Category: Art Feature

Having grown up in Memphis during the 1970s, I have always associated Ted Faiers with his humorous work from that decade, figurative pictures that depict politicians, good ole boys, and the like as hapless boobs. The folkish paintings, from which 3-D pot bellies, limbs, and implements jut playfully and portraits stare doe-eyed, invite the perception of Faiers as strictly a regionalist. But the new exhibit of the artist’s work from the 1950s at the David Lusk Gallery suggests otherwise.

Faiers was born in England in 1908 and moved with his family to Canada as a teenager. It wasn’t until his early 40s that he began to pursue painting as a primary vocation. He studied first at the University of Alberta and then at the Art Students League in New York, where he met mentor Will Barnet and was introduced to “Indian Space,” a movement that bristled against abstract expressionism and sought to extrapolate from cubism. In a catalog essay for the Lusk exhibit, Bill Anthes, assistant professor of art history at the University of Memphis, says the Indian Space painters “found inspiration in indigenous sources: pre-Columbian Inca textiles from Peru and the paintings and carvings of the Northwest Coast.”

The paintings at Lusk are from a period just after Faiers’ arrival in Memphis in 1952 to the time he began teaching at the Memphis Academy of Art, and they bear the influence of Indian Space, characterized by what Anthes describes as “drum-tight, flat surfaces packed with ideographic patterns.” While vegetative or mechanical forms are often recognizable, narrative takes a back seat to the joys of bold form, brash color, and compositional equipoise.

In an artist statement from 1972, Faiers described this transition to the South as initially jarring, being designated “a damn Yankee” in his very first encounter with a Memphian: “My limited knowledge of the South indicated the Civil War was long over, but the roll of distant musketry had sounded behind me and I hastened my footsteps. I was in a land very new to me — I was alien, and this little incident underlined that fact. I had pulled up roots of long growth and was in the process of transplantation.”

Before coming to Memphis, Faiers’ paintings focused on landscape and the figure, but the “sense of detachment from an as-yet unfamiliar locale brought on a series of seemingly nonobjective works for which subject matter was drawn from the comfortable and familiar atmosphere of my current domestic environment — home and garden.”

The rendering in Faiers’ paintings, such as Concerning a Tree (1955), emphasizes what Barnet describes as a “love of purity and geometry in painting, the beauty of a flat surface, [and] a cohesive quality of structure and clear forms.” Bean pods and acorns, carpenters’ tools and aliens are skillfully delineated with serpentine ribbons of color. The distinct flavor of Faiers’ graphic mark as well as the palette of earthen olives, oxides, ochers, purples, and pinks are informed by the artist’s knowledge of the woodcut, a medium with which he was equally prolific during his career.

A real oddball in the show is Throne of a Martian King (1956). Straying from the block-print mode, it is a decidedly more painterly effort — swaths of translucent orange woven over a simple underpainting, behaving as a tart scrim. Orange Flight (1958) is from Faiers’ experiments with calligraphic line, influenced by the similar inquiry of pal and fellow teacher Burton Callicott. Around 1960, Faiers returned to a more obvious use of the figure, and Oh Oh Mama from 1962 depicts the hourglass torso and draped tresses of a nude. Of this period, Faiers remarked, “There had been much said in the 1950s of the ‘end of figurative painting’ and in the putting down of ‘social comment.’ I found some satisfaction in attacking these taboos.”

Faiers is remembered by longtime friend and patron Don Bennett as “very droll and self-effacing,” that he would “never brag about what he was doing or give the impression that he had answers” but that he did love “making fun of the world.” Callicott has said that “like Hogarth and Daumier, he was a keen observer of contemporary life and mores — and like them he had a special awareness for the comic and false.”

