It's 1975. "Patrick" and the New York scene.

Today we have a story from 1975, of course from the New York art scene involving Dick's exhibition.  In order to set it against the historical background we go to Wikipedia where we find this handy chart about art movements from the 1950s to 2000s.

We look in the column devoted to the 1970s and find a handy list of hot movements of the time, but not what else artists are doing. Our blog entry halts and we have to find a better source of information on the period. We're interested in the stable of the Castelli Gallery as it is a good measure of what is going on in New York major galleries in that decade than the rather new movements listed on Wikipeidia, and we find the exhibition history on the gallery website.  Here is how 1975 looks at Leo Castelli.

 In short, Castelli is showing abstraction and pop art.  That leads us to assume, perhaps too soon, but our time is limited today, that there is little coverage of the kind of representational painting Dick does.  We make a short stop at Allan Frumkin Gallery, today know as George Adams which is known for representing figurative artists such as Jack Beal and Philip Pearlstein.  Here is a statement from their website.


"REALIST AND FIGURATIVE ART  The gallery has long been known for representing Realist and Figurative artists such as Jack Beal and James Valerio as well as handling works by Alfred Leslie and Philip Pearlstein."

We don't find anything on what the gallery is showing in the 1970s and we move on to the generals.

Another element to the backdrop of what Dick is doing at the time is the photorealist movement beginning late 1960s and early 1970s, a reaction to Abstract Expressionism and Minimalism. While the Abstract Expressionists, Minimalists and Photorealists are fighting it out, from what Dick tells us, Philip Pearlstein and Lennart Anderson are painting nudes and showing in New York galleries.

In 1975 Dick has a show in New York which features life-sized figures, including nudes such as "Patrick."

"Patrick" is in the European tradition of the idealized nude- three-dimensional and standing in space- except that he's a particular human being.

Here is the story;

"This painting of "Patrick" was taken down from the walls of a prestigious New York gallery without my knowledge and put in a back room. It was 1975 and the occasion was my third one-man show which, in addition to still-life and landscape, included four life-sized clothed figures and four life-siize nudes.

That Saturday opening I bounded up the stairs to the main second floor gallery to be congratulated, coming down, by the man who had introduced me to the gallery. He never spoke to me again.  On the following Tuesday my sister-in-law saw the show and called, saying that she had seen a man waving a catalogue and wondering where the painting of "Patrick" was? A gallery attendant then ushered him in to a back room, and she followed. 

At the age 44 and in full stride I was still an innocent about the art world. I called Walter Terry, dean of American dance critics and a friend of my wife's and     also myself, and I said, "Walter, what do I do"?  The reply came without hesitation- "go to the gallery and them them either it goes up or the whole show goes down."

I did that.  Well, I brought out the sweat on the gallery owner's upper lip. Not a good sign.  He said the head of a company was coming in to buy a large, million dollar unfinished sketch by Claude Monet of his house-boat, and that the man's wife had died of cancer and that he'd be upset.  The conversation continued on until I said, "Look. When he comes in, detain him on the first floor, take the painting down, and put it up when he leaves."  "Hooray," the dealer said, "Cunningham has got the answer."  A few weeks later the letter came, saying I'd never have a one-man show there again.

When the head of the Brooklyn Museum Art School, where I would teach for 18 years, Augustus Peck, heard about this he said, "You'll get a gallery in New York, but you'll never get a good one." Gus Peck was wrong on one count; I have had no gallery in New York, good or bad.

Why were the powers-that-be-disturbed by a particular, male, human being, nude?  Why are some people still disturbed? Is it the male nude?  Is it the particularity?

Today is not 1975.  We have had far more exposure to the body through television, movies and the performing arts.  We have now reality TV and "The Biggest Looser," where we see 350 or 400 pound bodies, but I suspect we're as much voyeurs now as we were then- afraid of our own bodies, looking at them with something between shame and distrust.  

Let's look at "Patrick" as being ahead of its time in taking up the nude in the classical art form but with the subject, a particular human being.

-Francis Cunningham"

Still Life with Basket Gourds and Oranges (1967)

From the figure we're turning to still life, in particular to Still Life with Basket Gourds and Oranges (1967) oil on linen 34 x 40 in. 
In part one of the video Dick talks about the root of painting being a lived experience.


In part two we take up composition on the flat surface and in depth.


In part three we consider light, flatness and space.


...and all of it with a dash of Cezanne and a few others.

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Further Thoughts on the Nude: The Relationship of the Contemporary to the Classical (Part 3/3)

Continues from part 2

Francis Cunningham On the Beach, Tom Johnson (1997) oil on linen 55 x 70 in.

Francis Cunningham Man Walking (1999) oil on linen 72 x 36 in. Private Collection.

In being open to the particular model one opens up the entire range of human expression through the body. When the model is nude one experiences this directly, unencumbered by baggage. It is shown by the small patterns within the larger movements. These are the adjustments, the little give-aways that a Nureyev, Baryshnikov or any great dancer or actor will show you and which will pass by you in a flash. They color the movement. They are expressed in painting and sculpture by what I call the designs within the design. But unlike acting, dance, movies or video, in painting and sculpture one has the opportunity to explore these designs at leisure, to meditate, examine and ponder.

