted targets and be gan sketching the kaleidoscopic vitality of the city's street life. Employing a splattery "action painting" technique, he captured the darkly contoured busts of the derelicts who flopped out on the Bowery. He dignified Everyman, even in despair. Said he: "I wanted to prove that man is more than a man - to put him on a pedestal. The human and the monumental are contradictory, but I wanted to put them together."

The results often look like two images trying to occupy the same space. In Johnson's current show at Manhattan's Martha Jackson Gallery, nude figures become skirmishes between Johnson's knowledge of archetypal images familiar to the Greeks and his restless, free use of oils inherent in abstract expressionism.

His stylized men, alternating with Ionic columns, are more monumental than his earlier portraits. The explanation may simply be that, as associate professor of art at Yale, Johnson now abides in the groves of academe. But as a teacher he still tries to make his stu dents aware of the action of painting.

Sometimes he actually jostles them off balance in front of their easels. Says he:

"Painting is a primitive expression; the artist is a sensualist. I try to make them realize that painting is physical."

For himself, Johnson tries to express a recognizable, timeless image of the human figure in the wet, free speech of oil paint. To keep it from becoming rigid and lifeless, he keeps himself off balance too, has even painted over his shoulder without looking at the canvas.

Says he: "It isn't a gimmick. It is energy, movement, an unbalanced situation.

It is like life."

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