Several of the articles I found relating to Faiers express regret that the artist has been slow to receive proper acclaim. In a 1979 article from The Commercial Appeal, Faiers said, “In terms of art, Memphis is passive. There’s only a small group which understands or pays attention. People who have money are basically conservative. For artists, Memphis is a $200 town.” But lest one get the impression that he was miserable, he added, “I’ve been happy working here. I think it’s always been true that situations which seem adverse can be a creative stimulus to an artist.”

Through July 6th.

As artists and critics gravitate toward conceptual, often arcane modes of

expression, what relevance does painting have in

contemporary art? In a review of the painting-sparse 2002 Whitney Biennial in the April

29th issue of The Nation, critic Arthur Danto observed

that “whether someone can paint or draw is no more

relevant than whether they can sew or cook,” but

that being an artist today “consists in having an idea

and then using whatever means are necessary to

realize it.” Younger artists increasingly shun traditional

painting and sculpture in favor of photography,

installation, performance, and every new advancement

in digital technology. Consequently, artists who are

still devoted to the incremental gains of the studio are

often looked upon as stubborn Luddites.

No doubt, much of the contempt arises from

the very notion of the individual artist’s solitary

pursuit of art. In a recent lecture at the Memphis College

of Art, author and critic Suzi Gablik reiterated the

conventional wisdom that governs surveys like the Whitney, championing “socially conscious and

participatory” forms of art and suggesting that the

studio arts have long since exhausted themselves,

even applying PC hubris to the purveyors of visual

aesthetics as the “hegemony of the eye.”

But not every artist or ideologue complies with

that line of thinking, and alongside the reemerging

dialogue regarding beauty, a corresponding esteem for painting

is evident. If the local art houses are any indication

of painting’s status, it certainly shows no sign of

endangerment. The following lists some of the high points:

Jason Story: I asked Story what he thought of

Gablik’s lecture. “Not much,” he grumbled. “But then, I’m

an artist.” Story’s “Reverie” series at the University of

Memphis MFA Thesis exhibit is typified by a palette of

narcotic pinks, peaches, and plums as well as a reeling

flotsam of images. The collision of bubblegum color

and arbitrary form casts a blurry-eyed wink at digital

media and raised-on-TV information overload.

Larry Edwards: Everyone says “Pink

Flamingos and Other Animals” at Jay Etkin Gallery is a

tame show by Edwards’ incendiary standards, and while

no trademark severed heads make an appearance,

dark sentiments do abound. The artist painted this

year’s Memphis In May poster, and considering

Argentina’s financial and political upheavals of late,

perhaps Edwards’ sinister narratives are all too apropos.

The scorching pink and yellow hues of Misstep in the

Flamingo Room raise the temperature of the abject

violence depicted, even as a gaggle of nearby

flamingos passively ignores the aggression. One can only

wonder what issues inspired Abandoned Baby, which

depicts a swaddled infant helplessly lying in the

high grass as a horde of crows descends upon it.

Kathleen Holder: The pictures by Holder

currently on view at David Lusk Gallery are intended to

invite contemplation. The “Temenos” series embodies

elements germane to spiritual symbolism and meditative

absorption: bifurcated symmetry, monochromatic surfaces, and

elusive, ghostlike apparitions. The crimson that glows at the

center of Temenos V is seemingly illumined from within, and

what appears as a navel or nipple that one would swear is

embossed upon the surface of the plane is in fact illusory.

Bruce Brainard: Also at David Lusk Gallery, Brainard’s

traditional brand of landscape painting also invites contemplation but focuses

on the beauty and majesty of God’s creation. The sun dramatically

pierces the clouds at dusk in Evergreen

Skyline, a painting which showcases Brainard’s deft handling of the oil medium, especially with regard to

the simple yet deliberate à la prima technique. The artist exhibits this

same confidence throughout, but the perched orb of the sun in the middle

of Recognition, milking that same bifurcated symmetry, aims for

sacred profundity that comes off more as corny sentiment.

