LARRY POONSRADICAL SURFACE:1985-1989

525 West 26th StreetNew York NY 10001212.695.0164www.lorettahoward.com

LARRY POONS

RADICAL SURFACE:1985-1989

NOVEMBER 4 – DECEMBER 23, 2010Opening ReceptionNovember 4, 6:00 – 8:00pm

Essay by

DAVE HICKEY

F. Scott Fitzgerald remarked that the careers of American artists have no second acts. Larry Poons pro-vides the exception that proves the rule. It’s almost impos-sible to imagine a smoother first act or a rougher second than Poons has had. The sleek urbanity of Poons’ early paintings are contradicted at every point by the rough-ness of his late ones. Even so, the real distinction between Poons’ early paintings and his late ones resides more in our perception of their self-possessed dignity than in the objects themselves—and why not? The dignity of high modernist painting is one of its defining attributes, yet somehow, over the years, we have fallen into the habit of addressing works of art as if they were advertisements, as if they were addressing us personally rather than the oth-

er way around. We assume that the aggression of Poons’ painting is directed toward ourselves, when, in fact, the aggression is directed by the artist towards the work of art and we are mere observers.

In this sense Poons’ paintings are battlefields. They portray the residue of antique struggles. So the question is not about the dignity of Poons’ painting. Dignity is an antique virtue but a real one. The question is about the evolution of our own narcissism and our recent propen-sity for turning every artistic exchange into a reality-tele-vision-show starring ourselves. When I asked Larry Poons a question about the nature of our responses to his paint-ings, he responded as if the issue had never occurred to him, as if it were none of his business. Poons answered in the old language of the Cedar Tavern. There are good paintings and bad paintings. There are maneuvers that make a painting better and others that make a painting

worse, but there are no maneuvers that channel a paint-ing’s energy toward the beholder. Only narcissism can do this, and narcissism inhabits a domain well beyond the vocabulary of painting. Good paintings, in Poons idiom, bear with them the aura of an impersonal fate that re-deems the artist’s defects. Poons himself attributes the eccentricities of his art to the fact that he is not comfort-able with his drawing; he attributes the eccentricities of Jules Olitski paintings to the struggle Olitski carried with his painting. As Picasso said, by our faults we are saved.

It is true enough, of course, that the imperial dig-nity and autonomy to which Poons’ paintings aspire is not much available in the present marketplace, or even dreamed of, but that doesn’t make it feel any less right.

There is something very clean about standing in the presence of so much primal and self-contained violence. What we feel is the absence of themes, trademarks, and mass marketing strategies aimed at selling examples of an artist’s work to the casual passerby. Cleansed in this way, unfortunately, Poons’ works don’t sell one another. Gathered together, they are not text-book examples—one of which might serve as well as another. They are warriors at one another’s throats, and this agon is invig-orating enough to argue for the potential of a paradigm shift—for the possibility that Poons’ old language might be hovering on the brink of a return. Consider the ongo-ing collapse of regional idioms, the pallor of sociologi-cal cant and the fading of cultural signifiers. Observe the spectacle of diversity dissolving into global entropy, and the escalating collapse of conceptual middle man-agement on the global art scene.

LARRY POONS

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Given these circumstances, when the travelling circus of fairs and biennial finally collapses (should it ever col-lapse), we will, almost of necessity, stop arguing about which cultural ideology or agenda is the better one and argue once again about which is the better work of art. The question of what a work of art might be “good for” will remain, or course, but it will remain secondary and dependant upon the work being good or bad in the first place. The artist’s task will be to execute a “good” work purged of vulgar manners. Poons’ geological language will depend upon its eluding the vices of nature and culture compounded. In a good painting of this sort, there will be no inference that the “artist” and “nature” are in any way identified. There will be no inference that “nature” itself means anything at all. There will be no inference of per-

sonal content in the geological configurations of the paint, nor any inference that a “geological” effect is intended.

