Commentary
On the wall of Ron Clark’s studio is, among other pictures of artists, a photograph of Mark Rothko. Clark has never limited himself to one mentor, he has a wide range of them, some surprising. But Rothko speaks strongly to Clark’s current concerns.
If they must be categorized, Clark is now painting works that fall somewhere between Color Field Painting and Expressionism. He got to this point by recapitulating the history of Modernism. Immediately preceding paintings evince that he was motivated by Cubism, Futurism and Mondrian. Modernism’s embrace of so-called primitive cultures affected him too. Historically these manifestations were all bound up with dynamism, with the influence of speed and technology. Consequently, Clark’s “early Modernism” paintings have forms with sharp edges, conveying the decisiveness and confidence that the machine and technological progress embody.
Yet Clark, along with vitality, has always imbued his paintings with mystery. Typically his forms and trajectories seem to advance from a dark field as if they are inevitable and inexorable. Now the mystery seems to be natural; dark areas indicate shadows or twilight. But his most notable development has the characteristics of a leap forward. He has given up form, edge and boundary. There is nothing to grab onto. The viewer is left to experience an unbounded field.
Abstract Expressionists such as Rothko, Newman and others long ago conditioned us to the idea of a painting as a field which could stand for infinite space and thus the cosmos or other, nameless aspects of the sublime. Clark is here now, with incredibly rich and moody paintings with remarkable textures and luminosity. Where as other of his paintings sharply prodded the viewer to take their measure, these new paintings seduce and envelop. They work through nuance.
Clark does not pretend it’s the 50s and 60s again. Attitudes like spontaneity and accident are foreign to him. His compositions are first worked out on a computer. The computer image, characterized by the rich and rare sense of color that is Clark’s most constant and durable painterly asset, is reproduced with near absolute fidelity on canvas.
One of Clark’s favorite words seems to be sensuous. He has remarked that the best new architecture responds to the needs of human beings and that a building can be thought of as analogous to the body. The newest paintings are sensuous through and through, they might be thought of as the Romantic Sublime which was missing from the preceding paintings. Clark has entered into the area of beauty, a difficult concept for modern viewers. The fact of their bold ‘drop dead beauty’ lends to these paintings bracing tension.
Clark is omnivorous. Another artist on his wall is Harold Stevenson, a fellow Oklahoman but an artist who has long been attached to New York’s glamorous demimonde. Clark was a child when he encountered Stevenson making a painting the size of an entire wall. He learned straight off about ambitiousness. It fits his definition of an artist, along with an inquiring mind and natural gifts.
William Zimmer
New York City
July 2003
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