Entry - 11.8.13

Kunisada - Scenes from Kabuki Plays - 1856

Mea culpa!  A few weeks ago, a friend brought to my attention that he had attempted to comment on my blog but wasn't permitted to.  Nothing frustrates me more than when I take the time to perform some lengthy function on an internet site only, upon nearing the end of the process, to discover that I don't have rights or that my credit card number is required.  I've adjusted my Blogger settings accordingly, tested the results and can state with a modicum of confidence that your comments will be posted. My apologies.

For the last month or so, I’ve been working on a project inspired by the fact that we ended up with a lot of recyclable bricks after having some work done on our property.  Ever thrifty, my wife and I tossed about some ideas of what we could make out of the old bricks, finally settling on a fire pit of my own design, a low half circle of brick backed by a wall of about hip height.  Nothing extravagant, just a warm place to sit at on cool evenings, enjoy a glass of wine and watch the sunset.

I’ve never done brickwork before, but, being ever the optimist when tackling some household project, I thought to myself: how hard can this be?  I mean you’re basically piling up a bunch of bricks and slapping some mortar in between.  So, while the masons were at the house, I spent about ten minutes watching them at work and attempted to glean a few tips from them on technique.  I learned that masons are not very talkative.  Undaunted, I performed the obligatory internet search and watched a couple of videos on the art of bricklaying, some of which were informative, a bit anally so, and some chaotic and slipshod.

I was ready to begin.

The first day, I worked eight hours straight and accomplished very little.  I put down my initial row of bricks and removed it twice before finally settling on my third attempt.  My guide line shifted with the slightest breeze.  The finicky bubble in my level verified that my ankle-high wall was already neither level nor plumb.  Mortar oozed out between bricks and ran down the face of the wall.  At the end of the day, I came into the house like a zombie, muscles I didn’t even know I had aching and throbbing painfully.  I forced myself to eat before hitting the carpet and falling asleep.  It was literally days before I could walk normally.

I had found a new respect for masons.

Over the next couple of weekends, I continued to work on the fire pit, never devoting an eight hour stretch to the job again.  With time and experience, I learned to keep my mortar at the right consistency, to control the amount of mortar that got placed between bricks and to make my wall a little more level and plumb.  I ended up spending about five times the hours that an experienced mason would have needed to complete the job, and, even then, the results were disappointing.  The outer rim of the pit dips noticeably on one side, and the rear wall wavers and juts in several places.  The finished product has an Antoni Gaudí feel to it, unfortunately, not deliberately so.

 

Lest someone with a kind heart should look at the preceding photo and assert consolingly that my creation looks pretty damn good, I include below documentation of the professionals’ labor.

 

And here’s my point: it takes years of education and practice to attain true craftsmanship.  Recently, there was a period in the art world when craftsmanship was disparaged and experimentation was promoted excessively, much to the profit of conservators and restorers.  I’m not disputing the value of innovation.  Experimentation is essential to art, both technically and intellectually.  It breathes life into stale tradition and opens up new means to address imagery and form.  It permits each generation to believe itself uniquely enlightened and at war with the canons established by the old guard.  But I believe it would be preferable to seek a balance between craftsmanship and experimentation.  For instance, if Leonardo da Vinci hadn’t employed experimental techniques when painting The Last Supper, the work would not have become compromised within just decades after its completion.  Albert Pinkham Ryder’s experimentation with pigments and binders led to his work’s rapid deterioration, pigments congealing and layers sloughing off with gravity, painting surfaces revealing severe cracking.  And, of course, aiming to make art less of a commodity, less precious, many modernists deliberately utilized materials and techniques that they knew would lead quickly to deterioration.  Hopefully, today, “craftsmanship” is no longer such a dirty word.  Craftsmanship permits an artist to control his results, to achieve desired effects consistently and efficiently, to create works that will endure for generations to come.

 

What better introduction could there be to the work of Antonio López García than an endorsement of craftsmanship?  I was unfamiliar with the work of this talented Spaniard until my wife bought me a monograph on him about a year ago.  Flipping through the plates in the book, I was immediately impressed with his skill and virtuosity, how his relatively loose and varied brushwork could impart a convincing illusion of visual reality and how he habitually tackled subject matter so complex and detailed that most artists would shy away from it.  Not only were his paintings magnificent, but his bas reliefs and sculpture were very accomplished as well.

