Artists have
long been irked by the power of modern galleries to regulate the public’s awareness
of art. Put off by the commercialization of art and its containment in
conventional exhibition spaces, generations of artists have turned to street
performances, manipulations of the natural environment, and even transmissions
by radio waves and the postal service. When such works become part of the canon
of modern art (as some eventually do), they may appear, ironically enough, in
galleries as documented events.
Will the New York gallery scene
eventually embrace Marvin Gates’ “Barbara?” Likely not; Gates’ sly and
idiosyncratic piece cuts a little too close to the bone. In a time when art has
exhausted almost every possibility of subverting our expectations, Gates
refutes one of the few that endures: our acceptance of galleries as gateways and
sanctuaries for art. Gates’ methods, moreover, are almost insidious in their modesty
and directness.
Twice I’ve
happened upon “Barbara” on the streets of Chelsea.
It (or perhaps I should say “She”) consists of a large welded steel box, sized to
comply with New York City street vendor regulations, and coated with protective
pick-up truck bed liner material. Small folding doors permit entry into its
dark interior. In this womb-like refuge one can sit and contemplate eight small
paintings by Mr. Gates, each one subtly illuminated by a baffle in the steel walls.
From the
outside, the black articulated surfaces lend “Barbara” a vaguely Gothic air.
(One thinks of certain sculptures by Louise Nevelson.) Watching Mr. Gates enthusiastically
close the doors upon intrigued passers-by, one becomes aware of how much
“Barbara” relies on, and engenders, acts of spontaneous trust.
The artist,
in fact, lives in Arkansas,
which means that he has towed “Barbara” several thousand miles for her two
appearances to date in New York.
Each time “Barbara” is unloaded on a Chelsea
street, she contends anew with the powers that be. The steel skin may be
impervious to the elements, but not, as the artist’s website recounts, to the
displeasure of some gallery owners and the predations of tow-truck drivers.
And just what
kind of art lies inside her protective walls? The artist’s paintings possess a
surprising delicacy and cheerfulness. Though painted in enamel on sand-blasted
steel—in keeping with the industrial-strength context—the images from last
winter’s trip were simple silhouettes of holiday themes: a reindeer, a
Christmas tree, a mitten. They looked for all the world like colored cookie
cut-outs. Mischievously, a snow man appeared upside-down. This spring’s trip
featured more highly detailed images of hands holding stylized roses or wreaths,
derived perhaps from medieval illuminations or tarot cards. Such glimpses of
the delicate, within a sanctum only a few feet from rumbling traffic, can be
strangely exhilarating.
The innocence
of Mr. Gates’ paintings only adds to the slyness of “Barbara,” which mimics the
hallowing, focusing role of the gallery spaces whose sidewalks she momentarily
occupies, but whose very business model she refutes. We still like to think of
artists as footloose, independent creators of transporting experiences, even as
we look to the institution of the gallery—with its trained staff, schedule, and
space maintained at considerable expense—to alert us to their creative acts. We
tend to accept this fraught relationship between artist, gallery, and public as
necessary for the incubation of significant art. But should we? One imagines
Mr. Gates takes considerable pleasure in poking at our presumptions.
John Goodrich is a
painter and writer on art who lives and works in the New York City area.
The following essays first appeared, in February 2006, at nplusonemag.com.
Interview
You have never heard of Marvin Gates. But then, few people have. He is that art world myth: a painter who develops in hiding and emerges late, fully formed.
Like his pictures, Mr. Gates's Harlem studio is simultaneously spare and dense. A tall man, he has to duck under a painting to get to the refrigerator. Four large paintings take up the entire room, and his extensive library is shelved neatly near the floor. He is apologetic about not having followed criticism for a while, having abandoned the art magazines in his early teens. I reassure him that he hasn't missed much. Then we talk about art.
In graduate school, Gates was known for engineering pulley systems to make paintings too big for the gallery space (they scrolled down onto the floor), and basically not acting like any kind of student. Upon receiving his MFA, he said he had "some questions." He spent the next decade asking them, and they resulted in a group of pictures now on display at the Dolphin Gallery in Kansas City.
