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Two San Francisco Artists
David Leonardis Gallery
Part I A cross in the margin of a breviary may signify the doctrinal: at its making, an invocation; and subsequently, an aide memoire. On a will, the same mark can be an affirmation of consent, and later, a testimony to illiteracy. In all cases, the mark retains significance, even where context is not definable and changes. Symbols and -- even more so -- images possess this deep-rooted potential to a degree which mystifies cut-and-dried logic. In art, they spark the dialogue between the art object and each viewer. "Two San Francisco Artists: Nina Glaser/Courtney Peaters," the current exhibition at David Leonardis Gallery, Chicago, presents the work of photographer Nina Glaser and painter Courtney Peaters. In this showing, the significance attached to image -- the context and the medium in which it is realized -- play upon a vital function of art: what the senses perceive intertwines into, and collaborates with the associations which the conscious thought supplements. "Two San Francisco Artists: Nina Glaser/Courtney Peaters" will run until July 12, 2000. What we physically see is not what we consciously perceive -- Nina Glaser's photographs recruit one of the fundamental paradoxes of all art, and one especially true for photography. Since the 19th Century, we have been conditioned to feel that photographs are authentic, i.e. records of real vision. We may perceive mistakenly, but the actual view is given. Naomi Rosenblum, in A World History of Photography affirmed this, saying: "the effectiveness of the resulting images depends on the viewer's belief that what appears in a photograph must to some degree be truthful." Susan Sontag, in writing On Photography, justly dissented: "All that photography's program of actual realism implies is the belief that reality is hidden. And, being hidden, is something to be unveiled." (Farrar, Straus and Giroux: 1978). Nina Glaser's work visually runs with that paradox -- "reality is hidden," "to be unveiled," and yet we "believe what appears." Glaser's images are fabricated, but plausible -- their significance is "something to be unveiled" by the lights of each viewer.
Put aside all 'art-babble,' and 'psycho-babble' (all that which thinks too much, and lives too little). Nina Glaser's photographic images are striking. Composition, technical execution, materials (how things are fashioned) and -- beyond the formal -- the content (what one perceives): all collaborate towards a strong, and enduring impression. There are some resonances with earlier work (no real artist's work is a thing solely unto itself), but at the opening, gallery visitors put aside their wine and hors d'oeuvres and talked Nina Glaser. (Significant.) And, after a first survey, the work lingered in mind (even more significant...) and it was worth a second and third trip. Glaser's work is wisely conceived, well-executed and elicits direct response -- photography worthy of notice. Upon reflection, what a viewer notices is that Glaser's work is visually clear: she doesn't fall back upon 'mists, blur or mere effect.' Without naive convention or cliche, Glaser's photography is infused with a Romantic sensibility; and it is vigorous, life-affirming -- even where it tweaks 'received agenda' (as in (27) [Man carrying Little Houses] (16"x20")). Glaser plays a conditioned response -- "what appears in a photograph must to some degree be truthful" -- against fabricated, unreal images, images which are ultimately all the more truthful because truth is "hidden" and must be "unveiled." A Glaser photograph, much like the breviary cross, emits significance, even where the context is not definable and changes with each viewer. Gallery visitors looked at them. Each photograph -- each phenomenon -- vibrates with an involving resonance. Indeed, one of the engaging aspects in Glaser's work is that, like a cross marked in a breviary, each viewer 'knows' what is afoot, and yet each disagrees. Art, like life, is lived, not pigeon-holed. No one has the 'final word.' That makes it worth it all.