 

I couldn’t find a lot of biographical information about López García.  It seems that his life has been fairly uneventful, no clashes with popes, no murders committed from which to flee, never cut off any body parts, never urinated in Peggy Guggenheim’s fireplace.  López García was born in Tomelloso, Cíudad Real in Spain on January 6, 1936.  In 1949, he moved to Madrid to prepare for his entrance examination to the Escuela de Bellas Artes de San Fernando.  He studied from 1950 to 1955, after which he traveled to Italy on a grant from the Spanish Minister of Education.  In 1961, he married fellow painter, Maria Moreno, with whom, today, he has two daughters.  The remainder of his biography is essentially a list of shows, commissions and awards.

 

López García is a founding member of a group of artists known as the “Madrid Realists”.  Unlike the American photorealists who generally copied photographs using a mechanized means of enlargement and painting with airbrushes, López García works from life employing traditional techniques.

 

 

López García’s technique is deceiving.  From a distance, his paintings give the impression that they are incredibly detailed and illusionistic, with transitions between pigments carefully blended.  In truth, his work is very painterly, immediate and intuitive, relying on the viewer’s eye to translate his markings into recognizable form.

López Garcia - Skinned Rabbit - 1972

López Garcia - Skinned Rabbit (detail) - 1972

The label “realist” has been applied to artists as diverse as Gustave Courbet, Otto Dix, Paul Cadmus, Richard Estes and Lucian Freud, artists whose means and goals vary greatly.  At this time, in the art world, the term “realism” has lost all meaning except to define work that results from a vague desire to represent form in an identifiable fashion.  Categorizing López García as a “realist” really does very little to help us better understand his work.  Let’s see what I can come up with.

 

I want to focus for the moment on López García’s series of bathroom paintings, the work I personally most admire in his oeuvre.  He repeatedly chose to depict this unusual subject matter from the mid-1960’s through the early 70’s.

 

López Garcia - Toilet - 1966

López Garcia - Sink and Mirror - 1967

López Garcia - Toilet and Window - 1968 to 71

I can’t help but wonder why López García became fixated on the bathroom.  Of course, for an artist seeking to accurately record external reality, the bathroom provides the ideal subject matter.  There are so many challenges to address there: mirrors, intricately patterned tiles, dully polished porcelain, gleaming chrome and translucent windows.  And opting to paint an interior space would permit López García to work continuously for months without being interrupted by inclement weather or having to address radically changing light.  But I believe López García’s interest in his subject matter had to go further.  Outside of the kitchen, there is probably no room in the home which is more utilitarian than the bathroom.  To perform its multiple functions, the bathroom relies on a number of technologies that have evolved over time: sinks, tubs, toilets, faucets, drains, lighting, waterproofing and heating.  Hidden from view, the walls and floors conceal working systems: plumbing, wiring, ventilation, heating pipes and ducts.  In many ways, the room resembles the human body with its vast array of organs and systems.  López García presents us with a functioning bathroom equipped with a host of grooming, medicinal and hygienic supplies.  And, lastly, the artist records the deterioration, the rust, the mildew and staining that inevitably results from habitual use.  In these works, López García is painstakingly documenting a microcosm, a terrarium of sorts, with its working systems, private dramas and cycles of growth and decay.

 

“Trying to understand the physical world was, to put it simply, what led many to modernity and abstraction.  It led me, specifically, to pursue a form of realism that made sense.”   -    Antonio López García

 

López García approaches all his subject matter with a similar objective, to attain a more comprehensive understanding of its functions and workings.  When painting a view of a city, he documents the street grid, the traffic signals, dividers and lane markings; private houses, apartment complexes, commercial buildings with cooling towers, advertising signs and tiers of windows; parks, squares and clusters of trees.  His skinned rabbit gives the appearance of having undergone dissection, muscles, sheathing, fatty deposits, veins, sinews and organs exposed for our examination.

 

López Garcia - Gran Via - 1974 to 81

López Garcia - Madrid visto desde Torres Blancas - 1976 to 82

López García is also a very accomplished sculptor.  As with his painting, his technique is deceptively utilitarian, the surfaces of his work being pitted, clotted and scored, reminiscent of the sculpture of Auguste Rodin and Aristide Maillol.  I say “deceptively” because the overall effect suggests careful examination and precise documentation.

López Garcia - Man and Woman - 1968 to 94

López García’s Man and Woman, contrary to its title, does not present us with prototypes of the male and female human form, does not idealize the features, figures and proportions of its two subjects.  López García depicts two specific individuals: the man bald and standing contrapposto; the woman poses soberly, her hairstyle dated, her body short and high-waisted, her toes pointing outward.  They are a strangely mismatched pairing, presenting precisely the kind of visual anomaly that results from real life couplings and groupings.  The sculptures, placed frontally side-by-side and separated by a few feet, establish an uncanny presence that the viewer cannot help but acknowledge.  By documenting these two figures so convincingly, López García plays the role of Pygmalion, bringing inert material to life.

