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| Collection's top | Works by Charles Keeling Lassiter |
Reinventing Eden? par René Berger | |||||||
The work being presented here has held its attraction for me for over a decade now. Such steadfast fascination makes me welcome this first book on the artist as an occasion to sort out for myself whatever 
reasons lie behind the complex feelings his work inspires. But before
proceeding to do so, I want to make clear that I consider Lassiter a
major artist of our times, even if public acclaim has been slow in
coming. This elicits a preliminary observation: the enormous volume of
work produced notwithstanding (now in his sixties, Lassiter is an
unflagging artist), this artist's work seems relegated, to all intents and
purposes, to the fringes of the art world or, more precisely, of the
official art world. It is as if some enigma intrinsic to his work has
either
been keeping mainstream fame at a distance or generating serious
misunderstandings. In the latter vein, such classifications as "art brut",
"naive art", or "primitive art" when applied to his work are not only
misleading but a reflection on the sorry need of the likes of us - art
critics and historians - to hammer out classifications as tools of our
trade. Nor are we likely to pay enough heed to the frequently rather
tumultuous origins of such concepts as have by now become fully
accredited: classicism, romanticism, naturalism, impressionism,
expressionism, cubism, constructivism, figuration, abstraction or, more
recently, arte povera, pop art, minimal art, land art. Yet the label
impressionist, for instance, was first hurled as an insult, as was the
epithet cubist. Indignation, sarcasm and scandal represent factors that
belong to the development of the history of art and that have, in the
process, become an integral part of that history. Rumours as to
Monet's blindness, or Picasso's sadism, certainly circulated freely. Not
to mention poor old van Gogh who, in his brief existence, in and out of
asylums, would see the sale, by his brother, of but a single painting.
Yet today the sky's the limit for the record -shattering prices his work -
like Monet's and like Picasso's - fetches at auctions. So that a
somewhat brazen conjecture comes to mind: nowadays in the art
market, auction sales have assumed the role that catharsis plays in
Greek tragedy, purifying passions by providing endorsement at once by
the god dollar and a chorus of television cameras.Be that as it may, artists who appear "off"1 from the start represent a different story again. Rightly or wrongly, their marginality is considered a quirk cutting them off from both the public and art critics. Etymologically, the word "margin" comes from the Latin "margo", meaning "border". In everyday usage, it applies to the white space around a written or printed text, implicitly emphasizing opposition to a "center". Thus the term takes on a qualitative as well as a topographical sense, and is often employed to denigrate, or at least to belittle that which is situated around, which stands to the side - in short, which pertains to the margin. In my opinion, Lassiter proceeds to stand that notion of margin right on its head. What I see is not work sidelined by some manner of change in its content or form, but rather an otherness that generates the work's own center, on the hypothesis that art is a susceptible as science to changes in paradigms.2 But before delving more deeply into all this, let me describe without Waxing anecdotic - my first visit to the artist, some fifteen years ago. To reach 1382 First Avenue and 74th Street is to find yourself in a faceless neighborhood. By this I mean the kind of section one tends to go through in every big capital, the kind "without qualities" (with all due respect to Musil) lest it be their very ordinariness and anonymity. And here, as the barest hint of a house number - 1382 - would indicate, is where you will find Charles Lassiter. Entering through a narrow doorway, there is an equally narrow stairwell to be travelled up to the fifth floor. The climb, for there is no elevator, tends to knock the wind out of you. The door to the apartment opens onto nothing even remotely resembling your conventional apartment. One is confronted with a kind of recess - if you will excuse the expression, Charles - inviting penetration. Stacks of drawings, gouaches, and paintings serve to articulate the place, revealing here the odd armchair, piled high as well with sheets of paper, there the chair temporarily divested of its contents to seat the visitor of the day. A trip to the kitchen to make a cup of coffee is somewhat of a speleological expedition. The walls on all sides are covered with drawings and etchings; even the bathroom is strung out with sheets of paper hanging down from the ceiling: strange would-be stalactites accompanied in turn by various sculptures either still in the process of being created or discontinued and remaining like so many stalagmites. Nor are the closets less prolific, nor the top of the bed, nor the coatrack. Indeed the only reference point is a portable television set perched on the buffet, god Lar holding sway with an owlish pupil. Inhabitant and habitation have reversed their relationship, allowing the artist's work to reign triumphant. We could be inside a womb that endlessly spews forth its offspring. The place cannot really be termed