'No real artist's work is a thing solely unto itself.' With Untitled (1) [Fabric With Painted Face On Face] (20"x24"), the immediate impression is of a face or perhaps even a death mask, caressed by three pairs of human hands; an impression which changes to two pairs of real hands -- the third pair is painted; and it finally becomes the realization that the 'painted face on face' (if indeed it is so) is also painted. Untitled (1) does make an impression -- theatrical, Expressionist, Romantic and illusory: it is strong upon first sight, and continues to endure. It gathers echoes of Greek Tragedy, and Dante's damned souls, and of the clever hand and eye of a San Francisco artist, Nina Glaser. It is a fabricated art, and a human, visceral experience. Glaser's (2) [Decapitated Kiss] (16"x20") seems an earlier variation on the theme: posed, but poised toward a same basic reality. More than the body as a whole, the human face and human hands form that creature's most elemental and most eloquent language. Glaser frames the viewer's sight; the very real subtleties arise from distanced, socialized discernment. If it is true that real passion, both in tragedy and in active commitment, often seems banal, it is our subsequent realizations which give it meaning, force, and depth. This is the well-spring of what it is to be human, the source and provenance of art. Within the image itself, Glaser's photographs in this showing often make reference to mud, mud veiling the human form and unveiling the artist's own perceptions of that form. Admittedly, this has become an established, contemporary idiom -- a means to an expressive end. Annie Leibovitz employed it in her portrait of Lauren Hutton (Oxford, Mississipi, 1981) and Sting (Lucerne Valley, California: 1985), and went still further in all-the-more tactically revealing veneers by using a milk bath to focus on Whoopi Goldberg (Berkeley: 1984). [These images are in Photographs: Annie Leibovitz: 1970-1990 (HarperCollins: 1991)]. A further extreme for this device was probably Dieter Appelt, a German former opera singer, who encased portions of his body in cement. (One need only consider Hands from Memory's Trace [Shashi Caudill and Alan Cravitz. Chicago: 1978].) Glaser elaborates the device in an individual and effective manner. Mud!? How so? One need only compare Nina Glaser's Untitled (26) [Closeup of crusted legs] (20"x24") with much of Appelt's work. Appelt directs image toward drama and ritual; Glaser approaches image from a more ambiguous, realist, but nonetheless directed perspective. In Glaser's work, there is always a deeper, more concentrated attention to the formal, compositional elements, and to the historical resonance with earlier images. There is less idiosyncracy, and more direct communication. One looks closer at (28) [Man and Woman Kissing] (20"x24"), or (24) [Closeup, man with long hair] (16"x20"). In Appelt's work, one receives the impression of decay, dissection, dissolution, and, invariably, the sense of playing with the newness of visual device. Leibovitz represents a more commercial approach. Glaser's photography somehow feels more at ease with an convention established and available as repertoire: a means to be used for the artist's individual expression. (In part, this is the consequence of chronology; but it is there. Art, after all, creates, and sidesteps, its own time-frame.).
Untitled (2) [Man Holding Woman in Arms] resonates to both noted photographic image, and to primal associations. One recalls at first such images as Leibovitz's John Lennon and Yoko Ono (New York City: Dec. 8, 1980). Leibovitz noted the difficult, but moving potential in what acts as fundamental icon: "I had been putting people in the fetal position, curling them up. And I finally did it successfully with John and Yoko." In Glaser's Untitled (2) [Man Holding Woman in Arms], the individuals are not celebrities: the image is direct, 'everyman,' and striking. There is a mythic quality -- strong cradles weak, two partial beings embrace in a total unity; and a tension -- the birth-giver according to biology and cultural convention here seems enwrapped in the male. In Glaser's work, image retains significance, even where context is not specific and definable. Untitled (3) [Man Carrying Little Houses] is a further example. In this photograph, a male nude puts shoulder to a cable, pulling church and dwelling upstream. The image could be interpreted as heroic: a tribute to the toil of sustaining urbs et civitas -- civilization; and yet, in its self-possessed ambiguity, it struck some gallery visitors as a Rousseau-ian critique: "Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains." (One might add, 'in chains' he himself forges and accepts -- a price for human societies...) For viewers who saw the latter implication, Untitled (33) [Woman holding ring] (20"x24") seemed kindred: the nude subject peers tentatively out through a metallic ring held to frame the face, held as if considering an object of ritual: both an offering and a bond. Many of Glaser's photographs seem moments, iconic images in the margin of a living, perhaps dreaming book of ritual. Within her camera's lens, the female image is prominent. In many of the displayed photographs, women appear as elementals, a view frequent in Romanticism. In Untitled (38) [Woman with Horse skull] (16"x20"), 'Death and the Maiden,' the feminine dallies with mortality, and human form confronts the bestial, now inert. Glaser's Untitled [Girl child with snake] (used for the gallery card), brings to mind Franz von Stuck's much-cited Sin (1893); but in von Stuck's painting, the seductress wears a serpent, obscured in shadows and malevolent. In Glaser's photograph, a viewer confronts a child who seems to have subdued and tamed the bane of Eden. Many of the images in this showing, reveal women in a charmed immunity to the mortal, the deadly, to cumulative authority and history. In Untitled (20) [Two lying on painted canvas] (16"x20"), the male at right is peripheral, the nude woman central to the image. The three painted females upon which they lie seem dour, spent, as if three graces turned to middle age. The female form luxuriates in physical being; it is the 'painted-ness' of the imaged trio which is joyless and irrelevantly prophetic. The floor canvas bears the warning motto: "Sic Transit Gloria Mundi" [Thus Passes the Glory of This World]... but the fixed and foremost image of the living feminine belies its credibility. Glaser plays the documental 'truth' of Naomi Rosenblum -- what one expects of photography -- against conceptual knowledge, confirmed by experience. Nina Glaser's skilled photographic technique ensures that the image is immediate and to great effect. Glaser's effect can be remarkable. Consider Untitled (25) [Woman cradling eels] (16"x20"). The female nude seems to hold a Classic pose, much like ancient representations of the grain goddess, Ceres. But instead of sheaves of wheat, she formally contemplates three splayed eels. Her balanced confidence, her poise, seems incongruous with her offering: the statuesque regarding the comestible. Glaser's sense of association at times borders on deep irony -- Dada or even Camp. Civilization, Classic or Romantic, is comprised of eaters who often raise necessity to a ritual of culture. There are truths within these images. And an eerie grace. And often a playfulness of image. At times, as in Untitled (29) [Three women in forest] (16"x20"), Glaser's approach harkens to artists such as Imogen Cunningham (1883-1976); the fabricated fantasies of a Paul de Nooijer; or even approaches the Expression libre of the French in the 70s and 80s. And even where her subject matter is texturally raw and earthy -- mud as veil, as in Untitled (26) [Closeup of crusted legs] (20"x24") -- or stately and yet starkly grotesque as in Untitled (24) [Closeup, man with long hair] (16"x20"), Glaser's photographs employ a consummate execution and technique, and a high visual sense which seizes the viewer. Nina Glaser's photographic art is worth a trip to the David Leonardis Gallery. That the David Leonardis Gallery is also exhibiting the paintings of Courtney Peaters (Part II), and, among others, Andy Warhol-related photographs by Christopher Makos, further argues for a well-spent visit. What we physically see is not what we consciously perceive -- a fact especially true given our conditioning to photography. A large selection of work by Nina Glaser tests each viewer's experience of image and life. It offers a perceptive, critical Romanticism, and raw effect; all with skill. "Two San Francisco Artists: Nina Glaser/Courtney Peaters" will run until July 12, 2000.
Finis Part I --G. Jurek Polanski Jurek Polanski has previously written and art edited for Strong Coffee in Chicago. He's also well known and respected among the Chicago museums and galleries. Jurek is currently a Visual Arts Correspondent for ArtScope.net. Editorial Note: Many of the books mentioned in www.artscope.net reviews are in print and may be ordered through this site's Barnes & Noble link. Dieter Appelt and others are discussed in the excellent A World History of Photography by Naomi Rosenblum (Abbeville Press: 1997). (Glaser's work appears more effective: a culmination of precedent.) Also recommended is Photographs: Annie Leibovitz (HarperCollins: 1991); and On Photography by Susan Sontag (Farrar, Strauss and Giroux: 1977). |
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