López Garcia - Night - 2008

López Garcia - La Mujer de Coslada - 2010

López García has been commissioned to execute a number of public works, outdoor sculptures located throughout Madrid.  The two works I present here show subjects that have been greatly enlarged and presented fragmentally.  Initially, I was surprised that  López García chose to distort reality in this fashion and thought that these works related most closely to his early paintings and reliefs (not included here) that were anchored in surrealism.  Upon subsequent examination and consideration, I realize that I was wrong, that these public sculptures function very much like López García’s mature paintings.  The paintings, by exhibiting an almost superhuman effort of observation and documentation, confront the viewer with a subject matter and force him to reevaluate or reconsider his understanding of that subject matter.  López García uses size to similar purpose in his public work.  These colossal apparitions, placed seemingly in haphazard fashion in everyday active environments, cannot be ignored, cannot be walked past unawares.  The pedestrian must consider these forms, to note how the proportions of a child’s head differ from those of an adult’s, to take pleasure in the plump ripeness of the baby’s cheeks, to feel the weight of the woman’s hair gathered in a snood, to observe how the neck muscles support the upturned head, to appreciate her firm, youthful breasts, to study her navel situated a few feet above the pavement.

 

López García is not a young man.  He is an established artist, whose best known work was produced in the 1960’s and 70’s.  He is represented by the prestigious Marlborough Gallery, and, in 2008, the Boston Museum of Fine Arts presented a solo show of his work.  And yet, in this country his work is relatively unknown.  It’s about time that his work should enjoy wider consideration.  Besides the handful of images that I’ve presented here, you can find plenty of others on the internet.  Take a look.

 

As always, if you would prefer to comment privately, you may email me at gerardwickham@gmail.com.

 

 

Entry - 10.13.13

In my last entry on Seminal Works, I ended my discussion with a look at First Light, a painting completed in 1990 after a period of indecision during which I determined in what manner I would address the figure in my art.  The entry was a long one and I felt compelled to wrap it up, so I summarily addressed the circumstances that lead to the creation of the work and wrote briefly as to why the work is considered “seminal” by me.  I recognized after publishing the entry that it is somewhat misleading.

Wickham - First Light - 1990

In my entry, I mention that I got the idea of painting a double portrait because I felt that my friend who posed for the work embodied a clear duality of conflicting personalities between which lay a chasm that could not be breached.  It was my belief at that time that these personae could not coexist in a single individual and that one persona would have to take precedence over the other.  All of which is true.  But the painting has very little to do with this germ of an idea.  I would be aghast if viewers came to the work thinking it an exploration of how a dominant persona must subdue one less viable in the individual, that this is a painting about a specific person that I knew twenty years ago.  The circumstances that initiate the development of an image are of interest as they expose process but commonly offer very little insight into how the finished work functions… may often lead to misconceptions instead.  That is why I seldom read those cards containing a few neatly printed paragraphs of verbiage that accompany artworks in museum shows.  If I read them, inevitably, the artwork is transformed into an illustration of the context purported by the card.

Picasso - La Vie - 1903

Does it help us to know that La Vie depicts Pablo Picasso’s friend, Casagemas, who committed suicide after being rejected by his lover, supposedly because he was impotent?  Or does this information prevent us from fully experiencing the image.  Picasso himself once opined: “A painting for me, speaks by itself.  What good does it do, after all, to impart explanations?  A painter has only one language.  As for the rest…”  He shrugged.

Gauguin - The Spirit of the Dead Watching - 1892

Does knowing that the nude figure in Spirit of the Dead Watching is Paul Gauguin’s 14 year old Tahitian wife help us to better understand the painting or does it place a context on the painting that most members of a contemporary audience would have trouble getting past to rationally explore the artwork?

 

By the time I completed First Light, that germ of an idea, visually representing the personality dichotomy of my model, was no longer of primary interest to me.  I didn’t even care if the viewer recognized that the same model was used for both figures.  (In fact, most people don’t notice this.)  Other aspects of the work began to dominate my thinking as the painting progressed.

