Colleen Barry, Black Hat, 2018.
For today’s art establishment (including once-conservative institutions such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Morgan Library), contemporary art must be radically “new”—the more unprecedented or deskilled in form and transgressive or inscrutable in content the better.1 An intrepid group of dedicated contemporary artists begs to differ, however. They are the largely neglected painters and sculptors known as Classical Realists. Devoted to continuing in the grand tradition of Western art since the Renaissance, they spend years honing their craft, striving to be worthy of the estimable predecessors who inspire them.2
The Unbroken Line: Old and New Masters [online catalogue], a modest exhibition at the Robert Simon Fine Art gallery (a stone’s throw from the Met) through June 8, begins to give them their belated due at last. As the title implies, it juxtaposes work (mostly portraits and still lifes) by faculty and recent graduates of the Grand Central Atelier with pre-modernist paintings and drawings from the gallery. (GCA is one of the many ateliers that have been created in recent decades to provide the sort of classical training generally missing from academic BFA and MFA programs these days.) The juxtaposition demonstrates that these relatively young artists clearly hold their own alongside the Renaissance and Baroque work Robert Simon specializes in.
Simon, by the way, is the art historian who discovered and identified the lost Salvatore Mundi by Leonardo that sold for a record-breaking sum last year. So he knows a thing or two about the finer points of “fine” art. The idea for this unprecedented exhibition came to him after he had enrolled as a student at Grand Central to improve his understanding of the technical side of painting, a peripheral aspect of his training as an art historian. The quality of the work he saw at GCA so impressed him that he proposed this show, which he curated with two GCA artist-instructors—Colleen Barry and Anthony Baus (both b. 1981). Barry and Baus selected works from the atelier, which Simon then paired with “sympathetically similar” images from his stock.
These Comparisons Are Not Odious
Justin Wood, Sea Bass, 2018.
An especially apt pairing was of Sea Bass by Justin Wood (b. 1982)—at the right—with A Still-Life “Pronk” by Joris van Son (b. 1623). For me, the recent work loses nothing by the comparison, and is even more appealing in its relative simplicity—as good as anything by the still-life master Chardin. Though I’ve never been a fan of dead-fish paintings, Wood’s sea bass is compelling in its plump iridescence, as is the huge brass pot standing ready to receive it. Two other still lifes by Wood in the show are also of impressive quality.
A more unexpected juxtaposition placed David—an unpretentiously secular contemporary portrait by Jacob Collins (b. 1964), GCA’s founding force—next to Christ Blessing by Vittore Carpaccio (b. ca. 1465-70). Notwithstanding the works’ vastly different significance, they demonstrate the riveting power of a direct frontal gaze.
Anthony Baus, Study for an Allegory, 2018.
Mastery of the human figure is evident in two drawings by Baus—Nude in attitude of defeat and Study for an allegory—alongside seventeenth-century drawings by Benedetto Luti and Francesco Monti, respectively.
But the strongest suit of the show is portraiture. Especially fine are the examples by Barry—most notably, Black Hat and Portrait of the Artist’s Mother—sensitive depictions of pensive youth and somewhat worn and wary age. Also striking are Portrait of a Young Woman by Rachel Li (b. 1995) and an untitled portrait by Will St. John (b. 1980), side by side with a similarly toned seventeenth-century Bolognese Portrait of a Boy.
Despite their evident similarities with earlier art, each of the new works is a unique take on aspects of humanity or things we value. Most significantly in today’s context, each subject is endowed with a degree of gravitas. Moreover, these paintings and drawings are as fresh and important now as the comparable works from the past were in their day. Only the foolish modernist insistence on originality at all costs would prompt the dismissive judgment “It’s been done” regarding such contemporary work in a traditional vein.
Can it be a hopeful sign that curators from the Metropolitan Museum were spotted in the crowd at the show’s opening? Might they have carried word back to their esteemed institution suggesting that its view of “contemporary art” needs revising?