The simplest way of explaining Poons’ process was given to me by a shy Italian professore. As we stood in front of Boticelli’s “Primavera,” the professore pointed out that the natural source of every pigment in Boticelli’s painting is represented in the painting it-self—re-incarnated, as it were—thus providing an ex-quisite Catholic explanation of Renaissance painting. The material world in fact becomes the material world in picture. In Poons’ paintings there is a sense that the applied pigment has risen like an iceberg up through its representational plane into a new resolution. The relative thickness or thinness, brightness or darkness of a Poons’ painting depends on the moment that the painting feels finished and not on the moment it looks like something else.

The haunted realm of pictoriality, however, is always there because pigment is earth, and art is pigment, how-ever it is configured. In some configurations, we sense the buried city beneath the cliff, the nest of bones be-neath the accrual of color. From pigment, the painting arises to become pigment redeemed. When we read the paintings top to bottom we feel the surge of gravity. When we read them left to right they have the music of a band playing a song. There are long sustained chords; there are splashes of bells and cymbals; there are re-curring squiggles of melody. As a surface, the desert of paint creates an effect like Titian reversed. The color of paint thrown last, it seems last. It becomes more visible as one approaches the painting and herein resides the longevity of the painting: a long blurred rectangle seen at

a distance assembled by a scattered overlay of intricate details, not one of which is available to the eye simul-taneously, in a glance. Like Bridget Riley and Ken Price in their own idioms, Poons creates images that cannot properly be seen at once—that must be visually collected and constructed in the feeling mind of its beholder.

The final question, then, concerns Poons’ ability to achieve a practice of this maturity at this peculiar time. The answer, I think, is that Poons seems dedicated to do-ing the wrong thing at exactly the wrong time. First, he abandons a successful practice in painting at the zenith of its popularity; then he rejects his friends and colleagues for the Florida Keys; then, at the very nadir of painting’s popular vogue, Poons returns to painting in a style that is antithetical to the “popular” style that made him famous, Then he paints and waits and paints and waits and frets as the wheel goes round, hoping that it will.

October 2010DAVE HICKEY5

Windley Cross1989, acrylic on canvas84 x 94 inches

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Brahms in Rio1982, acrylic on canvas841/4 x 1701/2 inches

fold over:detail

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The What Sonata1989, acrylic on canvas87 x 118 inches

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Southern Exposure1986, acrylic on canvas621/2 x 208 inches

fold overdetail

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Rogue Stadium1989, acrylic on canvas84 x 94 inches

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The Unknown1985, acrylic on canvas833/4 x 133 inches

fold over:detail

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This catalogue published on the occasion of the exhibitionLARRY POONS RADICAL SURFACE: 1985-1989November 4 – December 23, 2010

Loretta Howard Gallery525 West 26th StreetNew York NY 10001212.695.0164www.lorettahoward.com

ISBN: 978-0-9842804-3-8

front & back cover: The Unknown, (detail)inside front cover: Artist’s studio in Islamorada, Florida Keys, 1988-1991page 1: Larry Poons’ sketchbooks, late 1980’spage 2: Interior of Larry Poons’ studio in Islamorada,

Florida Keys, 1988-1991page 3: Sandro Botticelli, Primavera, c. 1482,

tempera on panel, 80 x 124 inches Titian, Bacchus and Ariadne, 1520-1523,

oil on canvas, 691/2 x 75 inches Interior of Larry Poons’ studio in Islamorada, Florida Keys, 1988-1991 above: Paint covered chair in Larry’s studiobelow: photo illustrated on front page The Birmingham News,

October 7, 2010back inside cover: Larry at the race track

Photo Credits:All photos of Larry’s studio by Paula PoonsPhoto of Larry at Talladega Raceway by Art FarleyPainting photos by Ali Elai, CamerartsPhotos of Larry racing in Ghost leathers by Joel PerlmanPhoto of Larry from The Birmingham News by Bernard Troncale

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