 

Early on, as I began to map out my composition in my mind, I thought of the painting as an annunciation.  Although I don’t adhere to any religious beliefs, I have always been captivated by annunciation imagery and have, over the years, addressed the theme in several works.  Most importantly, annunciation imagery represents a charged instant in time when a significant transformation is taking place.  The natural and the supernatural are merged as Mary is impregnated with the seed of god.  On a cosmic level, this moment is charged with such significance on so many levels that it is impossible to go into them here.  But there is a personal story to the annunciation as well.  This is a moment of revelation.  An individual, Mary, is being informed by the angel Gabriel that she is to give birth to the son of god.  This, of course, is rather shocking news, and I am fascinated with how different artists depict Mary’s response.

 

Greek Orthodox - The Annunciation - 14th Century

Wickham - First Light (detail) - 1990

In researching this entry, I was surprised to find that Orthodox iconography consistently depicted the angel Gabriel with a trailing right foot, turned toward the viewer.  This gesture mirrors that of the standing figure in First Light.  I must have tapped into deep reservoirs of art history images stored in my subconscious because I had no idea that my reference was so explicit at the time I made the painting.  I’m not sure what the significance of this gesture in iconography is.  My guess is that it symbolized the descent of the angel from the cosmic to the mortal plane.  (If any reader can help me with this, I would be appreciative.)  In First Light, I use the gesture to show that the standing figure is caught in mid-action, that she is approaching the supine figure.  It reinforces the sense of the moment.  I also think that it lends the standing figure a slightly threatening aura.

Martini - The Annunciation - 1333

Another thing I like about annunciations is that they are usually compositionally awkward, depicting a huge void between Mary and the angel.  I appreciate unconventional and awkward compositions.  The eye doesn’t know where to go and bounces back and forth between the two figures.  Simone Martini resolves this problem by emphasizing the independence of each figure, placing them in ornate niches and flanking each with the figure of a saint.  The composition becomes frontal and static, relying on a pattern of vertical repetitions to hold it together.  The portrayal of Mary is wonderful in this work, her sinuous body contracts upon itself, her face expresses wariness and dissatisfaction.

Fra Angelico - The Annunciation - 1437 to 46

Like Martini, Fra Angelico also utilizes a composition that places his figures in niches, but he integrates these framing devices into the composition as three dimensional architectural elements.

 

Botticelli - Cestello Annunciation - 1490

Tintoretto - The Annunciation - 1587



 

Later artists resolved the compositional problems presented by traditional annunciation imagery by bringing the figures closer together and employing more sophisticated compositional devices to lead the eye through the painting, generally by stressing strong diagonals.  But I have a strong preference for the clumsy compositions of the Byzantine and proto-Renaissance periods. 

Wickham - First Light (detail) - 1990

Of course, in First Light, I had no desire to evoke religious themes but did wish to emphasize the impression that the painting captures a charged moment when something critical is taking place.  As the wisp of smoke caught rising from the just extinguished candle establishes a sense of the instant, my allusion to annunciation imagery is intended to do so as well.  The theme of revelation in annunciation imagery is of equal importance, reinforced in the image by suggestions of drawing back a curtain and shedding light on a subject.

Wickham - First Light (detail) - 1990

In depicting the supine figure in a state of internal musing, I wanted to accentuate her vulnerability.  Too distracted to be aware of the approaching figure, she revels in her personal thoughts, leaving herself open to assault.  It is clear by her exotic dress, make-up, extravagant jewelry and carefully coiffed hair that she has good reason to be engaged in inner musings.  She is sophisticated.  Her life is rich, complex and active.  Balthus also depicted musing figures in his art.

Balthus - Nude with Cat - 1949

But his figures appear to be plotting, to be forming a stratagem to achieve some amoral goal.  They seem dangerous.  My musing figure is weakened by permitting herself the luxury of surrendering to inner thoughts.  She is not conscious of what is happening around her and does not notice the approaching figure.

Though we are unsure of her intentions, I wished to portray the standing figure as dominant; she looms over the reclining figure, studying her dispassionately.  I even deliberately made the silhouette of the candleholder, pointed like a knife, jut into the void over the recumbent figure.  The viewer cannot be sure what is happening here.  It’s possible that nothing is occurring, that we are witnessing a quiet moment of observation when the daily lives of two beings temporarily intersect.  But I’ve also attempted to suggest that something more momentous is in the works, that these two very different figures should not exist in the same space and that a resolution could be impending.  Simultaneously, these beings are strangely linked.  There is a hint that there is a bond holding them together, that we are voyeurs of a strange game.  I do not allow the viewer to come to a firm conclusion concerning this image.  It would be my preference that he vacillate between interpretations, that he never settle on one hypothesis about what is occurring, that he invent an endless series of myths to place the image into a context.  As the creator of the image, I am only responsible for setting the parameters of how far that invention can go.

