黑料不打烊

When David Shapiro asked me for a text for this issue of the Rail I was driven to finish a couple of responses to exhibitions that were abandoned for lack of time but that I also knew had been taking off on their own in more or less opinionated ways. This should account for a certain culture-critical indulgence here in the first of these texts, concerning a provocative cultural theme with which some paintings by Leon Kossoff that I have long admired in their own right are at least indirectly concerned. For I have always especially liked Kossoff鈥檚 paintings and drawings of classical architecture subjected to extreme expressive torque鈥攊ncluding what long struck me as a quoted Poussinesque temple-front. But at Kossoff鈥檚 exhibition of paintings from the last two decades at Mitchell-Innes & Nash, in May and early June of 2011, it struck me for the first time that possibly all the paintings of this sort that I鈥檝e ever admired are in actuality renderings, in different views from different angles, of the same Nicholas Hawksmoor, Christ Church, Spitalfields, in London, of 1714 鈥� 29. Over and over again, apparently, Kossoff has painted this church in his somehow lyrically heavy, putty-like manner.

Asking myself why has led quite unexpectedly into a possible political iconography. A few years ago I, a former student, under Rudolf Wittkower, of just such British architecture as Hawksmoor, found myself standing in front of just this splendid building wondering, might there conceivably be a causal relation between its being said to have been lent for years to a Huguenot, i.e., Calvinist, congregation and its presenting itself, even after comprehensive restoration, in such a depressingly shabby state as I saw? (I now read on its website that the church had to be closed for structural deterioration in 1954 and was reopened in 1987 after a thorough restoration; but I could swear that I saw it after that locked up in unhappy condition.)    

Then I recalled, some years back, my disappointment at finding Fran莽ois Mansart鈥檚 Church of the Visitation, 1632 鈥� 34, in Paris鈥攑erhaps the best work by one of the very greatest of architects鈥攑adlocked in shocking and shameful disrepair. Contemplating this wonderful building from without, I noticed a sign explaining how it had been given over to the Huguenots, who obviously hadn鈥檛 used it for many, many years, nor even taken care of it. By then that would have included the fattest of fat cat capitalist bankers who, I recall, when Fran莽ois Mitterrand was elected with jubilation from the Left, sat him down in a smoke-filled room and told him what he would and wouldn鈥檛 be permitted to do.  

All this came together thanks to something I had just seen that spring in London, a few days before seeing Kossoff鈥檚 exhibition. Near Sir Christopher Wren鈥檚 St Paul鈥檚 Cathedral, I鈥檇 been standing beside Wren鈥檚 St. Nicholas Cole Hole Abbey, of 1678, which, after being wrecked in the Blitz, had been restored in 1961鈥� 62. However, for about the past 25 years, local Calvinists were allowed to use it; and now, padlocked, it too looked shabby enough to need another extreme rehabilitation, surely not at the expense of the Calvinists who had borrowed it, either.

Well, then, isn鈥檛 it possible that Leon Kossoff, with his open series of paintings of just this particular Hawksmoor church in his home town, has possibly managed to put his finger on a certain hotspot in the political culture of the contemporary Calvino-capitalist world, namely the pseudo-ethical obligation to take advantage and exploit (often the term is 鈥渄evelop鈥�), to which nobody seems to dare to point? There now, I鈥檝e said it, provoked, at least to my eyes, by Kossloff鈥檚 art. But there will be no contradiction in my saying that even as the possible political implication of the motif comes to the fore, Kossoff鈥檚 various renditions under the title Christ Church, Spitalfields strike me as fully artistically engrossing as ever. The show had three impressive examples. The largest, Christchurch, Spitalfields (1999) I found really thrilling; with a skidding perspectival plunge along the church鈥檚 left flank.

I don鈥檛 see any reason to be disappointed if work I have long admired turns out also to have ideological implications with which I can at least concur, so long as I am not simply projecting. Obviously I have to wonder if my inference holds water; and I did find some secondary confirmation in this exhibition insofar as another category of paintings inter-hung with the 鈥淐hrist Church鈥� ones, concerned natural structural, though not architectural, decrepitude, using the motif of an old cherry tree in the artist鈥檚 garden, whose branches have come to require propping up, as if by walking canes. The partly parallel theme actually helped to avoid the possible aesthetic difficulty, once one was put in mind of the problem of building maintenance, of a thick, funky paint job being simply punningly equated with a broken-down building. For in their own right Kossoff鈥檚 thick smudgy stuccos of paint, memorably mauled in dirtied whites, are anything but decrepit. Perhaps they have something more reflective than merely reflexive to do with the generally decrepit state of the world鈥檚 dominant, if not quite sole, political economy.

Admittedly, Kossoff鈥檚 paintings may have stimulated my thinking inadvertently, though once we acknowledge that a painter is painting the very same motif so repeatedly, not to say obsessively, iconographical curiosity, to say the least, is definitely in order. Well, is even my favorite Christ Church, Spitalfields (1999) editorializing; and should that be okay? The painting is doing its job as a work of art by holding itself open to meaning, as we like to say so glibly when nothing much is at stake; and I as interpreter am permitted to risk projection so long as I account for myself.

I have to add that Leon Kossoff is the only significant painter I鈥檓 aware of for whom the literal weight, the sheer avoirdupois, of the painting might be noted immediately after its date, materials, and dimensions. The true bottom line is that he can get away with this because, thanks to a driving poetic idea, the sheer stuff of the thing, its gross materiality, its bulk, which so many Americans take as positive by definition, if not almost as absolutely good as money, never has the upper hand. But Kossoff鈥檚 hefty poundage of paint is thoroughly subsumed into a primarily aesthetic, but also maybe unexpectedly culturally political, magic effect.