The four pictures that constitute the centerpiece of the show are identical in size and tell a single story, so Gates considers them one piece. He spent a year on each, and told me that one of his questions is why he would do such a particular thing over such a long period of time. When you see the paintings, it becomes pretty clear. They are keen, fierce, and strange – and clearly a labor of love.
—Dushko Petrovich
Death's Sky Blue Bag
The Blue Case, 2001 - 2003, oil on canvas, 78 x 104 inches.
If the Grim Reaper were alive today, it seems he would be wearing sneakers. As the faceless city waits for cabs and hops in cars, he's busy. He's running around, jaw dropped – is he about to speak? Both his fists are clenched: one swings up in an even-paced trot, while the other grips a baby-blue case with fingerless gloves. What does he keep in there?
It has been a whilesince we saw death with a capital D, and it feels strange to see allegory looking so punchy. It's also strange to see a universal symbol jog through such an updated and familiar place. It's definately Manhattan, you can tell by the awnings. There's the blue stripe of the MTA, and the way everybocy is ignoring each other in nice clothes – you'd guess Upper East Side if you had to.
What you see when this painting is real and not computer-screened is the strict flesh of the thing. The paint is so saturated that even the dark colors are bright. The borders are snug and enjoyed. They are so precise that they must have been fought over, but without any scars or remnants from tricks like masking tape. The painting's last layer, though geometric, has been generously applied. It is the one that has to face the public, so its skin is thick.
The painting builds an expansive space, so there must be air, but you can't find it anywhere. Nothing is blurry, and you can only see the weather in the coats. The light is severe but not harsh. It obliterates nothing; nothing gleams. No surface is irregular: no cracks, wrinkles, or dents in the sidewalk. So this is and isn't the City. What is round arcs perfectly. What is straight is straight. The picture is measured.
It does not, however, add up. The space stays fractured and tricky. The sidewalk shifts, unannounced. You notice it sits impossibly on an awning. Everyone is still, but their postures are unsustainable. One woman forever slides into her car, holding the open door, perched on a yellow stiletto heel. The construction worker is also forever on the verge of descent. Their movements are not depicted, but rather caught. They don't have faces, but other details persist. We know her nails are done, and that he is sturdy. They are anonymous but typical. Dante comes to mind.
All of this puts time in a strange position. Allegory and hard-edge are revived, but they are put to work telling a personal story, something they wouldn't have done in their heyday. An obvious nostalgia is coupled with a rare devotion to presenting the City as it lives now. One may admire Léger, but those sneakers aren't retro. The story occurs in a flach which has taken forever to construct.
The picture might best be described as a pattern – it shows us an order but doesn't reveal more than it has to. It is fixed, but it has implications. Much of the world's identity has been stripped, and we have a hard time accounting for what remains. The magazine at the bottom left might be one of the art mags the young Gates read and abandoned, but we are not invited to know. And although we are invited to fix our stare on Death's sky blue bag, we will never know what's in there.
—Dushko Petrovich
Et in Manhattan ego
Forwards, 2001 – 2004, oil on canvas, 78 x 104 inches
Twin feelings of fascination and embarrassment emerge when we encounter a contemporary painting like Forwards. The figure of Death, in the suited, stylized, static jog of just another city commuter, appears at the center, conspicous to the viewer, invisible to those inside the frame. There are many things one could say about how clever it all is – dead leaves trampled under suede bucks, abriefcase containing who knows what, a bare canvas outline where the skull face should be – but to say them turns Death into nothing more than a painter's gimmick.
Perhaps this is always our first reaction when confronted with allegory: a supicion of gimmickry. Allergory engages the brain more than the heart, and so enlists the critical faculties, for better or worse, from the very first. As any museum docent would be glad to explain, Holbein painted in the elongated, allegorical skull at the bottom of The Ambassadors to remind us that though we may collect untold riches in life, death levels us all. The instant we understand that Death himself has inscribed Et in Arcadia ego on the stone in Poussin's canvas, we begin to formulate a moral in our minds.
