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"NOMA Shows
Clemmer Breaking out of Cubist Box" |
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One of the best things about watching old TV programs like "Perry Mason," "Peter Gunn" and "The Dick Van Dyke Show" is spotting the cool old Modern art on the walls: geometric flights of gulls, barely discernible nudes or scary existential cities with hundreds of lonely lighted windows. Usually the broken designs are some form of Cubism – the broken mirror style invented by Picasso and Braque in the first decade of the century – that had completely invaded world consciousness by the 1950s. Cubism was universally significant, not just for the way it looked, but for what it represented. Cubism suggested that there was more than one way to view reality. It dovetailed perfectly with Freud's new studies of the human mind, which focused on the subconscious; Einstein's' new theories of physics, which postulated that time was not necessarily linear; and Joyce's new stream-of-consciousness fiction. It was clearly the style of the new century.
Cubism was something else too: a dramatically new decorative form. By the time you found it on Dick and Laura's walls it didn't matter what it all stood for, it only mattered how it looked. Artists could now interpret their environments anew, turning their backs on more traditional styles. Everybody rode the heady, sophisticated Modern wave, even if they were not the primary creators of the styles they practiced. The world began to fill up with chunky geometric still lifes, stick-figures a la Giacometti, and Kandinsky's rainbow-colored sun spots.
That's what was going on in the arts when the young John Clemmer dedicated himself to the profession. A retrospective of his work, "John Clemmer: Exploring the Medium, 1940-1999," at NOMA, is a sunny promenade through various incarnations of his style. Clemmer's earliest paintings, from the 1940s, are combinations of Picassoesque Cubism and the wavy checkerboard abstraction of another Mod giant, Paul Klee. Most of them are predictable, second-generation exercises and nothing more.
In 1950, though, the then 29-year-old artist made a personal breakthrough. A canvas titled "Noon Visit: was a harbinger of things to come. Notice how "Noon Visit" has a quieter, more harmonious design than the typical Cubist composition, with few jarring diagonal lines, sharp angles or emphatic black shadows. Also notice that Clemmer used a mellow pastel palette. With rare exception, you can follow this formal quietude through the rest of his career.
In an excellent 1966 titled "Salem Symbol," for instance, he has turned away from the organic lines of his earlier paintings to a more architectural composition consisting only of vertical and horizontal strokes. It's a quantum design shift, but the soft, cloudy colors of "Noon Visit" persist. In "Topographia V-Capricorn" of 1973, his shift to geometry is even more extreme. This painting looks like it might have been drawn with drafting instruments, but in spite of the razor-sharp edges, the overall mood of the work is soft and soothing because of the harmonious low-key colors. Even Clemmer's relatively realistic paintings, such as the twin portrait of sculptor Lin Emery and her husband Shirley Braselman, are composed entirely of gently modulated pastel, further muted by large areas of ash gray.
Though the art world loves its young firebrands, the truth is artists generally improve with age. Clemmer is no exception. His most recent pieces, from the 1990s, combine realistic rendering with the design lessons of Modernism and are the best and the most thoroughly Clemmer of 76 Clemmers in the show. Some are pastel daydreams of exotic locales such as the temple of Poseidon in Greece or the rustic town of Cortona in Italy. Others are contemplations of the birch woodlands surrounding the artist's Wisconsin home. The best may be "View/Wahgouly I" a dappled forest-scape divided into three vertical bands of ice blue, sage green and naturalistic earth tones.
Though steeped in a variety of Modern traditions, these recent works seem more personal than those of past decades, although now Clemmer is making art more for himself than the world. The reason may be simple. Clemmer, who was an instructor, then professor, of art at Tulane University from 1951 to 1986, may have executed his earlier works in part as a method of demonstrating the precepts of Modernity to his students. Once he left teaching, the universal, instructional quality of his work diminished as the more personal aspects grew.
Like the individual works, this retrospective is a rather quiet, unassuming, even humble exhibit – qualities his friends attribute to Clemmer himself. No, there are no death-defying style shifts or episodes of autobiographical angst in these mannerly works, only a contemplation of beauty. It is a show somehow out-of-synch with our Seinfeld-era craving for psychological subtext and bitter irony. Clemmer is very much like Raoul Dufy (also on exhibit at NOMA) in that way; his focused, consistent, upbeat style, perversely leaves us wanting. Happy, fruitful lives don't make the best biographies either.
Permission granted by the Times Picayune. All rights reserved. Reprinted with permission.