The
other week in Toronto while walking along Yonge Street I noticed some religious
outfit was offering "free personality tests." It seemed to me an
incredibly
quaint and old-fashioned pursuit. Here these people were still attempting to
locate discrete "personality traits," while the best minds of the age
have been busy these last 100 years fragmenting, smashing and finally shredding
what William James once confidently called the "central nucleus of the
self."
The
concept of the personality, I wanted to inform these earnest interrogators for
God, was not the thing it once was, and no amount of praying or good works
would change things. What exactly did they expect to find in the way of solid
identifying traits in these trendily dressed urban subjects? Something like: Finds
the prominent wearing of corporate logos an amazingly individualistic
experience?
It
probably should go without saying at this late date in the 20th Century that
a,ny belief in the individual as a trim, tightly packed cognitive and emotive
universe is a concept not easy to sustain. According to
current
views identity is a purely social construction subject to changes in the
political, economic and cultural climate. Private lives are stirred into a big
public stew that includes -among countless other things -infotainment, special
prosecutors, tabloids, talk radio, news leaks, product endorsements, invasive
commercials, and appalling TV confessions that heretofore the Pope himself
couldn't have
elicited.
Today, personhood has about as much authenticity as Robin Hood.
This
isn't to say that the experience of the self is somehow invalid, just that it
must be framed far
differently than it has been in the past. Artists have been driving hard
on these points for some time now, attempting to demonstrate the mutability of
identity and its ambiguous relationship with the self.
In
the paintings of
tattooed women that make up the present exhibition, Bruce Adams confronts these
issues with characteristic directness and wit. He introduces into his painting
figures whose signs of individuality are literally emblazoned on their bodies.
As if to test their uniqueness against the great traditions of Western
painting, he then places these figures in the context of classical portraiture
and the nude, and in at least two cases creates variations on well-known
masterpieces.
This
engagement with art history -and history generally -is not new to Adams's work.
In an earlier series figures concocted from such sources as National
Geographic magazine are juxtaposed with reinterpreted pop images in
paintings that cut across historical epochs and transcend cultural difference.
These paintings typically show smug archaeologists or scientists from an
earlier day involved in some activity that paradoxically jolts them into the
discordant present. In one riotous example two lab-coated, utterly unflappable
scientists dis-
cover
under their microscope that the tiny ancient fragment they are examining is
actually a fully realized Franz Kline painting.
But
the delightful characters in these paintings are all types, ready-made figures
designed to dismantle tired cultural and social assumptions. It is only with
the paintings of tattooed nudes that Adams makes specific individuals the focus
of his art. In these paintings, tattooed and
pierced
individuals forcefully proclaim their individuality. Among these women are bikers,
artists, a college student, perhaps
an
S&M aficionado, part-time housewives, lesbians and persons of unknown
pursuits. All are tattoo enthusiasts, obviously, and all seem to relish
displaying the art that adorns their bodies. By choosing to tattoo and pierce
to this significant degree, each person, whether she intends to or not,
represents
a subculture. It is by most reckonings a subculture that revels in assertive,
if not transgressive individuality and prides itself on being in opposition to
the decorative timidity of the plain-skin citizenry and their cloistered
values. (This is so despite the broad interest in body alterations by many
segments of the population and corporate America's ongoing attempt to harness
the "dangerous" image of the tattooed and pierced person to sell products.)
These marks and piercings are intended as rebellions and stand as perpetual
declarations that the person displaying them is not from the presumed innocu-
ous mold that produces accountants, school teachers, lawyers, bankers, and
politicians (although, for alii know, some in this group may practice these
very professions).
But
this determined individuality can defeat itself by its very insistence. People
who are heavily tattooed are in danger of being swallowed up by historical
stereotypes - by images of slightly unseemly circus folk, drunken sailors, and
petty criminals. The pictures that these women wear on their bodies can make
them seem less like individuals and more like walking maps of identifying
marks. In some cases these tattoos and piercings are so profuse and dominating
that they seem to render gestalts of the human form slightly redundant: We
recognize these individuals by their surface patterns, the way you'd tell a
Monarch from a Tiger Swallowtail butterfly.
Adams
ingeniously plays these conflicting impressions of the tattooed body against
one another. Because tattoo- ing is both an expression of individuality and a
generic art form, it allows him to approach the representation of the female
body by a male artist from a new angle. Decorated bodies provide the means to
chip away at monolithic ideas associated with the traditional female nude. The
classicized nude, the nude born of the Italian Renaissance, was an idealized
object of unmitigated purity, its unblemished and inevitably white skin to be
defiled only by religious martyrdom or some severe stigma contrived by
mythology or poetic history. Insert the aggressively patterned bodies of these
tattooed women into a composition bedecked with classical features, as Adams
does, and cherished Western concepts of beauty -that is, beauty as the sole
creation of male subjectivity -are thrown into jarring disarray.
