Abstract art is theoretically unmoored from specific reference to the everyday world, but it’s often highly reflective of a particular time and place. The hothouse atmosphere of the Russian revolution gave rise to the pure, utopian imagery of Constructivism, while the macho, no-holds-barred painting of Pollock and De Kooning were a fitting visual accompaniment to Coltrane jazz and Beat poetics.

These ruminations were inspired by the suite of intriguing new paintings by Jeffrey Simmons now at Greg Kucera, works that are highly dependent for both their imagery and their mood on recent developments in the worlds of photography, science and technology. So deftly do these works draw on the floating imagery of the early 21st century, that they have the peculiar property of seeming vaguely familiar, while looking, when you come right down to it, like nothing in particular.

Here’s just a few of the things that came to mind while browsing the dozen-odd paintings in the show, paintings mostly composed of hundreds of tiny dots (who knew clumps of dots could be so evocative?):

• The new Seattle Central Library at night


• Rose Windows in Gothic cathedrals


• Printed circuits


• Photograms (prints made from the shadows of objects on photo-sensitive paper)


• Atomic collisions in a cloud chamber


• Images of the cosmos from the Hubble Space Telescope


• Astronomical charts


• A coral reef seen through night vision goggles


• A pile of electrified honeycombs


• Diseased tissue under a microscope


• Fireworks

This is not to mention the most obvious visual association, namely the pattern of big-city lights as seen from a descending airplane. And I could go on.

Adding to the high-tech look and feel of these works is their technique, a highly mysterious affair where the hand of the artist is barely in evidence, the surface of the paintings a textureless, ultra-sophisticated skein of colored dots, blobs, lines, and occasional mechanical shapes laid against a solid black background, the better to set off the glow of the painted elements. One visitor speculated that the pictures looked like they had been computer-generated, a not completely unreasonable (though incorrect) guess given both the flatness and repetitiveness of the painter’s marks. I personally suspected the use of a stencil, which turns out to also not be the case.

In fact, the paintings are the result of a painstaking process of layering, where hundreds of tiny, mechanically-similar dots, drips and swirls are arranged in patterns, then coated with layers of transparent, colored acrylic medium, layers which are then sanded back to partly reveal (and blur) the individual marks below. The finished paintings are extremely fine-grained, rewarding close inspection while at the same time emitting a soft radiance, like the coals of a slow-banked fire. Peculiar, tiny quirks – smooth lentil-sized grey paint mounds here and there, trompe l’oeil stains, black block-out shapes – give the surface yet another, almost subliminal, level of activity.

And then there is the issue of color, perhaps the most vivid single element of the work. While a great deal of color is employed in total, many of the individual paintings are dominated by only one or two colors, and even the most complicated paintings have only a few major color components. What color there is, however, is often tuned to its highest intensity - major chords rather than minor ones, cherry red rather than rust, pure red-violet rather than mauve.

The painting entitled O Precious Thought! Some Day The Mist Shall Vanish (the title comes from an old song) falls into the “Most Colorful” category. Oval-shaped, its black background grading into a deep sky-blue on the left-hand edge, the image is composed of five vaguely defined vertical stripes made up of variously sized and shaped dots, primarily in red and blue, with smaller areas of orange and violet. Scattered throughout is a repeated circular motif, suggesting either a compass rose, a gear, or an Aztec sun symbol. The painting falls just short of being garish, just short of being sci-fi, and just short of being too woo-woo (read: spiritual) for your average godless Seattleite – which is probably why it works. Successful art often comes close to a particular edge, without quite crossing it, maintaining a tension between what we expect to see (conventional imagery), and what is actually enacted.

The effect, in this case, is also slightly disturbing, perhaps because its visual electricity is so intense, a bit dangerous – with the red of fire or a breeder reactor being the most dominant color. Even more disturbing is the least successful painting in the show, a smaller canvas with the unmemorable title Love Dust (a song by Mike Hamer). This oval painting is done up entirely in Pepto-Bismol pink, with the foreground elements drawn in white. Here the dots are entirely replaced by line drawing, and we can almost recognize tube-like body parts that bear a cartoony resemblance to intestines, sex organs, and blood vessels. Gone is the mystery, not to mention the glow, that activates most of the other works. Simmons is at his best when he avoids getting too specific.

