Monday, February 18, 2008

Jasper Johns: Gray

At The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City.

When I saw the announcement for this exhibition I was very excited and eager to see it. On my tour of American museums in 2005 I saw the very impressive “Near the Lagoon” (Catenary) at the Chicago Art Institute, the less than impressive “Fools House” at the Walker, and the lithographs “Alphabet” in Seattle and “No” in Tucson. In addition I saw the exhibition, “Jasper Johns; Forty years of Printmaking” at the De Young in San Francisco. I have always had a fondness for gray and have often pointed out to others the pale traces of color that are discernable in an overcast sky and in the landscape of an otherwise gray day. That ability to see those colors might have come from my admiration for the works of Corot. After the trip, impressed by his mutual affinity for gray, I determined that I would do some further study and become more familiar with Jasper Johns’ work

I lived in New York City from 1959 to 1988 and the name Jasper Johns was known to me. I know I had seen Flag and Target, but other than recognizing the name I had never paid much attention to his work. Seeing variations of those familiar works on my trip I gave them more time than I usually have done and I was very impressed that Johns was such a painterly painter.

It is with great sadness then that I have to say I found this exhibition really disappointing: except for “Catenary”, most of the work here is not interesting. This opens in a small gallery with “False Start”, an abstract in color with stenciled color names. Next to it is a variation in grays, “Jubilee”. Both of these are extremely well done, they show a mastery of craft and a cleverness of conception. However, in the next gallery we were presented with some very early works from the sixties that had the look of having been student work on inexpensive materials. I wondered if they might not have been included in order to pad out the exhibition.

The interpretation states that in the gray works the artist was creating work which removed the emotional values associated with color and that it was intended to focus the viewer on the concept and the craft of the process. In the third gallery, works in the Alphabet series, this is all readily apparent, it makes its point, and I fully expected that the remaining work, executed over a forty year period, would go somewhere beyond this. But it did not. Instead the work took on the character of an extension of something that was of only minor interest in its conception, something one might do in his off hours or as an exercise to “keep in shape”. This became a formed opinion in the fourth gallery where there were spoons and forks and knives hanging on strings over canvases to which they had no relationship and or meaning. In the fifth gallery there was “Between the Clock and the Bed”, a design the artist had seen painted on a car on the Long Island Expressway. As a large painting this was physically impressive but it did not sustain the interest of the observer, neither mine nor the others with me in the gallery. Facing it, across the room, there was one of the “Savarin” works in which this same motif was used as the ground and it immediately identified why the larger work cannot interest us: this motif works very well as a ground but not at all as a subject.

In that same gallery, facing Bed/Clock, we see, on loan from Chicago, “Near the Lagoon”, a gift of Muriel Kallis Newman (as in The Steinberg Newman Collection discussed below). And it is indeed a very impressive painting, in technique, craftsmanship, and concept. It is a definitive image: henceforth the catenary will always be associated in art with Jasper Johns. It made me aware that the allure of a suspension bridge might well reside in the sensuous drape of the cables uniting the rigidly horizontal and vertical supports. This work is vertical. Next to it, on the side wall, in a horizontal format, is “Study for a Painting”, another catenary variation that is every bit as good as the first. But on the other side wall is a third variation, with a band of harlequin diamonds that immediately recalled Cezanne and Picasso. Going to read the museum interpretation, it told me that indeed that reference was intended. Suddenly it seemed a very obvious and a very trite reference, an indication, perhaps, of over reaching.

In the last gallery there are works that are based on the pattern of a flagstone walk. I thought they looked like value studies for an Armstrong Linoleum floor covering under consideration for manufacture. Cezanne was able to find a variety of motifs in every setting: Ansel Adams traveled in a station wagon equipped so that he could stop at any place and make an artwork from what he termed a found photograph. Jasper Johns apparently has an eye for the found pattern. Fine. But these flagstone works made me aware that not every found pattern is able to sustain the observer’s interest.

