Porter Paintings, Taiwan Tracings

Two new exhibits, one a show of Taiwanese drawings and the other a selection of works by Fairfield Porter, will open at the Parrish Art Museum in Southampton this weekend.

"Fairfield Porter, From the Permanent Collection of the Parrish Art Museum," is a traveling exhibit that is coming home for a month. "Tracing Taiwan: Contemporary Works on Paper," is visiting from abroad.

"Tracing Taiwan" looks at current developments in Taiwanese drawing and explores the medium's relationship to Chinese artistic traditions. The exhibit features four artists whose work touches on cultural and social tensions on the island of Taiwan, which was settled by Chinese immigrants, went through periods of Dutch and Japanese rule, and then, after 1840, became the seat of the Chinese nationalists' Republic of China.

Ink Scrolls

Huang Chih-yang's figurative ink scrolls quote the language of religious talismans popular in Taiwan. Hou Chun-ming retells ancient Chinese mythologies through allusion, bodily images, and explicit language of modern Taiwanese culture.

Yu Peng recreates Taiwanese landscape with a sense of cultural and physical dislocation. Hsu Yu-jen's landscapes are cut with lines of text, suggesting the environmental de struction that resulted from Taiwan's industrialization.

The show was organized by the late Alice Yang for the Drawing Center in New York. Ms. Yang died in a car accident this February shortly after accepting a curatorial post at the Parrish.

This exhibit and the Fairfield Porter show will open with a members' preview reception on Saturday from 6 to 8 p.m.

Mr. Porter lived in Southampton for part of each year from 1949 until his death in 1975 and painted some of his most important works there. The exhibit documents the emergence of a new power in Mr. Porter's work after 1948.

A Fusing Of Styles

The artist, a colorist whose work grew more and more intense over the years, painted the people and things he was familiar with - his house and studio, and his family and friends in domestic surroundings. He used the woods and paths near his summer house in Penobscot Bay, Me., and the Southampton area as a backdrop for most of his art.

"Though his landscapes convey a powerful sense of place and his portraits transmit a strong sense of the sitter's presence," wrote William C. Agee, the curator of the exhibit, "his concern was not the literal transcription of what he saw before him."

Instead, Mr. Agee wrote, Mr. Porter found the life of the painting in the paint itself. According to the curator, Mr. Porter's work sought to fuse the realism of simple observation with the energy of Abstract Expressionism.

The exhibit will be accompanied by a number of public programs. A three-week program led by Ellen Keiser about how art inspires writing will begin with a visit by Anne Porter, the artist's widow, on Saturday at 5 p.m., preceding the opening reception. Mr. Porter himself was an accomplished writer and poet whose art criticism was published in Art News, The Nation, and Art in America.

Mrs. Porter, a poet and longtime Southampton resident, will read from her late husband's poetry.

The Porter exhibit and the show of Taiwanese drawings will open to the public on Sunday.