Art & Art History
Tragic and Timeless Today: Contemporary History Painting
Artists: Milet Andrejevic, Roger Brown, Leon Golub, Komar and Melamid, James McGarrell, Nancy Spero, and Mark Tansey
Tragic and Timeless Today: Contemporary History Painting presents seven artists whose works in this exhibition extend and revise history painting, starting with its traditional definition – figurative, didactic and grand scale. The original practitioners of this noblest of genres, members of 17th – through – 19th century European art academies, sought subjects in history, mythology and contemporary life which taught universal, “timeless” truths about human nature; their work aimed at public education rather than private enjoyment. This exhibition featured works by contemporary artists, whose work acknowledges this long-rejected tradition and who sought to modernize it through a variety of styles and strategies. Presenting paintings by Milet Andrejevic, Roger Brown, Leon Golub, Komar and Melamid, James McGarrell, Nancy Spero and Mark Tansey, Tragic and Timeless Today offered some of the most talked about artists on the New York and international scenes along with painters enjoying somewhat quieter acclaim.
This exhibition was about a contemporary resurgence of “history painting,” a tradition long thought to have withered after the triumph of the avant-garde in the late 19th century. Defined in the 17th century as the highest category of painting, ranking above landscape, genre, portraiture and still life, the “grand style” is best embodied in the gravely dignified pictures of Nicolas Poussin and in works by 18th century academic masters such as Jacques-Louis David. History painting is figurative and didactic, drawing its subjects from historical chronicles as well from literature, the Bible and other sacred texts, and classical mythology. Human narratives depicted by means of spare, grandly paced compositions are meant to teach timeless moral truths. Just as Greek tragedy aims at effecting a catharsis that is meant to leave the members of the audience better human beings, so history paintings is intended to uplift the consciousness of the viewers.
The seven artists who were presented in this exhibition used methods ranging from the heroic to the parodic, and they each responded to different aspects of the tradition.
In the “postmodern” climate of the late 1980s, the taboos of earlier twentieth century art were disintegrating. Just as figuration had earlier returned under the guise of photorealism, so too did didactic public art. The artist’s task no longer began with the tabula rasa — wiping the slate of history clean in the quest for more primal, profound forms of expression. But rather, seekers after enduring truth through art once again began to make use of materials lodged in centuries of western literature and art. Artists who had ignored reigning formalist trends during the 1960s and 70s finally began to gain recognition and an art world context for their work.
The seven artists who were presented in this exhibition used methods ranging from the heroic to the parodic, and they each responded to different aspects of the tradition. Some, including Leon Golub and Nancy Spero, maintain history painting ’s original sociological and didactic intent; ultimately, they want to change the way we live and think. Others demonstrate quieter aims; Milet Andrejevic invokes the noble tradition of Poussin in order to demonstrate continuity between past and present – thereby ennobling our day. The huge scale of James McGarrell’s paintings belie their profoundly personal content; he turns majestic Baroque painting conventions upside down in order to express the present psychic instability with sweeping subjectivity.
Utilizing the military metaphors that characterize discussions of “advanced art,” Mark Tansey enacts mock battles (The Triumph of the New York School) and “illustrated” allegories of Modernism. The Russian ex-patriot pair Komar and Melamid also uses parody to debunk the “heroic” Socialist Realist tradition in which they were trained. Roger Brown’s cartoon-like style cannot mask his serious visual commentary on the omnipresent nuclear threat and America’s weakening position in global politics.
Huge unstretched canvases by Leon Golub, which treat rioting ghetto dwellers or mercenaries, forces the audience to confront its own complacency in the face of injustice and cruelty. Nancy Spero invokes the presences of weak and strong women throughout the ages. The cumulative rhythm of her goddesses and tortured women dancing across fragile paper scrolls become a “herstory” – a female alternative to male-dominated “history,” and to the heroic tradition of history painting.
In James McGarrell’s and Milet Andrejevic’s paintings, pastoral visions are inflected with history and echoes of grandeur. McGarrell’ s huge multi-paneled work shows the artist creating his own panoramic reality on the expansive scale of heroic painting. Andrejevic ’s smaller pictures dignify New York ’s Central Park with classical allusions.