 

Speculative Response To Latterday F枚rg

 

This last January-to-February I was too thoroughly preoccupied with other writing to respond to an exhibition by another major European painter, G眉nther F枚rg at the Greene Naftali Gallery. Twelve paintings from 2007 鈥� 09 represented two categories of work, one of which engaged me more, at first, though both appealed to me by the intelligence of their different modes of evidently gracious ease鈥攁s sophisticated unalienated work as anything but all-American labor-intensive. Writing now from on-site but cryptic notes more than six months old, plus a few on-line photographs, maybe it鈥檚 not such a bad thing that there is a practical constraint on labor-intensive description.

The paintings that were so easy to fall for that I thought something might be wrong are large, pleasantly lyrical white fields sporting arrays of patches of unashamedly pretty colors. But somehow it would have seemed unfair to accuse these works of being conservative inversions, as it were, of the American 鈥渓yrical abstraction鈥� of color-field painting, as if the spots of color were too European-reserved to bust out of the traditional role of contained motifs. But does everything have to be a pushy brass band? At least as elegantly as in American maxi-staining, F枚rg鈥檚 small patches of parallel strokes of one or two colors show themselves as micro-structurally articulate, rather than making a spectacle of 鈥榩ushing鈥� the structural 鈥榚nvelope.鈥�

If they are to be accused of traditionalism, however, let it be of a distinctly modern tradition. These works evoke a device important in Jasper Johns: the taches of pigment that build up into patches, which in Johns鈥檚 early work itself already evoked C茅zanne; and the build-up of such into a textile-like patchwork. (How strange, today, to see serious artistic 鈥渋nfluence鈥� or allusion, which once entailed respect and homage, presumed to be a marketing ploy.) F枚rg also engages with the modernist legacy by spreading out a white field that manages to be no inert graphic ground but an expanse of Malevichian 鈥渃osmic鈥� sky, in virtue of which his patches of color strokes float loosely without losing cohesion鈥擬alevich might have said, as if in a magnetic field.

  The easygoing grace of the result may threaten to trouble us Americans. In one unrepentantly lovely 鈥淯ntitled鈥� painting of 2007 the color patches trail like wisteria; and we can鈥檛 like Whistler and pretend we mustn鈥檛 like it. But if a certain languor generally holds sway, it seems less American-sentimentally nature-bound than, say, the loose twiggy arbors of mid-career Brice Marden. Other paintings show an intensity of intuitive color combination in their patches and then arrays of patches that seems intent to go beyond being quasi-floral spots. In fact, F枚rg shows a tendency, within his improvisational looseness, to go for a presumably incompatible color, sometimes but not necessarily the official 鈥渃omplementary.鈥�

As soon as I try to generalize I notice something peculiar to a given work. Take another of the same year in which some patches coalesce, like clouds just convening, out of strings of patches of strokes, including some patches of black. A four-square block of four of these, three green (with two of one green and one of another) and one qualified rose (?), almost juxtapose with a raggy crayoned netting of black lines, the only lines besides a nearby signature. I am aware of having to push myself just to account for a few of the more structural incidents as well as the plays of color, with overlaps of kindred or opposed tones, which give the resultant 鈥渨eb鈥� something like the consistency, percussively inflected, of modernist chamber music.  

At the same time, the virtually gaseous looseness of these images puts me in mind of a difficulty with the ever so practical 鈥渆mpirical鈥� worldview, namely, a presumptuous sense of 鈥渆xtension鈥� that doesn鈥檛 extend well to liquids and gases but only to doltishly law-abiding solids. How can these open, easygoing images look at once soft and concrete? By somehow making hue as well as pigment seem physical.  Even Wittgenstein鈥檚 鈥淩emarks on Colour鈥漰artakes of an especially British blundering over this distinction by constantly falling back on the term 鈥榗olor鈥� (die Farbe) without distinguishing hue and pigment鈥攁s when, over there, people speak of a 鈥渂ox of colors,鈥� which to us might as well equate with speaking of a basket of smells. I once tried to tackle this problem, which must condition whatever the Austrian gentleman is saying; but assaying each use of the one word in both languages was fruitlessly tedious. I wish I鈥檇 thought to ask F枚rg about this at the opening, where I did have the pleasure of meeting him.   

Besides the lyrical paintings, a few of the works shown were of a muddy blackish gray type too articulated, as with Reinhardt, to take as monochromes. Their fields are divided in various ways into rectilinear trellises too irregular to count as grids, whether by trailing a brush through wet paint or in seemingly overlapping, also brushy, rectangles. In their own right, as boldly smeared, as well as for the painter鈥檚 cultivation of two modalities side by side, they evoke Gerhard Richter. And as a group these variously distinct dark canvases of F枚rg, almost compensatorily somber compared with his lyrical type, look curiously photographic in a now technically obsolete and 鈥渁rchival鈥� analog-materialist sense: especially like 鈥渆xperimental鈥� double negative, direct deployments of light-darkened printing paper.

My notes are sparse, pretty sketchy; but I think I can testify that one 鈥淯ntitled鈥� work from 2009 seemed nearly and merely so. Others I found more engrossing, such as a big, loose structure whose thin light blackness allows for a play between 鈥渁dded dark鈥� and what turned out light in the way an overloaded brush can wipe away more than it deposits; or a structurally tight one, comprised of an irregular grille of rectilinear bands possibly laid down with about an inch-and-a quarter brush, not so somber but no pushover either. These unrepentantly blackish paintings which aren鈥檛 so immediately appealing as the others have grown on me since seeing them. They even have me thinking that it ought to be interesting to see what happens to the often simplistic 鈥渕aterialist鈥� cult of photography over and against painting, in the last generation, now that photography is completely independent of, not to say divorced from, material.