David Lochtie/Carl Morris painting Post #1

Just Married

It has been a week since I was “legally bound” to the Carl Morris painting “Untitled 1968” in a mock marriage ceremony at the Portland Art Museum. I had admired the painting before that, was physically attracted, you might say, and have abandoned other galleries in mid-visit to go stand before the piece I am now “married” to.

Each time I see it I feel the same leaping up of spirit that I feel when I stand before any of Morris’s great works. The shock of bright values amidst the stack of ovals that float up the canvas, the motion suggested by the composition, are thrilling. Once again he has pulled off that great trick: spontaneous depiction of nature’s vitality. And yet there is something else in this painting. Unlike most of Morris’ works, which favor the organic form over the symbol, these shapes are deliberate, less like collections of rock or sunlight and more like the undisguised sumi-e images he sometimes painted along with his wife, the sculptor Hilda Morris.

It was these sumi-e images I was thinking about as I said the wedding vows-- “to cherish and hold”--even the blackened turpentine half-toning over the canvas looks like thinned ink on Japanese paper. The simple figures in East Asian sumi-e paintings, like the orbiting ovals in the piece, are related to nature, but they are stylized, like the calligraphy from which they are derived. How informative of Carl Morris’ work were these sumi-e images? His uncanny mimicry of natural proportion and composition, the ecstatic energy present in asymmetrical clusterings, the dance of emptiness and form- were these derived through the study of Japanese calligraphy and Zen painting, as well as the meditations on Northwestern landscapes that I thought had been his primary inspiration?

Yesterday I began a monotype series, a place to put my recent musings on autumn, yellow, grief, and dancing. As nature was present in all these considerations, here at the time of year when the beautiful sadness of the passing year is most flush, I was also thinking about the work of Carl Morris, his shapes and the light they catch. I began with half a dozen prints that calligraphically blended musical lines and autumn yellows.

Today I took a different tack. I wanted to create something arising from Spirit: a picture of the opening heart, a heart flowing outward with joy toward possibility. I sat with a pad in a soft chair and waited for the image to come. What arrived: simple rounded enclosures radiating outward concentrically, almost-circles wobbling on their axis of symmetry. When I pulled the print there was a moment of recognition, a leaping up of the spirit. I had not been trying for a sumi-e nature image, nor for a Morris image, yet there was something of both in the piece. Just as lovers might see the face of their beloved in every face, perhaps artists can’t help subtly recreating the work they admire.

Fascination

It's unusual to see a painting or a print by Odilon Redon within a permanent museum collection, especially one outside of France or New York. So when I encountered “Oannes et le Sphinx” a few years ago, I was really excited. For me, Redon's work has always been a window into the logic of dreams and the mystery of the subconscious. While I love and admire contemporary painting, my heart always returns to Redon and other Symbolists of the mid to late 1800's. (His work is in my personal top 5 artists of all time.) Redon's prints and paintings portray a symbolic world where figures are obscured, oftentimes by a thick cloud of what appears to be atmospheric haze. As if emerging from another world or the dense clouds of a deep sleep, his figures reveal themselves and disappear. They point inward. They refer to the unknowable, that which escapes representation, even when they seemingly illustrate a myth or a poem.

Specifically, “Oannes et le Sphinx” hangs in the museum above a Munch, and I wish it could be hung alone, in a much larger space, where one could get up close to it. It requires you to be near to it. Its size makes you lean in. Its power is not in overwhelming the viewer, but rather in seducing you with inscrutable, strange, somewhat awkward little marvelous creatures. The soft pastel and earth tones are the palette of Redon's visions. In this piece, the Sphinx rises up with butterfly wings, and with a head that reminds me of the visage of John the Baptist, as seen in so many portrayals of the story of Salome. Oannes, the fish/man/god is below, in the low left corner, barely visible. I don't understand this painting completely, and because of that I am rewarded with a lot to ponder. I am fascinated.

Honeymoon

Congratulations to you happy newly-weds! All your wedding photos will be posted soon - as soon as they get sanctioned for public use by the museum.

Dearly Beloved we have gathered here to witness.