We could look all day at the way form negotiates space in Marvin Gates's Forwards and find in this a profound cerebral pleasure – but the moment we identify Death as such, our brains begin labeling the consequences of his arrival. The populace surrounding him takes on a meaning in this frozen moment, and we struggle to decipher it. See how all the pedestrians turn away from Death, how even the cars do it? Is it midless inattention, or a deliberate decision not to look? Who is going forwards in Forwards?
Because of all this mental activity, there are things we do not feel: no pity when we look at the two figures in the shade of the umbrella; no shame the man in a red vest extending a hand; no sorrow for the greened-out shades of people inside the city bus. In this respect they are all the victims of allegory. We trade something that works like a story for something that works like a riddle.
Whatever Death strides through sets itself apart from him, if only for the instant before he touches it. This instant is the one Gates has chosen to paint, and in painting it he has given it life while limiting that life to a single instant. Blocks of color drop into place, shapes interact – among them, human shapes. Some kind of meaning – some kind of narrative – is born at this very moment, but this very moment is all we are given. A hubcap, rediating its perfect dartboard pattern, makes a saint of a woman as she climbs into her car. Crosswalks reveal themselves to be immaculate ladders toward – and away from – a distant Palladian paradise. In the space between the two pedestrians who share an umbrella, in the space between the side of a building and the rear of a passing van, a sliver of depth, a rectangle of air, is created and preserved. And life is there in miniature, compressed and held in a frame for all time.
Does fixing a thing in time give it immortality or extinguish it? Over and against the crosswalk at the painting's center a blocky shadow falls. The woman who walks her child across the street is the gnomon of a sundial. Her shadow measures a time that knows no forwards. This is the place on the graph where never and forever intersect.
There is not much new that anyone living can tell us about death. But there is something new, I think, that can be said about the relationship between mortality and painting, the powers of annihilation and creation, and this picture is saying it.
—Chandra Speeth
Street Walking Man
On Things to Come, 2002 – 2004, oil on canvas, 78 x 104 inches
The trouble with the rat race is even if you win, you're still a rat.
—Lilly Tomlin
As the species of the same genus usually have, though by no means invariably,
much similarity in habits and constitution, and always in structure, the struggle
will generally be more severe between them, if they come into competition
with each other, than between species of distinct genera.
—Charles Darwin
A Donald Duck head. A miniature windmill. Some patterned cloth. Three rats sniff around a cage. I can't tell if the Environmentally Complex cage affects their mood. I laugh. There is no illustration for Isolated Cage. I don't need one. EC rats have heavier brains than IC rats. EC rats have higher dendritic fields that IC rats. Living in Environmental Complexity seems to make a rat smarter.
I winder if there exists a complexity threshold, a point after which the accumulation and compounding of visual stimuli overburden the visual cortex. The brain cries uncle.
+ + +
All but a handful of stray citizens have given up on the City in On Things to Come. No buses, no dogs, no jackhammers, ho hustle,no cramps, no squeezes. It is silent. Gates cranked the volume down. The voluminous space punishes every one in his separateness. A sewer king – a subterranean game piece – surveys the scene from his hole. A majorette, half-shaded, stands idly. She waits for a bus, for the light to change, for a sound. A street vendor sells nothing to nobody. Off on the horizon's edge, isolated against the white infinite where the painting ends, an old man hobbles to his conclusion.
Volume, from volumen, meaning a scroll, hence a book written on parchment. The past participle of volvere, to roll. Evovled: literally, rolled out, like a carpet. Evolution is disclosure. In the iconic poster a parade of hominids, from homo habilis to homo erectus to homo sapiens, marches across a long stretch of time. The story ends with bipedal man walking off the page. Walk, traced back through its Middle and Old English roots walken and wealcan, finds its etymological ancestor to be volvere.
His work done, Death hangs up his running shoes, lays his briefcase to rest, slips on spandex shorts and a yellow jersey, and rides a cab home. His legs hurt. He plays tired. Twirling a baton, he looks down the asphalt stretch from whence he came, back that way, over there.
We forget to survive. We have forgotten to survive. We have survived by forgetting.