And yet it’s the fact that this painting exists at all that suggests why Simmons is such an interesting artist to follow. Committed to experiment, unwilling to repeat himself, Simmons is likely to produce a follow-up show that is as original and surprising as this one – bearing the fruit of his keenly honed artistry, and his willingness to push the boundaries of technique. Meanwhile, Simmons helps make the case that paint is still a force to reckon with, even in an age where the technological and the electronic so often dominate the aesthetic conversation

On the surface, Jake Heggie’s setting of Graham Greene’s The End of the Affair appears to present the ideal subject matter for opera. We have the star-crossed lovers, an illicit affair, a war going on, bombs falling all over the place and a solemn vow to God, among other highly dramatic things. Just add music and you’ve got an instant opera classic, right? No, not quite.

The last two efforts to present Greene’s work have come in movie form; the first in 1955 and the latest in 1999. The 1955 version stars Van Johnson as Maurice Bendrix, Deborah Kerr as Sarah Miles, Peter Cushing as Henry Miles and the legendary John Mills as Albert Parkis. The director is Edward Dmytryk. As the writer-who-does-not-write, Johnson plays his role with the aplomb of a soulful frat-boy, but fortunately the rest of the cast seems to take his shortcomings in stride. Kerr does a good job as the tragic heroine, playing her character more carefree-yet-lost than desperate-and-doomed and Cushing provokes genuine pity as her dud of a husband. The strange thing about the triangle is that all three central characters are essentially uninteresting. Their situation might be rather intriguing, but they are not. That is why the real star of the show is Mills as Parkis. He is the only one in the cast who appears even remotely human, as a little man traipsing around wartime London with his little boy in tow, spying on “the party in question.” The lovers, Maurice and Sarah, come together, spend a few years quarreling, and break apart after Maurice is nearly killed when an errant buzz bomb hits nearby. But it’s OK, folks, he was just knocked senseless! Thinking he was dead, Sarah makes a vow to God that if he brings back Maurice, she’ll give him up. She seeks to validate her decision never to see him again with both religion and anti-religion. Thanks to Parkis’ theft of her diary, her true motives are discovered by Maurice, they resolve their differences and just as they prepare to run away and be happy forever, she dies of a bad cold. Maurice marches down the street and the movie ends in a swell from the dreadful faux-Rachmaninoff score by Benjamin Frankel. Although some performances, notably Mills and Cushing, are occasionally pitch-perfect, the movie falls short, as Van Johnson doesn’t pull his own weight. Sure, he was great in The Caine Mutiny, but as the writer-who-does-not-write in this picture, you can’t imagine him reading a book, let alone writing one.

Fast forward to 1999; director Neil Jordan takes a swing at the subject. This time Ralph Fiennes plays Bendrix, Julianne Moore is Sarah, Stephen Rea is Henry and Ian Hart gives the Parkis character a whirl. Michael Nyman provides a repetitious and unfocused score. Once again, Fiennes, Moore and Rea are strangely devoid of redeeming human traits, which allows Parkis and his boy steal the show. The events, though rearranged, are similar (only with better clothes and, conversely, lots of nudity) up until the buzz bomb sends Maurice flying. After that, we’re to believe that, with God’s cooperation, Sarah actually willed Maurice back to life. Not only that, but she can also heal the afflicted. The tragic part is – wait for it! – she can do nothing about her own impending end. This time around, however, morose and pathetic Henry finds out about the adultery and only becomes slightly more morose as a result. Sarah turns to a rather smug Catholic priest for comfort, instead of spending equal time with a bitter rationalist. And there’s more! After spending the better part of two years hating her for giving him up, Maurice reunites with Sarah, and they run away together. And they’re just so gosh-darned happy! But their bliss is brief. Sarah has some dreaded disease. She returns to her husband’s house, and oddly enough, Maurice moves in to help take care of her. When she finally expires, it is Henry who seems most affected by it, but in the very next scene, Maurice rails against everyone with aberrant spitefulness. He finally comes to terms with his loss by the end. This version doesn’t make the grade; the last 20 minutes are just a tangle and serve as the film’s undoing. The lovers were never meant to run away together. She was meant to expire and he was meant to mourn her loss before they could taste happiness. Maurice’s hateful and uncharacteristic rant is the only way director Jordan had to portray his anguish. But what has he got to be upset about? He won her! They ran away together! Can you imagine what Romeo and Juliet would have been like if the young couple had actually been able to spend time alone. It wouldn’t have been as effective as a tragedy, and that is the case here – unless your definition of tragedy is further romance denied.

