enlarge Courtesy Art House

“City Lights,” an installation by Graham Wood at the Art House in Portland.

enlarge Courtesy Art House

“Assemblage 5” by Drew Wilen at the Art House in Portland.

enlarge Courtesy Gold/Smith Gallery

Ken Greenleaf’s charcoal drawings at Gold/Smith Gallery in Boothbay Harbor.

enlarge Courtesy of Farnsworth Art Museum

Robert Indiana’s sculpture “Eight” at the Farnsworth Art Museum in Rockland.

enlarge Courtesy UNE Gallery of Art

“The Conversation” by Joseph Hirsch at UNE.

IF YOU GO

ROBERT INDIANA AND THE STAR OF HOPE

WHERE: Farnsworth Art Museum, 16 Museum St., Rockland. 596-6457

HOURS: 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily; until 8 p.m. Wednesday

CLOSES: Oct. 25

CHARCOAL DRAWINGS BY KEN GREENLEAF

WHERE: Gold/Smith Gallery, 41 Commercial St., Boothbay Harbor. 633-6252

HOURS: 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday to Saturday; noon to 5 p.m. Sunday

CLOSES: Sept. 8

DREW WILEN & GRAHAM WOOD

WHERE: Art House, 61 Pleasant St., Portland. 221-3443

HOURS: 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday to Saturday

CLOSES: Aug. 28

THE BUSINESS OF ART

WHERE: UNE Gallery of Art, 716 Stevens Ave., Portland. 221-4499

HOURS: 1 to 4 p.m. Wednesday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday; until 7 p.m. Thursday

CLOSES: Sept. 2

Robert Indiana's work is perfect. I haven't looked up the formal meaning of that word, but I suppose it means flawless. I could have used "flawless," but it's a weaker term; it defines away. "Perfect" is more assertive; it's emphatic and has a hard edge. So does Indiana's art.

Perfection in art is achievable. Think Edward Hopper or Milton Avery. It's the result of insight into an inexplicable force and of an intense method of suggesting it. The development of that method into an expression of the inner life of symbols is Indiana's achievement. No one in our time has been more profound or delivered himself on the subject of symbols with such strength and clarity. I find his inquest thrilling, as I do the current exhibition of his work at the Farnsworth.

"Robert Indiana and the Star of Hope" focuses primarily on the work accomplished by the artist since 1978. "Star of Hope" refers to the former Oddfellows Lodge on Vinalhaven, which has been his home since that time. The event includes principal efforts by Indiana in painting, sculpture and printmaking, some of which are long familiar; others not familiar at all. That mix, joined with the elegance of the installation, is a beacon in a season badly in need of them.

I have referred to Indiana's work as having a hard edge, and that is apt both for its physical self and its textual content. Physically, edges are Indiana's commanding feature. This applies directly, of course, to his sculpture, particularly to pieces that are hollow and determinedly three-dimensional.

The lines of edges created when faceplates join with the undulating, supporting side plates are voluptuous and inviolate. That stainless steel, for example, can retain its penchant for precision while acquiring grace is magical.

I have similar feelings about the two-dimensional work. An Indiana painting is approached through its edges, not of the canvas but of its figures. After digesting the artist's terse narrative, the eye follows the exterior lines of his figures – they may be letters or, often, numbers. Those lines, those edges, are insistent, and through compression determine the inner life of what they contain.

The pressure formed from the containment creates the pulse of the work; it drives the graphic devices embedded in it and accepts the ravishing color that supports it. This analysis works efficiently throughout much of this event, although the Hartley Elegy Series is a robust challenge. I know them well and am moved by their harsh opulence, but their edges are difficult to track.

I have avoided Indiana's "LOVE." It is a universal icon of our time, but in that fact is the danger that it will come to define the artist. As the Farns-worth exhibition tells us, Indiana, apart from "LOVE" and its sibling "HOPE," offers wit, irony, social generosity, political insight and a not unsympathetic view of who we are as people. It is all very terse, but it's there.

A word about Indiana's huge electric sculpture, "EAT," on the roof of the museum: An artifact of the 1964 New York World's Fair and the days of incandescent bulbs, it wryly summons the public to the museum. If left in place, it would in time become a landmark of the community. They didn't take the Eiffel Tower down when that fair in Paris ended.

A SCULPTOR'S DRAWINGS

Ken Greenleaf is among those noblemen of the arts, the sculptors. In a medium in which virtue is its own reward, sculptors labor far from the eye of the public and far from the jingle of money. Their contribution to our welfare puts our contribution to theirs into near total eclipse.

There is some amelioration in the fact that sculptors often can draw and thus carry us into the realm of their thoughts at prices within conventional reach.

All of this is a way of introducing a show of Greenleaf's drawings at Gold/Smith in Boothbay Harbor. Presented as a suite of 21, the drawings – thick...