Visitor Evaluation by Glen Cebulash
In his seminal essay of 1921, Custom and the Particular person Expertise, T.S. Eliot gives the reader with, if not a correct definition of artwork, a reasonably stark alternative. The work, whether or not it’s a poem, a portray, or a chunk of music, will inevitably fall into certainly one of three classes: the normal, the repetitive, or the novel. On the prime of this hierarchy lies the normal. Elliot’s clarification of what constitutes conventional is multifaceted, however partly:
“It includes, within the first place, the historic sense….and the historic sense includes a notion, not solely of the pastness of the previous, however of its presence…. This historic sense, which is a way of the timeless in addition to of the temporal and of the timeless and of the temporal collectively, is what makes [an artist] conventional. And it’s on the identical time what makes [an artist] most acutely aware of his place in time, of his contemporaneity.”
Suffice it to say it isn’t what we generally imply once we use the phrase. A genuinely conventional murals, which can also be a genuinely new murals, has an natural connection to the previous, however not by merely resembling it or repeating its methods. Nor can it succeed past the fleeting thrill of some slick exoticism. This essential linkage with the previous permits the brand new work to take its place amongst its predecessors, inevitably being judged by them, however its introduction into that current order can also be disruptive. In forcing these earlier works to make room for it, the brand new murals modifies and, even when solely barely, adjustments its which means. Thus, it may be mentioned that the actually radical factor a really new murals does will not be a lot alter the long run however the previous.
The Stanley Lewis Exhibition, Persistent Imaginative and prescient, presently on view on the Swope Artwork Museum in Terre Haute, IN, clearly embodies the spirit of Eliot’s thesis. Lewis, a prolific painter and beloved trainer, possessed of great power, enthusiasm and inventiveness, has been mining the American panorama for over 5 a long time. And, whereas it’s honest to say that he’s intensely dedicated to his topic, the work persistently transcends it. His work, considerably incongruously, construct an virtually granular realism on prime of a extremely personalised cubist substrate. The work and drawings that represent the mature part of his profession, a lot of that are on show on this exhibition, are deep investigations into the character of seeing and the character of image-making. The biggest and most concerned examples, as pocked and riven as World Warfare I battlefields, take months and generally years to finish. Brimming with an virtually child-like awe on the plentifulness of the observable world and scrupulously democratic of their attentions, the work are nonetheless rigorously mental and self-conscious explorations, deeply grounded within the wealthy historical past of the style. Lewis is a deserving inheritor to that historical past exactly as a result of he refuses to slavishly undergo it. The result’s a tour-de-force, and regardless of its distant venue, this dense and complete gathering of drawings, work, and sculptures is a must-see.
Lewis’s work, concurrently acquainted and other-worldly, conform to and confound our expectations. Their topic and their means, very similar to their realism and their modernity, are at instances odd however all the time energetic bedfellows. In Northampton Parking Lot, for instance, Lewis situates us in a reasonably mundane circumstance, a whole lot of yards behind what seems to be the city’s enterprise district. The decrease half of the portray is busy with the stuff of such locations: parked automobiles, signposts, phone wires, rubbish cans, highway restore, and so on., and so on. Within the higher half, a subdued sky of blue-violets and pinks gives the backdrop for an virtually ornamental passage of leaves and branches that undoubtedly belong to the tree canopied above us. Barely perceptible at first, a refined accordion-like construction emerges throughout the frieze of kinds, making a counter-rhythm that each accommodates and scrambles the scene earlier than us. The viewer struggles to get a agency grasp on this elusive quantity however, as is so typically the case in Lewis’ work, agrees lastly to easily play hide-and-seek with it. Equally troublesome to know is the life cycle of its rippling and undulant floor – an agglomeration of globs and pustules and the not-so-hidden pentimenti of torn and reconstituted canvas. These work aren’t simple to take a look at. They argue, they doubt, they insist, they overwhelm, and eventually, they take their pound of flesh.
In View from the Porch, East Facet of Home, Lewis crops us on a second-story deck trying down the size of his home and towards a distant, if obscured, horizon. The colour, absolutely realized, is weighty and light-filled. The picture is replete with element, from the backyard rake at our ft to the smallest branches of a faraway tree, and we’re as soon as once more, at instances fairly actually, within the weeds. The breadth of the house described is rivaled solely by the severity of its cinematic plunge, however this curler coaster trip is consistently interrupted by the superabundance of knowledge, the not possible geometry, and the raucous materiality of the floor itself. The summary construction of the portray is in a tense standoff with its insistent descriptiveness, and it’s a rigidity that doesn’t and can’t absolutely resolve. Moderately, it persists infinitely and in all instructions, and the image airplane crackles underneath this relentless pressure of oppositions. The bottom gained’t lie down; the paint gained’t play properly with its chosen targets, and the geometry gained’t absolutely acquiesce to the picture, and but, regardless of this constant mayhem, Lewis renders a reliable world.

Stanley Lewis, View from the Porch, East Facet of Home, 2003-2006, Acrylic on canvas 38 3/4 x
48 inches
Wanting long and hard on the exhibition, I used to be repeatedly reminded of Eliot’s program. Lewis, not like most if not all of his finest contemporaries, isn’t merely a spirited and interesting panorama painter. Neither is he a intelligent pyrotechnician. He’s, as Leland Bell as soon as mentioned of Andre Derain, trying one thing way more demanding. He’s “risking liberty inside custom.” So right here, among the many weeds and chain hyperlink fences and all of the bricks and branches, we discover Sassetta and Breughel, Claude and Constable, Cezanne and Derain, to say nothing of the Egyptians, the medieval painters, and the cubists. They’re deeply embedded within the work themselves, and one hears them whispering throughout the floor of each work. There may be an abiding love right here for all these artists, however once more, Lewis isn’t merely an adoring suitor. His ardor tears them aside.
One emerges from this present satisfied that the perfect items, alá Eliot, are certainly new and real artworks. They possess, as the nice French artist Jean Helion as soon as mentioned of Poussin’s work, “all of the infinity that may be received in an image.” They are saying one thing concerning the panorama, about trying, and about portray itself that has by no means fairly been mentioned earlier than. In so doing, they invite us to rethink, even when solely barely, every little thing.
Glen Cebulash teaches portray and drawing at Wright State College in Dayton, OH. He served as Chair of the Artwork Division from 2009 to 2022 and is presently a member of Bowery Gallery in NYC.
Video from the Swope Artwork Museum, Stanley Lewis: Persistent Imaginative and prescient, with Stanley Lewis