ARSHILE GORKY – A RETROSPECTIVE AT TATE MODERN
by: Katuschka
Spoonfed
Feb 11 2010
UK
As Tate Modern opens its retrospective of Arshile Gorky, Kate Weir
prepares to add a new name to the canon of Surrealism.
I’ll admit I knew nothing about Armenian artist Arshile Gorky when
I walked into his retrospective at the Tate Modern. I thought I
understood why when I saw the entrance room filled with sombre
Cezanne inspired pieces. I steeled myself for another exhibition
of worthy but eminently murky artwork, but was soon made aware
that Gorky’s artwork has been woefully ignored in the Surrealist
canon. (Incidentally Arshile Gorky is actually a pseudonym aquired
when the artist emigrated to America – his real name is the infinitely
more unpronounceable Vostanik Manoog Adouyan.)
Gorky’s early paintings show nothing of the kaleidoscopic, psychedelic
fun that begins when the influence of Picasso, Arp and De Chirico
become apparent. Theres’ floating amorphous blobs of colour, nudes
which make you wonder if Gorky has ever seen a naked woman before (or
perhaps if he has a fetish for women with giant hands and one leg) and
pieces which pre-empt the colourful scrawlings of Basquiat and Willem
De Kooning. He’s at least the equal of his eminent contemporaries.
His work recontextualises sections of New York through the steel
lenses of Russian industrialism, the graphic savvy of Dada, and the
jazz colours of Mondrian. Central Park at sundown is reduced to a
sienna wash with urban accoutrements invading the landscape like
buildings sprouting into a skyline. A tragic fire which destroyed
most of Gorky’s body of work becomes an inspiration from which the
sublime and shadowy Charred Beloved series of paintings emergelike
a Phoenix from the ashes.
His restless re-tooling – "If something is finished it is dead. I
believe in everlastingness. I never finish a painting." – marks him
as an unstoppable force of talent. Even the notoriously difficult
Dada artist Andre Breton said of Gorky: "He is the only surrealist
artist who maintains direct contact with nature".
At the centre of the exhibition are Gorky’s poignant paintings of his
mother, who starved to death after the Armenian genocide. There are
various guises of her haunted face, with Gorky painted as a little boy
beside her. She’s both an icon of his tragic early life, the lifeblood
which runs through his work, and an anchor for his Armenian identity,
so it’s no wonder she is the focus of his best work.
Gorky recounts his childhood experiences through the language of the
city with industrial flotsam and jetsam and his past with the vivid
palettes of dreams. The decision to show Gorky’s preliminary sketches
shows just how considered these seemingly random works are; some of his
paintings could be dismissed by the "a five year old could do that"
brigade, but these sketches show shades of Dalà -esque soft forms,
Picasso’s skewed perspective,and Duchamp’s erratic whimsy.
Gorky manages to bring all these elements together in a melée of
buzzing ephemera.
Arshile Gorky – A Retrospective is at Tate Modern until 3rd May 2010.