Reviews / Arts Magazine

1976

Judith TannenbauADFP0-m

Ronald Markman’s recent paintings and drawings constitute a fantasy world of sophisticated and bawdy good humor infused with a childlike exuberance. At first glance, the large brightly colored paintings clearly resemble Persian rugs, quilts, or oriental fabric, but upon closer perusal one realizes that the patterned bands and units within the geometrically ordered compositions are made up of numerous cartoonlike images—partial figures frequently seen sideways or upside down, cars, houses, landscape elements, etc. in one somewhat atypical canvas, The Good Earth, executed in a more subdued palette, the carefully drawn and painted figurative images are clustered together and form what looks like a mountain against a solid brown background.