—Jesse Dillon
Eulogy in Esperanto
Head of the Driver, 2003 – 2004, oil on canvas, 78 x 104 inches
The New York City street scene seems too demanding a subject for a contemporary painting. One hardly sees it anymore. There is something about its profusion of characteristic details – the taxis, hydrants, and kiosks, the carts and vendors, the small bits of trash – that embarrasses the painter seeking a sense of new ideas and visions. The landscape of the city is visually outdated, and it doesn't help that the characteristic view would have to contain kitschy depictions of itself, on all the magazines and posters we see everywhere. All these elements shame the painter because they call out to his only partially sublimated desire for nostalgia and reverie. A repository of tradition, the street presents a problem for a practice worried about being judged traditional in the wrong way, in the sentimental and old-fashioned way.
While neither sentimental nor old-fashioned, marvin Gates's paintings are decidedly engaged with tradition. Part of the paintings' appeal lies in the difficulty of accounting for their style, or even identifying their genre. I think of them as modernist vanitas landscapes. They involve fragmentary urban scenes and well-dressed allegories, painted in a simplified, hard-edged manner similar to early American modernists like Stuart Davis, Charles Sheeler, and Gerald Murphy. Alongside this connosseur's list of painterly references, which could be expanded internationally to include Fernand Léger and Jean Hélion, one could cite early video games, international symbols, and Playmobil figurines as secondary inspirations. The result, somewhere between Balthus and Legos, is a body of work that's at once reverent toward tradition and hard to locate within it. The question is, how does it work?
The simplifications in Gates's paintings don't exactly simplify things. Instead, the starkness provides a way for ordinary things to be themselves and also mysteriously otherwise. Hydrants are sculptures, people are mannequins, and a skull has a personality. Like him ambiguous abbreviations for objects, Gates's spatial shorthand disrupts easy reading. Receding planes tip toward the viewer, volumes empty out, and distances shrink and grow unpredictably. Gates invites the viewer in only to confront her with bizarre disjunctions and anomalies. He builds trapdoors in Renaissance space.
This quintessentially modernist tactic cools down the emotional heat of the subject, Death. The drama enacted in the paintings, in which a sneaker-clad reaper takes to the streets of New York and ultimately disembodies in a funeral parlor, is rendered in a visual language suggesting a goal of order and rationality in figurative art that has long been absent from critical discourse. The series of four paintings is like a eulogy delivered in Esperanto.
In Head of the Driver the tableau is lit from above, though not by the bare light bulb we see hanging from the top edge of the picture. It's true, metaphysical light source, the affixed beam of death, saturates the scene in an even, pallid glow that plays tricks on the eyes. Take, for example, the shadow cast by the precisely rendered skull in the left forground, which turns the front face of a jarringly fuchsia pedestal into a geometrically impossible plane. Or examine the chadow of the framed picture, which extends all the way down the wall and vanishes behind the improbably located hearse. The scheme is not so simple.
At the far end of the spectrum from the realistically rendered, proximal objects in Gates's paintings – hands, handbags, sneakers, and skulls – lies the body in the hearse. It's the most summarized object in the painting, an irregular geometric solid with a white cube for a head. It exists as something imagined inside the sealed space of the car, and, as a kind of modernist mummy, it makes sense. It is also very disturbing.
The hearse, for its part, is aimed between the black curtain and the pale blue wall. Curtain and wall, as well as the railing and the skull's pedestal, lie parallel to the picture plane, framing a shallow frontal space into which the hearse seems unlikely to fit. Two assertions about the space of the painting collide, and the clarity with which both are rendered, the straightforward, hard-edged geometry of Gates's style, makes the scene all the more discomforting. The hearse's blue shadow is severed abruptly by the deeper blue-black between curtain and wall, creating, in that intermediary rear space, an evocation of death far creepier than any skull.
In Gates's work, a complex narrative redeems the street scene. Precisely bright shapes render a tired subject new, and we get to reencounter the New York we all know. It's all there, from the crosswalks to the high heels and overcoats, and we pay attention because death, with his hurried nonchalance, is contiually making an appearance.
—Roger White
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The artist thanks the following for permission to reprint the material listed:
