People can be nice. They can have a small wedding in Central Park under a maple beside a stream, hire a two-piece band, the guy can wear a kilt to symbolize his Scottish heritage—the gal, a frilly white cocktail dress. They can invite their friends and family, a little girl would run to join in, her mother might rush to restrain her and the other people in the park could carry on with their own affairs: playing with their dog, chatting, looking at the water, etc. It’s delightful.
I hear the high school orchestra play Debussy’s Prélude à l’Après-midi d’un faune (though Bradford heard Beethoven) on the lawn and rest my eyes on the mountain ridge. The long-legged exuberant conductor is dancing for joy but also intent on her mission to rouse the players to their best performance. The flautists hold the flute horizontally and form the correct embouchure, the violinists coax the strings, the percussionist awaits his moment, etc.
I can see it all or I seem to even though they are all defined with only a few simple strokes of paint.
Why am I starting an art review this way? Because ever since Trump was elected again I don’t like people anymore and when I look at Bradford’s work I do. Maybe Bradford felt a little bit the same way. The show is titled If I Loved You. That “If.”
And a quote from the painter: “After all… I am trying to find expression for the abiding love I have for my country even as the values that sustain it are seen by many to be evaporating.”*
If I loved you,
Words wouldn’t come in an easy way—
Round in circles I’d go!” **
I saw a few paintings by Bradford some years ago and paused to look at them more closely but I’m sorry to say that I discounted them. They were biblical scenes and he was the founder of a group called “The Biblical Painters” and I’m religion averse, but looking at those paintings now, they are wonderful too. But first I had to see this body of work—based on operas, plays, artists painting, historical events—to realize he is a painter of great stories. The figures are actors playing their part earnestly and maybe even a bit self-consciously. They melt my frozen heart.
Bradford starts every painting by creating the mise-en-scène minus the actors.
First there is a heavily worked carved-out sweeping landscape—he is building the space for the figures. In Napoleon… the stage is almost abstract; the hill appears when Napoleon on his horse are placed atop it and it’s not a valley until the troops are nestled in it. And only at the last minute.
In The Marriage…(see above), it is the thickly impastoed yellow tree, the weeping willow beside it and the stream and field behind it that the painter takes his time on. It looks like a passionate struggle. Only when the scene is fully realized do the actors quickly, nimbly take their places.
It almost doesn’t work.
Here’s a thought from Deleuze: ”If you don’t see in a painting how close it came to turning into a mess, how it almost failed, you cannot have enough admiration for the painter.” ***
It’s a profound observation, as true for a painter as for a comedian—or a tightrope walker.
I just fell in love with A Stubbs… Three horses, three legs of the easel and three vanishing points and the hilarious moment when the viewer looks to see which horse the painter made a picture of.
—CNQ
* John Bradford, Over again After All: Recent Paintings