“In Celebration of Spring”:

The present show at Delta Axis @ Marshall Arts is also built around the tradition of the

landscape but much more loosely than Brainard’s work. For

instance, Arista Alanis’ pictures, like Six Blocks

Away, explode with Technicolor brashness and painterly crudeness and could

otherwise fall into the category of Ab-Ex painting but what

gorgeous surfaces. Susan Maakestad, on the other hand,

exhibits intellectual and emotional coolness in the simplification of

the landscape into horizontal sectors divided by a horizon.

John Dilg is likewise cool in Wilderness, in which a fallen tree

and stump are rendered with clinical precision. n

U of M MFA Thesis Exhibit through June 8th; Larry

Edwards at Jay Etkin Gallery through June 7th; Kathleen Holder and

Bruce Brainard at David Lusk Gallery through June 1st; “In

Celebration of Spring” at Delta Axis @ Marshall Arts through June 18th.

Manus manum lavat. (One hand washes the other.) — Petronius

The obvious role of politics in the uneven “Side by Side” show at the Memphis Brooks Museum of Art is so shameless it eclipses a serious discussion of the art. Any artist would, of course, be a fool not to accept an invitation to show at the Brooks, and the participants deserve no blame for accepting. Therefore, I apologize to them in advance for the following non-review.

“Side by Side” is predicated on “Departures,” which showed at the J. Paul Getty Museum in L.A. a couple of years ago. Regional artists were invited to create an artwork inspired by a piece in the Brooks’ permanent collection. The works were then installed alongside their inspirations, sprinkled throughout the museum, initiating a veritable Easter egg hunt that exposes viewers to the entire collection. But the invitational is stunted by the same old dull curatorial mandate to represent all constituencies, academic or otherwise. It begs the question: Has the committee that selects the annual Arts in the Park invitational found something to do in the off-season?

That’s harsh, you say? Back in 1998, a Fredric Koeppel review in The Commercial Appeal summed up Brooks’ 10-year retrospective of Arts in the Park under the subtitle “Dubious selection process degrades honorees.” Taking in the decade-long survey, Koeppel observed that, year after year, artists were not “chosen because they were essential, indispensable, and indisputedly talented, not because our community would be inconsolably diminished if they weren’t working in our midst, but because that year happened to be their turn.”

Little has changed about the prejudiced criteria Koeppel cited in his article; if anything, they are more firmly established. The regional artists selected for “Side by Side” are so boringly predictable, particularly in the deference paid to educational institutions. How not-so-ironic that, of the 32 artists invited to participate in “Side by Side,” Koeppel’s math in ’98 still applies perfectly today, in that “slightly more than half that number are (or were) teachers at Rhodes, U of M, the College of Art,” etc. Of course, the implication is that artist-teachers are ipso facto meritorious artists and that art institutions are the undisputed heart of the art community. If the world were just, it might be true, but the corollary between institutions and excellent art is circumstantial at best.

That fraction of “Side by Side” artists not typified by academic standing is conspicuously filled by one of several other categories equally irrelevant to compelling art. How about a shout out to the South Main Arts District? If Jay Etkin of Jay Etkin Gallery is in the first half of the exhibit, which he is, then, of course, the second half, opening this summer, must include Ephraim Urevbu, proprietor of Art Village Gallery across the trolley tracks from Etkin. Ironically, the calculated attempt in “Side by Side” to not leave anybody out uses up the opportunity for authentic diversity.

The cut-and-dried lineup of “Side by Side” is, with few exceptions, the easy choices, the obvious choices, and the same choices. Several contributors are veterans of the Brooks’ two other recent exhibits showcasing Mid-South artists — 2000’s “Do It,” in which an advisory panel of artist-managers enlisted artists to create work following the written instructions of famous artists like Yoko Ono, and last year’s excellent “Perspectives,” a juried survey of local art. “Perspectives” stands out because it benefited from the integrity of an outside curator and because persuasive art was what primarily motivated his selection process, as opposed to the unsuccessful outcome of “Do It”‘s trickle-down theory or the milquetoast boosterism of “Side by Side.”

