GALLERIES

On Newbury Street you can buy a $500 gown or a $3 fee shirt; you can eat in a sidewalk cafe or the elegant Ritz Carlton, and as for galleries, their fare is as varied as that of the stores and restaurants.

There is no way to group the galleries on Newbury Street into any kind of coherent review on one kind of art so the fact that they are all on one street will have to suffice as a justification. It's a great street though, right off the Arlington subway stop, with at least thirty galleries squeezed in between boutiques covering six city blocks.

Newbury Street boasts the "nation's first gallery" (Doll & Richards, at No. 172), the oldest art society in America (Copley Society, No. 158) and the oldest non-profit organization in the U.S. (The Society of Arts and Crafts, No. 175). The galleries display old masters and contemporary art, sculpture and arts and crafts, photography and ethnic art. So what's there now? Here's a sampling:

The Harold Ernst Gallery at 161 Newbury is an absolute must, especially now until May 7 with its show of watercolors by Frederick Lynch. Lynch paints wonderful, witty caricatures of portly men and buxom women dressed in atrocious color combinations. The most remarkable aspect of the works is their brilliant, vibrant colors, a far cry from the misty, delicate landscapes so popular among watercolor artists.

But, Lynch describes himself as a landscape painter. In a statement prepared by the gallery, Lynch says he is "changing images offered up to me by the American public into figures as landscape, landscape as figures, clothing as landscapes."

Lynch emphasizes habits, not individuals. He rarely shows the faces of his figures, preferring to leave them white or cut them off with the frame. He describes his choice of themes as including "role, sex and status identification, conspicuous consumption, contemporary dress habits and the use of facades and masquerade."

His figures run together into a delightful melange of bodies and limbs, patterns and colors. Often it is hard to determine how many figures are in the painting, but the people are recognizable. They are today's rich executives, shapely secretaries, tasteless show-offs and bothersome tourists.

The Alpha Gallery at 121 Newbury is showing another commentary on contemporary society. The paintings of Scott Prior, to stay until May 3, are, for the most part, bitter condemnations of man's treatment of his environment. He paints landscapes marred by factory smokestacks or highways and homes cheapened by glaring billboards in the yards.

Prior detests this kind of "progress". In one of his paintings industrial wastes billow into the air amidst a peaceful pastoral setting. Another painting called "House on a Highway" shows a home whose yard is bordered by a chain link fence. A fragment remains of the old wooden fence that must have marked the boundary more picturesquely before the highway was built. A basketball lies forgotten by the fence--the yard is not a very nice place for children to play any more. Ironically, a billboard by a highway peaks out of another charming landscape exhorting us to "enjoy!" what has happened to the country side.

Prior achieves such incredible detail with his photo-realistic technique that the observer is startled at times to realize that the works are actually done with paint and not a camera. But, the detail can become dull when it leaves no room for the imagination.

Turning to sculpture, a big show of work by the New England Sculpture Association will be at the Copley Society Gallery (no. 158) until May 5. The key word for this show is quantity--70 artists are represented here and seven more at the First Baptist Church on Commonwealth Avenue.

Quality is another question however, and a subjective one, of course. There is a wide variety of approaches used in this show, but nothing seems particularly innovative. Many of the pieces are pleasing however, and since the show supposedly represents a cross-section of contemporary New England sculpture, it is worth a visit.

Among the pieces of note is an untitled collection of stained glass rondels of different colors by Claire Steinert. Marion Kofman shows a plexiglass work called "Reflective Images" which forms fascinating patterns on the mirror below it. The Dorothy Gray wood constructions called "Timeline I and II" are interesting because Gray uses pieces of bedposts, stair railings and mirrors to show progression through time. The unusual Medium Award for the week goes to Patricia Verant for her sculpture of a giraffe made with epoxy glue and coconut shells.

For all those in Fine Arts 171 and anyone else who is attracted to "spots and dots" (as the 171'ers affectionately refer to modern art.) Graphics I at 168 Newbury has an exhibit of Josef Albers who is almost sure to pop up on the 171 syllabus soon. Albers is well known for his squares within squares and his subtle tonal differentiation from square to square. The show includes these works called "Homage to the Square", but it features more prominently his "Mitered Squares" done in the last two years of his life. Again using subtle coloring and precise geometric figures, Albers creates in this series of prints an optical tunnel with clever interaction of color.

The Society of Arts and Crafts at 175 Newbury is currently exhibiting pottery by Gerry Williams. Besides doing lovely examples of clay bowls and vases. Williams exhibits some of his humorous pieces about American history. One such work, "Watergate", deserves special mention here. The clay piece looks like a typical Washington D.C. monument, but the figures enshrined on the top bear vague resemblance to the heros of Watergate. Nixon stands in the middle holding a serpent and he has one foot on a crocodile. The roughly scrawled inscription on the base of the monument reads, "Get Back! Watergaters, crocodiles and dangergous fish-enemies. Raise not your heads. Let your mouths be closed and your gullets blocked. Back Evil Doers! Raise not your face against those who are in the White House." And on the back of the piece, another inscription adds, "(Expletive Deleted)"