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Some observations on paintings by Chris Lyon
Gerard Brown
Pick up any of the hundreds of hefty monographs on the heroes of 20th
century abstraction and in the first few pages you'll see examples of
their early "academic" work. A 1921 still life by DeKooning,
a painting Pollack made while studying under Thomas Hart Benton at the
Art Student's League, a coat slung over a door sketched by Diebenkorn,
a detailed pencil drawing Phillip Guston made as a young boy. All of these
are landmarks on the great journey from figuration to abstraction, a journey
undertaken by any serious painter of the last 55 years. To artists who
came of age in the twilight of the 20th century, these drawings are like
thunderclaps whose echoes can be heard in the later, "mature"
work of the artists we came to admire. It was incumbent upon our generation
to make these early works, and then to run like hell into the unknown.
Looking at the paintings in Chris Lyon's second solo exhibit at Bridgette
Mayer Gallery, one senses that some place in his studio, there is such
a drawing. Initially abstract, Lyons' paintings reveal more and more and
more of their figurative structure upon close examination. Echoes of limbs
and heads appear in the swirls of paint. These paintings have to come
from someplace, for they are obviously in an urgent rush toward something
new.
The scale of Lyons' ambition is announced by size of his canvases. Though
hardly large by the standards of heroic abstraction, these images have
an epic - or more precisely allegorical - quality to them, which is reinforced
by the distance between title and image. In paintings like Stumbling Through
Herculaneum or The Queen's Puking up the Confetti, it seems as if something
is being talked about which cannot be spoken of directly. It's not hard
to find heads in Driven Red Raw or traces of hands or feet in Stumbling
Through Herculaneum. The fleshiness of the palette in Recklessly Abandoning
Those Nude Skydivers and Their Apparent Lack of Rhythm is nearly pornographic
in it's sensuality. But all this brings the question, what are these bodies
doing there?
These are paintings that - despite their references to literary history
(in the classical or regal allusions in their titles) or art history (in
the resemblances they bear to that discipline's landmarks) - don't care
how smart you are. They challenge us as viewers to synthesize processes
of recognizing and seeing. On the one hand, they are bundled up in recognition;
we notice the images that echo through them and the words that echo around
them. They are tightly packed with the ambition and energy of mid-century
American painting. And yet they beg to be seen as if one knew nothing
of that stuff, as if it were all happening anew, for the first time.
But it is not new, only different. In an age where "everything has
been done before" is an unquestionable cultural condition, Chris
Lyon's paintings may strike some as nostalgic cover versions of more heroic
painters' work. People who recognize such things in these paintings are
missing what they might see by looking more closely. Although it is strongly
implied by those earlier drawings in the catalogs we all so carefully
studied, abstraction is not the inevitable outcome of a painter's progress.
Lyon's artistic choices need to be seen and evaluated on their own terms.
A closer look reveals Lyon's growth as a painter, his engagement in the
human form - even when it is hidden in paint movement. Lyon's paintings
stand on the shoulders of giants, and from there look toward the unknown.
Gerard Brown is an artist and writer living in Los Angeles.
>CLICK ON LINK'S BELOW TO READ SELECTED ESSAYS:
>SUSANNA JACOBSON 2003
>LILLY WEI 2007
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