Following the artist’s suggestion to study his technique I found that those works which incorporated small areas of color were far more satisfying than those which relied on gray alone. For example; “Two” has both color and interest while the smaller “0 to 9” is muddy and looks like a class room gray scale exercise. “Jubilee” is interesting because there was real risk taking with a values range that extended from 9 to 1 on the gray scale, but in most of the other works, including “Catenary”, the range was from only 5 to 3. In addition there seemed little development of the technique over the forty year period: “Tennyson”, 1958, has an almost identical ground as “Catenary”, 2002. Like Seurat’s conte drawings, (see Seurat below), this comes off as devotion to technique rather than exploration, fresh insight, or as an expression of profound interest.

I suppose it is a legitimate departure for an artist to direct our attention to his technique, in contrast to the usual method in which the effect of the work is only sometimes explained as having anything to do with the technique employed. In many of the great classic paintings technique is rarely taken into consideration, rather the anecdotal content forms the basis of the art commentary. I believe it was not until Roger Fry’s small book on Cezanne that technique ever came into consideration at all. And as for technique and its development over a span of many years, Cezanne is one of the great exemplars of genius extending his range into unknown areas through a constant and ongoing analysis of the plastic elements. Understanding his technique is a path to comprehending his profound interest, his expressive form, and his vital content. Jasper Johns’ technique is rather masturbatory in that it holds the attention of the artist, the doer, but, because there is so little involvement for us, it begins to appear as a rather tedious self involved artist’s exercise.

Finally, it seems to me that the mottled gray works beautifully in the lithographs and drawings but not as well in the paintings. In the former there is the sense of a drama on the flat surface, a sense of implied surface and depth; there are spontaneous accidents that work with the whole. In the latter there is only the sense of the gray being a methodically placed waxy, textured ground. One of the great pleasures for me in looking at paintings is that I am in intimacy with the sensual richness of the impasto. There is no sense of that in the encaustic medium.

What I did notice and to which I have a very favorable response, is that Jasper Johns’ draftsmanship is excellent. It makes me aware of a sadness I feel for modern artists, de Kooning, Larry Rivers, et al, who draw with great mastery but who cannot use their gifts, or can only use them sparingly, because of the dictates of modern art and that to do so would place their status, as true moderns, in jeopardy. It is as if, as makers of modern art, they have become prisoners of their own self description. To which I can only state: Create dangerously!

Despite Jasper Johns’ invitation that we see only the intellectual side of his work, there is another element that is very apparent in this exhibition: there is a very strong homosexual presence in these works. In one we see a hairy scrotum with an upright penis cut off by the edge of the format (ouch). In a painting featuring a frontal male nude the penis is uncircumcised. One painting references Frank O’Hara, another Hart Crane, the celebrated suicide and darling of the educated gay masses. Remembering how the gay culture of the 60’s relied on code in the correspondence among the initiates, I began to wonder if there were more coded and hidden messages in other of the works here or if the artist, having lived in that coded era, was unaware of the degree to which he has used that device. It is interesting because it seems so contrary to the parameters he established for the observers: despite his claim that there is no message, there is, however, a strong subtext.

I think Jasper Johns is authentic, I think he has talent, and I think he is the master of his craft. But I sense that he has spent his working days illustrating an art world polemic. He has spent forty years making not very interesting works, works that show a decided lack of personal growth. That seems to be a common feature among American artists…Stuart Davis, Mark Rothko, Calder, Dale Chihuly… I often wonder, having created a personal, signature, image, if these men haven’t opened a production facility to simply make product for the American art market and the many, many museums. This is a nation of cultural conformity: it is a shame that our artists cannot break free from the ties in which they have bound themselves.

And one last humorous observation. Merce Cunningham is almost always referred to in print as “the dancer choreographer”. John Cage is referred to as “the contemporary composer who often worked with Merce Cunningham, the dancer choreographer”. It seems to me that in just about everything I have read about Jasper Johns it is mentioned that in his early New York days, back in the 50’s and 60’s, “he formed a friendship with John Cage, the contemporary composer, and Merce Cunningham, the dancer choreographer”. Something could be made of this name tagged hierarchy, but perhaps you get the point.