a workshop either, No, what comes to mind would be more of a "biological pool"3 of molecules and cells generated spontaneously according to a highly fertile if unpredictable genetic code. My clear impression upon that first visit has since oft been confirmed: quite beyond going through the conventional motions as a painter, Lassiter has made a vocation of totally immersing himself in his work. Wheresoever the artist's work is seen - at his place in New York, at one of his shows or on the pages of a book such as this - it is a sense of creative flow that transpires above all. Indeed to such an extent that one tends to lose track of the man as an artist, in the face of such sheer effort to produce, to push forth, in short - dare we say to beget. In turn, the "creatures" peopling his pregnancy multiply themselves, seizing upon anything along the way onto which they could be fastened down: canvas, fabric, board, stone. The series goes on without interruption and is richly varied. Some of the variations are heavily underscored, others barely discernible, but whatever our visual approach, no two works are identical. Variety here certainly finds no sustenance in any mechanical patterns; it feeds exclusively on organic inspiration. A twofold gaze at the very least is required of the inevitably astonished spectator. Part of our gaze is captured by the successive nature of the work so that, after each painting, after each drawing, our eyes seek out the next painting, the next drawing. Another part, practice enabling our attention to function in reverse, finds it possible and indeed desirable to dart back and forth among the works as it please. From time to time both parts of our gaze come to a standstill in front of the same picture, only to continue following the film's movement by once again going their separate paths. This rather unusual manner of proceeding is confirmed with respect to both the artist and the spectator by yet another particularity of Lassiter's artistic production. Although his work covers a span of several decades, unlike the work of most other artists it does not fall into distinct "periods". To a great extent this is true as well of the chronology of his work which does, as the term goes, "evolve" but only as if from within. Continuity can best be traced through the artist's vigorous and perenially renewed inventiveness, rather than in seeking out any specifically chronological terms of reference. And that, in a nutshell, serves to explain, or at least sheds a great deal of light on what is referred to above as the "enigma" of Lassiter's work. Any opposition between center and margin dissolves since the margin itself - for lack of a better term at this point - becomes the creative flow that knows no center nor border, becomes the river that draws the riverbanks into its stream of movement, so that in effect the stationary can no longer be distinguished from the shifting. This gives quite a jolt to the concept of representation, a key term in painting. The term refers to the use of imagery to render perceptible an object, an idea, or a concept. Different types of representation in painting are covered by longstanding classifications: historical paintings, portraits, landscapes, still lifes, genre paintings. Lassiter's distinction is not only that he ignores such categorization but that he goes so far as to erase, so to speak, its very "raison d'être". To his mind, only the human figure - beyond any favorite type or choice subject of painting - provides at once the site, the instrument and the theme of his inspiration, provides in fact the unique motivation behind his work. Figures that are always glimpsed, always pursued, but never quite reached, that always draw near but are never grasped: these then are both the basis and the goal of the artist's work, the Holy Grail of our dreams, object of our lifetime quest, out of our reach. Such is our amazement at being alive, felt even more strongly by Lassiter than by many others; such as well is the trouble we have accepting life when the child in us screams and kicks against growing up. Naive could indeed be the term, in the sense of "native", "innate", forthe manner Lassiter transpires in filigree through all the beings and objects he captures along the way. No identity is provided by which they are to be recognized, no feature by which to be defined, no point of reference to pin them down. These "creatures" cannot be considered as of our world, neither are they subjected to it, although they infiltrate its every corner. They do have eyes, a nose, arms and legs... upon closer inspection, words that in this artist's work purposefully overlap rather than correspond to body parts, thus drawing our attention to a subliminal - or what I call "limbic" dimension (see below). Moreover, weird as they appear, these creatures cannot be taken for ghosts or spirits; they have naught to do with a fantasy world and are fundamentally real, if nonetheless devoid of realism (presenting yet another paradox). No matter how whimsical the pictorial matter may appear to be - subjects barely sketched in some cases, quite thickened in others - density has in fact been carefully adjusted to avoid both the evanescence popular with the Pre-Raphaelites or the overwrought touch used by a good number of artists to underscore the "naturalism" of their work. One can easily fathom the fact that Lassiter, who makes