Re-introducing Robert Barnes

By Alan G. Artner
Tribune art critic
March 29, 2002

Not every day does a veteran painter produce a body of work that suggests he is making a fresh start, but that's what Robert Barnes has done in his new oils and caseins on view at the Sonia Zaks Gallery.
A year ago Barnes moved from Indiana to Maine, and the change in locale prompted several other shifts, from subject matter to palette. The fantastic element that once had the artist imagining worlds for a friend of Lord Byron has suddenly here become more subordinate to things actually seen in a watery environment.
Of course, Barnes being Barnes, the sights have been filtered through the experience of earlier paintings from Eastern and Western cultures. Then, too, there is the sumptuous decorative effect of ancient textiles and enamels plus, in the largest paintings, an engagement with the "vanitas" theme that symbolically reflects on mortality.
The setting has caused the artist not only to test himself on different kinds of subjects but also to become more himself in, say, the filling of each picture with incident that often hovers on the threshold of abstract mark-making. Barnes' new world, it seems, has become richer, demanding even more time from us to take it all in.
What he has achieved through the matte, tempera-like appearance of casein also is in itself a subject for study, enlarging the artist's power with oblique references to ceiling and wall painting.
Few living painters are as familiar and well-received as Barnes is in Chicago, but this time he brilliantly introduces himself all over again.

Copyright (c) 2002, Chicago Tribune