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"John Clemmer
in Retrospect" |
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If one artist has quietly left a mark on the city of New Orleans without notable fanfare, that artist is John Clemmer, who has worked steadily in this city since early 1940s. That oversight is presently being ameliorated with Clemmer's joint recognition by the New Orleans Museum of Art, and the New Orleans Academy of Fine Art – the former with a retrospective exhibition and catalogue, the latter with an exhibition of current works. Together these two exhibitions celebrate Clemmer's lifetime of achievement. The exhibition and its accompanying catalogue published by the New Orleans Museum of Art, particularly, makes evident Clemmer's contribution to art in the city.
Originally from Franklin, Louisiana, Clemmer moved to the Crescent City in 1928 as a young boy and studied in the local schools. He took his art training – his only formal art training – at the Arts and Crafts Club when that institution operated the only school offering an art education to young men. Although Newcomb College was educating young women in art, it was the only academic institution in this city to offer a baccalaureate degree in art, a degree at that time that was limited to women. Its art courses were not yet open to young men – and would not be until 1956, and the Tulane University School of Architecture did not parallel Newcomb's art instruction in its offerings.
During Clemmer's war service in the Army Air Corps, he taught art to young students and to servicemen in Dayton, Ohio. While there he learned that he had won first prize in the Arts and Crafts annual exhibition, a prestigious award at that time. After his return to New Orleans, he continued to exhibit with the Club and in exhibitions throughout the country. He later served as executive secretary and then director of the Art School of the Arts and Crafts Club for many years until its demise in 1952 for lack of funding. He took a position on Tulane's architecture faculty, where he taught painting, drawing, and design until becoming director of the Newcomb Department of Art from 1978 until 1986.
Despite his not having a collegiate degree in art, Clemmer trained under some of the best-known artists of the day, including Paul Ninas, and Xavier Gonzalez – who taught art at Newcomb College and critiqued classes at the New Orleans Art School. Following his natural tendency toward unceasing curiosity, he continued to study and remain abreast of his field, becoming well read and versed in music. He remained abreast of national and international art movements, and his works show his experiments in the prevailing modernistic art trends, particularly the Cubists and the Paris Art School. Active with the artists who pioneered the Orleans Gallery, he worked alongside artists like sculptors Lin Emery and Enrique Alferez, painters Robert Helmer, Charles Hutson, Hazel McKinley, Joseph Donaldson, and John McCrady, the potter Rudolph Staffel, and the photographer Clarence John Laughlin. He was a familiar figure among the artists of the French Quarter, often discussing literature, music, and art theory in artists studios and in the cafes of the Vieux Carre.
The NOMA show includes several of Clemmer's early works , as well as some drawings from his days in the service. Here one observes particularly the influence of Cubism. This trend, subsequently, gave way to a more orderly geometric style, then gradually evolved into the precisely controlled systematic works suggestive of well-defined architectural shapes, which is distinctly Clemmer.
The video that is shown at the museum is more successful than usual for this type of informational accompaniment. It is fascinating for its restraint and understated portrayal of an artist at ease with himself and with his work. Clemmer speaks candidly – both in the video and in the text labels for the exhibition – about the joys of improvisation in his work; he is conversant with art theory and his ability to succinctly state his work ethic is inspiring. As one watches his deliberate precise, orderly working habits, one is reminded of Gauguin's admonition to Van Gogh after observing his slovenly work habits, that creativity and good art cannot arise from chaos. The work habits of French Quarter painter Clarence Millet also come to mind, for his ideas regarding the unnecessarily unkempt appearance of artists of the French Quarter at that time. One recalls stories about Clemmer, who would rise early and after breakfast descend a ladder from his loft apartment to his studio, whereupon he changed to tennis shoes to accommodate his habit of constantly walking back and forth from his canvases to study thoughtfully the work before proceeding to paint. After a full day's work, in the evenings he would reverse the order of changing shoes, somewhat like an early version of television's Mr. Rogers.
Clemmer's oeuvre includes a diverse body of work including landscapes, portraits, still-lifes, and sculpture, with representations of each in the NOMA exhibition. Many of the pieces are drawn from his travels abroad, as well as from his Wisconsin residence. All are competent in their artistry and in their accomplishment. This continued portrayal of international subjects eliminates Clemmer the position of local colorist in the sense of many French Quarter artists.
A 1940 still life of fruit and mother-in-law tongue, his first independent painting after training at the New Orleans Art School, is characteristic of the type of work that was produced during the that time by artists of the school: the spheres, ovoids, and cones of the centrally placed subject in a carefully arranged composition with strategically balancing complementary colors. The work is a simple straightforward presentation of the subject, yet the background cloth with its crisp geometric shapes and the rectangular ochre inset behind the cloth-covered chair and spiky plants points to Clemmer's future direction in art.
How Men Their Brothers Maim, painted in 1942 in a somber palette, derives its title from Oscar Wilde's Ballad of Reading Gaol. The jester, a subject popular throughout the 1920's and 1930's, presents a wretched sight with slooped shoulders and distorted face. The drooping multiple points of its hat emphasize misery. The painting reflects the influence of Xavier Gonzalez in palette, in treatment, and in subject, with its emphasis on the psychological and physical pain inflicted by other humans.
The drawings from Clemmer's service days underscore his drawing skills, as well as his sketching habits. He sketched whatever subjects were available and often produced drawings after the painting was executed. These works show a certainty and economy of pen stroke, delicate precise cross-hatching, an understanding of the human figure. Clemmer comments that he does not necessarily follow a sketch in the painting, but his ability to extract a subject from preconceived composition evident in See Ungeheuer (Sea Monster), painted in 1944. Its muted tones derive from his experience spray-painting camouflage color on landing craft and PT boats at Higgins Industries in City Park, where he worked previous to his military service. The subject of the painting that Clemmer was working on until the morning of his induction makes reference to the escalating carnage of the war; one detects plans, ships, sea creatures and multiple sinister faces. Throughout his works, the viewer detects an underlying sense of seriousness and composure. A series of nudes show the Paris influence, with the figure abstracted and shown larger than life, often with the background show fragmented in geometric shapes.