So
it is in Oiscordia and Paris, a contemporary version of Paris judging
the relative beauty of Hera, Athene, and Aphrodite. The painting has a
serio-comic tone, with the nude artist himself depicted as Paris holding in one
hand the coveted golden apple that, according to Greek myth, a disgruntled
Discordia offered as a prize to the most beautiful woman, thereby setting off
contention between the goddesses and, ultimately, the Trojan War. In Adams's
version the apple is selected from a bushel
basket
nearby, making you think that it might be nothing more significant than a
Golden Delicious. Alongside Paris stands the usually-absent Discordia, modeled
by the artist's wife, surveying the three tattooed contestants with
considerable disdain.
In
this painting Adams faces head-on the perceived binary relationship of the
sexes in which the male holds the power to mold the self-image of the passive
female. The aesthetic decision that Paris/Adams is about to make will evidently
take precedent over whatever notions of identity these tattooed
"goddesses" might have. But who can believe it? The women, even as
they assume some loose equivalents of classical poses, wear their
identities- or at least what they see as representing their identities -right
on their skin. In the context of this painting, tattoos are weapons in the
gender wars. They invade the sanctity of male subjectivity and its sober
deliberations on beauty and serve up their own brand of kick-ass aesthetics (a
point that is made infinitely more complex by the inclusion in the background
of a copy of Manet's 01ympia with its famous assault on the traditional
nude).
appeared
one day posed in the studio. Moreover, these images reflect the reality of the
flesh of the models whatever that reality may be -firm, loose, sagging, ruddy,
translucent, smooth, rippled, polished, or deathly pale. No idealizations are
allowed, no concessions made for the sake of the model's ego.
To
be enjoyed, however, the painting needs no such solemn analysis. It is probably
among the most good-natured and gently ironical takes on a subject that has
long been used by philosophers, aestheticians and psychologists as a
springboard for complex arguments on the source of beauty and aesthetics and
their not always comfortable relationship to sexuality. (Compare, for example,
Freud's notion of beauty as psychic material displaced by the shock of
observing the ugliness -or what Freud thought of as ugliness -of human
genitalia.) It would be a mistake to take this painting as serious
argument if it
means
missing its delightfully theory-free play of ideas.
And
the tattoos, along with the piercings and their attached hardware, are for the
most part also accurately recorded. The paintings reveal, in fair detail, a
wide range of tattooing styles from an "orientalized" drqgon emerging
from the rear of one woman to the skulls and black flowers and other
accoutrements of death to kitschy patterns to even a bit of inadvertent
"Victoriana" in the form of a deli- cate web of black-lace. A
glimmering stream of connecting chains anchored to nipple clips, ears festooned
with a whole fleet of polished coils, and a ring attached to an eyebrow or a
lip like a shiny beetle are all convincingly rendered.
With
such vivid subjects the temptation is to be a mere chronicler in paint, to put
down with as much fidelity as possible what the eye sees in these women. On one
level Adams does just that; on another he subverts the whole process of
realistic representation. Although working in a painterly manner here, Adams
takes few liberties with the specifics of face and body of his models. Amy looks
reasonably like a real person named Amy; Cathy, though painted in
vigorous "impressionist" style, still resembles an actual Cathy as
she
But
Adams's handling of photographic depiction is what undercuts this easy,
painterly realism. The artist elevates the photograph to the status of a
document of near-absolute authority, making it the measure of what visual
information to include in a painting -even to the point where oddities of the photographic
image supersede Adams's own judgment as to proper anatomy, body shape, and the
arrangements of light and shadow. If, for example, a shadow in a photograph
appears to cut oft half a limb or turn an appendage into a vague clump of
organic
matter, so be it; he paints it that way. The photograph becomes something of a
faux "objective view" that is worked into an expressive painterly
style, be it impressionist or expressionist. The photographic "look"
functions as a kind of stylistic chaperone keeping the "wilder"
mannerisms of (mostly) modernist style in check.
This
synthetic blending of painterly and photo-real styles is used by Adams as a
ready-made painting vocabulary. It helps carry the viewer through a
calculated romp through the history of painterly painting, from Hals and Velazquez
to Renoir and Manet. It allows old master lookalikes that almost
nonchalantly interject contemporary references into the old humanist context.
