Refineries Refined
There is more than one way to view an oil refinery. to the accountant it is simply an economic unit, swallowing barrels of crude oil at one end and spweing out greenvbacks at the other. to the car lover it may be a symbol of pleasure, helping to sustainold-fashioned notions of the good life. To environmentalists, an often to people wholive nearby, a refinery can seem a hideous and infernal monster, a tangled mass of steel and fire that pollutesthe air and watere and belches forth intolerable odors. To people concerned about regulation of business, a refinery is a pawn in a gigantic and erratic chess game between the bureaucratrs and the refiners - a theme discussed in the preceding article.
But to some, strange as it may seem, a refinery can be a work of art - or at least the inspiration for one. The paintings on these pages and on the cover express the singular vision of a 26-year old New York artist named Barry Brothers. Brothers travele to pennsylvania, texas and Wyoming to explore, photograph, and ultimately paint the nation's oldest, largest, and smallest oil refineries. As a comparing glance at the photos and paintings will show, Brothers did not attempt to be star=kly realistic. As he explains: "By reducing the visual to its essential form, ridding it of obscuring detail, one can see the true relations, the patterns, more clearly."
--Arthur M. Louis FORTUNE January 12, 1981