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The annals of contemporary art are full of conjugal relations
yet few co-habiting couples share sensibilities which are as intimately
allied as those of Karen Dahl and James Doran. They display a
mutual fondness for an eye teasing, touch confounding, mind bending
mimicry. Each comes to that shared vision through separate technologies:
Dahl is a ceramist and Doran is an enamellist. Although they might
appear to have achieved a homogenous vision, close examination
reveals an interactive dynamic which fuels distinction, individual
development, and independence.
Obviously both artists use kiln technologies. Put simply, Doran
forms copper to receive surfaces of glass. For Dahl, clay that
is hand-built and moulded acts as support for the surface finishes,
the glazes and lustres, which are common to low-fire ceramics.
As aesthetic bricoleurs, as artists who seem to reassemble
disparate odds and ends to create new unities, their heritage
would seem to emerge as much from the techniques of collage and
assemblage as from traditional illusionism. But is this really
the case? The casualness in their compositions is itself a feint,
for, given their media, nothing can be left to happenstance. Infinite
strategies are assumed from the commencement of each piece: the
conjunction between the trick of the eye and the sleight of hand
is itself a cultural fabrication.
Intimate scale, domestic content, and humour are common traits,
but there is nothing common about their work. The coalescing of
mutual support, detailed planning, procedural agility and personal
vision have brought each of these Winnipeg artists to the forefront
of their respective fields.
Dahl and Doran are intuitively aligned with the known traditions
of trompe l'oeil representation, which is to say that they are
not rooted in a pre-established discourse. They do not consciously
pursue a course charted by historical precedents; nor do they
perform to standards maintained by custom within a prescribed
genre. Rather, their native inclinations toward pristine realism,
the characteristics of assemblage, and the narrative circumscription
of content, all background technical advancement. Each advancement
forwards those inclinations, and hence, the alignment is continually
reinforced.
Having established that they do not labour under the anxiety of
influence does not make their relation to historical material
any less problematic. Each period, region, or enclave that has
developed a perfect illusionism has had its own style, choice
of subjects, and aims, making the accepted term a generalization
and at best an awkward convenience. Yet no matter what culture,
period or media, the criterion for successful trompe l'oeil include
life-sized representation of common objects; shallow construction;
invasion of the spectator's space rather than evasion from it
in perspectival form; the establishment of a credible visual logic;
and the utmost fidelity to the depiction of tactile values.
In American Painting of the late nineteenth century, as characterized
by the works of William Harnett(1848-1892), John Frederick Peto
(1854-1907), and John Haberle (1856-1933) to name but three, trompe
l'oeil presents simple objects assembled to convey convincing
aspects of moment and mood: the gentleman's smoking paraphernalia,
the scholar's writing table, the musician's cupboard, the bachelor's
drawer, the sweetheart's album, the bookseller's shelf, the veteran's
kit, the hunter's rack. Yes, all the artists were male, their
vision was exclusive and their subjects genderizing. Their production
connected with earlier European artists in the representation
of letter racks, personal notice boards of calling cards and pocket-emptyings
in which the fantasticality of the commonplace and the pathos
of age and desuetude are featured, lending them all the nuance
of Vanitas still life painting.
Letters pinned to a board, postage stamps, playing cards, and
photographs or reproductions held to a flat surface in the earliest
works in this exhibition show the artists toying with various
aspects of ruse, recasting the repertoire in their own mould as
they become adepts. Then as now, immaculate imitation, crystalline
clarity, meticulous detail, deceptive depth, severe purity of
design and subtly imaginative content are requisite. In these,
Dahl and Doran easily qualify.
And something else: to produce successful trompe l'oeil that does
not deplete in one viewing, I assert that you must be first and
foremost, a diehard sensualist, capable of savouring the inflection
of each shift in grain or tone, each juxtaposition of surface
and substance, each delicate difference in colour and meaning.
In short, you must have an erotic relation with the world that
permeates your entire being. There can be little doubt that what
occurs for the public as depth, relevance and complexity in Dahl
and Doran's works, issues from private articulation and relational
synergy.
