After the Fall: |
| by Jeanne C. Wilkinson |
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Certainly since the seventies, many artists have worked hard to deny art's physical nature, as if any
positive visceral experience or enjoyment to be had while regarding an object somehow demeaned
serious thought. Artists made efforts to bypass the eye with its penchant for pleasure — an
iconoclastic urge, contradictory and difficult to pull off. Question: how can art be done and denied at
the same time? Answer: with sleight-of-hand maneuvers like inserting irony, incoherence, political
content, anger, or all of the above into art, and by aiming for verbal synapses less swayed by sensual
input than the eye. The idea, if it can be called an idea, was that harsh art might raise a spark, a shock
to jolt the mind into thinking instead of just seeing, or at least into thinking that it was thinking, and
not about pleasantries like color and form, but deep thoughts, hard thoughts that had to be faced up
to. Add pain to this mix and the viewer might begin to believe that the whole thing was a truly
memorable experience of great import.
Abstract painting, of course, did and does not fit well into this trend of trompe l'esprit art. The
internal meanderings and struggles in abstract painting are subtle, immediate and ineffable; the
intensity of the engagement limits the artist's concern with viewer reaction. Relationships formed
between artist and art are too vital and personal to be diluted by the half-life issues of irony and the
politics of anger. And here is the true irony. The issues of color, form, space and movement are deep,
complex and time-consuming, making them more easily avoided than understood. It is simpler to
declare abstract painting dead (or worse, irrelevant) than to face the difficulties, regardless of reward.
But here is this exhibition, including over 120 abstract paintings, lurking like Postmodernism's dirty,
delicious little secret across the bay in Snug Harbor, within the former home for "aged and decrepit"
men of the sea, behind vast Greek columns, inside Classical Revival architecture decorated with
anchors and waves and knotted ropes.
The curator, Lilly Wei, a friend of mine, has gathered together the work of about 80 painters, and
arranged them by decade (70's, 80's and 90's) and, to a degree, by motif. The extent and range of
imagery and techniques within abstract painting is given full play. There is less difference than one
might suppose between the decades — an immediacy or fundamentality inhabits these paintings both
old and new. To look at them is to sense being outside of history, even outside of time, connected less
to an era than to a continuity within the permutations of matter. This exhibit illuminates the constancy
and inconstancy of form.
Many paintings from the seventies — Al Held's skeletal linearites, Frances Barth's velvety colors, Bill
Jensen's intuitive shapes — seem like old friends. In their imagery lies comfort and pleasure stemming
from a sense of resolution; their earlier struggles with form and structure have borne fruit. But
complacency also appears in some earlier work as here and there stylization swallows up
experimentation.
But in the 80's, satisfaction disappears as painting goes on the defensive, becoming strident and
stressed in efforts to prove not only its validity but its continuing existence. Painting's inner spirit gives
way to an outer hysteria, relying on those trompe l'esprit techniques, and closing ranks in
formations of stylized sterility. "Bad" is at its peak and irony invades like a debilitating disease. David
Diao's work exemplifies this phenomenon. In Wealth of Nations, 1972, he employs rich,
deKooning-ish mayonaisey paint, layer after layer, in a composition both lush and subtle. Yet in 1989,
his work sheds texture and sensuality and gains a message of ironic intent about the nature of "Push-
Pull" dogma. The word "Greenberg" is included in the dry composition in case we don't get it. Some of
the eighties paintings are worth considering (Sean Scully is always reliable) but much of the work, like
Peter Halley's, withholds some vital element that might make it come alive.
It is in the paintings of the nineties that this exhibition truly comes into its own. The bulk of the
exhibition is from this period, and it appears as if a breath of fresh air has entered the arena. Painting
expands during the same time that critics busily declare installations to be the cat's pajamas and art
magazines focus in on scatter art. Painting has redefined the terms of the battle and has, from the look
of this show, come out stronger by going inward to the real struggle.
In certain rooms a consistency of style between works creates a presence, a kind of visual music that is
a synthesis of complementary forms. These environments highlight not only the similarities within a
style, but also subtle differences which become vivid and profound in such close proximity. In one
room, minimalistic painting changes vastly as it moves from Marcia Hafif's, French Painting:
Barabon, 1990, field of dry pink to Clytie Alexander's subtle gray-green stripes and curves,
Study for Chitrartham, 1995/96 and Study for Vidura, 1996, to Winston Roeth's
shimmery perfect-edged Light Body, 1995.
Other rooms hold less stylistically cohesive groupings, yet in general there is a sense of coherence and
communication as paintings change shape, motif, color, content. They speak to each other in their
ineffable language, and also to us. Excuse my anthropomorphism, but these paintings seem pleased
with each other's company.
It is impossible to mention more than just a few of the works and of course easy to quibble about who
was left out, but overall the exuberance and vitality of latter-day painting is well marked in this
exhibition. It is more than worth a trip on the ever- romantic Staten Island Ferry (and the less
charming but expeditious S-40 bus) to revel in the setting and art at Snug Harbor.
Editor's Note: The Gallery is open Wed.-Thurs., Sat.-Sun. noon to five, Fri. noon-8.
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