Explicitness in Modern Art

The four exhibitions presented at the Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal each illustrate one basic commonality which I would like to focus on: bluntness of style. The first of the exhibitions is a group show called Cubes, Blocks and Other Spaces which focuses on artwork based around urban architectural forms and geometric shapes. The second is a retrospective of the Quebecoise painter Francine Savard, spanning her works from 1992 to 2009. The third exhibition is in fact a dance performance based on John Cage's "composition" 4:33, in which he captures silence for nearly five minutes. And the fourth exhibition is an installation by Tricia Middleton called "Dark Souls".

The first exhibition displays the works of several different artists all focusing on a few major themes. These themes are metropolitan architecture and media representation. An example among the many works shown there is Anders Oinonen and his work, "Lake of the Woods" from 2007. This painting shows a blockish and tactile feel in the brushstroke, from the brown and black swirls that recall both rushing water and the bark of a tree, to the face composed of large geometric shapes and opaque, bright colours. When I say that this work is blunt, I don't mean that to be a critique of the artist's skill nor of the works thematic and intellectual content. This argument lends itself only to the style used in this painting. This is a wild combination of cubism, surrealism and wild, vibrant expressionism. Naturally, the work is loud, explicit and in-your-face. It's foreign enough to demand a second look and exudes a certain mystique, but it's familiar enough for the observer to relate to the individual images within it and have some kind of emotional connection to it, and its mystique inspires further analysis.

Bright, explicit colours and blockish shapes are also a feature of Francine Savard's works, as seen in her painting "Tu m': un dernier tableau" from 2000. This work actually extends outward in a rainbow of colours. It looks like an accordion caught between dimensions. Or, in other words, it's as though the work translates

electronic media into painting. The shock and stimulus we receive from film and the like is imitated in the effect that "Tu m': un dernier tableau" produces, and as such Savard's work should smack the viewer in the face. Here, Savard is trying to translate Marcel Duchamps colour palette into space, and as such is not so different from Oinonen's attempt to translate media into painting. Savard's bluntness could be explained in this light.

The third exhibition attempts to capture the subtlety of John Cage's "4:33" through the medium of dance. The element that makes this work so blunt is the fact that it literally takes a work dedicated to finding the music in silence and translates it into finding, I suppose, the movement in immobility. The "dance" operates under the same principle as the "composition": that people become so disturbed by unnatural inertia that they tend to look more closely to see any movement. The bluntness here is that the dance is trying to accomplish the same thing as the composition by confronting us with a disturbing amount of nothing. It tests our patience and our attention span on an almost primal level.

"Dark Souls" by Tricia Middleton is so overwhelmingly blunt that it's undeniable. In order to illustrate her point about the destruction and transformation of resources, Middleton literally tacks on a hodgepodge of relics and symbols onto these almost fecal looking mountains. The installation is monumental and contains iconography from a huge scope of eras. The texture and green and brown colours of the work, which reflects a mountain of sewage, as well as its imposing stature are things which seem to be constructed to be explicit, brazen and blunt.

There are plenty of commonalities between these works, but bluntness appears to be a unifying feature of a lot of modern art. This is not necessarily a good thing or a bad thing, merely a feature. Part of the reason for this may be found in the artist's endeavor to represent society in its vulgarity, pollution, corruption and the like. Perhaps the best way to do this is to create explicit artworks as a response. On the other hand, even modern society hasn't stopped many other artists, be they comedic writers (and actors) like Charlie Day, visual artists like Banksy or musicians like Frank Zappa, from confronting society whilst imbuing their work with finesse. That isn't to say that blunt works are devoid of substance. The works seen at the MACM do require analysis. Certainly, even the artists I mentioned have created a fair amount of blunt material. What it does say though is that there is something in our culture that feels compelled to shock, confront, express and vulgarize.