The real casualty of the selection committee’s fixation with political correctness and inclusiveness is, as always, the art. That is not to imply that “Side by Side” doesn’t feature some estimable art, just that it is undermined by the equal regard paid to lesser efforts.High points like the stellar installation after Luca Giordano’s painting The Massacre of the Children of Niobe by Tom Lee of MCA or the exquisitely painted Café by U of M’s Jed Jackson are attended by a gnawing suspicion that their inclusion is founded on some pathetic notion of democracy rather than their individual contributions to the exhibit.

I wonder what works realists Kathryn Manzo, Marc Rouillard, or Adam Shaw would respond to in the museum if given the opportunity. Or whether the selection committee is familiar with Pam Cobb, Don Estes, Mark Gooch, Nancy Hall, Greg Haller, Jeri Ledbetter, Mark Nowell, Jonathan Postal, Frank D. Robinson, Brian Russell, and Johnny Taylor. Will Charlie Miller be recognized for his fabulous paintings in this lifetime? How about the young guns Bob Burdette, Brook Grant, Marci Brown-Frye, Jason Story, Emily Walls, and Tad Lauritzen-Wright? Is the best they can hope for is hocking their work at the Playhouse On the Square art auction?

Through June 9th.

Evening At the Improv

I recently found myself engaged in a mild argument following the slide lecture

and informal interview with renowned painter Lisa Yuskavage at the Brooks

Museum. The issue: Yuskavage’s refusal to engage in a discussion of gender

issues raised by the racy content of her paintings.

The artist presented images of work dating from the early ’90s to the present —

heaving bosoms and pursed lips of lounging seductresses cast in a soft-porn

afterglow, which inflamed lust, cynicism, or dry wit from those present. A

moderated interview that was supposed to follow the lecture never got off the

ground. Instead, Yuskavage drifted into a protracted shtick of self-deprecating

banter and intimate disclosures, punctuated by several well-timed gags from

giddy audience members. But for anyone desiring a full-frontal reckoning of her

use of negative stereotypes, the artist dismissed the subject with impunity.

The unapologetic explicitness of Yuskavage’s canvases follows a current in

culture and criticism that invokes the notion of women as libidinous, albeit

sovereign, beings. The Vagina Monologues by Eve Ensler, Tracey Emin’s

stained and disheveled My Bed, or the popular HBO series Sex In the City

present gendered themes which are perhaps antagonistic to patriarchy but are

more confessional than confrontational. Yuskavage’s stereotypical blond

bombshells, sporting baby-doll pouts and tan lines, are portrayed with tender

empathy or, more importantly, in the words of University of Memphis painting

professor Beth Edwards, “without irony.”

“She gets such impish joy from pushing your buttons,” says Darla Linerode-Henson

of Yuskavage, referring to the artist’s painted sexpots gazing banally into the

eyes of the viewer, her eye-popping primary-color schemes, and even the

artist’s public demeanor. Yuskavage gushed about how her “fancy” art dealers,

critics, etc. were obliged by their professions to repeat titles such as The

Asspicker and Motherfucking Foodeater “over and over and over.”

Likewise, she projected a Vermeer alongside pages from a ’70s-era Penthouse

to mumbles and nervous giggles, asking viewers to recognize the “Dutch light”

in Bob Guccione’s cheesecake photos.

Of course, subversive behavior is infectious, and one fellow, sensing slackened

mores, caught the artist off-guard with the compliment “Your tits have gotten a

lot better over the years.” Then a quavering voice behind me trumped that, to

riotous laughter, with “When you’re older, do you think you will still paint

such perfect breasts?” Such was the tenor of the evening.

