'Love and Dementia' in lively, cartoonlike works

How come dementia, a subject seldom explored by artists in the 20th century, has moved up into the fast lane with Fay Stanford's art show "Love and Dementia" at Lankenau Medical Center? The obvious answer is that this malady called "the Dementias" is now tagged as "the epidemic of the 21st century," because of so many more people living a lot longer.

Following its debut at Soho20 Chelsea Gallery in New York, this display by Philadelphia's Stanford arrived at Lankenau, opening here in conjunction with the launching of a medical education course, "The Nuts & Bolts of Dementia," for health-care practitioners (part of a twice-yearly program on varied topics). Stanford's introductory talk declared the show a tribute to her mother Rita, who loved to dance and sing. She told how the lives of her father, sisters, and herself were being transformed by the turmoil of her mother's disease.

Viewing Stanford's work makes us realize what a strong impression the shorthand devices of cartoons have made on the way we see things. You would never confuse Stanford's woodcuts, ink drawings, or monotypes with cartoons, yet their lively design, their commentary and personal narratives, with occasionally a comic flair, definitely owe something to the visual vocabulary of cartoons. There's a cartoonish verve and a bounce about them.

We become aware we're seeing the artist's mother and other patients in an institutional setting more intimate than public. Issues that concern them are a constant theme here. Most scenes show people as they're not customarily seen, doing unexpected or private things. Stanford gives the viewer a lot of visual material, interspersed with closeups as if in a film. Finally, the viewer has to put these things together into a coherent story. The complexity of the emotional states the artist manages to project is impressive, as are characterizations of her mother and father that are a special blend of deadpan reality and irrational dreamstuff.

An eye-opener, this series of more than 20 works is an outstanding achievement. Of the show, Barry D. Mann, a surgeon and Main Line Health System's chief academic officer, keenly observed: "The art personalizes the theoretical."