Cats

Different attitudes toward feline character dominate the local gallery scene this week. At the Paul Schuster Gallery, Claire Johnson Wiest shows her Blue Cats in playful moods. A fine watercolor technique removes many of her studies from the category of calendar art. The light touch and subtle color effects remind us of the animal's Eastern derivations. For those patrons of the Poets Theater doing between-act viewing this exhibit will be a mild diversion but aelurophiles may find it more exciting.

Overweight, sinister cats that look more like lions are a trademark of David Berger, one of the finest young painters to be seen in Cambridge. They are one disturbing element in a world otherwise ruled by gaiety and love. A small cat lurks in the background where young lovers sleep, peering like douanier Rousseau's tiger, an ominous and imposing reality. In another instance a group of cats prey like vultures around the form of a young girl who is sleeping amidst a bacchanalian dance in the forest. Mr. Berger saves his naive world by this grace. If one lives in a dream world there are also nightmares.

Berger's style is distinctive without being strained. Technique is subordinated to artistic ideas. I didn't get the impression that Berger feels he must have a style but rather that he does have one and it doesn't show snatches of Braque, Picasso or any particular influence. His figures are monumental and organic reminiscent but not quite like the billowing sculpture of Henry Moore. All the figures have calves that look like Captain Kidd's peg, which is slightly disconcerting at times especially coming forth from balloon-like limbs. But in this as in other exaggerations he is striving for rhythm. The roundness of the figures, their repeated curved gestures and the arrangement of objects reinforce the swinging effect. Even the paint, or rather melted wax (encaustic) helps to quicken movement applied as it often is in windy veils of color. Berger's canvases could be likened to snow globes in the midst of a storm.

While I find much of his garish fantasy a little too theatrical, perhaps better suited to a New Yorker cover than a New York museum, Berger does have a good deal to say even in the atmospheric mist of his paintings. He also displays not only creative color sense but fine draughtsmanship. The economy of line and airiness of the ivory and sepia study Mother and Child are examples of the almost oriental sensitivity and skill of understatement of which he is capable.