Painters Painting at Linda Warren
by Jeriah Hildwine
Stanley Lewis
Linda Warren is one of my favorite gallerists in Chicago, and I’m always excited when she has a new show opening. The current show, Painters Painting (with Paintings by Megan Euker in the project space) was particularly tantalizing; I am a painter in my own studio practice, and reserve the right to a certain bias in favor of my chosen medium. When I stopped by this afternoon for a sneak preview, I was not disappointed.
Stanley Lewis is a fine example of a painter who can also teach: the other artists in Painters Painting, Jeremy Long and Don Southard, as well as Megan Euker, have all studied under Lewis at some point. Stanley Lewis has several fine works in this show, but by far my favorite is his North Hampton Parking Lot from 2007. In reproduction this work looks much like any other expertly executed urban landscape, with cars, buildings, and trees rendered with gritty specificity. In person, however, Lewis’ work (like Staples’ at 65 Grand) takes on another physical dimension. The substrate seems built up of layered, collaged canvas, covered with oil paint laid on so thickly its gobs have shriveled as they dried. The entire surface has the wrinkled quality of an an elephant’s knee, an elbow, or a scrotum, which does not take away at all from the reality of the whole. The overall effect is one of the finest pieces of contemporary painting I’ve seen in recent memory.
Don Southard
Don Southard brings a modernist flatness to his subject matter of still lives and references to the Old Masters, Ingres, and Fayum mummy paintings. By far my favorites were his Fayum mummy paintings; the flat acrylic paint and restrained, subdued palette perfectly evokes the waxy encaustic surface of the originals from Roman Egypt. I recently saw an original example of these at the Milwaukee Art Museum, and Southard’s renditions are an excellent homage.
Jeremy Long
Jeremy Long’s large-scale realist compositions are closest to my own sensibility, and they are indeed impressive. More than mere verisimilitude, Long arranges elaborate domestic dramas and then uses them as a stage on which to play out spatial paradoxes, modernist compositional elements, and an awesome display of varied painting techniques. The surface varies from figures rendered with the layered care of the best traditional techniques, combined with some areas of the environment given only the most cursory surface of thin or uneven paint, without in any way feeling unresolved. The spitted chickens and the underlit bearded man in The Delivery (2009) are particularly compelling.
Megan Euker
Megan Euker’s New Paintings in the project space are also worth seeing. Like Southard, their subject matter is representational but rendered with a modernist hand. Her looseness is evocative of Eric Fischl, and her colors bright and nuanced. She is an excellent rounding-out of this excellent show of paintings, one of the best exhibitions I’ve seen in Chicago recently, and one of Linda Warren’s best yet.
I thought the show sucked, personally. Jeremy Long’s paintings are stiff and lifeless. Like paintings of mannequins instead of actual people. Some of the work looked like it was painted in the 20′s. Boring. The artists that were painting in the early 20th century did a fine enough job.
Well, “sucks” is a hell of a word, and that’s coming from the most flip, profanity-ladden art writer around. I reserve “the show sucked” for an entire vision of suckiness, from moldy cheese cubes, ackward job of curating the show, + a weak show.
hmmm, I didnt try the cheese.
Fresh cheese is a critical must-have. I also unconditionally pan shows if the floor is so crappy I can’t tell if it’s an installation.
Miguel,
I hear what you’re saying, and you’re not the only person I’ve talked to who wasn’t impressed with Jeremy Long’s paintings.
I ran into a friend and colleague who works in a somewhat similar way (figurative realist narrative paintings) on the 11th, and suggested she check out this show. She was similarly not impressed.
Her criticism was based less on the technical aspects of Long’s paintings, and more on his subject matter. I hope she won’t mind my anonymously paraphrasing her; in general her observations were that Long seemed to be overly reliant on art historical references (floor by Escher, a figure that looks taken from a Vermeer, I think were here examples), and clever visual “gimmicks” like the arm in the image above breaking the picture plane by paradoxically appearing to reach through the doorway the “wrong” way.
I don’t disagree with her, nor do I exactly disagree with your observations that Long’s figures seem somewhat stiff. You’re right, they do. They’re very obviously posed, and appear like, well, posed figures arranged, like still life objects, in a space. They’re not naturalistic, animated, or interacting in fluid and dynamic way.