While part of the still life genre, exploiting layers of culturally
shared images to communicate content, trompe l'oeil is also lodged
in the biological phenomenon of mimesis, of imitation, and hence
its reputation for camouflage, subterfuge and deceit. The title
of this exhibit is doubly appropriate, for it imparts the humour-based
mischief once ascribed to the old deuce himself. Trompe l'oeil
has always seemed imbued with magic, and in the nineteenth century
it was even advertised as uncanny prestidigitation, a déclassé
side show beggaring gullible suckers. It has been looked down
upon by high-minded academicians as unheroic, as lacking universality,
as mere sleight of hand recording insignificant ephemera, and
consigned therefore to the craft ghetto. It is the essence of
the representational make-believe of the west, and home to our
concepts of the artists' world of artifice and virtuosity. I have
enjoyed the scramble to reassess the idiom instigated by Jean
Baudrillard, one of the heavyweights in cultural theory.
Anecdotes of miraculous feats of trompe l'oeil are part of the
mythology of famous painters of the past. Such tales relate the
means by which they are said to have astonished their contemporaries.
Myron's bronze cow in the Athenian market place fooled even the
bulls of 5th century Athens. Pliny records the contest by which
Zeuxis competed with Parrhasius a generation later. Vasari notes
an incident with the young Giotto in the studio of Cimabue. Rembrandt's
students painted coins on the floor of the studio for the pleasure
of watching him bend down to pick them up!
Karen and James can add similar anecdotes to such accounts. One
of Dahl's early reviewers completely missed her medium when she
appeared in a show entitled, "Paper and Clay". To his
credit, he recanted later, in print. And gallery attendants have
been seen conscientiously trying to whisk away the cigarette ash
from Doran's compositions.
Examples of trompe l'oeil in clay attest to the multiple origins
of this recurrent sensibility, ranging from the pond-riddled platters
of Bernard Palissy to the nuts and fruit pits of the Yixing potteries.
I have no particular knowledge of similar practices in enamel,
where the tendency to a jeweller's preciosity would sabotage any
attempt at a populist trompe l'oeil.
One could assume that because these artists share both a studio
and approach, their pieces would occur almost as conversations
bantered back and forth across their impossibly tiny studio space.
They confess, however, that their studio personae differ from
their social presentation wherein she often seems circumspect,
demurring to his gregariousness. In the privacy of the studio,
I am told, Karen is open, freely discussing various aspects of
her phaseal production, while James admits to a mentality secretive
of all but the fait accompli.
Aspects of trompe l'oeil illusion had arisen in clay when Pop
and Funk idioms intersected with regionalism in Regina, where
Dahl trained. Ironically, it was ceramic journals that provided
her with exemplars such as Marilyn Levine and Richard Shaw. They
had broken the modernist grip that required objects to reflect
the materials and means of their making by producing works categorized
as realist and hyperrealist ceramics. For techno-savants such
as Shaw and Mark Burns, the medium seems not the message at all,
until we recognize our own ideological limitations on the medium's
protean capacity. Their work maintains the category of "superobjects",
a contradistinction into which some of the later, declarative
pieces here qualify. Disparate images are reconstituted into meaningful
tableaux, imparting whole narrative environments. For each artist,
inexplicable little incongruencies flesh out each mise-en-scène.
In composition, Dahl's most recent work tends to austerity, while
Doran's appears increasingly touched and fondled. Doran in particular
has taken optical illusion to extreme, exploiting anamorphosis:
a work painted or drawn in such a manner that from all but one
vantage point it appears so distorted as to be unrecognizable.
However, when viewed from the designated spot or in a mirror which
through its own distortion can reconstruct the image, it becomes
immediately recognizable. The principle was used frequently in
17th century religious art to intimate shifts to a transcendental
plane. Anamorphosis denies the reality the trompe l'oeil affirms.