Thursday, February 14, 2008

Abstract Expressionism and Other Modern Works: The Muriel Kallis Steinberg Newman Collection

At The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City.

This collection has been described as being unique in that it is the only extant collection put together during the lifetime of the artists. Most of these works are American and were collected in New York City between 1950 and 1954 although there are other modern, European, works from other dates. I am uncertain if the entire collection was on view.

Lately I have become very interested in studying collections: I am curious to discern the common thread running through a body of collected works and to see if I can ascertain what the collector’s interests might be beyond the school or style. These works are mid century abstract expressionist works. That is the main theme. As a secondary theme many of the paintings were black and white with some small touches of color…or none. Where color was dominant the hues had a lowered chromaticity so that overall there was a mellow tone to the collection. The exceptions to this were in the works by Hans Hoffman and Alexander Calder. In Calder’s work the three primaries were softened by the addition of areas in black and white. In Hoffman’s work the green hue of two squares was softened by the red hue of the ground.

There were two main influences: those artists following Arshile Gorky began with a reference to the human figure and those following Hans Hoffman referenced “nature”, meaning, I believe, landscape.

One of the most interesting common threads, but not a factor in selecting the works, is that many of these paintings are works made before that particular artist created his familiar iconic image that is seen in almost every museum today. For example the Clyfford Still is a black on white ragged edged movement, but not the common black vertical tear with some additional bright color. While that later development can be seen everywhere to the point of having become common, this is by far the most interesting work of his that I have yet seen.

There is a de Kooning sketch from early in the Woman series, dedicated to the collectors, but the oil on canvas is of black lines of what appears to be several figures drawn one over the others. Where the forms remained open they were closed with additional, gratuitous, lines. This created an allover pattern and the areas defined by the crossing lines were then filled in as flat independent forms. White and a muddied white are predominant with slight touches of color here and there. As a result there is a sense of there being “something” here, but rather than seeing it clearly it has become a field of confusion: what do I see; what is here? I was reminded of Frost’s poem, The Watchers: “they cannot look out far; they cannot look in deep…” Too many museums ride the de Kooning bandwagon by exhibiting only his work from the Woman series. It was a great delight to find this really wonderful painting in this collection.

For all the look of modernism about these works, there is in the whole collection a very strong sense of classical repose. But the most interesting characteristic is that it reads as a personal collection representing personal interests within a specific time frame rather than being a group of works displayed in a museum in order to illustrate a particular school, an historic era, or an art world polemic.

The works by Murray Louis and Kenneth Nolan are stained raw canvas and here they are credited with having begun that tradition although in other reading I had understood that Helen Frankenthaler was the first to do this. Her work here has some staining in the early stages of the development but she then continued with a heavier impasto. She has used a long thin rectangular format and has made it even thinner by painting a wide black area on one side. Two distorted large circles almost appear to be mirror images of one another and these circles are repeated in smaller sizes. There is a wonderful and powerful sense of action, surface and depth. The painting is very dynamic, much more so than others of her works which I often find too cloying with their watercolor-like, ephemeral prettiness. This had not only a motif of circles, but, over all, it had real balls.

Facing the de Kooning across the room was a Phillip Guston work, an abstraction which had the structure of a cubist painting, in which all of the elements rushed to and built up a complexity in the center of the format, leaving the surrounding sides less developed. This was very pale and seemed almost an out of focus flower garden, saved from complete prettiness by some dirty beige scrumbling. I’m not a Guston fan, especially of the late works, and if I had to choose something of his for myself it would be from this period.

The Hans Hoffman, essentially two green squares on a red ground, has a very strong sense of surface. The greens do not leap out as might be expected, but rather seem calmed and almost subsumed by the red. They rest and seem very slightly to hover. Near and far are suggested. Despite Hoffman’s usual six colors, three primaries and three secondaries, these do not seem to be “rich” colors. But neither are they juicy and so overall there is a rather Spartan sense of “making do” with this limited palette. There is less the sense of exploiting the richness of color than there is of an artist at work in his studio using color as a tool.