I will digress a moment to relate a personal story.  Back in the early 90’s, I used to get together with a friend at a bar in lower Manhattan about once a week to relax after work, have a few beers, shoot some pool and engage in freewheeling discussions about a host of subjects, one of which was art.  My friend had seen First Light on several occasions, so, one evening, I was explaining to him how I thought the painting should function, that it could represent a banal moment in the lives of two women but it could also depict something more momentous, that there were suggestions of conflict, violence and decadence in the image.  My friend could only see one facet of the work: two women calmly coexisting in an interior space as the first light of morning illuminates their surroundings.  I described the cyphers embedded in the image that I hoped would suggest alternative interpretations.  I touched upon my references to art history.  Though hesitant to do so, I even conjured up a possible scenario or two to explain what could be happening in the painting.  After all of this, he looked at me dead eyed and stated flatly, “I just don’t see it.”  I must admit that I was nonplussed by his reaction, wondering if my subtle suggestions within the work were too subtle.

A few weeks later, a friend from my wife’s workplace visited her at our apartment in Brooklyn.  At that time, First Light hung outside of our apartment on a landing that capped what seemed an endless series of stairways.  As you climbed the last flight to the top, First Light, lit by a filmy overhead skylight, filled your view.  It was unavoidable.  When I came home from work that evening, I asked my wife how the visit with her friend had gone, and she told me that she had been very disturbed upon seeing First Light.  Her friend thought the painting was sick.  I was surprised that her reaction was so strong but, at the same time, felt relieved that she had picked up on nuances in the work to which my friend had been blind.  In a nutshell, the painting functioned.

As I conclude this entry, I recognize that I am guilty of self-deception here, that I began by questioning whether being provided with biographical facts and explanations actually helps one better understand a work of art and then proceeded to provide a host of biographical facts and explanations about First Light.  I guess my excuse for this blatant contradiction is that, even though wary of the impact that the written word can have on one’s experience of an artwork, I must confess that I greatly enjoy reading about art and artists and take a prurient pleasure in rooting about in the intimate details available concerning the milieu within which an artwork was created.  It seems only natural that I would speculate on my own process, explain my intentions, attempt to unravel the workings of my art and even toss in the occasional private anecdote.  I suspect that most of us would like to remain intellectually “pure” but find ourselves surrendering to personal weaknesses.  I don’t find this a bad thing.  Much of my art takes a sympathetic, if not comic, view of human failings, and I honestly believe that it is our deficiencies which make us creative, innovative and interesting.  I can state one thing with certainty; future blog entries will continue to indulge in this kind of agreeable roving.

 

If you would prefer to comment privately, you can email me at gerardwickham@gmail.com.

 

Entry - 9.11.13

You may have noticed that I tend to use the word “approach” in instances when “style” would be expected.  When discussing the making of art, “style” has negative connotations in that it suggests that the artist chooses a way of painting as one would opt for a new hairstyle or select a period in which to decorate a room.  The process of creation to be substantive must be very different.  I think in imagery so bear with me here.  I imagine the artist confronted with an enormous, impenetrable ball of rock, metal and debris, all comingled in concrete.  The artist knows that at the core of this ball there is something significant, but he isn’t exactly certain of what that something is.  So, he needs to work his way to the center of the ball.  Luckily, at his disposal, he has a number of tools: a hammer and chisel, a crowbar, a maul, a vat of acid, etc.  I have always referred to these tools as my arsenal or my bag of tricks; they are the skills and techniques of paint handling that I’ve adopted, mastered or invented over years of working.  The tools to which one gravitates are not selected arbitrarily but are determined through very personal inclinations and unconscious drives.  And so, the artist begins hammering away at the giant ball, only to find that his efforts result in little progress, the shattering of a stone, a shower of dust, a chip of concrete sent flying.  But he keeps at it, moving about the ball, changing his tools, positioning his body differently.  And occasionally, a new “approach” proves effective, progress is made and the artist toils away for a period of time, believing that he’s conquered the impenetrable ball and with continued effort the core will surely be his.  Unfortunately, almost inevitably, the artist tunnels into an enormous, solid chunk of metal or rock that refuses to be penetrated or bypassed and must start the process all over on the shell of the ball in hopes of adopting another “approach” that will ultimately permit access to the core.