A portrait of Lin Emery and her husband, Shirley Braselman, was painted between 1967 and 1968 in the studio of the Tulane School of Architecture. The painting is very simple in its sparse setting in the frontal position of the sitters. Since the two sitters were unable to pose at the same time, Clemmer solved the problem of drawing the two together by showing Braselman seated and Emery standing behind him with her hand on the back of his chair. This very simple solution hearkens to a long line of portraiture in photography and painting, which has the wife standing behind her husband and placing her hand either on his shoulder or on the chair back. Other portraits are similarly composed, with the subject frontally posed against a sparse background.
Clemmer works through a progression of abstract subjects and non-representational works, including some painted with a paint roller. The experience of working with these compositions, as well as his early leanings toward a minimalist subject is evident in many works that are dominantly pastel. He does, however, explore the middle and darker tonal ranges in many of these series. Almedia, a near-pastel 1962 collage, underscores Clemmer's manner of studious questioning of his composition, and his manner of turning a work against a wall to "rest" before continuing. He decided that the painting, originally a long landscape having simplified chevron-shaped trees, worked well as a vertical composition. This technique recalls that of Newcomb art teacher Will Henry Stevens, who insisted that his compositions be equally as interesting from all points of verisimilitude, and often turned his paintings upside down or sideways to illustrate his point. Clemmer additionally placed a magazine illustration of a cracked sculptural ear to the wet paint, and finding that it adhered, gave it the title Almedia, learning later that it was the name of a plantation serving as a major water source for New Orleans. Clemmer delights in telling this story, which is typical of the pleasure he takes in other spontaneous or "happy accidents" that happen in his art. In several text labels in the show he discusses the element of these felicitous occurrences.
Vapros, Exaltation, and Plumed, executed in the late 1980s, are typical of Clemmer's skill in taking advantage of the materials with which he works. The Mexican paper papel de amate, which Clemmer uses for these mixed media pieces, is made from the bark of a tree related to the fig tree. The rough texture invites the artist to explore the surface for inherent designs, and Clemmer is especially adept and creative in responding to the designs and subtleties as he interprets his subjects in these pieces, which all draw their motifs from the Mexican cultural heritage.
Several works show the influence of the artist's coursework in Early Christian and Byzantine art and architecture that he took at Newcomb. Others, like the Temple of Poseidon, show his fascination with the ruins of classical architecture, particularly in the lintels and strong columnar elements. Many of these canvases are shown divided into three vertical rectangles with the hue of each panel suggesting the progression from warm dawns through bright midday to cool or dusky evenings. Others focus on the seasons, while still another series develops the theme of cosmology inspired by his interest in the texts of Cosmos Indicopleustes and medieval manuscripts. Many can be compared to music in their regular measure and in the range of tonal harmonies.
Clemmer's recent works at the New Orleans Academy of Fine Art show many of the same characteristics, particularly his sustained interest in geometry and nature. Most of these feature trees or landscapes, with the majority displaying the same serenity and sense of quiet composure as the artworks showed in the NOMA exhibition. Others suggest the idea of suppressed turmoil just beneath the surface. Many feature circles or a series of concentric circles. Still other are divided into either three horizontal layers or in multiple horizontal layers, again reminiscent of the compositions of Will Henry Stevens. And of course, there are representative examples of vertical divisions with the tonal arrangements corresponding to the times of day. Like the NOMA exhibit, some of these works are divided into square grids of 36 or 47 blocks; each division forms a part of the whole, and yet each retains its integral shape.
This practice is especially true of Honey Island Swamp, a triptych painted in muted tones with an undeniable local interest in exotic location and subject. The vertical elements of trees are interspersed with a tangle of curvilinear vines, jagged branches, and spiky vegetation. The surface of each panel is fragmented, yet the pattern carries over to its adjoining panel to form a cohesive unit. As the viewer examines the triptych closely and the eyes adjust to the fragmented surface, an unmistakable ape-like figure is evident as it emerges from the tree behind it. The imagination perceives a number of shapes that suggest such primeval creatures.
One especially enchanting piece titled Gap, shows a compressed stack of somewhat disorderly shirts on a shelf, as though customers had rifled through a previously orderly arrangement. There is the usual variety of colors and shades of gray that one expects to find in these commercial establishments. What makes this work especially interesting, though, is the curvilinear and geometric shapes of the central design in this subject. The stack seems at once as a solid stack and at the same time as a shape that dissolves as it recedes into a perspectival roadway into the distance.
Another work, divided into four squares, focuses on a modern white patio chair on a deck, obviously in a Midwestern landscape setting. The artist plays with the plastic elements of design, shadow against light, white against tone. Here the curvilinear shapes of the chair contrast with the sharp rectilinear shapes formed by the architectural elements: deck, railing, roofline, and the negative spaces between each geometric mass.
Clemmer's early training at the School of the Arts and Crafts Club together with his teaching experiences at the Club and in the Tulane School of Architecture are incorporated with his travels and other life experiences into a blend that emerge in an artistic style that is unmistakable. Together these two exhibitions document his artistic accomplishment and the larger contribution to the history of art in the city. Furthermore, this exposure places Clemmer staunchly in the company of artist like Enrique Alferez, who also has been exhibited simultaneously at the Art Museum and at the Art Academy in recent years.