WHAT is it about the figure that's always held our attention in art?
Well, for one thing, it's us, right? So looking at figure paintings and drawings, just like looking at sculptures of humans, is a bit like looking into a mirror.
And, of course, we humans seem to keep returning to the same themes over and over again in our art, music and literature. From the Old Testament to Greek drama, from Chinese poetry to Hollywood cinema, the same stories show up over and over -- love, lust, betrayal, triumph, tragedy, and so on -- stories about who we are and what we're doing.
My friend, who's a Grade 8 teacher, has been having her class think about Gauguin's "three questions" all year, namely: Where do we come from? What are we? Where are we going?
Maybe those three questions figure in to our love of our own figures -- maybe they explain why, even after they've been represented in endless variations, from cave paintings and ancient sculptures to Goya's nudes and Michelangelo's David, we still can't seem to get enough of looking at them.
Whatever the underlying reasons, two artists are currently showcasing work that highlights the human body.
Jacques Clement, a Montreal-based artist, last showed in Winnipeg in 2004 at the Centre culturel franco-manitobain. In his current exhibit, as with the previous one, the apparent simplicity of the work hides something deeper -- a careful, prolonged study of the human figure in literally hundreds upon hundreds of small drawings.
This method of creating work began when the artist -- who attends an average of 15 hours of live-model sketching sessions a week -- needed something to work on that was light, portable, and could hold lots of drawings (since he now estimates he's done over 45,000). The solution was four-by-three-metre sheets of textile design paper that he could fold and unfold, and carry in his backpack as he travelled from class to class all over Montreal.
Whatever the purpose behind it originally, the large number of drawings creates an almost hypnotic effect. The temptation is to sit for hours and look at each individual figure and the reworking and layering that goes on around the original sketches. (Ask to have the lights in the gallery turned out, too -- some of the works use luminous paint, an effect that creates a whole other show, one that's invisible until the room is dark.)
Over at Ken Segal Gallery, local artist Keith Wood, best known for his abstract paintings, has done a series of figure works for his latest show. As the gallery's press release states, it's an exhibit featuring "a pig, a camel, a bull and some interesting people."
It's worth noting the progression that takes place from Wood's usual abstract style (some examples of which are on display here) into his more recent work -- the way these two seemingly opposite styles overlap and bleed in to one another.
Interesting, too, is how Wood's slow change into more realistic works debunks the typical "my kid could do that" argument that still surrounds abstract art. As Wood shows here, the best abstractionists are often those who have mastered the fundamentals -- drawing, design, the human figure and so on -- well enough that they're able to bend the rules more successfully when it comes to abstraction.
Wood has also switched media here, using encaustic, a wax-based pigment that produces a heavy, layered style of painting. The works are rough, bumpy, and like Clement's, they stand somewhere between representing the subject directly and using figure studies to venture off into fun, impulsive art-making.
In each case, it's the kind of work that the audience responds to because the artists so clearly enjoyed making it.
Regardless of whether these two artists answer any questions, or even try to, they still provide some beautiful and thought-provoking mirrors for our ongoing love affair with ourselves.
lorne.roberts@freepress.mb.ca
Visage, by Keith Wood
Ken Segal Gallery, 4-433 River Ave.
To Dec. 20
Contingence Figurative, by Jacques Clement
Gallery 1C03, University of Winnipeg, 515 Portage Ave.
To Jan. 12,
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