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Art
In a category by himself
[David Anderson Images]
The drawer suspended in the center of Sometimes It Causes Me to Tremble, surrounded with folds of silk and symbols of Christianity, is worthy of Salvador Dali. |
By LENNIE BENNETT
© St. Petersburg Times
published February 13, 2003
The unique paintings of the late David Anderson are described as the visual equivalent of literature's magical realism.
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TARPON SPRINGS -- Whatever you think about them, you can't view David Anderson's paintings and remain unmoved.
The artist, who died in 1996 at age 69, suffused his work with a level of feeling that has become unfashionable in postmodern art but is nevertheless compelling. In his emphasis on the personal and psychological, his use of color as an emotional component, his exaggerated treatment of figures and his need, as Van Gogh once wrote of himself, "to express man's terrible passions," he could be called an expressionist.
But Anderson is no throwback. Unlike early 20th century painters who discovered that beauty could reside in ugliness, Anderson turned the principle around, painting ethereal, haunting figures, then often giving them an edge of grotesqueness.
Twenty paintings by Anderson are on view at the Leepa-Rattner Museum of Art that reveal the dichotomies that make Anderson's work original, difficult to understand and difficult to categorize.
The show is too small to be a retrospective, though it includes work spanning most of his prolific career.
The earliest paintings are sweet, proficient portraits painted before his talent had been harnessed to a vision or style. Children on the Beach, 1958, is like a Childe Hassam study, three beautiful children glowing with dappled light. Man in the Gold Mask, 1965, calls to mind Rembrandt's self-portrait Man in the Golden Helmet. But most of the paintings here are radical departures from those early works, which seem like academic exercises.
Family Portrait: Beat the Drum Slowly memorializes the late artist David Anderson’s two brothers killed in World War II and his mother, who died in an accident.
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He found his style and voice in the late 1960s, about the time a partnership with Estelle Marsh helped bring him to the attention of a loyal, local clientele. These patrons gladly paid five figures for his mature paintings, mostly sold through Anderson-Marsh Gallery in St. Petersburg.
They often are described as the visual equivalent of magical realism in literature, which won't mean much if you haven't read House of the Spirits or 100 Years of Solitude, and is not especially illuminating even if you have.
Anderson's paintings are above all theatrical, reveling in trompe l'oeil effects and dramatic flourishes, with a bent for surrealism's suspension of disbelief. The draped fabrics in The Red Poppy triptych or the self-portrait Artist in Search of Imagery are lush enough for stroking. The drawer suspended in the center of Sometimes It Causes Me to Tremble, surrounded with folds of silk and symbols of Christianity, is worthy of a blue ribbon from Salvador Dali.
The very personal Family Portrait: Beat the Drum Slowly, memorializing the artist's two brothers killed in World War II and their mother, killed in a freak accident when a car plowed into her bedroom, stages his grief and loss, wrapping it in bunting and strewing it with flowers. If it weren't so well done, it would be mawkish.
Icarus, in three portraits presaging his fatal flight, is a renaissance man, stylistically, with perfect musculature and rich skin tones as is the saint of Sebastian Forsees His Martyrdom.
Visually, Anderson's paintings are always interesting even when you're not sure what they're about, as in The Red Poppy, Gothic Dialogue and Enigmatic Procession. They are populated with androgynous faces, by turns strong or delicate, veiled in layers of shimmering paint, surrounded by objects and textures that create more layers.
And that facility to use paint, rather than his aesthetic vision, is Anderson's genius. He switched from oil to acrylic in his youth because he was allergic to the oils, but he learned to exploit the qualities of the water-based medium, using stenciling, washes and even an airbrush to achieve the luminosity of oil-based paint. A video in the exhibition showing him creating the gorgeous Puck Among the Irises, one of his Shakespeare-themed works not on view, illustrates how he painted with assurance and speed, building up and breaking down blobs of paint until they coalesced into a dreamscape.
Those who knew David Anderson well say he constantly read and studied literature, philosophy and religion, always seeking answers to the great existential questions. That he used his paintings to pose some of them is clear, and that he never seemed to find answers is, too.
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PREVIEW: "David Anderson: Images and Reflections" is at the Leepa-Rattner Museum of Art, 600 Klosterman Road, Tarpon Springs, through March 9. Hours are 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday, 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. Thursday, and 1 to 5 p.m. Sunday. $5, discounts for seniors and students. (727) 712-5762.
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