Ralph Goings

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Few can actively dislike Goings's photorealist paintings of pickup trucks and fast-food joints, the homogenized landscape of small-town America. Glazed donuts, gleaming diner countertops and Coke machines convey a shock of recognition. But one questions whether these pictures capture ``both the physical reality and spiritual essence of America,'' as art historian Chase rashly claims. The modest pleasures of the artist's crisp images are drowned out in artspeak as the author strains for comparisons to Vermeer, champions photorealism as a rebellion against the art estblishment and praises Goings as ``one of our foremost twentieth-century realists.'' His renditions of lonely fast-food gorgers and desolate intersections have a kinship to the works of Edward Hopper, Chase's protests to the contrary notwithstanding. Goings's dilemma is that his obsessively detailed panorama of blue-collar workers tends to degenerate into a sort of American socialist realism. (May)