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Volume
II
Issue 15 Early Fall 2000 |
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Dream Worlds: Neo-Surrealism in the Millennium An exhibition
at the Attleboro Museum Center for the Arts By Kristin Redpath As this is being written, the Summer Olympic games are in full swing in Sydney, which reminds me of a story. Do you remember the closing ceremonies of the Barcelona games? Do you remember the introduction of the proposed mascot to the Atlanta games, a strange-looking creature made of what seemed to be colored foam? Do you remember its name? If you don't, that's quite all right, since it mysteriously and providentially disappeared sometime during the four years between the Barcelona and Atlanta games. Maybe it went back to its home planet. Its name was "Whatizit." Please forgive me if I didn't spell its name right. Here's the segue: when I saw the title of the exhibit I am going to tell you about, I said to myself, "Neo-Surrealism - what is it?" (In my head, the words spelled themselves correctly, of course). I've certainly heard about Surrealism, including the fact that it was declared dead by Antonin Artaud sometime around 1941. So, perhaps, I thought, Neo-Surrealism might be comparable to Neo-Classicism as a movement. Boy, was I wrong! Surrealism had rules; Neo-Surrealism doesn't. Surrealism encompassed, in fact began with, literature; Neo-Surrealism is primarily painting and sculpture (so far, at least, as it is described today). I have read several novels in the last few years that I, in my ignorance, might classify as Neo-Surrealist. I especially recall The Lighthouse at the End of the World by Stephen Marlowe, which has as its primary plot the strange inner life of Edgar Allen Poe. As the beautifully written and illustrated Attleboro Museum exhibition catalog says, "The Surrealists were a highly cohesive, regimented group which went to the same cafes, imbibed the same drinks and celebrated the same heroes. Contemporary Neo-Surrealist artists are individuals, not part of any group, often unknown to one another, united by a like outlook and similar subject matter of fantasy, dreams and subconscious dictates. They have no political agenda, unlike the classic Surrealists...." Another interesting development is that the Surrealists were nearly all men while Neo-Surrealists include women. In fact, this exhibition includes sixteen artists, of whom more than half are women. I have viewed this exhibition several times and have never failed to find something new and exciting in each piece. In fact, I think I could continue to look indefinitely and still not exhaust the possibilities. The most satisfying part of doing the background work for this column, however, was a gallery talk I attended on September 13th, at which three of the artists, Wendy Seller, Ric Haynes, and Ed Oates, generously gave their time to discuss their work and answer questions. The only criticism I have of the gallery talk was that it was not well enough attended. It should have been SRO. Hello, out there! Wendy Seller, whose work Legendary Ladder appears below, is said to be the first artist known to have been labeled a Neo-Surrealist (in 1994). Her most recent paintings are soft, watercolor-like, dreamy canvasses with an eye-pleasing palette. To paraphrase her own words, she breaks the taboo that art shouldn't be pretty. Seller, instead, tries to make her art pretty ("pretty" is her carefully chosen word), but so cleverly includes dreamlike and symbolic elements that, "before one runs screaming from the prettiness, something draws the viewer to examine the painting more closely."
Her symbolism includes ladders, roots, a gossiping couple, a bowler hat, paintbrushes. She works in oil, with very tiny brushes, carefully laying out the composition and working in a series of overlays producing, when viewed from a distance a lovely, soft painting that beckons one closer. When one does get closer, one sees the meticulous detail, the symbols, the dream images and the vivid imagination of the artist. Wendy Seller began as a sculptor and has never had a painting lesson! She is a member of the faculty at Simmons College and the Rhode Island School of Design. Ric Haynes is represented by the Creiger & Dane Gallery, Boston. His work seems, to me at least, to be close to the opposite end of the genre from the art of Wendy Seller. His palette is strong, startling, brilliant; his images almost terrifying in their contrast, as in Giant's Playground shown here.
Frightening creatures loom out of the earth in sharp antithesis to the child's tricycle in front of which the artist is standing in the image shown. Haynes is a trained artist and a professional therapist (and has several other specialties as well, including soldier, archaeologist, writer, performance artist, clown and bookmaker [the paper kind]). During his portion of the gallery talk he made so many striking remarks that I couldn't write them down fast enough, so here are only two of them. The first is that each of us finds what we need. He used as an example well-known artists foraging in a landfill. Picasso, he said, would zero in on a discarded bicycle seat while Duchamp would be more interested in the bubble wrap. The other was, "Never explain your soul - you might explain it away." Ric Haynes' clearly lives an examined life. Haynes says he might have hundreds of names for the same painting and that his paintings are never really finished (as long as they are in his possession, presumably). To quote from the exhibition catalog, "I am primarily concerned in greeting the images that arrive unexpectedly on the smeared and marked surface of the canvas, as guests and strangers. Wanted or not, these images force me to see their origin within me as I work through them to establish a place to reside on the canvas." Accordingly, Giant's Playground resulted from his need to work through the emotional trauma of one of the school massacres that have become so horribly frequent in the past few years, exhibiting both the artist and the therapist in himself. Ed Oates is a shaman. He says so himself. He daily enters a trance state, far deeper than a daydream if I understand him correctly. Oates, like the previous artists, is and has done many things (as the truly creative must). He has lived off the land as a hunter-gatherer; he has climbed rocks and mountains, once suffering a life-threatening accident; he was a taxidermist and a spelunker. He has been a painter but is now primarily a sculptor.