A small, illustrated catalogue accompanied the exhibition.
EXHIBITION ESSAY
Tragic and Timeless Today: Contemporary History Painting
(author)
This exhibition is about a contemporary resurgence of “history painting,” a tradition long thought to have withered after the triumph of the avant-garde in the late nineteenth-century. Defined in the seventeen-century as the noblest category of painting, above landscape, genre, portraiture and still-life, the “grand style” is best embodied in the gravely dignified pictures of Nicolas Poussin and works by 18th-century academic masters such as Jacques-Louis David. History painting is figurative and didactic, drawing its subjects from historical chronicles as well from literature, the Bible and other sacred texts, and classical mythology. Human narratives depicted by means of spare, grandly paced compositions are meant to teach timeless moral truths. Just as Greek Tragedy aimed at effecting a catharsis that would leave the members of the audience better human beings, so history paintings would uplift the consciousness of the viewers.
History painting is by definition a public art; it is meant to go beyond the viewer’s aesthetic pleasure and the artist’s involvement with his medium. Ultimately, the aim is to inspire worthy behavior through heroic example. The hero is someone “whose noble body sheathed a soul shining with virtue and whose exploits could serve as a model and as an ideal” 1. Grand manner painting emphasizes the continuity of western tradition, especially as embodied in classical mythology and antique art.
Until recently, history painting appeared to be an obsolete category. The commitment to building on the past vanished in the face of Modernism’s unswerving orientation toward the future. The very idea of the hero has lost all meaning in the twentieth century. Art, especially painting, has undergone a “privatization” process — so that the artist’s inner vision is celebrated above all else, and communion with the art work takes place in the home of the individual owner. Even museum settings for pictures encourage contemplative aesthetic journeys, and are not meant ultimately to lead outward into the sphere of worldly action. The most compelling mission of art has been the realization of formal purity, expressed by abstract means. For the most part, artists avoided treating such extra-formal issues as politics, modern myths and heroes, even art history.
In the present “postmodern” climate, the taboos of earlier twentieth-century art are disintegrating. Just as figuration had earlier returned under the guise of photo realism, so now does didactic public art. The artist’s task no longer begins with the tabala rasa — wiping the slate of history clean in the quest for more primal, profound forms of expression. But rather, seekers after enduring truth through art once again make use of materials lodged in centuries of western literature and art. Artists who had ignored reigning formalist trends during the 1960s and 70s finally gain recognition and an art world context for their work.
This exhibition presents seven artists whose work acknowledges the long-rejected grand manner and seeks its modernization through a variety of styles and strategies. Using methods ranging from the heroic to the parodic, they respond to different aspects of the tradition. Some, including Leon Golub and Nancy Spero maintain its original sociological and didactic intent; ultimately, they want to change the way we live and think. Others demonstrate quieter aims; Milet Andrejevic invokes the noble tradition of Poussin in order to demonstrate continuity between past and present –thereby ennobling our day. The huge scale of James McGarrell’s paintings belie their profoundly personal content; he turns majestic Baroque painting conventions upside down in order to express today’s psychic instability with sweeping subjectivity.
Modern day history, including acts of war and public violence, race riots, presidential politics and world leadership is the subject of much of this art; clearly the taboo against artists trafficking in politics is gone. Indeed, these “history paintings” are just one sign of artists’ growing engagement in current events — others include Hans Haacke’s mixed-media critiques of corporate imperialism and many “deconstructive” responses to the mass media. Yet very few artists present instantly accessible points of view on current events. Satire, parody and deliberate ambiguity maintain a critical distance from the topical subjects. Even Golub, master of the visual critique against war and social injustice, seemingly garbles his message by heroicizing the mercenaries he abhors through the use of grand scale. These intentionally mixed signals are also very evident in Roger Brown’s presidential portraits and in Komar and Melamid’s invocations of Hitler and Stalin. The artists’ shared aim is to provoke the viewer to personally engage with the issue at hand.
