Review by Georgina Coburn
Jon Schueler- Five Decades
13 Feb 2006 in Visual Arts & Crafts
Ingleby Gallery, Edinburgh, until 11 March 2006
Felt Red in Sound, 1968 (oil on canvas) © Jon Schueler
BY 1957 with his one man show at the Leo Castelli Gallery in New York, Jon Schueler had established himself as one of the leaders of the second wave of Abstract Expressionism.
Introduced to Barnett Newman, Jackson Pollock, Ad Reinhart and Mark Rothko by his mentor Clyfford Still, Schueler took his place amongst the groundbreaking avant-garde of the1950’s New York Art scene.
In complete contrast to this world, 1957 was also the year of the artist’s first journey to Mallaig, a place he would return to again and again for the rest of his life.
Whilst Scheuler’s mind engaged with the ideas and techniques represented by the Abstract Expressionists, it was the west coast of Scotland that caused him to truly confront Nature.
His own intense response to this environment developed a visual style which was a deeply personal attempt to come to terms with his past and with his own nature.
This latest exhibition at the Ingleby Gallery brings together paintings and works on paper that reveal much about the true scope of the artist’s journey from New York to Mallaig.
At Romasaig, overlooking the Sound of Sleat, Schueler found a place that enabled him to create a definitive visual language reflective of his own struggle.
The sky itself, the horizon, and its meeting with the sea took on an iconic meaning for him. As an air force navigator during World War II numerous bombing missions were to have a lasting effect on his life and art.
A great admirer of Turner, Schueler’s paintings contain the same kind of large scale effects of light and nature but also a very basic sense of humanity.
During the war the sky was quite literally, “a place of life and death” for him and those he served with. In the years that followed it became a powerful symbol through abstraction.
A small watercolour on paper “Untitled (Romasaig)” 1970 is an example of the distillation of this idea. It is a deceptively simple image, three bands of muted colour that are wonderfully evocative in the total absence of any detail.
There is a sense in which all artists search for a “Romasaig”. For Schueler it provided him with something that no human contact ever could. It became the catalyst for a confrontation with nature and with his nature as a man. This I would argue is the soul of his work. It is abstraction absolutely grounded in reality. It is loneliness “being held together by the landscape.”
Whilst many painters indulge in the rendering of misty Highland scenes, the unique qualities of light and landscape of Scotland’s west coast were the impulse behind a life long search for something beyond what we simply see with our eyes.
Schueler wrote: “I think of this artist’s life in part, as rending of veil after veil of self deception. The romantic never knows whether he is creating the veils out of his fantasy, or is assuming, out of his fantasy, a truth behind the veil. As each dim shadow is defined, it can only be questioned as a cover for the next.”
For me these sentiments are expressed visually in “Sleat Veil III” 1969 and “Window in the Sea” 1981, both oils on canvas.
“Sleat Veil III” depicts a window of blue on a grey ground with a foreground of misted green, there is a real sense of what can be seen being revealed gradually.
The mind’s eye focuses on “Window in the Sea” in a similar way. It is a kind of shift in perception that is subtly rendered in the choice of muted colour and in the handling, especially at the delicate meeting of two areas of colour framed by the artist.
“Reflection: Grey and Gold” (Romasaig) 1972-73 recalls the work of colourfield artist Mark Rothko. It is an extremely beautiful painting in its simplicity and in its meditative quality. The luminous gold almost becomes gilt as it seeps out of muted grey light.
It is the kind of revelation that comes through observation of nature. Simple hovering bold fields of colour, delicate in their edges fill you with a feeling of peace, calm and reflection. It is the appearance of something tangible out of nothing, having come through a storm of nature and out the other side.
In both his paintings and collected writings, “The Sound of Sleat – A Painter’s Life”, he describes the elements of sky, sun, cloud, land and sea “all set in motion against each other.” To him they “suggested infinite nuances of human emotion and the emotion of time”.
What we so often observe in our unique climate, the “tension of change every minute” was a basic human truth to Schueler.
He is an artist capable of incredibly bold statement and intricate delicacy. The works on paper in this exhibition are a revelation.
“Untitled (Walking Woman)” 1951 in brush and ink contains the sparsest suggestion of a space, a horizontal line of one pressure, a vertical of another and the signature of a female figure. In three movements he says all that he needs to say.
“Black Weather” 1968 (brush, ink and crayon on paper) is a good example of real depth being born out of a series of marks. There is a layering of media in this drawing that draws you into the seepage of ink into paper and the black glare of cloud.
“Rhythms I, II and III (New York)” 1954 are three works using graphite on paper that read like musical notation in their staccato-like vigour. They are absolutely alive, and hung together it is hard not to draw a comparison between these works and three musicians jamming together in a freefall of jazz improvisation.
Schueler himself played the double bass and was involved in the New York jazz scene of the 1950’s. The effect of these drawings is as instantaneous as this kind of music and brought a broad smile to my face.
A neighbouring painting of the same era, “Orange and White” (New York) 1952, shares the same vibration with un-primed canvas showing through layers of orange and white impasto, with spattered accents of red and lemon yellow. Though at first glance the work seems unrestrained in its handling of paint, the composition through the use of colour is extremely well balanced.
“Pending Possibilities IV” (New York) 1990 is another example of an abstract piece beautifully balanced. Broad brushwork with purple, blue, black and pink organic forms on a white ground are expressionistic but placed on the canvas in a way which balances the painting as a whole. There is order in apparent disarray.
“Felt Red in Sound” 1968 (oil on canvas) is a passionate meld of orange and red on a black baseline. Although the banded colour is predominant, hung high on the gallery’s staircase the brushwork can still be clearly seen. It describes the human hand that created it. It is here that abstraction has its greatest expression, in human emotion, in what it can make us think or feel.
“Moonlight: Wednesday (Romasaig, 1981) is as subtle as “Felt Red in Sound” is bold. It contains the palest suggestion of purple hue, flitting gradations across the surface of the canvas that catch the eye as you pass the doorway to the Gallery office. That something so simple should be so arresting is surprising but nature often captures our attention in exactly the same way. Schueler understood the Scottish landscape and its moods profoundly.
A great admirer of Turner, Schueler’s paintings contain the same kind of large scale effects of light and nature but also a very basic sense of humanity.
This exhibition should also be viewed with the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art’s display of Jon Schueler, “The Sound of Sleat” and related work, which runs until 5 March in Edinburgh.
© Georgina Coburn, 2005