I must admit that of all the works in this wonderful show, Fossil Shaman is the one I covet most. The image here does not show the work to even a modicum of justice. The catalog says it is made of polyadam hydrocal and found objects. It is a three-sided piece, each of which depicts an aspect of the shaman: the shaman, the ally, and death. Just as poetry, we were told in college, must be "emotion recollected in tranquillity," Oates's sculptures are the representation of a recalled vision, not created during the vision but afterward. It is studded and embedded with beautiful things collected over the years - actual fossils, colored glass, semi-precious stones. The shaman side of the sculpture has embedded in it, at the place the heart might be in the torso, a geode of amethyst crystals. To me (this may have nothing to do with the artist's intentions) it symbolizes that the heart of a person and of the stone are both hidden until broken open and the beauty revealed, but only if the beauty is there. Not all rocks are geodes. Oates works to please himself and in doing so pleases others. Often, he says, he does not know what he is creating until it is finished and a piece is only finished when he loses interest in it. Ed, if you ever lose interest in Fossil Shaman, I know where it can find a very good home. The three artists I had the privilege of listening to and talking with could not be more different in their styles of artistic expression, but they do have two things in common. First, they have all experienced much change, either voluntary or thrust upon them - Wendy Seller had to move 28 times before she could find a permanent studio, thus the use of roots and ladders as symbols in her paintings; Ric Haynes and Ed Oates seem to be interested in everything (I didn't get a chance to ask Wendy what else she is interested in, but I'll take a wild guess that her interests encompass more than painting). Second, they are all generous, kind, obviously extraordinary talents, and, dare I say it.... nice! About the Author: Kristin Redpath is Professor Emeritus of Computer Technology, Massasoit Community College, Brockton, Massachusetts, with a Master's Degree in Theater Education, and additional graduate study in theater, education and computer science. She is currently at work on a textbook on introductory computer graphics and is investigating the feasibility of making her own technical training CD's. Also a watercolorist and singer, she views retirement as a new beginning. Married, with a grown son, she lives in the picturesque (Wheaton) college town of Norton, Massachusetts, and never wants to live permanently anywhere but in a small, New England college town. Her five-part Art and Technology series appeared in previous issues of this Newsletter. Find it in the Archives. Resources: Attleboro Museum Center for the Arts: http://www.attleboromuseum.org Surrealism http://www.oir.ucf.edu/wm
/paint/glo/surrrealism The resources below are published courtesy of the Attleboro Museum curators, Alicia Craig Faxon and Dore Van Dyke. [KR] Selected Bibliography Surrealist Sources Andrews, Wayne, The Surrealist Parade. New York: New Directions Publishing Corporation, 1990. Artaud, Antonin, l'Opinion pendu. Paris: Nouvelle Revue Francaise, 1925. Barr, Alfred H. Jr., ed. Fantastic Art, Dada, Surrealism. New York: The Museum of Modern Art, Dec. 7, 193~Jan. 17, 1937. Breton, Andre. Manifestos of Surrealism. Translated from the French by Richard Seaver and Helen B. Lane. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 1972. Breton, Andre, le surrealisme et la peinture. Paris: Nouvelle Revue Francaise, 1927. Caws, Mary Ann, The Surrealist Look. Cambridge, Mass and London: MIT Press, 1997. Chadwick, Whitney, Women Artists and the Surrealist Movement. Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1985. Dali, Salvador, la conquete de l'irrational. Pans: Editions Surrealistes, 1935. Ernst, Max, La Femme 100 tetes. Paris: Editions Surrealistes, 1929. Gascoyne, David, A Short Survey of Surrealism. London: Cobden-Sanderson, 1936. Markus, Ruth, "Surrealism's Preying Mantis and Castrating Women," Woman's Art Journal, Vol 21, Spring-Summer 2000, p. 39. Nadeau, Maurice, The History of Surrealism. Translated from the French by Richard Howard. New York: Collier Books, 1967. Rubin, William S., Dada, Surrealism and Their Heritage. New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 1968. Spector, Jack T., Surrealist Art and Writing 1919-1939 Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Waldberg, Patrick, Surrealism. New York: Oxford University Press, 1978.
Later Developments Emma Amos Paintings and Prints 1982-1992. Wooster, Ohio: The College of Wooster Art Museum, 1993. Aronson, Virginia, Different Minds, Different Voices. Boca Raton: Paradux and Gosling, Inc, 1996. Chadwick, Whitney, ed. Mirror Images Women, Surrealism and Self-Representation. Cambridge, Mass and London: The MIT Press, 1998. Clearwater, Bonnie, ed. Ana Mendieta. Miami Beach: Grassfield Press, 1993. Cotter, Holland, "Psychic Healing in the Uncanny," The New York Times, Friday, April 17, 1998. NE edition, page B44. Duncan, Michael, "Tracing Mendieta," Art in America, April 1999, pp.111-113. Faxon, Alicia Craig, Ah, Paintings of the Last Decade. Boston: Pucker Art Publications, 2000. Faxon, Alicia Craig, "Ana Mendieta, Sacrifice and Transcendence," Art New England, October-November, 1992. Faxon, Alicia Craig, "Virginia Lynch Gallery: Gayle Wells Mandle, Amy Scott, Wendy Seller." Art New England, August-September, 1994, p~ 62. Jacob, Mary Jane, Ana Mendieta: The 'Silueta' Series, 1973-1980. New York: Galerie Lelong, 1991. Langer, Lawrence L., The Game Continues: Chess in the Art of Samuel Bak. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1999. Perreault, John and Petra Barreras del Rio, Ana Mendieta: A Retrospective. New York: Museum of Contemporary Art, 1987. Rosemont, Penelope. Surrealist Women An International Anthology. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1998. Tucker, Michael, Dreaming with Open Eyes. San Francisco: Harper Collins, 1992.
Videotapes The Bleeding Heart-Ana Mendieta Emma Amos' Action Lines Bachner, Barbara. Behind Closed Eyes
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