Student Art H-R Art Forum through May 2 at the Fogg

STUDENT ART regrettably falls into the arbitrary and self- defensive categories used by critics and artists alike. These distinctions-women's art, ethnic art and black art-betray a self-consciousness that is political. If you are critical of black art, you are a racist. If you don't like women's art, you must be a chauvinist. And so on.

The student works on view at the Fogg Museum in the Harvard-Radcliffe Art Forum arise from a common set of conditions not as unitary as the American black experience, but just as identifiable. Understandably, the exhibitors are not full, finished artists, for all are still in the process of being taught how to realize their skills and visions. From student art you necessarily expect less technical expertise. But that does not justify a double standard. Distinguishing art into categories of minority art is an exercise in miscellany. If a work doesn't succeed as art, it doesn't succeed as student art.

Granted these limits on appreciation that student art implies, it can still represent a vital expression. The earnest spontaneity and unorthodoxy of spirit are gratifying. Catching the student in the act of becoming an artist is. however, a depressing experience. The show has an admirable scope: it includes photography, handicrafts as well as oils and graphics. Adventurous use is made of diverse materials like wool, metal. wood, and plastic. But, in spite of the exhibit's range and diversity, it contains few stirring and competently executed works of art. You have to wonder if the fine artists were rejected, or if they even exist.

The single artistic statement of distinction is not the work of a university undergraduate. Heidi Pape, a Smith graduate and a student of Leonard Baskin's, contributed a large woodblock print and a small abstract graphic print. In the woodblock, a female figure inclined upon a table in the foreground gazes backwards towards a checkerboard avenue overhung with intertwined branches of menacing black trees. Entitled "Playroom," it suggests mystery and romance, foreboding and longing. Especially admirable for its command of intent, the print is reminiscent, in the swift and clawing strokes winding around the woman's body, of certain German expressionists in its boldness and control. Heidi Pape's etching, composed of related, textured, angular and soft-cornered forms hovering and melting together, yields an impression of soft, lithe melancholy.

Of the sculptures, one construction by David Brown, entitled "Voodoo Totem," completes its theme by manipulating the new dimensions of natural textural irregularities. The assemblage's central spine is a splintered railroad tie, onto which are hammered small colored pieces of wood and pottery. Minus the cartoon face painted atop the structure, it is a pleasing, although perhaps accidental, piece.

Most of the photography is well-printed but doesn't fulfill its potential. Like the rest of the show, it is strangely devoid of a visceral, emotional content. John Lewis's beautiful photograph of a girl seated in a chair on a summer lawn viewed from the darkened interior of a barn greets one with a well-organized and well-conceived balance of mood and effect. I also appreciated Cynthia Saltzman's fine picture of bathers climbing among seaside rocks. A dark, truncated male figure and the granular texture of the rocks gives the photo an engaging sense of imminence.

Wendy Walker's expressive self-portrait, dramatic in its russet, green and purple facial tones, is a forceful and moving expression. David Fitcher's silkscreen of a contorted American flag lying amid a claret and orange landscape ably controls, through an appreciation of the organizing effect of color, both its political and aesthetic context.

These are the good pieces, those which force appreciation in their emotional and formal organization. Other pieces show potential or succeed in a more circumscribed manner. The show contains many disappointing minor works. Some are badly executed. and destroy their own credibility. Some are weakly conceived and precious, like the painted eggs and the acid-trip canvases. In most cases the artist's intent seems ambivalent, which is perhaps why he loses control, or restricts himself to working out a formal, limited problem.

HAMPERED by technical and inspirational weaknesses, few of the works seem to be the products of organic creation, springing in spite of the creator from any powerful impulse. Yet clearly the reason for the exhibit's mediocrity is Harvard's fault. Artistic creation of a non-professional, non-commercial sort is barely acknowledged here, hardly encouraged. One Fine Arts basic life-drawing course for credit would have redeemed this show. But Harvard offers no such studio course. So students are forced to engage in mechanistic, intellectual exercises at the Visual Studies Department, which are legitimate but necessarily design-oriented. or to compromise their talents by. say, designing posters and play costumes. It is no wonder. with no facilities and no encouragement, that the undergraduate artistic impulses go unrealized. It is no wonder our undergraduate art show is pathetic. But it is Harvard, not the students, that should be ashamed.