The Establishment View of Contemporary Art
As one might expect, the establishment view—in sharp contrast with the work shown at Robert Simon—is widely shared by art critics, including members of the International Association of Art Critics (AICA), to which I was recently admitted. Last month I attended the annual meeting of AICA’s U.S. section, at the offices of The Brooklyn Rail. I alternated between feeling like Daniel in the lion’s den and the fox in the henhouse.
On the way to the meeting from the subway station, a longtime AICA member, Suzaan Boettger, struck up a conversation with me. An art historian who teaches at Bergen Community College, she specializes in “environmental art,” having written the book Earthworks: Art and the Landscape of the Sixties—regarded as the “definitive history” of such work by the New York Times Book Review. I, on the other hand, consider “earthworks” to be one of the sixties’ anti-art phenomena, a topic for sociology perhaps but not for “art history.”
Other AICA members I met included Kaoru Yanase, visiting from Japan, where she serves as chief curator of the Nakamura Keith Haring Collection. On its website, Haring’s work is said to embody “the importance and preciousness of life, containing strong themes of peace, freedom, hopes, and dreams of humanity.” Nothing is said of the extent to which Haring’s schematic, cartoonish, street-art style undercuts the seriousness of such themes, however.
Another member, by chance seated near me at the group’s business meeting, was Norman Kleeblatt, who served for many years as a curator at the Jewish Museum in New York. As it happens, I had commented critically on a 2002 exhibition organized by him featuring “conceptual art” (Mirroring Evil: Nazi Imagery / Recent Art). My article was entitled “Anti-Art Is Not Art” (What Art Is Online, June 2002).
Also telling was the cover of the latest issue of the Rail, depicting a minimalist installation by the German sculptor Wolfgang Laib. Inspired by Eastern religions and philosophy, his work is at the inscrutable end of the contemporary art spectrum.
But perhaps the most unsettling indication of the artworld’s prevailing inclinations is the work of the two painters featured in a panel discussion on art writing at the AICA meeting, which was moderated by the Rail’s co-founder Phong Bui.
David Salle, To be Titled #2, 1998. Oil and acrylic on canvas, 90.5 x 180.5 in. Hall Collection. © David Salle.
Carroll Dunham, Untitled (July-30-2014), 2014.
They were David Salle, “who helped define postmodern sensibility,” and Carroll Dunham, whose paintings even the Los Angeles Times has considered “vulgar beyond belief.”
That prompts me to ask whose work should be more highly regarded—David Salle’s “conceptual” painting featuring dead fish, say, or Justin Wood’s still life of the same subject? Carroll Dunham’s vision of humanity or that of Anthony Baus? My answer is too obvious to need stating.
Notes
- Regarding the Morgan’s break with tradition, see “Cy Twombly in Mr. Morgan’s House?” and “Folded Paper and Other Modern ‘Drawings’.” On the Metropolitan, see “The Apotheosis of Andy Warhol” (Aristos, December 2012); “Met Rooftop Folly: Cornelia Parker’s ‘PsychoBarn’”; and “An Urgent Letter to Aristos Readers.” ↩
- Unlike Damien Hirst—who once lamented never having learned to represent the three-dimensional world on a two-dimensional surface—these artists have mastered that foundational skill. For more on Classical Realism, see “The New Dawn of Painting” by Louis Torres (Aristos, March 1986), my “R.H. Ives Gammell” (Aristos, May 1990), “The Legacy of Richard Lack” by Louis Torres (Aristos, December 2006), and “Reflections on ‘Classical Realism’” by Jacob Collins (Aristos, November 2007). ↩
I’m enjoying this discussion. While reading it, a quote from C.S. Lewis came to mind. “No one who wants to be original will ever be original. Focus on telling the truth as you see it, and originality will come naturally.”
I lean toward the optic realism of John Ruskin when teaching my younger students because I feel it teaches close observation and a love for nature. As my students mature I move them into more academic realism because it allows for more imagination, incorporation of geometry, and appreciation for good design.
I do not find that academic inhibits originality in my students. In fact, they are better able to express what they think and feel in their art because they have gained the ability to do so. Musicians study and practice technique to be able to play expressively. Why should the artist not do so?
The Real Person!
The Real Person!