For
example, in Woman on Couch with Boy; the incredibly graceful nude of
Velazquez's Cupid and Venus is transformed into a sleek modern woman
whose distinguishing characteristic from the rear is the aforementioned dragon
of the backside. Adams has cannily posed his model so that her buttocks hangs
over the couch and'pushes ever so slightly
into our space -a very un-Venuslike maneuver. Her features, reflected in
a cheap household mirror, are solidly modeled and possess a hard, unflinching
stare that is seriously at odds with the muted "feminine" face that
appears in Velazquez's mirror. Acid green shadows careen down this tattooed
woman's back adding a slightly tawdry note (think Toulouse-Lautrec), amplified
by the sagging, seedy ochre-colored sofa that stands in for Velazquez's
sensuous display of satins. The trendy work boots
on
the woman's feet ensure that we won't forget the whole thing is a studio
set-up, not a voyeuristic opportunity to catch a latter-day Venus naked, save
for her body ink.
These
"personalities" -an evidently strong-willed young woman and an impish
child -are presented clearly enough. But whatever identities come through are
fragmented by the doubleness of their roles as living contemporary people and
as models imitating very different models from another social order. In
Velazquez's time (and very much because of Velazquez's synthesizing vision),
painted representations of even mythological subjects were given the convincing
sheen of actuality and models presumably played their parts without
experiencing any special anxiety. This tattooed woman, on the other hand,
reveals a self-awareness of being both the passtve object of the painter's
regard and the possessor of a transgressive body that proclaims an unassailable
individuality.
A
similar announcement of the patently fictive
nature
of the individuals depicted in the painting comes from the boy holding the
mirror. In addition to being a pivotal element in the composition, the
boy radically alters the psychology of the piece by playing off both the stern
tattooed "Venus" before him and the Velazquez cupid that he
represents. On his arm is a tattoo of a heart with an arrow through it, a comic
reduction of the standard regalia of the Cupid figure. Smiling a faintly
embarrassed boy's smile, he appears to be in on the joke. He gazes happily out
at us, a counterpoint to the woman who seems to be equally divided between
poetic reverie (shown by means of the beautifully painted lost profile) and an
intense, not to say aggressive, regard of her observers.
Many
of Adams's nudes have the specificity of portraits and a number actually assume
the traditional attributes of portraiture -centralized figure placement, props,
even accompanying pets. (A dog appears in a couple of cases and, more
surprisingly, a snake.) Adams takes full advantage of this genre-mixing in Amy;
a painting based on Frans Hals's The Laughing Whore (also known by
the gentler title, The Gypsy). In terms of paint, this is a slowed-down,
quite deliberate version of Hals's fabulous paint handling. And all the raucous
animation and seductiveness of Hals's figure is replaced by a stiffly upright,
pensive, almost shy figure with averted eyes.
But
then this figure, unlike Hals's slatternly, breast- trussed woman, is nude and
it is a nudity of a very bellicose kind. From the naked, studiously modeled
breasts with their projecting nipple rings to the spread of death images
clinging to one shoulder, this body signals its antipathy to both ordinary
rules of portraiture and the staged vernacular drama of Hals. The painting is
thrust hell-bent into the present by the demanding presence of nipple rings and
macabre tattoos made to seem absolutely subversive by the surrounding cocoon of
tradition.
Adams
points out the impossibilities of certain expressions of the self as much as he
demonstrates workable connections with the image of a painting and the
individual portrayed. His paintings proclaim repeatedly that what was once
considered a sound basis for allying a depicted person with the specific and
unique judgments, thoughts and emotions of a bounded self now is revealed as a
flimsy social arrangement accepted by painter, patron, model, and audience
alike. The shape and attitude of a body, facial expressions, style of dress,
the props of
social
status and professional acclaim, the illusion of spatial and psychological
harmony that painting can impart -all these things can no longer function as
anything but a homeless collection of identifying marks. Adams's painting
suggests that if there is anything like a measurable personality dwelling
within a living subject of art, painting has no more access to it than does
that business-suited proselytizer handing out questionnaires on Yonge Street.
Richard
Huntington Buffalo, New York 1998
Big
Orbit Gallery's main
purpose is to promote contemporary art in all media by artists
associated with the Western New York region. The gallery encour- ages
under-represented, emerging, and established artists in the community through
solo exhibition opportunities, performances, and group/theme exhibits. Big
Orbit assists in promoting new ideas and issues in art, and seeks to raise the
awareness of the community to the arts developing in Western New York. The
gallery promotes many artistic disciplines including the visual, literary,
video and performing arts.
This
brochure was
prepared on the occasion of the exhibition Tattooed Women: Paintings by
Bruce Adams on view from August 22 through September 19, 1998. Big Orbit
Gallery's programming is made possible by the New York State Council on the
Arts, the Cultural Incentive Program, administered by the Arts Council in
Buffalo and Erie County, the County of Erie, the City of Buffalo, and the
support of its members.
Big
Orbit Gallery
30d
Essex Street, Buffalo, NY 14213
716.883.3209