I was very much looking forward to seeing Heggie’s take on both of these near-misses. And I’m afraid to say that despite some very good vocal performances, his is the widest off the mark. And this is after a series of revisions by a self-described “creative team” of Heggie, Terrence McNally, Patrick Summers and Joe Mantello. The preamble to the fateful night is familiar enough. We have the same characters still having troubles being human and Parkis (who sings with a Cockney accent, curiously enough) making up for their inherent lack of appeal. Indeed, everything is initially similar to the films. Maurice wanders the streets and runs into Henry, and we’re suddenly drawn into the tale, which tells of Maurice’s present-day misery via a study of the past. Except for the odd characterization of Sarah’s mother – the opera’s only other female character – as something of a deadbeat floozy, everything proceeds as it should until the night of the bombing. The second act, however, is quite the mess. It is here that the “creative team” has left its muddled mark. Here we find both faith and Freud hammered into the same territory. Sarah’s vow to give up Maurice becomes a quest for God, and everyone she runs into during that time either falls in love with her or is cured by her kiss or both. Along the way, we hear that Sarah’s family history includes a father who was killed in a tragic ballooning accident. This is accompanied by some clumsy symbolism. Because of his concern for Sarah, Henry longs to change himself into someone more caring and less boring, even though what makes Henry tick is his innate dullness and predictability. Later on, shortly before Sarah’s death, she crawls into bed and – whaddaya know – it begins to snow. Maybe it was this piece’s La Boheme moment, but it had a completely random feel to it. Finally, when the love of his life has worked her miracles and died, Maurice is out on the street checking out the ladies. It makes me shudder to think of what the two previous versions of this work were like, since this draft worked so poorly. Despite the high drama promised in the story, The End of the Affair does not deliver, and it should serve as a reminder as to why creation by committee should be avoided.

Musically, Heggie keeps himself firmly in the camp of restless, accessible Romanticism for the entire production, but he’s given himself the challenge of writing for a scaled-down orchestra consisting of a mere 24 pieces. In theory, this should give the feel of greater intimacy usually imparted by a chamber orchestra, but Heggie’s musical approach is never able to convey that closeness with the audience. The music always maintains its distance and, as the opera progressed, it adopted a singularly cinematic feel to it, giving it even further detachment and using the same musical devices over and over again in an attempt to build dramatic tension. The only problem is that some of those devices, such as string harmonics, have to be used sparingly, as they are clichés. Unfortunately, Heggie seems to turn to these and other effects when he is hesitant to forward thematic material. As for reflecting the unfolding drama, there is very little in the music to indicate any change in attitude or emotion. For example, when the two fall in love, there’s very little difference in the music from when the two are arguing. It just plugs away with its shifting tonality and frequently becomes excessive during many of the characters’ arias. Sometimes, composers have to let their characters sing and to hell with the constant prodding from the orchestra. That sensibility was obviously not heeded for this work. Even when Sarah dies, there is absolutely nothing in the music that tells us that one of the main characters has just left the building. Time and again, Heggie passes on creating true drama in favor of lyricism that leads nowhere. And while lyricism is nice, it ultimately proves nothing. A little musical contrast would have been greatly appreciated.

With that said, let’s give credit where it is due. The singers are excellent, especially Sarah who is sung by Mary Mills. Philip Cutlip and Robert Orth are also quite capable in the parts of Maurice and Parkis, respectively. They make the most of Heggie’s lyricism and hold their own against the overactive orchestra. The staging is compact and expedient, courtesy of the Houston Grand Opera’s designers. And finally, the scaled-down Seattle Opera Orchestra was well led by Yves Abel. I realize all this is tepid praise, but that’s all I’ve got for this production. Except for a few snatches of melody, this work does little to justify its existence. And I doubt that any number of revisions will solve the problem.

The End of the Affair plays at McCaw Hall through October 29th.