Well said (and done), Holly! The C.S. Lewis quote (which I’d never heard before) is especially apt, as is your analogy with music.
Dear Michelle,
While we agree on most points on ‘contemporary art’ and a lot on abstract art, we will radically depart on classical realism. And while there are certainly individual artists within the field that warrant deep respect (Wyeth in USA or Jakac in Slovenia), I do not see the movement as a whole, viable. Classical realism lacks innovation, originality and is therefore sterile and boring. There is great skill present of course, but just as a urinal in a gallery is not art, mere skill is not art either. One can easily read the drivers behind classical realism: fear of anything going outside of the supposed norms, the desire to appeal to masses that want art to be ‘safe’ etc. Manneristic to its core, it strives to mimic the styles of the past as if the norms in art have been given once and for all a few centuries ago. What supports this argument is that individuals like Wyeth or Jakac gain respect precisely by somewhat breaking with the norms of classical realism, by being therefore original.
The respected Robert Hughes once said that art is not about groups or movements, it has always been about individuals.
With kind regards,
Boštjan Jurečič,
Slovenia.
The Real Person!
The Real Person!
I appreciate your candid response, Bostjan, but I fear you’ve misread me in thinking we radically disagree regarding classical realism. I’ve clearly argued in Who Says That’s Art? and elsewhere that art, in the fullest sense, involves more than mere skill. As have classical realists such as Jacob Collins (see his remarks in “The Other Face of ‘Contemporary Art’”).
Where we might differ is on the matter of “originality.” I see it as consisting not mainly in stylistic innovation but in individual sensitivity and intensity of observation and depiction. That, to my mind, is what most distinguishes Andrew Wyeth’s work. While some “classical realist” work is indeed stale and sterile, I find sufficient originality (in my sense) in the portraits of Colleen Barry or in this untitled portrait by Will St. John.
Finally, though I don’t always agree with Robert Hughes (he regarded Mondrian as “an artist of genius,” absolutely “loved” Robert Rauschenberg, and thought Richard Serra “attained real sublimity”), I agree that what matters most in art is not groups or movements, but individual artists–and, I’d add, individual works of art, each of which should be judged on its own merits. Given today’s artworld juggernaut, however, so inimical to both skill and humanism, a movement may be needed in which artists devoted to both can nurture and support each other.
Yes, Wyeth must have been a man of astounding sensitivity, I am not sure about many others, though. And to be honest The untitled portrait by Will St. John I find stale, stiff and boring.
Some remarks in The Other Face of … were quite revealing. I, as a painter, was classically trained (life size figure drawing and painting 4 or 5 hours every day!) to a very high degree but at the same time we, the students at the Ljubljana academy, were fully introduced to all of the modernism with all of its achievements and failings. I think this approach is exactly what is needed.
As for Hughes, well, everybody makes mistakes, maybe prior to his death he changed his mind about Mondrian and Serra. Personally I think these two are boring and nonsensical.
Kind Regards,
Boštjan.
Michelle, I believe this is the 2nd or 3rd post I have read. Each one has been an enjoyable read. Thank you for sharing your perspective. With Regards, JeanneMarie
The Real Person!
The Real Person!
Thanks for letting me know you find it of value, JeanneMarie. As I post infrequently, by all means subscribe to receive updates!
I would like to read more of your posts. I enjoyed this one and learned a number of things I was not aware of. Best wishes,
Karen Gillis
The Real Person!
The Real Person!
Thanks very much, Karen! Be sure to Subscribe if you haven’t already done so. And browse through the back contents, or search for a subject that you’re curious about.
Michelle,
Wondering if there are missing words in paragraph 2. The sentence reading “As the title implies, it juxtaposes work…” never tells us what these new works are being juxtaposed to.
The Real Person!
The Real Person!
You were right, Tom. Thanks so much for alerting me to that careless omission! I have just corrected it.
What a contrast. I am in awe of what the GCA students are able to do.
The Real Person!
The Real Person!
I hope that other art teachers will share your view, Holly, and bring such work to the attention of students as an alternative to the anti-traditional contemporary work they have been focusing on.