generous use of color, does not, properly speaking, color in figures or background. His colors are not meant to be representational but are left to lead their own lives. In somewhat similar fashion, butterfly wings, while they do identify the insect, inspire admiration above all for their gloriously if silently festive manner of lending flight to ocelli and agates in formations of all hues. Hardly does a single line sketch in a silhouette, when the silhouette sets out on an endless search to fulfill its destiny along outlines that now accelerate, now slow down, topping over each other and intertwining. Filiform beings come to the fore, half-terrestial and half-ethereal tribes of them or even, when the work falls within the range of hieratic composition, half-human, half- h ieroglyphic ones. Long streamers float in space, like so many phylactery strips bearing enigmatic legends, or like seaweed innervating the atmosphere with undulations that fall somewhere in between the purely vegetal and the visceral. The qualification surrealist would no doubt be the most widely accepted in connection with such a world. The term hardly fits Lassiters's work. The question is, can a more fitting one be found? My own suggestion may come as a surprise at first glance, so it is submitted in the spirit of a dare. In my view the world the artist sets up should be qualified as "imbic"; whatever that designation admittedly lacks in charm is more than compensated by its relevancy. Let me explain. In its first acceptation, "limbus" denotes the border (the idea of margin reappears), a strip of cloth or a peripheral region. This is certainly what inspired the physiologist Broca to refer to "the great limbic lobe" in providing the world with its first (1878) description of the cortex surrounding the brain stem. More recently, in his famous theory of "the triune brain"4, the American McLean explains how man in fact has inherited the structure of three mutually adjusted brains: a first sub-brain, reptilian, relates to our most ancestral feelings in programming instinctual forms of behavior, largely guided by the olfactory sense. In addition to olfactory functions, the second sub-brain - paleomammalian or limbic - is the seat of our emotional life and can be linked to our sense of territoriality and community living. The third, the neomammalian subdivision, is the most recent and has to do with the emergence of abstract thought, of the rationally combinatorial. The main point here is that all three brains coexist simultaneously in each one of us, so that we are called upon to "orchestrate" them on the basis of personal character, moods, aptitudes and circumstances - succinctly, on the basis of what we experience, and how we experience it! The reason for reviewing the above theory is to clarify the distinction between the "emotional mind" and the "rational mind"5. For none of us proceed in the manner of pure spirit, emitting only lucid ideas. Innumerable affective tonalities mark the information, significations and interpretations at which we arrive. This explains why the "emotional mind", our limbic system", is the level nearest to us; it colors every second of our lives even if later, more often than not,' we tend to develop a more rational and reasonable image of ourselves. This latter image strives to meet societal requirements based on maximizing efficiency and normalizing the cognitive process. Lassiter has managed to keep his native spontaneity intact: herein resides his basic originality. Spontaneity is what keeps him in touch with his aleomammalian brain, and gives us a direct link to our "emotional mind". His work refutes our entire range of standard representations, discarding from scratch any elements of information belonging to our longstanding centers of reference. His concern, above and beyond anything else, is with our feelings, down to their slightest nuances, down to those which, embodying the innermost meaning of our lives, are the most elusive. A hardly uncommon objection would be that this holds true for all artists who "transpose" reality into image, calling to witness classicism and its actualization of the "ideal". To which I would counter that Lassiter appears to take just the opposite tack: he does not trans-pose but "sub-pose", carrying out his work below the level that commonly serves as a springboard to representations. By aiming at the level below, he is trying to get at the very impulse sparking our feelings, well before the latter can be purified and recuperated by transcendence of any sort. He throws out endless invitations in the enchanting realm of our emotional center, meandering as whimsy dictates. At times he goes so far as to thumb a nose at those who would unfurl the banner Reason over his head, piercing their flag with daggers so as to leave them brandishing but the tawdry finery of their conceit. On my first visit I was so stunned by the wealth of imagination his figures show that I felt impelled to ask: "Where on earth do you find your models?" - "At nearby Central Park where I go for a walk every day". The answer was so self-evident to him that any doubts I might have harbored would have been quite uncalled for. What's more, the effect of his answer was to spark off an illumination in my mind (the expression is no exaggeration), which I have the rather difficult task of putting into words in the present essay. The gist of it is