Installation view of “Biographs and Recollections: 1967-1974”
Framing art and its history as an unending barrage of left and right-brained tendencies softens much of the criticism regarding its impracticability. The degree to which engaging with art invigorates these specialized hemispheres—left as order and right as intuition—cannot be overstated. This pattern emerges again and again across art history: the Renaissance and Baroque, Romanticism and Neo-Classicism, Abstract Expressionism and Pop Art. If we do in fact perceive the essence of these movements as quasi-oppositional, then such polarity often breeds cultic fandom: Blur vs. Oasis, Picasso vs. Matisse, the yuppies vs. the hippies. Here lies part of the magic of grasping competition as insight: definitions derive as much meaning from synonyms as they do from antonyms. To quote John Waters’ famous dialectic: “To understand bad taste, one must have very good taste.”
While the polarizing appeal of such absence-as-presence Rorschach tests breeds cult-like extremism, the extent to which an artist packages these sensibilities into a complete, yet just as captivating chimera, conjures an equally alluring one-size-fits-all type of magic.
Stephen Greene, “R. 3,” 1972, graphite, ink, charcoal, gouache, and collage on paper, 22 ¼ x 30 inches
One such artist is Stephen Greene (1917-1999), the renowned multi-hyphenate American painter known for his cross-genre work in Surrealism, Abstract Expressionism, and Social Realism. Three movements and three dimensions: the unconscious, the subconscious, and the socially conscious.
His current show at Moody Gallery, however, Biographs and Recollections 1967-1974, includes a psychological suite of drawings on paper, a mixture of biographical references and graphic art. Much like the coordinated mechanics of cognition mentioned in the introduction, Greene lends graphic technicality a soul. To Greene, these floating forms convey a direct, personal meaning. To his audience, they present a symbolic soup of unknown ingredients. Viewed from both perspectives, these drawings read as objectively non-objective confessions. Greene’s daughter, renowned Museum of Fine Arts Houston Curator Alison de Lima Greene, both adds to and peels back these personal references.
As the Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at the MFAH, Alison quite literally functions as Greene’s most reputable scholar. As an art historian, she situated these drawings both biographically and art historically.
Stephen Greene, “Biograph 7,” 1967, graphite, ink, gouache, and collage on paper, 21 ⅛ x 27 ⅝ inches
“The drawings in this exhibit definitely echo the improvisatory/disciplined spirit of Roberto Matta (the Chilean Surrealist who my father knew slightly) and his treatment of the negative space of the page,” noted Alison. “But he loved even more the drawings of Arshile Gorky, who also was influenced by Matta, but who brought a more organic touch to his work.”
Stephen Greene, “Biograph 8,” 1967, graphite, ink, gouache, and collage on paper, 21 ⅛ x 28 ⅝ inches
The collaged protractor included in Biograph 8 (1967) references Greene’s longtime friend, the minimalist painter Frank Stella. For Stella, the protractor provided the stable ground needed for his meticulously graceful compositions of illusionistic lines and artificial colors. Despite Greene’s similarly grounded geometry, where straight lines, solid angles, and even the previously mentioned protractor sustain an architectural stability, much of the content hints at change, evolution, growth, and process perceiving this moment, much like life itself, as an ephemeral and gradual phase change.
Stephen Greene, “Biograph 23,” 1967, graphite, ink, gouache, and collage on paper, 21 ⅛ x 28 ⅝ inches
Take the smoky smudges of ink found in Biograph 23, 7, and R. 3 for instance. Much like the dissipating qualities of that smoky pollutant, graphs inherently represent metrics like rates and change, exponential growth, or decay. Susceptible to similar levels of change, Recollections, memories, and biographies morph across time.
Stephen Greene, “S. 1,” 1974, graphite, charcoal, crayon, and gouache on paper, 22 x 31 ½ inches
Among the most recurring forms is Greene’s scattering of barren bones. These once-hidden structures, those invisible yet in-the-flesh tools of mobility, resurface as their uselessness renders them visible. The most contemporary inclusion in the exhibit, S. 1 from 1974, lightens such morbidity with a depiction of a bone sprouting a colorful flower, at once a signifier for death and memento of life.
Greene includes symbols with varying degrees of decipherability: like the trademark substitution for his signature in the form of an “X” or the repetition of a similarly sized musical coda, both symbols indicating finality (signing a painting and ending a musical score respectively).
One of the exhibit’s central questions relates to the significance of symbols in the pre-digital world: how do past and present artists produce personal expressions, confessions, and invitations into private worlds, all while maintaining a seductive allure of mystery? Is such an enigma even possible today?
In our media-soaked attention economy, a never-ending carousel where artists produce, and influencers consume while claiming to produce, our “hustle and grind” culture fantasizes about the idea of hard work today … “but I think I’ll start tomorrow…”
Before social media, when the barrier between “easier said than done” was more well-defined, seeing was — for the most part — believing. Unlike today, where grown adults treat the internet as a platform for “look at me, Grandma!” monetization, Greene’s generation often delayed any “job well done” validation until the deal was sealed. Ironically, even a multi-volume, tell-all biography from that bygone era likely reads as more mysterious than a single, present-day profile on social media.
Stephen Greene: “Biographs and Recollections: 1967-1974” will be on view at Moody Gallery through October 26.
