Seattle critic Elizabeth Bryant tends to write about art at the margins of the Seattle experience. If she were in New York or LA, she’d find the less likely there too. Ditto North Dakota. Whatever is central in North Dakota would be unlikely to move her, but a North Dakota follower of Italian Futurism who paints in a sagging house off a rutted road and fails to notice that Futurism is a century past its pull date might well become the subject of her illuminated scrutiny.
Here she is on painter David Kane:
“Farewell to Mars and Other Paintings” is Kane’s first show “since all that happened,” (meaning his diagnosis, treatment, and recovery from lung and thyroid cancer…) Some of the canvases in the show were begun ten years ago, set aside and picked up again; others are entirely new. Allusions to the battle with cancer can be read throughout the show in saucers, moons and suns that look like cells, in the scorched earth and the struggle of flesh and technology.
In “Farewell to Mars”, a priapic alien herma gives a three-fingered wave to a trio of flying saucers soaring like so many platelets in the purple skies of a red planet. It’s a hopeful sign.
Kane’s painting, as always, is intellectually and pictorially brilliant, going far beyond the personal. He plays with spatial recession, atmospheric effects, and deceptively tight compositions, pulling from 18th-century Venetian vedute painters (think Canaletto), depression-era regionalism (think Benton and Hopper), ’50s pulp sci-fi illustration, and apocalyptic fundamentalist religious tracts (rapture merges with alien abduction) to reference classical myth and rationalism, post-war atomic-age conformity, environmental disaster, and the war-ravaged sands of the Middle East. (more)
Canaletto? Not even a little bit. I can see Benton without the rhythm and Hopper without the light, however. Kane’s paintings look as if he made them with caked powders on sandpaper. In their choked aridities, in their coarse forms and muddy colors, there is something genuine, a real toad in his imaginary garden. Bryant is thunderously wrong in what she sees in him, but I enjoyed reading every word. She’s that rare critic who lives not because of her judgments but in spite of them.
Hello Regina, I’ll have to disagree with you on this one.
Canaletto? Yes of course. Why don’t you want to see it? Elizabeth Bryant has been consistent here in her peripherally measured approach to comparison.
Upon opening the Kane link you provided, my first quick-sighted impression of the painting of The El Greco Brothers was easily Benton. And the stark light upon a lone metropolitan inhabitant can make a person wonder over a futuristic Sunday morning on Mars. The indevidual’s response to the quietude of a city was stock-in-trade for Hopper.
And as for Canaletto, Kane’s work is reminiscent of someone who satisfies an inner need to see the world by reading old encyclopedias and travel magazines. Artistic license affords this artist the ability to pick and choose from his own memory the scenes which will satisfy the fantasy. A borrowed vacant Venetian promenade from a Canaletto painting would easily find a place for expression on a foreign world built by the artist David C Kane.
You’re saying her taste violates the canon law of your opinion, but that her writing is so good it doesn’t matter? I think what you’re saying is that her essay is complete bullshit, but you wrapped it in compliments in the hopes nobody would notice. Why write this post in the first place, if you’re not going to be clear?
His paintings make me want to drink.
Good museums, bad choices: Erik Johnson at the Henry Gallery and David Kane at the Frye. SAM is the only one that hasn’t disgraced itself. Its one person shows of artists from the NW are really good.
Elizabeth Bryant is a better writer than you or Jen Graves will ever be.
Re: Molly
Hmm. I finally saw Erik Johnson’s show at the Henry and found it to be quite stunning. That pick-up truck ‘hiding out’ in that warehouse is still haunting me. They did over-hang the show a bit, but overall it was an impressive and I think important body of work.
What’s your beef with it?
Regina – Did you by chance happen to make it to the show?
Regina – is this a review of Elizabeth’s writing? Disagree if you like but please do be clear in your objectives.
I don’t remember seeing that image in the show.
Hi Gail. Her review had one tiny image only, with nothing supporting it, no title, dimensions or date and no link to those things. The show was not online. I didn’t want to leave only that single image, so I added one as a good representative of his work. I didn’t say it was in the show. I don’t understand why a review online would be so skimpy with images. In newspapers, there wasn’t room. Now, there’s all the room in the world, and the capability.
Hi Jim. No, which is why I didn’t review it. Many things are possible online, but it’s still not possible to review a show without seeing it. My post is a review of Elizabeth’s review, backed up by what I know of David Kane’s work from seeing it for 20 years.
Pretty horrible of you to ding a guy with cancer. If you get it, I hope people are kinder.
Very well, but I might have had some trouble judging her statements without having seen the show she was writing about. Also, it is possible for an artist’s work to evolve or change over time (especially after a bout with cancer) or for critics to have revelations hit them on account of the alignment of works in an exhibition.
I remain confused, however, by your statement that Elizabeth “tends to write about art at the margins of the Seattle experience.” Without debating with you what the center and margins constitute (many – including Kane himself – would probably place Kane in the latter category), what do you mean exactly? The bulk of her writing, at least here at Artdish, has been about artists who’ve had their work exhibited at the Henry, Western Bridge, Lawrimore Project, etc.
So you’re saying that Elizabeth Bryant is a good writer but a knucklehead critic, or are you saying David Kane is a knucklehead painter and she and he are well-matched? Please clarify. I read it twice.
Dear Confused: You’ve read it twice? Three’s a charm.
@Karma. You are SO wrong. Cutting people slack because they have cancer, or diabetes, or borderline personality disorder, or just bad old drug habit isn’t kindness – it’s being condescending.
I’d be ashamed to accept pity as a ground for judgment of my professional production.
And FYI, I’m wearing the t-shirt – a year of surgery, chemo, and radiation.
Hi Victoria: Exactly.
Regina, you might want to check your statements with Dave. The Canaletto connection was something we discussed, and is quite apparent in the new work (all the work in the show was from 2009), as well as in the image Ken Marulis pointed out (thanks!). To clarify, this was a review of the show at Eidelauer Picture Club, not a general essay on Kane, and especially not on the Frye retrospective from 2007. (If you missed the show, it’s still up at least through today by appointment.)
Maybe you should have come to see the show.
Sheesh. Regina, I think maybe you’ve been smoking too much sandpaper. Put the pipe down and GO SEE art, rather than write about someone else writing about what they saw and think.
No worries, Dave: there’s no such thing as bad publicity (only bad critics.)
Hi Hermione, and all: I didn’t review this show. I wrote commentary on a review. Just because an artist says there are relationships between him and other artists doesn’t mean there are. Elizabeth Bryant bought the most superficial similarities possible to make her connections. She writes well but I expect more from her. And about David Kane: I’ve seen this shows for 20 years. Examined his paintings carefully. Nobody’s claiming the new show contains breakthroughs, not even Elizabeth. Plus, it’s not his work that bothered me, it’s the wild overpraise.