By Dorothy Shinn
Beacon Journal art and architecture critic
Figure painting has been in a long decline.
It’s as though everyone finally paid attention to Alfred Stieglitz’s 1922 diatribe on its downfall at the hands of fine art photography.
It’s not as if figurative art hasn’t been taught at the three main Northeast Ohio art schools: Cleveland Institute of Art, Kent State University and the University of Akron Myers School of Art.
A check of the course descriptions at each school reveals at least one course each semester devoted to ”life drawing,” ”life modeling” or ”figure drawing,” although none offers a course in portraiture, which at one time was a core curriculum subject.
There are signs on the horizon that that decline could be about to reverse.
Lately, a strong contingent of figure painters has emerged on the national and international scene, with artists like iona rozeal brown, Nick Cave, John Currin, Peter Doig, Dana Schutz, Yinka Shonibare, Mickalene Thomas, Luc Tuymans and Kehinde Wiley leading the way.
Nonetheless, it’s often difficult to find artists who specialize in the figure, a fact that Joan Colbert discovered when she began to organize Figuratively Speaking, on view at Summit Artspace through July 31.
Of the four artists — Rachel Gentner, Bonnie Stipe, Charles Szabla and Ron White — in this show, probably only Stipe and Szabla are even aware of the new wave of figuration.
White’s work displays a fascination for the
Renaissance, albeit a fascination that could use some research.
White, a West Akron artist who works in clay and on paper, considers his classic human figures as depictions of moments in time that mark events or personal space.
Some of his ceramic portraits are of actual individuals. Others are entirely fabricated. Some strive for realism. Others are wildly exaggerated.
White’s sculptures show broad-ranging influences from Hieronymus Bosch to Jack Earl, all with a hard-edged realism that owes more to an interest in linearity than to aesthetic proportions.
One of the ceramic cold-glaze sculptures in his pantheon of famous artists that purports to be Raphael, however, could have used a bit more attention to detail. With a pointed beard and trim moustache, White’s Raphael is closer to Rembrandt than its namesake, since Raphael, who died at age 37, was most commonly shown as clean-shaven.
To be sure, there is a Self-Portrait With Friend (1518) by Raphael that shows him sporting a beard, but the features are soft and rounded and the beard isn’t pointed in the Northern European style of White’s portrait, but full and soft.
It’s a hard lesson, but true. When you work in a realistic style, your research must be impeccable. Otherwise you just look careless.
Gentner, for her part, displays a fascination with female deities, spirits and muses, such as Calliope, muse of heroic poetry; Danae, impregnated by Zeus in a shower of gold; Gaia, earth mother, a primordial deity in the ancient Greek pantheon; Leda, whom Zeus (busy god!) appeared to and seduced as a swan; and Nemesis, the spirit of divine retribution against those who succumb to hubris (arrogance before the gods).
She also includes portraits of herself and friends in drag attire and uses her sisters as models.
Gentner, a Wadsworth artist who just earned her M.S. in education from the University of Akron, seems focused for the most part on seduction in these works, with emphasis on surface texture, soft bodies and partial nudity.
Except for the large painting of herself in drag, Gentner’s draftsmanship tends to be wispy, generic and lacking in either gravitas or the type of specific modeling that would tell us she spent sufficient time studying her sitters.
Szabla, an artist from Bath who graduated from the Cleveland Institute of Art in 1981, works in pastels.
His small, intimate drawings focus on parts of the figure, areas of detailed observation that often become abstractions by way of misinterpretation.
He works in the 2.5-by-3.5-inch format traditionally used in Art Card Editions and Originals (ACEO format), the size of a baseball trading card.
”People actually swap them like trading cards,” said Szabla. ”There’s tons of them on eBay, which is basically where they do their trading and selling.”
Each study is on Canson Mi Teintes pastel paper, each a different color.
”I was trying different colors of paper to see how it reacted with the pastels and how much of the paper to show through,” he added.
Szabla has 20 works in the show, all identically framed, a handsome look and a welcome strategy that serves to anchor the exhibit visually.
Stipe, another UA graduate, has degrees in painting, drawing and art education.
Her interest also lies in the female figure, in the folds, wrinkles and weight of female flesh that goes beyond idealized beauty, often causing physical uneasiness in the viewer.
The wall hangings that she has constructed with fiber and thread all allude to the body and its flesh through her twists of fabric and form. Some of these, while distressingly suggestive, are nonetheless well done and beautifully thought through.
Her paintings likewise focus on the imperfections of the female form, exaggerated to underscore the irony in the notion that beauty can come out of a jar or bottle.
In light of the recent and hugely popular Akron Art Museum exhibit, Pattern ID, it’s easy to see how a renewed enthusiasm for figuration would inspire Colbert and the Summit Artspace committee to try to keep the interest going with another show based on the figure.
The fact that only half of the recruited artists seem to get what was going on in Pattern ID and other contemporary figurative art suggests that, in addition to the high-quality exhibits brought to us by the Akron Art Museum, what’s also needed in our area is cogent discussion of these events and where they fall in the wider world of art.
The University of Akron occasionally brings in outside speakers for such talks, as does the Akron museum.
But what’s really needed is a forum with local speakers organized in consultation with the museum, Summit Artspace and the universities, to thoroughly explore contemporary art issues.
That’s the only way local artists will be able to measure their own interests against new developments in approach, philosophy, technique and design.
Otherwise, each artist is just on his or her little island as new ideas on the horizon sail on by.
Dorothy Shinn writes about art and architecture for the Akron Beacon Journal. Send information to her at the Akron Beacon Journal, P.O. Box 640, Akron, OH 44309-0640 or dtgshinn@neo.rr.com.