On Receiving A Summons To Be Painted

Bradford J. Salamon pays tribute to the cognoscenti among artists, curators, critics, and collectors in Orange County's artworld with a new series of portraits. He also aims to reveal them as regular human beings, hinting at the private hopes and fears that lie beneath their public personas. He achieves his goals of presenting both venerable and vulnerable qualities in his subjects through a deft handling of paint and pencil.

Portrait painting is one of the oldest genres within the history of painting. Generally artists held it in low esteem since they often had to produce portraits in order to survive, especially before the advent of photography in the 19th century. Despite its low rank in the hierarchy of painting, Los Angeles-based curator and critic Michael Duncan has recognized that there is a new generation of artists who wish to connect with the long history of art. especially painting. He specifically noted a resurgence of portraiture.

In an Art in America article published in 1999, he cited several southern California artists such as Tom Knechtel, Monica Majoli, Amy Adler, John Sonsini, Kurt Kauper, Judie Bamber and Keith Sklar as painters who have utilized portraiture as a method for developing psychological studies of either themselves or others. Similarly, curator Gordon Fuglie's exhibition Representing L.A.: Pictorial Currents in Southern California Art (2000) explored a revival of representation among the Southland's artists, specifically among painters.

The subtext to both Duncan's and Fuglie's observations is that, since the mid-1990's, there has been a resurgence of painting among young artists. Their efforts run counter to the perceived notion of the Southern California contemporary art scene being a hotbed for art that emphasizes conceptual strategies over process or experimentation with materials. This perception has been largely due to the influence due to the influence of local art schools and university departments. However, in a relatively short time, the Duncan's and Fuglie's once challenging commentaries have come into tune with today's pluralism.

One cannot help but compare Salamon's project with the well known L.A. portraitist Don Bachardy. He has made portraiture his exclusive domain, depicting most notably, celebrities from film, literary and art worlds. However, he does draw and paint the not so famous as well. The difference between the two lies in their handling of paint. Bachardy uses line and diluted colors for the most part to define the psychology of his sitters, and Salamon uses the rendition of his subjects as a celebration of color and form. While the former artist is airy, the latter is earthy.

During this painting renaissance among younger artists, Salamon's dominant use of forced perspective reminds me of one of Alice Neel's work, an artist whom he admires greatly. During the 1970's, also a time of pluralism in the art world, Neel, Andy Warhol and Chuck Close stimulated interest in portraiture in a (then) contemporary art scene enthralled by minimalism and conceptualism. Like These artists, Salamon also has many neighbors, friends, artists, curators, collectors and critics come to his studio to pose.

Salamon Works in a studio on old Newport Boulevard, right across the street from Hoag Hospital where he was born in 1963. Save for brief periods of travel, he has lived in Orange County for all of his 39 years. Creating this series is, for Salamon, about recognizing that there is indeed a diverse artistic community in Orange County, one that he has had the opportunity to observe as it ebbed and flowed. He is ans is most likely to remain determined to challenge the stereotype of the county of one that is devoid of artistic stimuli and talent.

THE LIVING SURFACE

Salamon creates a three-way dialogue between subject, artist and the painting process. He begins by conducting a photo session where the subject lives or works. Then again, he invites others to come to his studio to pose directly. At times these photo sessions or studio sittings will be the first time that salamon has actually had a one-on-one encounter with a curator, critic, collector, gallerist or fellow artist, as opposed to a more public meeting at crowded gallery or museum opening nights. It is a situation where subject and artist are alone together, placing each other on somewhat equal footing as two people who are simply meeting. Ideally it will become a time when both subject and artist might lower their masks.

Salamon permits himself to paint inconsistent surfaces. Reaching back as far as Edouard Manet in the late 19th century and to the artists of the 20th and 21st centuries such as Chaim Soutine, Alice Neel, or Lucian Freud, he reveals a struggle to render areas of figures to his liking, sometimes a leg, a hand, a forehead. It is a process that dates back to the beginnings of modernist painting in which both the sitter and the paint itself simultaneously became the subjects, intertwined, caressing one another at the artists' will.

It is as if the artist embraces both the paint and the sitter's psyche. It reveals his journey through the painting process, one that becomes a metaphor for the 'journey of questions' that we call life. This aspiration is perhaps the most evident in Salamon's handling and application of paint and other mediums. His paint is slathered on, to the point where it literally spills over the top edge of the painting like frosting. It is a living surface.