But a young woman’s inquiry regarding pornography received a terse “I smell

theory in that question” from Yuskavage consistent with her attitude of leaving

ideology to the critics and not being pigeonholed by gender-rooted

interpretations of her provocative imagery. And her position is fundamentally

legitimate, barring one objection. The artist, brought to Memphis by the U of M

art department with the generous aid of Delta Axis’ Dr. James Patterson, asked

as a condition of her visit that Dr. Katy Siegel accompany her to conduct the

interview. Siegel, former faculty member at U of M, critic, and contributing

editor of Artforum, is one of Yuskavage’s ideological proponents and

wrote the essay “Local Color” for the artist’s monograph, which was

published concurrent with her retrospective at the Institute of Contemporary

Art in Philadelphia last year. For many, by not addressing the question she

dared the audience to pose (“Why are you so obnoxious?”) while courting her

critic, Yuskavage seemed to be denying the elephant in the room.

Gender-o-rama

Among the many attending the floor act at the Brooks was Allana Clarke, local

curator of “Venus Envy,” an event opening March 30th in both Memphis and St.

Louis featuring visual art and performance created exclusively by women. The

annual “celebration” began in 1999 in St Louis with a conviction that “women

are primarily responsible for perpetuating culture and strengthening the arts

in our world,” says “V.E.” founder and chairwoman Mallarie Zimmer. Memphis is

the first satellite city to observe the event, and organizers plan to expand

into other metropolises in the future. “V.E.” in Memphis promises to be a

treat, given the impressive lineup: Elizabeth Alley, Danita Beck, Brenda Fisk,

Jean Flint, Anastasia Laurenzi, the aforementioned Linerode-Henson, Carol

Harding McTyre, Annabelle Meacham, Leslie Snoke, Mel Spillman, Amanda Wood, and

Nanci Zimmer.

Clarke assures that, despite the “mature audiences” disclaimer in the

literature, the art in “V.E.” is “not as provocative as Yuskavage’s body of

work.” However, with the hoopla over the public art at the entrance to the new

library and the Memphis-Germantown Art League’s ridiculous hand-wringing over a

nude, Clarke, a recent graduate of Rhodes College, wouldn’t be surprised if

some were “offended by the tampon cross or bra-wearing feline.”

Linerode-Henson’s Emerge, exhibited at U of M’s juried student exhibit

earlier this year, is an anachronistic choice for the gender-conscious

theme: a writhing length of articulated pipe, tipped by an orange glass bulb,

dangling flaccidly from the wall.

Otherwise, says Zimmer, “V.E.” doesn’t have any axes to grind, insisting that

the enterprise cannot be reduced to any “political, religious, or sexual [huh?]

identity.” Clarke adds, “Some of the work has strong feminine content, some

work could be interpreted as sexual, and other pieces do not seem to relate to

women at all, except that a woman produced them.”

Such broad criteria beg the question: Does “Venus Envy” designate a theme so

ubiquitous as to dilute any urgency that the provocative moniker implies? Go

find out for yourself.

“Venus Envy,” 960 S. Cooper (at the corner of Cooper and Young), 7-9 p.m.

Saturday, March 30th.

Dying rednecks, Rebel flags, and off-road vehicles populate Colin McLain’s new batch of paintings, “Redneck Resume,” at David Lusk Gallery, while over at the Memphis College of Art, coinciding with Black History Month, the exhibit “Shadows & Silhouettes: The Dangerous Faces of Willie Cole and Juan Logan” explores identity, dignity, and oppression in the context of the African diaspora. And next I’m going to ask you to stick out your tongue and take your medicine. Not really, but that is often the perception of shows that adopt such grave and/or acerbic postures.

In the last few decades, there has been a prominent notion among artists, curators, art historians, etc., that art is a vehicle of social and political consequence, manifesting in dissections of gender, race, class, geopolitical issues, and almost anything else imaginable. There is, however, a flip side — a suspicion of art experiences that are supposed to be “good for you,” suggesting that such enterprises generally have a limited scope of cultural influence, remaining instead inside a privileged cocoon of the like-minded and self-congratulatory.