In my 7/31/13 blog entry which addressed the topic of The Artist at Work, I mentioned that First Light was for me a breakthrough painting.  The more common adjective to be applied to such work is “seminal”, in that it initiates a fruitful series of successful work.  If I were to continue with the overly long parable above, I would say that an “approach” that leads to substantive progress toward the illusive and vague core is “seminal”.  Seminal works usually occur within a period of experimentation when the artist is struggling to find the visual language appropriate to a concept that is just formulating in his work.  Sometimes the experimentation is sparked by new, often radical, influences.  At other times, it is initiated through frustration with or aversion to safe, established practices that have grown stale and leaden.  Many times, the artist is compelled to move in a direction that seems too extreme and will hesitate, dancing around that direction before finally taking the plunge (resulting in a seminal work).  Seminal works are fascinating in that within them you can see the artist’s mind at work; often they embody diverse or conflicting approaches without finding a unifying visual language.  Even though these works are commonly unsuccessful, appearing incomplete or unresolved, they are sought after by collectors and usually command high prices.

Henri Matisse spent the summer of 1904 in St. Tropez, working alongside Paul Signac and Henri-Edmond Cross, two adherents of the theory of pointillism, an approach that adopted many of the tenets of impressionism but, in adopting them, transformed them.  For instance, the impressionists utilized broken, impasto brushwork of relatively pure, unmodulated color to accelerate the painting process, thereby permitting the artist to capture the unique lighting effects of an instant, and by using pure tones, often placing complimentary colors side-by-side, were able to heighten the visual impact of their work, replicating the effect of intense, natural lighting.

 

 

Seurat - Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte - 1886

 

The pointillists recognized that placing pure tones next to each other heightened their impact but felt that the impressionists use of the technique was too personal, too arbitrary.  The pointillists painted in uniform dots applied following scientific color theory, and it was their hope that the expression of the personality of the artist would be minimized in their work, that a Seurat would be indistinguishable from a Signac.   While the impressionists sought to capture the reality of a unique moment, the pointillists attempted to construct a nonexistent universal moment when every aspect of an image, the scenery, the placement and posing of the figures, their dress, their activities, all reflect the quintessential.

 

Matisse - Luxe, Calme et Volupte - 1904

 

Matisse was not new to pointillism; he had experimented with the technique since reading Signac’s essay, “D’Eugène Delacroix au Néo-impressionisme”, in 1898.  But in the summer of 1904, he painted Luxe, Calme et Volupté, a strange work that stepped away from pointillism and predicted change that would shortly lead to the fauvist revolution.  Of course, the pointillist elements are still very apparent in this work, but, even though the image is constructed of individual markings of color, the hues are heightened and often bear no resemblance to natural coloration.  The landscape, a scene of the Riviera’s shoreline, is peopled with a number of nude and seminude female figures who are depicted unconvincingly in a cartoonishy distorted fashion.  The pointillist markings are not uniform and equispaced but have become thicker, directional and more expressionist in character.  The image does not depict contemporary life; these women hearken back to representations of goddesses and nymphs executed by Nicolas Poussin and Claude Lorrain three centuries earlier.  The artist’s intention is to capture a mood of luxury, peace and pleasure as the painting’s title, a quote from Charles Baudelaire, openly asserts, but, in straddling two stylistic intents, the image is vaguely disturbing.  The landscape is presented somewhat naturalistically, conforming for the most part to the rules of perspective, while the figures feel pasted on and don’t exist convincingly in the space.  The boat’s placement appears to be most contingent on acting as a reflection of the cloud formations in the sky and does not seem believable within the landscape.  The mast and spar of the boat along with the flailing boughs of the tree serve as compositional devices, directing the eye about the painting, but appear awkward and out-of-place.  In a year of two, Matisse will divorce color from naturalistic effect, subjugate all compositional elements to the logic demanded by the image, dismiss the constraints imposed by the rules of perspective and permit the brushwork to confidently follow the dictates of his subject matter.  Luxe, Calme et Volupté is a courageous yet faltering step in that direction.

 

Three years after Matisse painted Luxe, Calme et Volupté, Pablo Picasso stunned the art world with Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, a work which depicts five prostitutes gathered in an interior space, a still life displayed in the foreground.  In his earlier work, particularly that of the Blue and Rose Periods, Picasso had absorbed and personalized a number of influences.  The symbolist movement, probably predominant during his youth, exerted a strong influence on his immature work.  Van Gogh and the fledgling expressionists certainly made an impact too, but I would say that the two artists that served to guide the young Picasso most consistently were Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec and Paul Cézanne.  The sway of Toulouse-Lautrec is easily detected in Picasso’s moody scenes of circus performers, street people and the Parisian nightlife, both in subject matter and execution.  Cézanne’s influence came later and provided a conceptual pathway for the most part.  Cézanne had explored the question of whether a painting could maintain a visual integrity convincing to the viewer while violating the rules of perspective.  Cézanne accomplished this by minimizing the perspective variations contained in an individual work and by masking or disguising the junctures of planes in contradictory perspectives.