Notably, Salamon rarely adds props to his figures. To do so would turn them into symbols, lessening his focus on human expression. He uses the axis of his sitter as a tool for revelation. Instead of a declarative, frontal position facing the spectator, suggesting a passive honesty, he opts for mysterious, twisted, exaggerated, off-kilter positions.

Conversely, he uses titles that are technical and without reference to anything other than the painting itself, name of the person, year the painting was made, medium and size. This helps to keep the viewer focused on the subject and the painting process and Salamon's take on the uniqueness of the human figure.

In terms of color choice, Salamon's portraits are not cold like those of John Singer Sargent. Still, Salamon does evidence a personal dialogue with the past. For example, he appears to quote Sargent's notorious Madame X, when he depicts art critic Daniella Walsh with a peasant blouse pulled down to expose an underlying swimsuit strap. However, instead of being motivated to tweak social mores, as may have been Sargent's and/or his patron's intention with the society woman's loose dress strap, it is one that suggests the human, vulnerable, and the coy side of one of the most well-regarded art critics in Orange County, a critic being a player in any art world who has traditionally had to wear masks in order to keep artists and curators at bay, hungry for the make-or-break review. Then there's the portrait of Laguna Beach gallerist, Peter Blake. The point of view is established above Blake who is stretched out on a couch, his feet propped up on the armrest, an arm folded behind his head and his eyes looking intently at the viewer. It is a pose that suggests that he has nothing to hide and waits to listen. While the brightness of Blake's white clothes flattens out the picture plane, the overall composition is meant to allude to some of the minimalist artists, like Tony DeLap, that he loves to represent. (Salamon also immortalized DeLap with two portraits, one painting and one pen and ink sketch). It also suggests that Blake is a person whose emotions are undisguised. With Blake, you get what you see, and Salamon has captured this forthright quality of his personality to perfection.

The portrait of collector, Geoffrey Le Plastrier focuses only on his face and shoulders. He wears a hat and the brim casts a shadow across his eyes, darkening the very features that we so often use to read peoples motivations. The eyes are intense but he has a slight smile. Mixed meanings here combined, these characteristics suggest someone with secrets waiting to share with the right person.

Although the exhibition is composed mostly of paintings, Salamon has also created several portraits in pen or ink. For of the one of artist and curator Richard Turner, he said that he spent a few hours at Turner's studio attempting to find the right pose. However, there was one particular moment when Turner turned to Salamon, wondering whether he was finding what he wanted. It was at that instant that Salamon mad a quick sketch. Back in his studio, he felt that this sketch, and more decisive nature of drawing in general, captured Turner's highly inquisitive and probing nature.

Artist Tom Dowling's portrait is a full-length painting. He sits in a chair with his legs and arms crossed, looking upward at the viewer. He appears to be listening. His hushed, attentive pose is perhaps appropriate since Dowling is an artist who was also Salamon's teacher and mentor. The point of view is directed downward despite this importance, as if to suggest a lessening of his status for Salamon. However, the artist has given Dowling a body language and presence that suggests that he can wait out the impetuous rebelliousness of a former student. Dowling appears to know that in time they will be seeing eye to eye as peers.

Risky Returns

Salamon's groundbreaking project is unique in so far that he is painting all these portraits not on commission but as homages. He is taking something of a commercial risk, betting that there will be collectors who will recognize the overall project as an undertaking meant to capture a moment of Orange County's evolving art scene.

Standing amidst all the portraits is a somewhat unsettling experience. However, it is interesting to see such a variety of players presented on the same stage of one artist's palette. As a group they are silent and tend to stare back at the viewer. You have to fill in their stories for yourself. Perhaps you have heard a little bit about the persons depicted or maybe nothing, but now you are curious as to the reason they were selected to be on Salamon's list.

In Salamon's world, everyone possesses a unique beauty, one that in itself comprises form of truth. These works are tributes to a growing group of select individuals. The project is ongoing and there are many yet to be invited. They too may soon receive Salamon's summons and challenge to sit and be transformed into thick sensuous paint.

Tyler Stallings

Curator of Exhibitions

Laguna Art Museum

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