These two exhibits in particular couldn’t be more astringent to regional sensitivities and obsessions with race and class. McLain’s crudely drawn pickup trucks emblazoned with the Confederate battle flag and superimposed over fields of camouflage scream Deliverance. The use of the hotly disputed emblem by the artist is decisive, a recognition of its potency as “both a badge of Southern pride and an encapsulation of hate.” The work of Cole and Logan, referencing the systematic shuffling of African Americans into the lowest rungs of labor and society, is a heritage that many defenders of the Stars and Bars ironically wish could be left behind. “What is an inspiration for some,” intones McLain, “inspires fear and loathing in others.”

The attention showered upon “Shadows & Silhouettes” — including a swank dinner party for the artists, the purchase of Cole’s Man, Spirit, Mask by the Brooks Museum, and no less than three separate stories about the exhibit in the daily newspaper — is unprecedented in Memphis. The timing of the exhibit during Black History Month and the attendant fanfare perhaps hold more sway over the impact of the work of Cole and Logan than any single interpretation of its multifaceted content. Scholarship and reviews included in the press kit, plus coverage by the local media (“Two-man show reflects on racist vestiges”), seem to fixate on the exhibit’s sociopolitical signification above its other estimable qualities.

While there is no denying the identifying marks of ethnicity, the exhibit obviously weaves Western art values with African motifs, evident from the use of found objects, conceptual art, and a grab-bag approach to cultural appropriation that is positively postmodern. The exhibit, deftly curated by Cynthia Thompson, while not abandoning serious intellectual content, seems to follow a current in art that revels as much in visceral punch as refined craft. Logan’s Whose Song Shall I Sing? is a series of multiples, resin faces cast in soft, molten contours and coated with a velvety chocolate patina that resembles a delectable confection. The round jowls and puffy lips of this comical character, smiling in a gesture of appeasement and servitude, call to mind the archetypal Aunt Jemima or Step ‘n’ Fetchit, an identity created ultimately by ignoble white culture. However, the grid-like installation of dozens of masks is strictly modern, even clinical, transforming a benign, familiar caricature into a grinning menace.

Playfulness and a sense of humor characterize the work of Cole and Logan, taking the edge off of its serious content, an element that McLain also utilizes in his oil paintings to good effect. The artist is still making cartoons with bubblegum-color combos and comic-strip narratives, but we’re not talking Peanuts here. The inspiration for McLain’s slumping, lurching, and prone characters is Robert Capa’s photograph Death of a Loyalist Soldier, which captures a combatant at the moment he is shot during the Spanish Civil War, an image credited as being the first close-up photo of armed conflict. Similarly, Fugazi depicts an unfortunate redneck at the instant of his doom, his body seized by a bullet, leaving a trail of crimson.

As perplexing as the blending of rednecks, violent death, and the Sunday comics is, McLain continues to grow as a painter. Gone are the excessive drips and convoluted sloppiness of the earlier work; one might even suggest that the artist’s technique has become slick. Rather than the complementary and tertiary color relationships so characteristic of his prior work, the artist offers more complexity in his palette, even if it is still quite pungent. What hasn’t changed, thankfully, is his fresh approach to line, using the vernacular of the cartoonist to achieve deliciously painterly results à la Philip Guston.

Distilling what is essential about these two excellent shows is difficult in the shadow of their prickly or even incendiary themes. McLain’s convergence of incongruous motifs is enigmatic, perhaps purposely so, but, while one finds hot-button issues broached, no palpable stand can be discerned. Cole and Logan’s message is unequivocal, even while their symbolism is more poetic, but does it amount to preaching to the choir?

“Shadows & Silhouettes” through February 28th; “Redneck Resume” through February 23rd.

MAYOR JIM ROUT’S OFFICE. LOBBY, 160 N. Main Building. Showing through January: “Black and White and Read All Over,” work by Bob Burdette, Hamlett Dobbins, Kathleen Kondilas Franks, Clayton Marsh, Richard Napier, and Jonathan Postal.