that Lassiter paints and draws what he sees, how he sees it. He has not been schooled to a certain manner, nor does he belong to any official art movement. His work reflects a native familiarity with both himself and others, at the heart of which lie shared feelings played out daily with a great deal of imagination. For instance, right from the start the space he invents discards all constraints as to top and bottom, as to horizontality and verticality. Planes dissolve into one another or intersect each other. Changes in color tone disregard distance. The venerable Euclidean postulates are reduced to naught. Once classical perspective has been discarded, forms are free to float, half- open drapings, like frail embarcations pursuing unheard-of horizons, sails shimmering in twilights fraught with uncertainty, a procession of glimmers and reflections sending off ripples extending to our 'innermost core. It would be tempting to speak in terms of dreams, were it not that psychoanalysis restricts them to displacement and condensation, terms of reference that always lend themselves to rational analysis according to Freudian theory. Nor can Jung's approach be applied, for we are not dealing in archetypes. Lassiter's world is a product neither of our dreams nor of our collective unconscious. I purposely repeat myself in situating it at the limbic level, where awareness is focused on "emotional" logic, the very logic which, although expressing itself individually in each one of us, serves as well to affiliate all who share the chain of being. It is the same spirit that keeps the artist from pinning his creatures down to any chronological context. They are left devoid of social status and of age. Untouched by time, they are called forth by the artist from the canvas, wood or paper as if by magic. And there they be: gestures interwoven into garlands, mimicry multiplied into a tangle blossoming with connivance. Just look at the feet, just look at the hands! Incipient roots, tender shoots of foliage rustling in a breeze coming in from we know not where. Anatomical outlines are drawn in without closing off the form; left open, the stroke bounds forth, forks off, radiates, starts over again... a stalk, an estuary, a tree bark. Deprived of a ground on which to stand, the bodies defy gravity, are metamorphosed into mornirig- glories, shells, small woods. Caught in action, the figures unfold and refold like dancers in a ballet, even their faces borrowing balanced movement from the arabesque. Take their eyes: in lieu of a gaze, they are provided by the artist with the quiver of live petals. Or their head, so oft blooming forth from the variegated intricacy of a Harlequin's hat. The artist plays on the various degrees of opacity and transparency of acrylic, gouache and oil colors to underscore his effects. The resulting choreography is reminiscent of, for instance, the gay and sensuous scenes depicted by Watteau. Granted, the comparison may seem somewhat 'incongruous! But I find there is an element of human comedy in the American artist's work, a blend of the joyful and the serious, that relates to what the French artist expresses in rather muted fashion. Cardboard, newspaper, Japan paper, canvas, fabric are all used by the artist less as supports than as environments capable of providing the figures with a substance halfway between the material and the immaterial. In similar fashion, from time to time, inner "lighting" goes on, producing different sets of writing as found in palimpsests. Time thus unfolds in stratums - and not in archives - in layered recollections. Does it go all the way back to the original palimpsest? For Lassiter keeps right on reinventing the garden of Eden, just as our childhood haunts as well may keep on being reinvented. With original sin left out. Standing aside of the tree of knowledge, he dissolves the shadow of sin in light regained, and if any cherubs are still around for it is they who are the innumerable creatures he paints - he relieves them of their sword with its flaming blade, and restitutes them to the blaze of Genesis. Lassiter refuses to accept the curse with which we have been condemned. Is he being immoderate, just like Lucifer was once upon a time? The artist's reply interprets the Bible literally: if God made man in his image, it is up to us to continue the unfinished business of creation; for it must be remembered that before his Fall, Lucifer, as the name indicates, was the archangel of light. Setting out with pen and pencil, brushes and paint, as sole provisions, Lassiter multiplies outlines, forms, in an attempt to rediscover the paths leading to the light that was at the origin. Blessed indeed be Lassiter for having avoided the delusions of knowledge in order to bloom forth with the innocence of desire. Casting aside the seductiveness of abstract thought, he remains loyal to the limbic realm where every gesture, every word, every mood, every joy - yes, every sorrow even - retains its unique singularity. This is certainly what makes us in turn immerse ourselves in the long flow of Lassiter's artistic production as if availing ourselves of an opportunity to "share from within" a strange yet somehow familiar story. A story that unfolds not only as the artist's experience but, in a certain manner, as our own. René Berger
Notes
1 In English in the original French text.
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