LIGHT & DARK

EVERY two years, Washington's Corcoran Gallery stages one of the nation's most important exhibitions--a huge cross-section show of U.S. paintings. For laymen, it is an opportunity to see the nation's best representatives of every school of contemporary art; for the painters whose works are shown, it means acceptance into the top ranks of U.S. artists. This week the Corcoran opened its 23rd biennial show--a lavish spread of 226 paintings--and announced the four prizewinners. The $2,000 First Prize went to Abraham Rattner's glowing Composition with Three Figures (opposite). A pleasantly romantic still life by Hobson Pittman took second money, Francis Chapin sailed in third with Regatta at Edgartown (opposite), and William Congdon came fourth with a chic peek at Venice, done in glimmering impasto.

Artist Rattner, 57, was a camouflage engineer in World War I, returned to Paris after the armistice for 20 years of advance-guard painting. He came home in 1940, now teaches at the University of Illinois. His prizewinning picture looks as if it might have been intended to represent the Crucifixion, camouflaged, or seen through stained glass darkly. But Rattner's explanations are never that simple. Says he: "It is rather an idea related to the need to give men hope and encouragement, and involving the conflicting things that we are confronted with today in our hearts and souls."

At 54, Chicago's Francis Chapin is a cheerful conservative with his feet firmly planted in the dazzle of impressionism. "I chose the regatta as a subject," he says, "because it was just plain old pictorial." His prizewinning result, as light and easy as Rattner's is dark and difficult, proves that there is nothing wrong with such a modest ambition. Taken together, the two paintings speak well for the scope and vitality of U.S. art.

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