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Currently standing in the window of James Cohan's Chelsea gallery is a sculptural recreation, in acidic ice-cream hues, of Picasso's famous 1905 group portrait of the sad itinerant circus performers, Family of Saltimbanques. Although the figures have been hewn out of sparkly Styrofoam and Polyurethane foam, some of which has been left in toxic pools at their feet, and although the group is very loosely based on the portrait (and appears to raid Picasso's related works as well) there isn't anything all that unconventional about the representation. The five figures seem much as Picasso pictured them, one young girl balancing on a barrel, another sitting on a man's shoulders; an old man stands to the left sheathed in a thin shawl; the young Harlequin stands forward, sullen, in a hat. The fact that it is representational at all, however, seems very, very strange indeed.
It wasn't so long ago that critics were debating whether figurative painting still had any left life in it (a conversation prompted, in large part, by the Pompidou's Cher Peintre, Lieber Maler, Dear Painter show of 2002). Note that they didn't ask the same of representational, figurative sculpture: that is deemed hopelessly retrograde. Granted, artists like Kiki Smith create figures, but they do so most often as talismans; and sculptors like Charles Ray and Jake and Dinos Chapman have also employed figures, but they tend to be blank and voided, mutant doubles, rather than stand-ins for the real thing. Most artists still regard figurative sculpture as the province of war memorials and nineteenth century public sculpture.
'Les Saltimbanques', 2007
Clearly de Jong does not, for more of the same waits inside the gallery. In one group, The Tower 'Violin Player' (scene 3) (2007), the figures form a human tower on a trio of baby blue barrels, creating a platform for a violinist who teeters at the top. Another group, Human Pyramid (scene 2) (2007), has similar figures crouched on hands and knees to build another human triangle on another trio of barrels. And, in the final group, Circle of Trust (scene 4) (2007) the maudlin performers gather around a brazier for warmth.
'Circle of Trust', 2007
They all seem strikingly present as figures, and yet they also seem slightly removed from us because they are representational is a particularly peculiar way. Their surfaces are a patchwork of colours and areas of pre-formed, sometimes honey-combed material, which seem as if they are intended to represent the painter's haphazard brushstrokes rather than the area they ostensibly depict. The colour bleeds with sloppy carelessness, areas of local colour (describing, say, a face) giving way suddenly and unrealistically to dramatically different shades. It's an arrangement which, one feels, would only make sense if one stepped back from the canvas. Nevertheless, these are not clever simulacra or knowing reproductions, but simply fine renditions which nod to Picasso's artistry even whilst they are tuned to a contemporary sensibility.
De Jong is clearly not resurrecting these figures with the intention of lending a patina of grandeur to his work, he is more interested in finding figures which might serve in an allegory of our war-riven and polluted world. He certainly did so with Gott Mitt Uns (In God We Trust) (2006), the group of skeletal warriors he exhibited last year at Lever House in New York4. Using figures from the cast of the commedia del'arte to do the same, however, seems odd, since even when Picasso employed them to represent his own marginality as an artist, the characters were somewhat past their prime. And one could worry that de Jong never quite manages to evoke new themes in each of the figures and groups in the show: the marvel is in their manufacture, rather than in any theme of danger or sorrow or community that they may evoke. Nevertheless, the sight of these old theatrical diehards in a contemporary Chelsea gallery is a powerful and unsettling sight, as if all the turbulence of the world had torn a gash in history, destroyed all natural chronological order, and let these figures live again as ghosts. It's a very haunting return.
Morgan Falconer
Folkert de Jong: Les Saltimbanques
Until 24 November
James Cohan Gallery
533 West 26th Street
New York NY 10001
T: +1 212 714 9500
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Morgan Falconer is a journalist and critic. After an age spent immersed in 1920s New York as a graduate student, the result now props up his computer, and today he writes about contemporary art and culture for a variety of publications including Art Review and Modern Painters. |
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| Published on 15-11-2007 |
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