DEFYING TIME AND FASHION

TO Painter Edwin Dickinson, 69, the reward that counts most for the artist is that other artists understand and respect him. A spry, sparrowlike man in a sea captain's beard, he has steadfastly kept his name out of the press, has rarely allowed his paintings to be reproduced. On these terms Dickinson has won admiration among traditionalists and avant gardists alike for paintings that defy fashion, time or classification. Last week Manhattan's Graham Gallery opened a major retrospective that should help in making Dickinson's name as familiar to the public as it has long been within the profession.

Dickinson grew up in the Finger Lakes country of upstate New York, and his first ambition was to be a naval officer. Twice he applied for an appointment to Annapolis, twice flunked the math examination. As a child he had always sketched and drawn; he decided to make art his career. He studied at Pratt Institute, the Art Students League, the National Academy of Design. After a stint as a Navy radio operator during World War I, he lived briefly in Paris. The art world was popping with new group movements in those days, but Dickinson chose a path all his own.

Realism Turns Unreal. He tirelessly sketched models of Greek and Roman statues, studied Rembrandt, Titian, Velasquez, and most of all, El Greco. When it came to his own painting, he refused to be hurried, would go through hundreds of "sittings"--three-to four-hour stretches before the easel--to achieve what he wanted. With a lesser talent, the result might have been dry and academic. Under Dickinson's brush a mystic world of magic harmonies emerged.

The large (6 ft. 1 in. by 8 ft. 1 in.) Fossil Hunters was painted from life; he used models for the three figures, as well as yards of billowing draperies. But what interests Dickinson is never pure representation. It is impossible to tell just what the figures are doing; because of the wonders Dickinson performs with perspective, the figures seem to be lying down, standing, and floating under water all at once. The sea-green light, which seems to come from nowhere, falls not on the figures but on the folds of cloth, on a hand, on a death mask. In the end the painting turns out to be not realism at all, but a superb arrangement of low-keyed color and form.

Precision or Abstraction. In his one-sitting paintings, mostly landscapes and seascapes done on Cape Cod, Dickinson is especially versatile at catching the highlights of a moment. He can do a cottage window that is both precise and geometrical, yet seems about to reveal some intriguing mystery. A seascape may be romantic and bathed in mist, while a painting of waves crashing upon some rocks can recede into abstraction. But Dickinson has still another side to him: oils that are pure dramatic invention. Such a work is his Ruin at Daphne.

There is a ruin by that name in Turkey, but Dickinson has never laid eyes on it. He go his first idea for the picture from the Roman ruins at Aries, but as he worked away at the canvas off and on for nine years, the scene became more and more a fantasy. On one level it is a play between two colors: the central purplish blue and the clayish red that surrounds it, each in subtle shadings. But the most compelling thing about the painting is the intricacy of its structure. The columns, arches and stairways lead the eye down to mysterious valleys, back into an unending cavern, up to a rooflike sky. Forms mount in profusion; yet each has its place and each is in scale. In reality, Dickinson's temple would be an architect's nightmare; on canvas it is a painter's triumph.

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