But first, some words about who and what is here. The disbelief in Sylvestre's work is delivered crisply and rather coldly. In the paintings of David McClyment, it is served up with a sense or morning after tristesse, and with much sad painterly loveliness. So bald a description, however, hardly captures the ambiguous, faintly suspect beauty of McClyment's work, or its sense of philosophical brooding. This should certainly not be taken as a criticisrn.
All artists start out working in the period style and period spirit of the day.
As we have it, this body of artwork is a body of evidence for a sensibilty now ending, and which Fabo has designated Mannerist. He is definitely on to something. Mannerism was, above all elsc, a game over style. This sophisticated, fanciful way of worrking remained in fashion in Rome until the 1590s, when it fell before the resurgent realism of Caravaggio and his circle. The artists at Marcer Union are not big on putti, but that fact alone doesn't dull the point of Fabo's terming-them Mannerist.