Go Figure: Contemporary Art's Dilemma

Ambiguity often distinguishes good art from great art. By attempting to simplify the state of contemporary art into two distinct camps, the Carpenter Center’s show “Some Options in Abstraction” and its currently-showing sister “Some Options in Realism” are in a double bind. Such categorization of art—while perhaps useful and necessary for its understanding—runs the risk of destroying a work’s subtlety and mystery. The compelling works that make up the show are strong on their own, but they often seem limited by the blanket term “realism,” which fails to recognize the myriad issues at hand.

In a society wracked by over-consumption, consumerism, self-image and physical obsession, works dealing primarily with issues of figuration and the body are especially relevant. They hold together as perhaps the most coherent and complete segment of the exhibit. Comprised of paintings by Richard Phillips and Jenny Saville, a photograph by Charlie White, and a sculptural triptych by Louise Bourgeois, the group provides a thorough investigation of female bodily concerns and dilemmas inherent in feminine sexuality.

Jenny Saville’s “Brace” (1999) is the most jarring and provocative of the works displayed. This enormous painting confronts the viewer with the looming image of what appears to be a grotesque mockery of the female form. With her painfully distended neck, puffy and veiled eyelids, stub-like nose and hairless head, it is difficult to determine whether her expression is one of miserable resignation or of defiant helplessness. Her androgynous body is bloated and motionless. Her paradoxically lush and painterly style enhances the painting’s macabre and moribund tone. The pallid fleshy hues that dominate Saville’s palette and the thick, deliberate way in which she applies these colors contribute to an overall sense of impotent frustration and internal rage. The subject is clearly a victim, but is unclear who the victimizer is—perhaps internal mutilation or societal abuse.

In Charlie White’s photograph “Friday Night,” a tanned, blond housewife in a dowdy, powder blue night gown, aggressively kneads a raw shank of meat into the pristinely white carpet of her suburban home. Her furrowed brow, clenched teeth, and planted thighs represent a hostile determination. In an opening night lecture, Charlie White suggested that this woman is pounding a part of herself into the floor.

Louise Bourgeois’s triptych, “Obese Bulimic Anorexic” (2001), deals with similar issues of control, self-loathing and aggression in a slightly more obvious way. Composed of stuffed, flesh colored stockings, her figures resemble homemade dolls, maybe even a variant of the voodoo doll or a reference to the fertility goddess, the Venus of Willendorf. The three figures play out an ambiguous progression of weight gain, emotional trauma and aging. Their armless bodies are scarred with seams betraying surgery, deformity or self-mutilation.

Richard Phillip’s “Untitled (Smiley)” (2000) evokes billboard and pop art. This adolescent ingenue looks down on the viewer with an insouciant sneer that recalls a mix between a 1960s beach babe pin-up and a Rosenquist parody of American pop culture. The blaring yellow happy face placed like an enormous sticker over her nipple confronts the viewer with its insistent smile.

A brief glimpse into some compelling issues in landscape is provided by two photographs by Hiroshi Sugimoto, and a painting by Wayne Thiebaud. For Sugimoto, the landscape is a stark and stripped down depiction of solitude and metaphysical expanse. His black and white photographs contain a palpable sense of isolation and alienation that combine in a deafening silence. The deliberate absence of figures establishes tension between the perceived serenity and implied longing. The elegant simplicity and minimalism is indicative of Sugimoto’s cultural roots in Japanese aesthetics.

By contrast, Thiebaud’s painting, “Diagonal Ridge,” is a whimsical meditation on the visual challenges of representing space. This piece is less wedded to its specific subject matter than to the actual process of painting, particularly the process of translating space onto a resolutely flat surface. Thiebaud engages the painting in a play between spatial illusion and material flatness, where large geometric expanses of color dance with the more delicate details that split the picture plane. The viewer is delighted by the use of a playful assortment of colors and an almost comical progression of tree clusters that bounce across the canvas with life and personality.

The remaining photographs and paintings are more difficult to categorize as they straddle figurative and landscape art, and thus can be characterized by the conflict or harmony of the figure’s interaction with landscape. There are three photographs—by Collier Schorr, Gregory Crewdson and Todd Hido—and three paintings—by Tim Gardner, Elizabeth Peyton and Catherine Murphy. The Schorr is a literal and picturesque depiction of man in nature. The Crewdson and Hido photographs are interesting views of the domestication of landscape and the superposition of natural elements and images of suburbia.

In keeping with this dialogue of natural features and man-made structures is Gardner’s deceptively simple painting showing snow-spattered mountains in meticulous detail. In the lower left corner, he slyly inserts the serpentine curve of a highway encroaching on the majestic landscape. Elizabeth Peyton’s “Queen Elizabeth II with Her Dogs at Balmoral” (2002) is a small light-hearted scene painted in large, broad strokes and dominated by an acid, neon green background.

Catherine Murphy’s “Cardboard Palette” (2001), which seems utterly different from the others, corresponds indirectly in that it is a trompe l’oeil residue of the painting process. This enlargement of the artist’s palette, with its convincing globs of paint and glistening highlights, morphs into a created landscape of its own equipped with ridges, valleys and plains.

The exhibit provides an informative and thought-provoking look at the myriad functions of realism in contemporary art. Each work deserves extended viewing and often demands a modicum of patience in order to unravel its meaning and appreciate its implications as interpretations on the timeless conflict of representing the world we inhabit.

visual arts

Some Options in Realism

Carpenter Center for Visual Arts

Through Apr. 14