Postmodernism does not mark the end of Modernism’s selfconsciousness about style. Rather a host of older, “abandoned” modes regain Viability. And Modernism itself is undergoing renewed scrutiny as an “historical event.” Seeking to separate the mythology from the artifacts of 20th-century art, Mark Tansey recreates the metaphorical “triumphs” of the New York School as actual occurences. On the other hand, Roger Brown — ever the man-of-the-people — warns fellow artists against lapsing back into obsolete stylistic modes. Komar and Melamid, since leaving the Soviet Union in 1978 and moving to the U.S., show the same deft ability to imitate recent “American” avant-garde styles as they have demonstrated with Socialist Realism. Nancy Spero collapses all of art history into long paper scrolls. She invokes goddesses from past ages to mourn centuries of injustice and to celebrate the dawn of a new age. Her very choice of fragile and impermanent paper as medium subverts the “heroic” tradition of history painting.
Tragic And Timeless Today is not about a straight-forward revival of a tradition defined by 17th and 18th-century European art academies. All postmodern, these pictures cannot offer simple messages to edify the public. Formalist self-consciousness is irrevocable; no artist can again assume the unified climate of belief on which purely didactic paintings depend. Each artist in this exhibition is profoundly aware that the “meaning” of a picture is determined not just by the choice of subject but by the invocation of particular representational conventions. therefore underlines the fact that history
painting, relying on a long disused, despised set of conventions, has been brought back selectively in the late twentieth century, to achieve its original aims — to teach, to comment, to ennoble.
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1. Walter Friedlander, David to Delacroix (Cambridge, Mass: 1952), 7.
MEDIA COVERAGE
Review: “Contemporary History Painting” James Yood, New Art Examiner, April 1987.
EXHIBITION SUPPORT
Tragic and Timeless Today: Contemporary History Painting is supported by the University of Illinois at Chicago School of Art and Design’s College of Architecture, Art and Urban Planning.
This exhibition is also funded by grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Illinois Arts Council, a state agency.
Tragic and Timeless Today: Contemporary History Painting
Essay by Laurel Bradley
Gallery 400, School of Art and Design,
University of Illinois at Chicago, 1987
24 pp., 8.25 x 10 in., with black and white reproductions
This catalogue can be purchased for $XX.00 plus shipping by calling Gallery 400 at 312 996 6114.
EXHIBITION CHECKLIST
Milet Andrejevic
The Fountain, 1981
Oil, egg tempera on canvas, 36 x 50 in.
Study for “The Three Girls”, 1979
Oil/egg on canvas, 22 x 19 in.
The Three Ages of Man, 1976
Egg, oil tempera on canvas, 40 x 50 in.
Roger Brown
Beware of Artists Bearing Myths, 1986
Oil on canvas, 48 x 72 in.
Chicago Hit By the Bomb, 1985
Oil on canvas, 48 x 72 in.
The Decline & Fall of the American Empire, 1985
Oil on canvas, 48 x 72 in.
Presidential Portrait, 1986
Oil on canvas, 48 x 72 in.
Leon Golub
RIOT II, 1983-84
Acrylic on canvas, 120 x 172 in.
Komar and Melamid
The Judgement of Paris, 1985-86
Oil and acrylic on canvas, 60 1/4 x 69 1/4 in.
The Third Empire, 1983
Oil on wood nine wooden boards, 13 1/2 x 11 in.
James McGarrel
Spots: Near Distance, 1984-85
Oil on canvas, 10 panels, 110 x 176 in.
Nancy Spero
ARTEMIS II
Hand-printing, collage on paper, 3 panels, 64 x 110 in.
ELEGY II, 1983
Hand-printing, painting, collage on paper, 108 x 20 in.
Mark Tansey
Action Painting II (oil sketch), 1984
Oil on canvas, 40 x 58 in.
Judgement of Paris, 1982
Oil on canvas, 72 x 120 in.
The Triumph of the New York School (oil sketch). 1984
Oil on canvas, 42 x 66 in.
PRINT COLLATERAL
Postcard: Tragic and Timeless Today: Contemporary History Painting