Edinburgh Art Show

Paintings by John F. Berger '70, who is working for a graduate degree in fine arts at the University of Edinburgh under a Reynolds Scholarship, were exhibited at the University Art Centre, Old College, for most of the month of April.

Berger is in his second year at Edinburgh, the first supported in part by a Dartmouth General Fellowship. His studies are in the broad area of aesthetics and its particular relation to the photographic work of D. O. Hill and R. Adamson, collaborators in Edinburgh in the 1840's. He is approaching their effort from the standpoint of the larger social ethos, its relation to Scottish and English painting, and the photographic process itself. During the current year, Berger reports, his specific interest in Hill's and Adamson's photographs has been taking on a broader context of realism.

Berger's work on display at the University Centre, all done since the first of the year, included eleven abstract paintings in acrylic emulsion on raw canvas and "Spray-Gun Piece," executed in wood, canvas, plastic, rubber, tape, metal, and water.

Of Berger's paintings, Professor Ivor Davies of the University commented in the catalogue: "Being conscious of the history of modern art movements, he is not captured by one trend. His love of geometry is softened through the flow of paint and associations with landscape appear both in the titles and in his forms, some of which are reminiscent of the New York abstract school of around 1910."