The portrait for the artist’s sake

AT THE GALLERIES

The relationship between an artist and the human form as subject is a

complicated one. It is the most sophisticated subject matter a

painter or sculptor can choose, and can be the least pliable.

Portraiture is a different matter, since the artist’s goal is

often to express the individual complexities of the sitter. When the

artist is using the human body in the same way the items in a still

life might be used -- in other words, to express not the sitter’s

personality but using the sitter as a way to express the artist’s

vision -- that relationship gets very interesting.

Using the human body as an expressive and interpretive vehicle for

the artist is a relatively new development in art. Picasso’s

analytical cubist paintings, such as his “Les Demoiselles d’Avignon”

(1907) had almost nothing to do with the actual persons involved and

everything to do with the way he was experimenting at the time. If

you examine Francis Bacon’s still-shocking “Study after Velazquez:

Pope Innocent X” (1953), it’s clear that this is no longer a

portrait, but a declaration (perhaps in Bacon’s case, a manifesto)

originating in the artist and violently flung against the subject.

Linda Christensen is clearly using her human subjects as tools for

expression. A series of works on view until Sept. 1 at Greenwood

Chebithes Gallery (330 N. Coast Highway) are all abstract, extremely

simplified figures that nevertheless retain their structural

integrity and general proportion. There are broad brushstrokes and

textures that indicate much layering and mixing of wet paint on the

canvas; and Christensen uses objects like a printmaker, pressing

corrugated cardboard against the canvas as the last layer, or rubbing

on the canvas with oil bars.

Christensen uses a palette of bold, spice-toned colors: russets,

mustards, chartreuses, always darkened with black. She also slides

the paint around with varied amounts of glazing, so that some

sections of a canvas may appear more transparent than others, or

glazed layers may peek out underneath a more flat color.

The overall effect is that of movement in the paint, speed of

execution. This contrasts sharply with the positioning of her human

subjects. They are stationary: either sitting quietly or standing in

stillness with crossed arms or hands on hips. This gives the canvases

an air of irony. It also creates complexities with the light sources,

since shadow or brightness becomes less imperative than form or

color. Line and definition are also subservient to form. To create

distinctions between limbs and clothing, Christensen pushes unlikely

colors up against each other in thick applications of the paint,

producing a dimensional as well as tonal distinction between areas of

the canvas.

This is all exemplified in “At the Window” (60x72, oil on canvas).

Two figures gaze out a large open vista that might be city or village

roofs. They are rendered in blocks of browns, yellows, blues and

greens, energetic shapes that blur into each other but still convey

the impression of distance and horizon. The two foreground figures

are lighted from all directions, but it is clear that most of the

light is from the window. One figure wears a rust and orange skirt,

with taupe and purple legs, and the hand at her hip is defined by

deep scrapes into the paint. The colors used comprise the whole

spectrum, but always in darker hues. White is used sparsely and with

great effect. The painting has a sense of interlude, of two figures

quietly gazing out into space, yet that quietude is expressed in a

riot of color.

“Courtyard” (56x56) reveals some interesting things about

Christensen’s attitude toward line, the same kind of exploitation

certain Cubists like Georges Braque used. A reclining figure faces

us, done in lighter blues, rusts and cadmium yellow. Portions of the

thinned paint run and fabric and patterns are mere streaks. The

background is again abstracted; but the bottom of the bench she sits

on, and the leg of another, are both done in a single rough black

line the width of an average paint brush-seemingly in a single

stroke. Above this seat, blocks of aubergine and deep navy become an

arm, shoulder and head only because of a similar black line. A

background figure stands in three quarter view with crossed arms,

dark in the purples of the courtyard.

It is a deep three-dimensional space that has been flattened and

simplified, poised in this moment, and made important by the play of

color on the canvas. A shade of violet that may have inhabited only a

fragment of the “real” scene is now a major character; a ripple of

cloth becomes a large block of sand-colored paint.

You can contrast this vision of the human figure with Sherry

Karver’s photographic mixed media canvas on view in the room next

door. Karver uses a painstaking process that results in enlarged,

manipulated images colored in the same sepia and pastel tinting that

old photographs often have. The series on view is of people on

various fair rides. All viewed from the ground, with people suspended

in the air, and the skies behind them that seem pale and transparent,

in watercolor-like tints. Her subjects often have dreamy, blurred

expressions.

Yet there is something disturbing about Karver’s flat, glossy

surfaces. The shading makes each canvas appear to be in perpetual

dusk, the moment before the fall of night. The enhanced shadows on

the faces leave them hollow, and their smiles seem naive, and we are

aware of the temporary nature of this thrill.

“Sweep It All Out” (mixed media, 25x62) is comprised of two

canvases depicting riders on one of those spinning swing rides I

remember as the “Yo-Yo.” A second image is superimposed on the

canvas, deeper in shadow. The dark silhouettes of the treetops are

transparent, revealing the tents and lights of the fair. This creates

the illusion of time in the work, of the ride after night has fallen,

and, by extension, of the space after the fair is gone.

Viewing them engenders an odd sensation of loneliness and pathos

for the humanity you are looking at on Karver’s canvases. This is

most apparent in a work from a separate series called “Icing on the

Cake,” which depicts the mass of people going about their business in

the strange isolation of Grand Central Station. The faces all seem

melancholy and alone. They are done with the ride, and are going

home.

The melancholy in Karver’s work is oddly complimented by a single

sculpture standing in the corner of the gallery, back turned to

Karver’s fairgoers. Joe Brubaker’s “Carl,” a rough but extremely

sophisticated figure carved out of cedar wood, gazes out laconically,

standing atop a rusted metal stand that reminds you of a dilapidated

fair ride. He wears a wrinkled white shirt, and has one hand tucked

into his bright yellow pants. “Carl” is a meeting of portraiture and

expression. He is an everyman, but his interesting nose and crooked

shirt placket make you certain you have met him.

His presence in GCG allows the human figure to run the full gamut

of expression in one small gallery, from abstraction to extreme

realism to caricature -- the range of the human condition itself.

* BOBBIE ALLEN is a poet and writer who has taught art theory and

criticism. She currently teaches at Saddleback College.