Notes on the Culture
Every Tuesday, Matthew Reed Baker will offer his thoughts on the arts and culture scene. This week: WARNING: The column below contains references to ancient Greek and 18th century German philosophy… But you’ll be fine.
I was down in Annapolis recently visiting friends, and as we strolled the seafood restaurants and shops on Dock Street, we passed by an art gallery or two. They were filled with paintings of the sea, but the gaudy kind you find in Days Inns or pediatric wards.
You know, the ones copping the splashy stylings of LeRoy Neiman, featuring two little girls holding hands in the beachy Atlantic surf, bearing titles like Good Friends. Others depicted plucky sailboats on rolling waves, presumably the swells of the Chesapeake. Rarely have such big waters been portrayed as so small.
Therefore, I was pleasantly surprised when returning to Boston and found that three prominent Boston galleries just opened exhibitions of seascapes last week, with nary a wee lass or quaint ketch in sight. What I also found interesting was how each artist faces the vastness of unadorned nature, using a different approach to seek the sublime in the maritime.
This is when I started thinking about Immanuel Kant. No really, read on.
When I was a young impressionable philosophy major, certain ideas and phrases I read jolted me then and have stayed with me still, and one of those noble concepts was Kant’s theory of the sublime. In his Critique of Judgment, Kant wrote about the definition of beauty as well as the vain attempt to define an even more exalted aesthetic—that unnamed feeling when faced with the immensity of nature, such as massive thunderheads, lightning flashes, and “the boundless ocean in a state of tumult.”
Kant called that more intense experience “the sublime,” and defined its power as such:
…The sight of them is the more attractive, the more fearful it is, provided only that we are in security; and we readily call these objects sublime, because they raise the energies of the soul above their accustomed height, and discover in us a faculty of resistance of a quite different kind, which gives us courage to measure ourselves against the apparent almightiness of nature.
Almost 20 years later, these words still speak to me, and I admit they color how I interpret art. I think we all know and appreciate these two modes—the comfort of lush romantic beauty and the adrenalizing frisson of the abstract massive. And I was pleased to see how these three Boston exhibitions find the shades in between.
The most familiar approach is taken by Puget Sound artist Victoria Adams, whose “Landscapes” exhibit is showing this month at the Arden Gallery. In each painting, Adams portrays a still body of water—perhaps an estuary or a quiet shoreline—overwhelmed by a huge expanse of clouds and light. The ratio of small land/big sky and the precise blending of hyper-real detail is very neo-Dutch Master, with the clean strokes of oil on linen achieving a majestically aurorean effect.
At first I was amazed by the execution, but unfortunately, all the paintings taken together are just too much for me, skirting past the sublime into kitsch. I can only take so many fanfares of sunlight blasting through heavenly cumuli before I start thinking less about Kant and more about that more famous, reviled Painter of Light, Thomas Kinkade.
Chase Gallery is just across the hall from Arden, which makes me wonder if the two spaces coordinated for November, because Wayne McDowell also does largely the same aquatic painting over and over again. However, this Wilmington, North Carolina, artist finds the subtlely and variation that keeps his work fresh. McDowell paints on canvas and his thick, impasto-like strokes achieve the texture of surf as well as a dreamy abstract impressionism. Think of this: the skies and seas of J. M. W. Turner (sans boats or towns) matched with the relentless color planes of Rothko.
So many of the paintings have similar titles such as Ocean, Early Morning or Ocean, Late Morning or Ocean, Late Afternoon, but each one evokes the mystery of the sea at that given moment. Taken together, the paintings don’t tire but instead have a profound cumulative effect. I’m still feeling philosophical, so I’ll mention that Heraclitus once wrote that you can’t step into the same river twice, and here it’s as if McDowell is saying the same thing about painting the ocean.
For my money, however, the sublime of the unbounded sea can best be found this month at Gallery NAGA, now showing Peter Brooke’s “Out in the Overcast.” This latest work by the Vermont landscape painter features depictions of misty Irish coasts. Sounds potentially mawkish, yes? Not with Brooke’s brushes.
These are large panels featuring colossal green cliffs plummeting to the sea, leafless trees dissolving into the ether, and dense, impassive cloudscapes. Perhaps I’m biased, having been to Ireland and seen these sights in person, but I could not stop looking at Brooke’s paintings, not just because they please the eye, but because they gave me that inchoate, satisfying chill up my spine. Here’s where I felt the sublime.
Of course, to a certain degree I do believe in taste, especially when talking about one’s visceral reactions. So your sublime might not be mine. But there’s one thing in common that’s especially true about all three exhibitions: The images you’ll see here on the Web do not do the work justice. Shrunken into .jpegs on a computer screen, Brooke’s and Adams’s landscapes look like nice enough photographs, while McDowell’s merely look bland. The sea is mighty and so is art, so go and experience these paintings in person and judge for yourself.
Victoria Adams at the Arden Gallery and Wayne McDowell at the Chase Gallery both show through November 29. Peter Brooke at Gallery NAGA shows through December 13.
Neverending film festival fun: It seems that nearly every week I’m mentioning another film festival in town, but hey, that’s wonderful thing to write about and it shows Boston’s laudable interest in all things cinematic. Having started last Wednesday, the Boston Jewish Film Festival is in full swing, screening documentaries and features from around the world at movie theaters around the metropolitan area.
This evening’s 7 p.m. showings are prime example of what’s on offer every afternoon and night: At Showcase Cinemas Randolph is Love and Dance, Sipur Hatzi-Russi’s 2006 teenage romance centered around ballroom dancing and the cultural differences between Russians and Israelis. At the Coolidge in Brookline is Holy Land Hardball, a documentary about Bostonian Larry Baras’s efforts to launch Israel’s first professional baseball league, which also includes appearances by such Red Sox notables as Dan Duquette and Kevin Youkilis, one of the rare Jewish players in Major League Baseball.
Sounds intriguing, and options like these continue through the festival’s end on November 16.
Peter Brooke, Danish Cellar, Bellmullet 2008 image courtesy of Gallery NAGA.
