From Mundane to Metaphoric_The Visionary Candor of Antonio Lopez Garcia

8/7/2019 From Mundane to Metaphoric_The Visionary Candor of Antonio Lopez Garcia

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Antonio IUpez Garcia, The Apparition(La parici6n), il on wood. 21O31WM5 . 1963. Courtesy of the Museum of Modem Art. New York. ift of the Staempfli Gallery.

The Visionary Candor of Antonio Lopez GarcfANDRE VA N DER WENDE

onsidered by some a passd form in which to engagecontemporary issues, realism currently suffers froman overbearing deference to visual fidelity that errseither toward the academic, or the illustrative. That's notthe case with Spanish realist Antonio L6pez Garcia, who isenough of a household name in Spain to be satirized onSpanish television, but whose renown in this country ismore analagous to that of cult hero.

For someone whom the critic Robert Hughes oncecalled "the greatest realist artist alive," L6pez Garcia hasfailed to register a higher profile due to the slow pace atwhich he works. His canvases often take years; one major

sculpture,Man and Woman, took so long(twenty-six years), L6pez Garcia started todream that the male figure was following

- - him around. Solo exhibitions, particularlyin the United States, take on a similar spanof years. His last one was in 1986 at hiscurrent representative, the MarlboroughGallery in New York. Before that was 1968,at New York's Staempfli Gallery.

That alone makes the Museum of Fine|Antonio t6pez Arts, Boston's, survey of some fifty paint-Aes.oston. ings, drawings, and sculpture (the largest

collection ever assembled in this country) notable, but it isprofundity of his work that warrants the most recognition.If the measure of realism lay in the veracity of its precsion, L6pez Garcia would win hands down. However, heequally adept at investing rich layers of meaning withinmost mundane and grotesque of subjects: a bleak toilet, tdetritus of a meal, or a skinned rabbit coiled in a bowl allruddy and red. By taking a thing both repellent and oddlyattractive, L6pez Garcia causes us to re-examine our notionof beauty and how we see, turning the ordinary into theextraordinary and rendering a poetic equilibrium thatbecomes an affirmation of life, even in the face of death.

L6pez Garcia has always existed outside of the eb b anflow of prevailing trends. He is an artist who is deeplyengaged in a personal discourse with art history, embracinits conventions to record his own notions of the human spitual condition.

Tradition is the foundation upon which L6pez Garciatranscribes the world he sees, and it is also the thread thatcornnects him to the MFA's complementary Spanish exhibitEl Greco to Veldzquez: Art during the Reign of PhilipIII.Withascension of Philip III at the end of the sixteenth century,came an era of conspicuous celebration, building, and pietTh e benefits of travel were widely touted, and art began to

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Antonio L6pez Garcfa. 2006. Courtesy o|Garcla. Provided by the Museum of Fine


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Antonio L6pez Garcia. Atocha (Espaao). il on wood. 1964, Melvin Blake and Frank Purnell Collection. Courtesy of Antonio L6pez Garcia. Provided by theMuseum of Fine Arts, Boston. Photo: Steven Tucker.

shed its stringent lifelessness as it movedtowards a more naturalist approach.

By providing a modem counterpoint, L6pezGarcia "honors that tradition and in a sense, re-invented it for himself," says MF A Beal CuratorCheryl Brutvan, curator of the L6pez Garciashow. While the exhibition posits the idea thatL6pez Garcia is an extension of a Spanish artbased on the tenets of naturalism and human-ism, it is just as important to recognizethe impact of Spain's mountainous iso-lation on the national psyche.

"I think Antonio, in a sense, accept- Ced that (isolation)," says Brutvan. "IHel opeven thrived in it and found all the truthsthat you might find in a VelAzquez or[Juan SAnchez] Cotin, but from thiscontemporary viewpoint, and throughhis own ability to understand through studyand observation, a metaphorical relationship tothe very primary things of the world and life."

L6pez Garcia can combine the precision ofAndrew Wyeth with the psychological opacity ofVermeer, or even Edward Hopper, but he neverdescends into nostalgia or obsequious referenc-ing. His life-size sculpture Man andWoman beliestraces of Egyptian statuary and classical Greeksculpture, right down to the man's contrappostostance, but they are a resolutely modem couple,dearly born of the twentieth century.

Born in 1936 in Tomelloso, Ciudad Real, justmonths before the Spanish Civil War, L6pezGarcia makes no direct reference to the traumaof Spain's past, though one cannot help butthink that the melancholy in his work is anindirect result of it. Encouraged by an unclewho was also an artist, L6pez Garcia was a pre-cocious talent who moved to Madrid at the ageof thirteen to study at the Sa n Fernando Royal

kopez Garcfa can combine the precisioif Andrew Wyeth with the psychologicacity of Vermeer, or even Edward Hopibut he never descends into nostalgia

or obsequious referencing.Academy of Fine Arts. Once there, he becameassociated with a burgeoning realist movement.At the time, however, L6pez Garcia was barelyheard above the din of Antoni TApies and thetowering strength of abstraction in Spanish art.From the late 1950s to the mid-1960s, L6pezGarcia's work had a surrealist twist, with float-ing objects and figures that earned him the tagof "magic realist."