Hoffman is very good and I enjoy his work, observing how he creates a sense of balance through variation of the elements within what is usually a standard format, how he creates a sense of forms by altering the direction of the brush strokes, but I think, despite his adherence to color, generally minus white and black, that he is not a colorist, he seems far more interested in form and in using color to suggest form. And despite his influence, I think that he is not “major”. Hoffman’s work lacks depth: what you see is what you get. The work of one of his students next to his had a beautiful sense of color used to define the work. It was beautiful and juicy color. It was every bit as good as Hoffman’s if not a more satisfying visual experience.

On the other side of the Hoffman was a small work painted by Richard Artschwagle, “Bread”. On pressed wood the heavy surface texture was given a black over white finish with a shaded oval in the center indicating a loaf of the title. Eschewing the grandiose values of abstract expressionism, this small jewel holds its own amongst the larger works with accomplishment, talent, and wit.

In the smaller room outside, a Larry Rivers work, a portrait of his mother in law, was done in the large format. The figure, a line drawing, is seen reposing in a stuffed overlarge arm chair. It is excellently drawn but the areas indicated then became suggestions for the development of the color, as if the line and the color had been maintained as two separate elements. (Contrary to the Cezanne dictum: The color is the drawing.) Worked up primarily in a dusty rose and a pale olive green, with some orange flesh tones, the motif is there but the painting has its own presence and authority. It is a very, very nice painting. It is very human and very respectful. I have always liked Larry River’s work and I am always so sorry that he is not more highly regarded than his frequent omission in American museums seems to imply. If status were based on talent alone he would have his due.

Of the paintings I would think that the Robert Motherwell, Ode to the Spanish Republic, is the star turn. The black and the white are both very clean and very forthrightly stated, with the black appearing to have been dramatically imposed over the white ground. Although nothing but shape, the black is very visceral and evokes the sense of the genitalia of a Picassian bull, Spain. The ochre just to the side of the lower center edge is exactly the right color and the right amount of it. And, yes, this is the well known Motherwell iconic image. But the fact that it still provokes a powerful response, indicates, I believe, its validity and authenticity. The same cannot be said for the Marin watercolor, the Rothko color field painting nearby, or the rather too pretty Jackson Pollock Lavender drip painting.

There were some pieces of sculpture in this collection as well; most of it set at the quadrants within the room. Without exception they were welded metal, looking heavy, overwrought, and rather hostile. But then I don’t like sculpture. Neither, apparently, did the other visitors: almost everyone discovered these just before bumping into them. They leapt back and then walked around them without giving them further attention.

While this is a very good collection it would be difficult to determine that it is a great collection. This genre is widely represented in American museums where the works are presented one by each of the artists displayed. This collection too has one by each artist, unless there were others that were not shown here. For the most part the collectors have avoided what I think can be considered the clichéd utterances. All of the “right” names are included and many of the lesser known names have created works that stand as equals to those of the stars. It is a handsome group of paintings and shows a consistency of taste and discrimination. If I have any reservations it is that this represents a very brief moment in art history; it has depth in numbers but lacks breadth in the long term overview.

Another work in the smaller room was a really fine collage made of paper and fabric by a woman artist who, it was stated, had name recognition and fame during the time these works were collected but who, with the lessening dominance of abstract expressionism, faded from public awareness. I consider abstract expressionism as but one of many twentieth century ism and I am certain that even many of the well known names will someday take their place in the store rooms of the art world as well. Except for the Larry Rivers work I did not see anything in this collection that I thought would occasion a reappraisal of the movement as it is presently defined.

Wanting to know more, to answer the questions this exhibition raised, outside the gallery, at one of the Met’s ubiquitous sales kiosks, I considered buying the catalogue but in thumbing through it I was very surprised to see that the color of the reproductions was extremely garish and hardly representative of the beautiful colors in this collection. Therefore, at $50.00, I passed on it, despite the vigorous protestations of the salesclerk. But then, that is her job: to sell the books.