Francis Cunningham Two Figures, Red Background (1992) oil on linen 78 x 52 in.

          I am also suggesting the reintroduction of reason and science into the artistic process – not in the sense of technology as in video and computer art, but science taken as the rational and experimental study of a subject, here the nude. We have gone past the anatomy of Leonardo and Michelangelo, codified in the 16^th century by Vesalius. As expressions of their world they are, in a sense, as out-of-date as are the politics of the 16^th century Italian city-states. But, and it is a large “but,” the raw information that Leonardo and others developed and that Vesalius formulated is still valid and the mass concepts and form theory developed and practiced in the Renaissance are as valid today as they were then. So also is the classical attitude towards humanity in so far as it is civilizing and humane. It is just that we have broadened the scope of anatomy, movement, gesture and our attitude toward the human being.

In taking on the particular individual nude as subject for painting and sculpture I am not advocating license, crassness or whatever may be demeaning. 

Philip Pearlstein Male and Female Models With Balloon Chair and Old African Drum (2000) Courtesy Betty Cuningham Gallery, New York

                                            Odd Nerdrum Iron Law (1984) 115 x 82.7 in.

                                              Lucian Freud Lying by the Rags (1989-1990)

                                         
The body is magnificent in how it functions, noble and as intrinsically beautiful in its daily self as anything depicted in classical art.

How you view the world will determine what you see.
                                                                                       *****************

Addendum 

December 26, 2009 

and 

February 24, 2010 

 Polykleitos Doryphoros ca. 450-40 B.C. from Pompeii, marble, 212 cm. Naples, Museo Archaeologico

Why the anatomically functional figure?  I regard myself as a classicist.  I go back to Greece, to my experience of Polykleitos and Phidias in Naples, the real presence of the human being in art, not just the human body.  If the Greeks in fact confined the human being to a few poses and to one or two points of view – station points from which to view the work – their figures feel real, existing as real presences.

                           Francis Cunningham Regina Standing Side View ('07-08) oil on linen 80 x 36 in. 
With the anatomically functional figure the figure feels real from many points of view, because it is not confined to its position on the canvas or as sculpture, but communicates its capacity to move about and take other positions.  Furthermore, expressively, it is not confined to a few poses and to those proportions which are defined as beautiful, but it opens up the whole range of expression through the unrestricted range of the body’s positions. 

                                       Francis Cunningham Reaching - Regina ('93-96) oil on linen 72 x 48 in. Private Collection.

                                            Francis Cunningham Reaching-Peter (1994-96) oil on linen 72 x 48 in.
For the Greek artist, the body and spirit are one.  So they are with me, and what I have sought to do is to bring the intellect, emotion and spirit back into the body. 
      In comparison, the “New Realism,” as Philip Pearlstein embodied it, intentionally avoids narrative and the intellectual, spiritual and emotional life of the subject.  The press release for “Pearlstein/Held: Five Decades” at Betty Cuningham gallery, November 19, 2009 – February 13, 2010, comments that, “By the late 1960’s Pearlstein had committed to the ‘New Realism,’ as stated in John Perrault’s manifesto:
No stories; no allegories; no symbols. 
No hidden meanings; no obvious meanings.
No philosophy, religion, or psychology.
No jokes.
No political content.
No illustration.”

Philip Pearlstein Two Nudes in Studio (1965) Oil on canvas 24 x 18 in.  Westheimer Family Collection © Philip Pearlstein
     
We had to have Pearlstein – we are lucky to have him – because, as he has said, “I rescued the human figure from its tormented, agonized condition given it by the expressionistic artists and the cubist dissectors and distorters of the figure, and at the other extreme I have rescued it from the pornographers, and their easy exploitations of the figure for its sexual implications.”  This quote, from Irving Sandler’s essay for the Betty Cuningham show, is followed by, “Unlike painters of the nude in the past, Pearlstein continues to portray what he sees without interpretation.” 
      Likewise, I portray what I see without interpretation.  I do not interpret, I present.  Pearlstein had to strip away all the barren and sterile expressionist, cubist and neo-classical baggage that hung around the human figure.  He cleared the decks.  It was a prodigious achievement.  It makes possible tearing down the barrier Kenneth Clark describes between the naked individual and the nude. 

                                           Francis Cunningham Three Figures (1993-99) oil on linen 72 x 96 in.
     
What I “see,” and this is tightly bound to the color-spots and the specific individual human being, has been described by Martin Sheen, the actor: “If you don’t leave home with the true sanctity of being, you won’t see that sanctity in anyone else.”  I see that sanctity in every person I have painted, nude or clothed, not because I approach them from a theologically intellectualized point of view but because I am convinced and awed by the universals of geometry, arcs and angles, and the staggering uniqueness of the color-values seen from my station point, unrepeated and unrepeatable. 
      A friend, author and educator, on seeing the figure of Genay Sundra in Three Figures remarked, “She is a goddess.”  For me, the gods and goddesses of antiquity and idealized form are as dead as they are to Pearlstein and other figure painters of today, but I have found also that they are not truly dead; they have simply moved into individual human beings.  I say this not because I “think” this or would like to believe it, but because this is what I see.