September 5 to October 6, 2012
179 East Broadway (between Rutgers and Jefferson Streets)
New York City 917-463-3901

I first saw paintings by Sandi Slone in 1983, when she was living in Boston, and I’d been invited by some Boston artists to visit and critique their work. Slone had recently taken her MFA from the Boston Museum School, and was still teaching there.

Her paintings were huge and abstract, with large, soft fields of color; mellow reds and oranges either predominated or simply struck me with especial force. I thought them very beautiful (that being an adjective one could still use on such work in those days).

In 1984, Slone moved to New York. Twice, in the 1990s or maybe in the next decade, I saw more of her work in Manhattan galleries.  On the first occasion, her paintings were hung on three sides of a space, in the center of which, on the floor, sat a pile of sand and/or detritus. The second time, the paintings were only semi-abstract, with little, cartoon-like human figures floating on their edges.

I felt that these embellishments reflected insecurity, that the artist seemed worried that her work might not be “edgy” enough to attract attention by itself. Such embellishments aren’t unique to Slone. In the recent past, I’ve seen one well-reviewed show of abstractions to which lit-up neon tubes had been affixed.  Another artist had semi-abstracts mounted on hanging glass panels, because (according to the label accompanying them) she hoped that this would make them appear “relevant in the environment of today’s art world”.

I believe that today’s “relevant” may well be tomorrow’s redundant, and that any artist is better off trying to inaugurate trends than to follow them. That is why I was so pleased to find that in her latest show, Slone has largely (though not entirely) abandoned embellishments, and determined to tough it out with pure painting. The new paintings are more modest in scale than those I saw in the 1980s; but they’re also more aggressive, even offensive, with a savage voluptuousness that borders upon barbarity.

Colors are louder and shriller: reds, purples and oranges still dominate, though some pictures (especially less successful ones) are mostly blues or greens. Technique involves pouring and swabbing streaks of paint onto horizontal canvases, then manipulating the paint by lifting the canvases one way and then another, so that, besides vehement swirls and sinister puddles, there are long, straight drips, often running toward all four sides of the canvas.

Poured paintings, of course, are nothing new. Pollock worked on the floor, and has had his followers, but in the decades since, many more abstract painters have kept their canvases upright and applied paint entirely or at least partially with a brush – following the alternative example of de Kooning, that other Pole Star of abstract expressionism. It is therefore unusual to find an artist who perseveres on the road less traveled, and rarer still to find one who pursues it as passionately as Slone does in this show.

Some paintings here are overdone, with splashes and puddles dissolving into an inchoate sea of paint.  Other paintings, where coy little figurative elements still peep out around their edges, look underdone, unfinished.

A sizeable handful, though, are real winners.  One is Sex with Strangers (2012), whose pouring creates a wonderful swimming, soaring impression by contrasting thin with thick paint, and reds, whites, and pinks with purples and blues. Also dynamite is Vulcan Love (2012). It is mostly burning, boiling lava-like red, with complementary dark speckles and complementary smears of black at the bottom, blending with the red into brown.

A third, nearly perfect painting is Further Out (2011), which is organized into three horizontally-streaked, drifting areas of color – soft blues and purple at the bottom and a central dreamy cloud of white, above which a blazing red sunset waits.

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Report from… New Orleans

Hard Truths: The Art of Thornton Dial at the New Orleans Museum of Art

February 26 to May 15, 2011
One Collins Diboll Circle, City Park
New Orleans, (504) 658-4100

At his best, Thornton Dial is a great artist. Don’t Matter How Raggly the Flag, It Still Got to Tie Us Together (2003), a massive construction of enamel and spray paint on canvas on wood and mattress coils, chicken wire, clothing, can lids, found metal, plastic twine, wire, Splash Zone compound stands comparison with Jasper Johns’ flags. First Butterflies (2002), constructed of clothing, plastic, carpet, oil, enamel and spray paint on canvas on wood, can legitimately to be set alongside the classic color field paintings of Larry Poons. The exquisite Clouds Moving in the Sky, We Wake Up in Darkness and Look for Daylight (2006), built of denim pants fabric canvas scraps, staples, industrial plastic and enamel on canvas on wood can justly be hung alongside Robert Rauschenberg’s collages. And, as Thomas McEveilley has noted, Dial’s constructions with sacred themes, — Crosses to Bear (Armageddon) (2001-2004) is a good one — are worth comparing without any hesitation or apologies to Anselm Kiefer’s best works.

As the catalogue explains, Dial, born dirt poor in Alabama, September 10, 1928, has never been in an art school and has never studied art history; in fact, he is illiterate. That he worked for thirty years in a rail car manufacturing company explains his mastery of construction techniques, but it doesn’t elucidate how he came to make large paintings, which are so obviously related to the art of mainline late modernism. And while the catalogue provides a great deal of useful background information, it fails to treat him seriously as an artist who deserves to be judged alongside his peers whom I have named, by – instead — treating him as a black artist, providing too much information about his obviously heroic status as an outsider struggling with the sad history of Southern racism.  He is linked, for instance, to fellow Alabamian jazz musician Sun Ra and the compared with James Brown. It would be better, I think, to provide a balanced account of his artistic career, without focusing entirely upon the kind of sociological concerns that mostly dominate the catalogue essays. As it is, we don’t really learn how a man from such a harsh background became a major visual artist, with a utopian religious vision.

Dial is not always at his best. To my eye, the obviously anecdotal painting, Trophies (Doll Factory) (2000) with its Barbie dolls, stuffed animals and plastic toys, is too literal-minded to inspire conviction. And while Everybody’s Welcome in Peckerwood City (2005), which includes a doormat, wood doors and a bed frameamong its materials, with its seemingly beautiful façade and ugly back, is a potent comment on American racial divisions—“peckerwood” is derogatory black Southern slang for white people—it’s more of a manifesto than a fully convincing visual work of art. I can take or leave the drawings, which are delicate,often erotic, and certainly Picassoesque in their fascinating with female body parts. But this is nitpicking points. At his best he is a world-class artist.

Originating at the Indianapolis Museum of Art, this exhibition continues on to the Mint Museum, in Charlotte North Carolina and the High Museum. It is a singular misfortune, and a sad commentary on the limits of our present art world thinking that this exalted exhibition will not appear in New York, in Chicago or in California’s major museums.

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