10 + 10: Sovremennye Amerikanskie I Sovetskie Khudozhniki

Introduction by Gordon Dee Smith, E. A. Carmean Jr., Marla Price and Graham W. J. Beal, essays by John E. Bowlt and Victor Misiano. Abrams, $39.95 * ISBN 0-8109-1668-1 ~ Ten Soviet painters and 10 American painters are shown side by side in a path-breaking joint exhibition soon to tour both countries. This catalogue with fine color reproductions is full of surprises from both sides. Highlights of the Soviet works include Vladimir Mironenko's challenging Rorschach-like image ( Ours-Yours ) intended to bridge the Cold War mindset, Leonid Purygin's primitivist fantasies riddled with religious and folk elements, Yurii Petrak's sardonic meditations on Laika, the Russian dog shot into space. Notable American pictures range from April Gornick's majestically simple landscapes to Annette Lemieux's outrageous splicings of words and images, and Rebecca Purdum's luminous vortices of color suggestive of energy fields or natural processes of birth and decay. Both Soviets and Americans display subversive humor and a fierce willingness to investigate reality through any means available--figurative, mythic, topical, conceptual. (Sept.)