He eventually abandoned the use of dis-parate realities cobbled together in order tofocus on a single reality. Atoclia (1964) is a tran-

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sitional painting, depicting on e of his first viewof urban Madrid: a naked couple are locked inan intimate embrace, seemingly unaware oftheir brazen exposure in the shadows of apart-ment buildings and open streets. However, hiswork still has that hangover of disjointedworlds, so that even when his figures are notfloating, the image is no less surreal. By 1967,an unadulterated observation of one subjectbecame L6pez Garcia's norm, as in his paintingSink andMirror.

Full of painstaking, serious intent to collectand coalesce all manner of perceptions from hissubject, the intensity of L6pez Garcia's strugglefor resolution over reality (and, by extension,mortality), is what gives his work power. Weare taught to see again and, gladly, we haveL6pez Garcia to do most of the work for us bydistilling the essence of a presence and thetranquility of a moment.

His images are vulnerable, operating with-in the paradox of an attempt to commit to areality that will always be evasive to theaccounting of time. Despite his best efforts,nothing remains fixed, and that effort to makethe intangible more concrete gives the work abrittle infrastructure that hovers between thereal and the fantastic. Hinting at narrativesgleaned from a world at hand-while alsoreferring to a world at large-L6pez Garciaperpetrates a "through-the-looking-glass"quality by creating a new pictorial reality grafted from meticulous observation.

L6pez Garcia gives one the culminating experience of what it is like to see through the eyesof another, but when on e watches him work, oncannot help but think there's something quite

mad about the whole enterprise. InVictor Erice's poetic 1992 film El Sol den Mettbrillo (Sunlighton the Quince Tree),al which chronicles L6pez Garcia's:)er, methodical effort to paint a quince treein his backyard, L6pez Garcia is as much

an engineer as a painter, carefully measuring distances and calibrating light.As the seasons progress and the fruit

bears heavy, L6pez Garcia ties them back intoposition before he vainly casts a tent over the treeto protect them from the rains and, eventually,winter. (The film will be screened several times inthe MFA's Remis Auditorium during the exhibition's duration; see www.mfa.org for times.)

Had L6pez Garcia not become an artist, itseems he may well have been a scientist or amember of the clergy, so quietly driven is hisquest. Certainly, he attempts to voice his visionwithin a framework that straddles discipline,method, and faith. There is the same streak of

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sustained devotion and perseverance-as wellas patience-that adds an inherently Spanishlevel of penance and humility to the work.

LUpez Garcia's meticulous craft augmentsthe viewers' satisfaction and, while one canmarvel at his virtuosity (the arbitration of lightand the precise delineation of space and vol-ume), it never overwhelms the emotional res-onance. LUpez Garcfa disperses light like aphysical layer: it covers as much as it reveals,and carries one into dim stretches of corridorsand flat, stained rooms, as in Toiletand Window.

Yet, for a style we often associate withtightlipped edges and clean surfaces, there issurprising range within his work. Graphitedrawings of a quince tree are drafted withminute detail that hark back to Darer.Maria,a hallucinatory portrait of his ten-year-olddaughter, modulated with infinite gradations oftone, provides a convincing indictment againstthe fallacy of photography. The Dinner s full ofloose edges and hesitations, while the grittymottled surface and chalky palette of Atocha isa revelation. Even the firm grip of Sink andMirror eveals drips and blemishes incorporatedinto its final stasis. And while LUpez Garcfa isa superb colorist, he is more concerned withthe sensation of color as it pertains to light;color per se never declares itself above all else.

Perspective and measured articulation maybe important,but equally important is that thepaintings feel right, and as L6pez Garcia wres-tles to locate himself in space, remarkablethings happen. In Lucio's Balcony, a paintingthat evolved over a bewildering twenty-eightyears, horizons shift and lines bend at preciseangles, causing the painting to reel and swayin a slightly dizzying fisheye effect-it can benoticeably odd, but palpably right.

Whatever the subject---staggering views ofurban Madrid, the clinical provisions of a starkroom-L6pez Garcfa's eye is morally centered torecord a truth devoid of sentiment or melo-drama, stripped down to an essential innerlife (he refers to it as "nobility") that is akin toseeing for the first and last time. There may bea certain futility in trying to pin the worlddown with his visionary candor, but like thebest before him, we're aroused by his dignity,comforted by his compassion, and astonishedto know there's always more to see.Andrg van der Wende is an artistand writerwho liveson Cape Cod.He has been writing aboutartand popu-lar culture or the past ten years, and is the artcriticforTh e Cape Co d Tunes.

Antonio Ldpez Garcia, Perchacon Ropa (Clothes Rackl,polychrome wood, 58 x49 x 11". 963-64. Melvin Blake and Frank Purnell Collection.

Antonio Ldpezarcia, Skinned Rabbit{Conejo Desolladol.1972.

Antonio l.6pez Garcla, Sink andMintor, il on wood. 1967. Melvin Blake andFrankurnell Collection. Courtesy Antonio Upez Garcla. Provided by theMuseum of Fine Arns, oston.

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TITLE: From Mundane to Metaphoric: The Visionary Candor of

Antonio L%opez Garc%a

SOURCE: Art N Engl 29 no3 Ap/My 2008

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From Mundane to Metaphoric_The Visionary Candor of Antonio Lopez Garcia