By Laura
Perkins
Sometimes it is
nice to be vindicated especially when some professional calls your bluff. Of
late I have become an art critic, an amateur art critic proud to say, in this space based on my love of art, my having
studied it in my youth and because I still haunt art museums (and a less worthy
reason that nobody else in this philistine operation would dare go within ten
blocks of a museum having been “wised up” in about sixth grade on that fateful
field trip to some art museum and they
have never gotten
over it.) Along the way I have gathered what amounts to things called trolls
according to my fellow writers here who have ranged from spiteful evangelicals
to people with axes to grind without purpose and a few professional art critics
like Clarence Dewar. That last troll is what today’s archival caption is about.
Dewar, a
professional art critic for Art Today, has apparently made it his life’s
mission to rid the field of what he considers, get this, citizen critics,
people who would mess up his well-oiled art theories by exposing them as no
less subjective than their poor offerings. He has made me the “poster child”
for his wrath having replied and commented on every single article that I have
pushed out the door the past several months. He went crazy when I exposed
Edward Hopper, holy of holies, as organically incapable of drawing anything but
mud faces. Took a nutty when I mentioned that Jackson Pollock’s drippings had
plenty of material embedded in the work which indicated that he had been a
sexual dervish, with who I don’t know on at least a few of the early productions.
(Of course, such “madness” his term required him to defend his mentor Clement
Greenberg who was the max daddy of critics hailing abstract expressionist art
in general and Pollock’s semen drippings in particular. Leaving later generations
to have to try to break free of that stigmata). There have been a million other
controversies as well but that gives the tenor of the so-called “duel” between us.
I thought we were
going to have to send an hospital emergency room squad specializing in bilious
behavior after my most recent “discover” about modern artist, abstract and
maybe pop artist thrown in, Jasper Johns and the route he took to define his
own working life. Let me lay out the story as I heard it first. Early in his
career he had been like all young artists awash in representational painting
(even mad Surrealists and Dadaists started out “by the numbers”). The Johns’ household
was something like a sanctuary for second chance cats, kittens really, you know
rescue cats from animal shelters.
One cat named
Jasper was always around when Johns was doing his artwork. One day dear Jasper
spilled a bucket of paint from the worktable, color charcoal grey, onto a
painting of some scene Johns was working on. At first furious at the frisky cat
after picking up the “damaged” goods he noticed that the results looked extraordinary
like a AAA map of Augusta, Georgia (where he had been born in 1930). This would
be the lesser known Piping Number 4 dedicated to Jasper, most art critics,
most professional art critics including the villain Dewar when I researched the
matter, assumed that he was referring to himself. From there Johns made a career,
a lucrative career out of such common symbols as maps, flags, numbers, using
various materials, not all paints as such.
Enter Dewar
our esteemed professional art critic to counter my so-called story with the usual
blather about Johns being influenced by Pollock, Rudy Zane, Billy Bligh, Christ
even Marcel Duchamp and Salvador Dali. Dismissed, as usual, any idea that an accident
by a beloved animal might have influenced him. Of course if the average art
lover knew anything about Johns it is the multitude of American flags he
created out of many materials and with many variations. These flags have sold for
many millions, many, many millions. That is the standard a guy like Dewar measures
works by. What Dewar did not know is on this one I was able to get the “skinny”
on the cat story by the grandson of Johns’ late art dealer and the person who
put him on the New York art world map. He confirmed the story (and moreover has
the painting given to him by his grandfather when he was young). Touché.
Touché for a
minute because as the reader will note the headline includes the name of famed
(maybe more famed than Johns now) Mexican artist Frida Kahlo. Now Frida and
Johns have little in common other than being well-deserved famous artists whose
works sell for mucho dinero but a reader enthralled by the Johns cat story
wrote that cats played a significant role in Kahlo’s early career.
No question
that Frida was influences by her husband Diego Rivera and his circle of muralists
and by what today is called Arte Mexico, an appreciation of the indigenous cultures
of her country. But according to my reader, and I have begun to see that she is
right, Frida also was influenced by a cat, or cats. Had been sometime after the
horrible injuries received on a runaway tram been frightened almost to death by
a cat who ran across her chest several different times while she was recovery
and had not way to stop the beast. That is the genesis of the many cats (and other
animals as well) in her works. Go figure. Go figure as well Clarence Dewar will
have to say on this one.
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