CONTEMPORARY SURREALISM
Galerie Barbara Gladstone
Whenever in today's calculated art world a gallery or group of artists
declare the emergence of a new movement, it strikes one as perhaps too
indulgent and commercial an enterprise. The "New Hand-Painted Dreams:
Contemporary Surrealism" show was in this way too obviously a packaging
device. We are now indeed in the age of postmodernism, and are maybe
too cynical for the youthful bombastic manifestos of emerging artists.
The art world is united in a rare agreement that the age of avant-garde
has passed away; little can be new, nothing can shock.
Instead of merely accepting the obvious degree of contrivance inherent
in any "neomovement", it is a bit more enlightening to define what it
is, in a show such as this, that seems like such a typical art-world
concoction. If this point is to be made, as it should, one must locate
the impetus for this "Contemporary Surrealism" in the present, rather
than in surrealistic forefathers. Following so shortly after the
phenomenal success of German neoexpressionism, the stylistic
reinvention of surrealism must be observed with a slightly cynical eye.
These neo-retro movements are more a statement of a contemporary
perspective than a resurgence of previous ideas.
The equivalence of contemporary surrealism with neomovements lies in
their formulaic reduction of art to its lost generic terms. A major
by-product of the postmodernist dilemma has been an abandonment of
invention in the name of mannerism. With the resignation of
originality, the act of creation is determined by the visual rather
than the intellectual. If superficiality is the risk, then art which is
purely visual must allow its sensual pleasures as its philosophic
ideal. No longer is surrealist painting embedded in a complex
psychological inquiry into human nature; it exists completely without
the original ideas from which it issued. There is little
stream-of-consciousness painting here. It is, in fact, much too
deliberate. Neossurealism is a calculation. Without the basis of its
original intent, it is directed towards the picturesque. Whatever
effects can be borrowed from the inspiration of others are arranged
according to taste.
The predominance of a decorative ideal is not merely a phenomenon of
neosurrealism. The affectation of artistic sensibility is a mannerism
typical to today's confluence of styles. The annoying failure of the
Gladstone show is that it cannot even articulate the specific nature of
the movement it proclaims. The cohesiveness that marks the Pat Hearn
Gallery (from whom artists Thierry Cheverney, Georges Condo and Peter
Schuyff are borrowed) is noticeably lacking in the Gladstone exhibit.
Its overall scattered eclecticism obscures rather than clarifies the
group.
Within the inconsistencies of "New Hand-Painted Dreams" there is still
a sampling of some of the most promising exponents of this loosely
defined movement. Peter Schuyff is the quintessential neosurrealist.
Schuyff, beyond all others, reduces surrealistic abstraction to its
most decorative and superficial basis. If the trite beauty of his
paintings isn't actually offensive, then they are amongst the most
appealing being made today. Georges Condo well fits the title of the
exhibition. His work is of a visionary nature, displaying a
preciousness of gold that is nearly sublime. The clumsiness of his
paintings, which is by no means a detraction, looks oddly sincere next
to the slick paintings of Schuyff and Kenny Scharf. His collaboration
with, and the individual paintings of, his German friend, Georg Jiri
Dokoupil, are quite engaging. Dokoupil's Groszian doodles are
refreshingly not surrealistic.
Carlo Mac Cormick