The most famous example of anamorphosis is, of course, the shield-like
form beneath the table in Holbein's painting of Ambassadors,
dated 1533. When viewed either from below or in a properly positioned
mirror, the shield manifests as a barren skull. Another example
is The Portrait of Edward VI attributed to Cornelis Anthonisz,
now in the National Portrait Gallery, London. Stretched like a
printed balloon, the image collapses back to the royal likeness
when viewed from an extreme angle.
At the risk of taxing the point, for Doran has employed anamorphosis
only three times and all recently, his use is media specific,
dependant upon highly reflective metallic surfaces which inhere
to the enamellist's practice.
Except for statements by fin de siècle jewellers, enamelling
has not had good press of late, partly because when carried into
those veins of art which have dominated the latter part of this
century, it looks like cheap trash. But the media and its effects
have always gripped the attention of a few perfectionists bent
on operating to the highest standards. Doran so spearheads those
developments that he has been shown and reviewed outside this
country, and he has also published technical papers in The Enamellist's
Newsletter (Newport, Kentucky), the chief organ of the media in
North America.
The economy of Dahl's and Doran's basement studio encourages replication
which leans toward bibelots and bric-a-brac. In domestic spaces
such as theirs, we all allow ourselves to be seduced by small
material pleasures, by the seemingly unimportant things - the
casual, even unconscious accumulations which occupy the nooks
and crannies of our homes, make up our world, and define our lives
as if we are their instruments. Human beings are addicted to things.
We have a psychological dependence on things. As Csikszentmihalyi
puts it:
"Artifacts help objectify the self in at least three major
ways. They do so first by demonstrating the owner's power, vital
erotic energy, and place in the social hierarchy. Second, objects
reveal the continuity of the self through time, providing foci
for involvement in the present, mementos and souvenirs of the
past, and signposts for future goals. Third, objects give concrete
evidence of one's place in a social network as symbols, (literally,
the joining together) of valued relationships. In these three
ways things stabilize our sense of who we are; they give permanent
shape to our view of ourselves that otherwise would quickly dissolve
in the flux of consciousness." (Csikszentmihalyi 1993: 23)
In coupling basic needs with their own of technical indulgence
in simulacra, Dahl and Doran provide a dialectic of affirmation
and denial that approximates the function of ritual. By seducing
us with earnest conviction, in violating our most ingrained expectations,
the worlds of these artists break the space of tacitly accepted
interpretations, blithely if not gleefully puncturing holes in
our notions of the real, stabbing at "the sleep of culture:
the forces that stabilize and maintain the human world are habit,
automatism and inertia". (Bryson 1990: 140) At its best,
as here, trompe l'oeil is used as an explosive heresy.
By subverting the ideas by which we sustain our identities and
our comfortable place in the world, by restructuring our own solid
opinions as a house of cards or a temple of dominoes, these artists
seem to commit devilments. They do a strange violence to the prosaic,
information driven mind which does not hold paradox dear. The
most abhorred of all paradoxes, it seems to me, is that of meaning/nonsense.
Assemblage requires literacy in material culture that lies close
to the diurnal pulse. Both Dahl and Doran use their association-laden
representations to maintain contexts, making of viewers less
meaning-mongers of established order than weavers of meaning's
ineffable web. George Steiner's call for the instauration (renewal
restoration, renovation, and repair) of originality is germane
here.
"Originality is antithetical to novelty. The etymology of
the word alerts us. It tells of inception and instauration, of
a return, in substance and in form, to beginnings. In exact relation
to their originality, to their spiritual-formal force of innovation,
aesthetic inventions are 'archaic'. They carry in them the pulse
of distant source." (Steiner 1989: 27)
Given their commitment, in their quiet moments Karen Dahl and
James Doran might fear that their worlds will only be seen as
trivial. I think we can assure them that will not happen. For
myself, I am grateful that their artistry has reawakened something
I had forgotten - that there is no more radical presence in this
time of relentless simulation than elegant completion.
Glenn Allison, Director-Curator
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