To define postmodernism as a general cultural category, one would have to make a thorough study of the theories of Baudrillard, Foucault, Derrida, Barthes and other important thinkers. In the single area of painting, however, the term becomes much simpler to define. And by narrowing our focus down to abstract painting in particular one gets  an overview of how postmodern painters have introduced new approaches and attitudes, as seen in three excellent recent solo shows at Agora Gallery 530 West 25th Street.

Toshiko Nishikawa: Catching the Spirit of the Elements
  A Japanese painter living and working in New York , Toshiko Nishikawa exemplifies how certain artists today eschew formal limitations in order to embrace subjective vision. She states, “I've been on a journey. A journey in search of eternal beauty.”
    The intimate scale of Nishikawa's work also suggests a turning away from the pressure to bowl the viewer over with aggressive scale that once characterized the New York School . Nishikawa's paintings are more reminiscent of the calligraphic “white writing” of the Seattle artist Mark Tobey, an American artist who studied  Zen Buddhism and was influenced by Chinese and Japanese culture. However, the streams of influence flow in the opposite direction, since the calligraphic tradition is Nishikawa's birthright, rather than something appropriated from afar, and she combines it with an astute grasp of Abstract Expressionist aesthetics with singular effectiveness.
   Employing mixed media, Nishikawa creates abstract compositions in which linear elements are the central focus. Set against subdued color fields, graceful vertical strokes suggest falling rain or snowflakes melting into milky voids. In a less literal manner, Nishikawa conveys an overall sense of natural phenomena such as wind and air through a personal vocabulary of streaks, drips, and other fluid effects that seem to evolve during the act of painting, rather than through premeditation.
   She is partial to soft pink, green, or blue pastel hues that are often all but subsumed by her liberal use of white, both as a calligraphic vehicle and a luminous ground for her other colors to “bleed” through. In the true spirit of multiculturalism, the paintings of Toshiko Nishikawa blend aspects of Eastern and Western culture to create a poetic personal synthesis.

Melanie Prapopoulos: Gesture Equals Meaning
   Born in Surrey , England , with a Greek surname, raised in New Jersey , schooled in the art and literature of Latin America and the Caribbean , Melanie Prapopoulos literally personifies multiculturalism in her own manner. Now residing and working in both the United States and Greece , Prapopoulos creates vibrant acrylics on canvas in which suggestions of human and animal figures, fruits, and other recognizable objects emerge from vigorous gestural compositions. An intrepid colorist, she appears to be inspired by the Fauves and the German Expressionists, yet she has liberated their forms considerably, resulting in paintings that avoid detailed descriptiveness in favor of an energetic suggestion of the image.
   As titles such as “Mitico-Mythic” suggest, Prapopoulos often draws upon antiquity, yet transforms its vestiges with stunning immediacy, with bold painterly effusions evoking spectral human or animal presences that seem to hover in space.  There is a sharp distinction between figure and ground in her canvases, making her sinuously brushed  forms appear to dance against solid-colored fields, projecting a dazzling sense of movement, of energy. Fiery colors enhance the effect, adding to the impact of her compositions, which compel our attention by virtue  of their succulent surfaces, sensual color combinations, and gestural velocity.
   However, what makes the art of Melanie Prapopoulos especially appealing is her ability to create paintings that are equally engaging for their purely visual qualities and their suggestions of a submerged narrative.

Harry C. Doolittle: Making Geometry Expressive
   When Modernism was in flower, it would have been verboten to refer to a non-objective composition as anything but a purely formal construct. All that has changed, judging from the mixed media paintings of Harry C. Doolittle, a former advertising creative director turned painter who introduces a unique emotional impact to his precise geometric compositions.
   Although Doolittle employs the mandala as a starting point for many of his paintings (demonstrating, in his own way, the postmodern penchant for multicultural inspiration), he transforms it through his dynamic sense of form and color, streamlining and updating an ancient source, making it viable for the personal, secular expression of a decidedly Western artist. Russian Constructivism would also appear to inform Doolittle's style, although he often employs its formal vocabulary as a launching pad for his own flights of fancy. Indeed, Doolittle's delightful mixed media painting “Lolly Pop in Flower Pot #1” has a whimsical quality akin to certain works by Paul Klee, albeit filtered through a somewhat Pop vernacular (perhaps a remnant of his past as an ad-man).
   In any case, Doolittle animates the genre of geometric abstraction in new and exciting ways, bringing to it all the expressive impact  of a more permissive period, in which it is possible to combine the formal with the subjective and imbue ostensibly austere nonobjective compositions with a strong emotional undercurrent.  
   Like the other two artists whose solo shows have been discussed here, Doolittle is a rule breaker by nature, intent on discovering ways of surmounting the old aesthetic doctrines,­­ as Ezra Pound once exhorted artists in all mediums to do, ­­to “make it new.”