That Heavy Secret

The paintings at Manhattan's Downtown Gallery this week range in subject from the comic to the sublime, but even the most light-hearted of them seem to carry a heavy secret. Whether involved in a child's game or in an ancient tragedy, the chunky figures appear lost in some timeless trance: no matter how much a part of a group they are, they are always solitary. The figures pray or weep, bend in joy or agony, play out roles in a cobbler's shop, or at the foot of the Cross. They all bear the same basic message: all men live out their lives alone.

At 34, Painter Morris Broderson knows more than most men about living out life alone: he has the private vision of one who was born deaf. In the past few years, his extraordinary talent has earned him recognition around his native Los Angeles; now he has been added to the prestigious stable of the Downtown Gallery, which represents such noted older artists as Ben Shahn, Abraham Rattner, Stuart Davis, William Zorach and Georgia O'Keeffe. Dealer Edith Halpert introduces her new artist with a ten-year retrospective, borrowed mostly from the collections of such varied celebrities as Joseph Hirshhorn and Actor Robert Preston.

The one work in the show that seems out of place dates from 1943, when Broderson was only 14. It is a meticulous rendering of the muscled back of a male model, done with all the skill of a master draftsman. Gradually, Broderson came to "dislike perfect bodies.'' His figures became a play of shadow and form--squat, ghostly figures that can be taken as universal symbols suggesting anything from the innocence of a child's puppet to the thunder of an ancient god. For a while, they held the stage with nothing in the background, but over the years, Broderson's compositions have grown increasingly complex. They are the result of innumerable sketches, worked and reworked until the final structure, often an almost archaic architecture, is just right.

There is nothing bitter about Broderson's vision of the world, but he is drawn to themes of sadness and is fascinated by ritual. Just as he may portray a tale of rape and murder that has been repeated century after century by the Kabuki players of Japan, as in The Nun and the Skull, so he is drawn to the bull rings, where year after year man and beast have performed their ballet with death. Then he might do a painting of a little girl listening to "the sound of flowers," or of two praying nuns, one of whom seeks, and one of whom has heard, the voice of God. Violent or tender, these are supremely lonely acts, and they are of every time and any place.

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