 

Picasso - Les Demoiselles d'Avignon - 1907

 

 

Picasso had assimilated Cézanne’s approach rapidly in the months prior to the summer of 1907, and as he began work on Le Demoiselles d’Avignon was ripe for major change.  I think that Picasso was compelled to explore what would result if, instead of maintaining a visual integrity within an image as Cézanne had done, he allowed the painting to conform to its own laws that had little basis in visual perception.  Les Demoiselles is more about dismantling than construction.  The figures are drawn in conflicting styles, some figures being complete and anatomically rational while others disintegrate and become defined as a series of interlocking planes.  Two figures wear grotesque distorted masks that cannot be reconciled with other aspects of the painting.  Tonalities are subdued, flat and unmodulated.  There is no identifiable light source in the work, and the space the figures inhabit is shallow, fragmented and layered.  Picasso never resolves the conflicts contained in Les Demoiselles.  There was no need to.  He had gotten from the experiment what he needed, an approach to addressing form and space that would evolve into a style that has become known as cubism.

 

Jackson Pollock was a great admirer of Picasso’s work.  He’d been known to bemoan the fact that Picasso had done everything, that he hadn’t left anything new to realize.  Picasso certainly was an extraordinary innovator, having initiated developments in painting and sculpture which would continue to be explored by future generations of artists for decades.  But, no matter how far Picasso pushed his abstractions, his imagery was always rooted in visual reality.  Picasso felt that to divorce his work from concrete visual references would leave him rudderless, that the creative process would become pointless.  In the early 1940’s, Pollock was testing the boundaries of abstraction.  In Male and Female, a masterpiece which now hangs in The Philadelphia Museum of Art, Pollock disguises his subject matter so successfully that, at first, it is hard to distinguish the male and female figures within an active field of patterns, brushwork and drips.  But upon closer inspection, the viewer recognizes the totem-like figures, set in two vertical bands running parallel from the bottom to the top of the painting, by a few key emblematic features: breasts, lush eyelashes and triangular feet.  The male figure resembles a chalkboard covered in nonsensical calculations.  Though paint itself is becoming the primary subject matter for Pollock, like Picasso, he cannot surrender the link to the visual world.  He retains references to the physical attributes of his subject matter; he uses patterns to define planes and establish compositional cohesiveness; he inserts clearly recognizable numbers and mathematical symbols in the painting.

Pollock - Male and Female - 1942

In 1943, a year after painting Male and Female, Pollock was commissioned by Peggy Guggenheim to execute a huge painting, about eight feet by twenty, for her NYC apartment.  This represented an enormous opportunity for Pollock, and, according to legend, he was slow to get started, hesitating to consider his approach.  In Mural, Pollock has jettisoned recognizable imagery.  Movement in the piece is established by repetitions of gestures, in particular a series of strong, mostly vertical strokes that run the length of the painting.  Activity is contained in three major zones: the top section that is more open and less crowded, the middle section that is defined by large sweeping vertical strokes and the bottom which is packed with busy, intricate detail work that creates a horizontal frieze along the base of the painting.  These zones enhance visual interest and move the eye about the painting.

Pollock - Mural - 1943

 

Pollock’s step toward pure abstraction was influenced to a great part by ideas being addressed by Jung.  Many surrealists, fleeing Europe during WWII, had settled in NYC and brought with them Jungian theories of how the subconscious mind asserted itself in the seemingly accidental gestures of the artist which contained the germ of not only the individual’s repressed emotions, thoughts and memories but those of all humanity.  Through Guggenheim who represented many of the surrealists, Pollock had been introduced to these theories, and, at that time, he was coerced into undergoing Jungian analysis to treat his alcoholism.  Although Mural reflects Pollock’s recognition of the importance of the subconscious in the creation of art, it retained some traditional elements.  Pollock is still purposefully applying paint with a brush, and, though indecipherable, polymorphic imagery and three-dimensional form are suggested.  It would take four years before Pollock was prepared to move to pure abstract expressionism, creating imagery through dripping, splattering and pouring paint.