I hadn’t thought about this before you pointed it out (and so I’m grateful for your insight), but in hindsight, it doesn’t ruin my enjoyment of the work. It does to some extent explain a certain limitation I felt in my engagement with the work: Long’s work does NOT function as an immersive space into which the viewer feels drawn.
Rather, Long uses realistically painted figures as compositional elements in what is essentially a modernist, abstract painting. I think that’s a key to understanding what this work is doing: it isn’t working as true realism, although elements of it are realistic. Rather, it’s basically a formal composition, just like the modernists were doing with abstraction in the 20th century, but using realistically painted figures.
Of course, this isn’t entirely new: formal compositional principles were as important to the Old Masters as they were to the Abstract Expressionists. The structure isn’t quite as obvious when realistic figures are used instead of abstract forms, but all the same rules are at play.
Long’s work isn’t revolutionary. It isn’t changing the way we look at painting. Personally, I’m not of the opinion that all painting needs to constantly redefine the entire paradigm in order to be worth looking at. But, as an essentially formal arrangement, using realistic figures in place of abstract shapes, I think they’re solid.
Lastly, I should add, I think they’re good, but also, I like them. They’re a type of work that appeals to me, personally, and so I’m a bit biased: I like good, complex, figurative realism. Long’s doesn’t tickle me as much as, say, Nicola Verlato’s, Gottfried Helnwein’s, or even the much-maligned Odd Nerdrum’s, but I still like it. This is a matter of personal taste, and not something I expect every viewer to share.
Jeriah,
I understand what you’re saying, but I just don’t find the work moving. If the artist’s concern is formalism, then why use the figure? I guess I think the work is cold and enjoy a more muscular, expressive sort of painting. I’ve not lived on Chicago very long, but Linda Warren but I always make it a point to stop at Linda Warren. This time i was surprisingly disappointed. To speak of the show itself, something thatt bothered me was that it was way over-hung. Why so much workk?
Miguel,
It is nowhere written that everybody has to like everything; if it doesn’t do it for you, in some ways that’s the end of the story. You do a good job of explaining why it doesn’t work for you, but ultimately, for each viewer, a piece either works or it doesn’t. This stuff doesn’t work for you, it does work for me, and that’s cool.
To answer your question, though, I think Long uses the figure for two reasons. I’m speculating here, but I feel pretty confident in making two claims: firstly, that Long, like many other artists today, was either taught or has come to his own conclusion that abstraction has to some extent run its course, and secondly, he probably really likes painting the figure.
Please note re: my first claim, that I am not myself asserting that there is nothing new to be done with abstraction. I do think that much abstraction today is repetitive or derivative of 20th-Century abstraction (see for example Carolyn Cole’s recent paintings and Hans Hoffman’s mid-20th Century work, currently on show side-by-side at Gallery KH, http://gallerykh.com/), and that an artist working abstractly today has a major challenge in finding truly new territory to explore. Depending on one’s point of view, one could say either that Long wasn’t up to the challenge of doing something new with abstraction, that he believed or recognized that there wasn’t anything new to be done, or that he simply preferred to work figuratively.
On my second point, that Long probably likes working figuratively: it is sometimes forgotten, in criticism, that an artist is an individual who follows his or her own personal vision. In critiquing work, we express disappointment or approval, affirmation or a belief that the artist should have done differently. But to make different work, the artist would have to be a different person. So, to paraphrase David Cross, “Jeremy Long’s got to do what’s best for Jeremy Long.”
None of this is to say in any way that a particular viewer is obligated to enjoy a given work of art, just because the artist was following his or her personal vision. I agree with you that the work is cold; I don’t mind that, and you do. That’s the difference between art and science, say: in art, there aren’t any answers at the back of the book.
As far as the show being over-hung, it was definitely denser on the walls than is usual in a gallery, and denser than Linda usually hangs her shows. (I’m with you, by the way, in that I always make it a point to catch Linda’s shows.) It’s probably Long’s fault; his two large paintings surrounded by smaller studies almost forced a salon-style hanging on the walls they occupy. It did feel very “full” but not in a way that bothered me. I have sort of a Baroque, opulent sensibility; I like a bit of over-stimulation.
Even my favorite galleries occasionally show work that doesn’t tickle me; I always give them the benefit of the doubt that their next show will be better. So, even if you didn’t care for this one, keep your eye on Linda Warren and see what she does next!