 

While in grad school, I developed an approach to painting based on a process of abstracting the figure through distortion and disguise.  My goal was to suggest multiple, often contradictory, activities that the viewer would be unable to resolve.  I found the process rewarding.  I enjoyed painting loosely and intuitively, working in thick impasto built up in heavy layers or thinning my paints to facilitate broad gestural strokes that dripped and splattered across the surface of the canvas.  I became intensely aware of materials and experimented with new mediums, adding sand and grit to my gesso, using tape to create occasional hard edges, embracing the accidental effects that resulted from unrestrained painting.  I became a fairly competent abstract painter, and the work I produced during this period pleased me, leading me to believe that I would continue to explore abstraction throughout my life.

Wickham - Modern Love - 1984

 

 

 

But by the late 1980’s, I was beginning to lose interest in abstraction.  The process of masking imagery was becoming mechanical, artificial and arbitrary.  The themes I addressed in my work were limited, and repetition inevitably resulted.  I knew that I needed to reestablish reasonable boundaries that working with more concrete imagery would impose but was resistant to returning to figurative work.  For a couple of years, I struggled with imagery, working on isolated parts of the figure, including words and symbols in my work, deliberately creating paintings that were awkward and unpleasing.  These works were, without exception, failures, and most of them were, thankfully, destroyed.

 

At the end of that period, I was finally ready to consider the possibility of painting figuratively once more.  It didn’t feel good to be moving in this direction.  I sort of felt like I was throwing in the towel, but I sought the confines that working with the figure established.  I had no idea how far this process would take me, but I certainly had no interest in becoming a “realist” painter.  I needed to relearn how to approach the figure, and I painted a small series of figurative works that were very painterly and still anchored in abstraction.  I wasn’t satisfied with the results and turned to Picasso’s Cézannesque work to serve as my guide, in that it addressed form cohesively without slavishly recording external reality.  In Two Women, painted in1986, I constructed my subject matter from a number of sources: anatomy books, fashion magazines, advertisements and sketches from the live model.  In “building” these two women, I was not concerned with perspective or desirous of creating a convincing illusion of visual reality; I was interested in erecting two structurally sound edifices.  I placed my figures in a shallow, ambiguous landscape of my imagination.

 

Wickham - Two Women - 1986

I was happy with the results and began painting a series of similar works.  These works were formal explorations into which I eventually inserted the hint of a narrative element.

 

Many times with me, development comes as a result of accidental occurrences.  In 1989, I was approached by a friend who wanted to commission me to paint her portrait.  I recognized that she would make a perfect model, being in great physical shape and very attractive, but knew that, as a struggling college student, she could not afford to purchase a serious work of art.  I proposed that I’d paint her portrait for free if she would pose for three additional works, an offer she readily accepted.  We tackled the portrait first, and I understood that my model wanted a traditional image that captured her features accurately and established form in a rational space, lit by a definable light source and constructed following the rules of perspective.  I worked hard on this painting, but it was challenging for me to make the leap into realist representation.  For so long I had resisted the draw of realist painting that I struggled to create a consistent, cohesive image, and, unfortunately for my friend, the finished work was flawed and problematic. 

 

For me, it was an important step just to entertain painting in a realist mode again.  This may seem strange since this move is in a less radical direction, but, at that time, moving toward realism meant reconsidering how I had come to understand art functions.  I still had three works to “collect” from my model.  I had always thought that my friend embodied a duality, two conflicting personalities that would eventually have to come to blows to determine a victor, and I decided to use this idea as the germ for my next painting, a double portrait.  In First Light, I retained many realist elements that I had explored in my last painting but couldn’t completely walk away from approaches that I had developed in recent years.  So, the image contains an impossible space that permits me to display each element from the optimal perspective for viewing, almost like ancient Egyptian art.  The figure lying on the sofa and the carpet exist in a plane that is flipped upward toward the viewer, while the standing figure inhabits a space parallel to the picture plane.  The striped curtain is situated both behind and in front of the standing figure.  All the same, the picture preserves a convincing visual cohesiveness.  I maintained a painterly approach in the work, brushwork being evident and a bright golden underpainting surfacing in multiple areas.  Just as significant, the work addresses themes that continue to interest me to this day.  It presents a moment in an ongoing narrative that suggests the possibility of extreme activities while simultaneously asserting that nothing remarkable is happening here.  First Light is a seminal work for me, a painting that straddles multiple approaches to addressing form and points the way to future work that will more successfully explore themes introduced within this image.

Wickham - First Light - 1990

 

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