Pook (a tree shadow): I waver today
as if a man were looking at me
and I were changing shape
the way we do in men's eyes.
--Robert Duncan
"Jess: A Grand Collage, 1951-1993" presents the paintings and
collages of a contemporary San Francisco artist whose work, until now, has
only peeked out from behind the curtains of the art world. This retrospective
exhibition recently came to the Boston Museum of Fine Arts (May 21 - August
21, 1994) after stops at the Walker Art Gallery and the San Francisco Museum
of Art. The exhibition, whose curator is Michael Auping of Buffalo's prestigious
Albright Knox Gallery, will complete its tour (through December 4) at the
Whitney Museum of American Art in New York. "Jess: A Grand Collage"
offers a rare opportunity to explore a deeply felt personal vision, one
that touches on universal human experience.
Like the tree shadows in Robert Duncan's play Adam's Way, Jess's
images change with viewers' perceptions. His work has a subtle complexity,
which allows him to evoke multiple feelings and ideas simultaneously. Most
prominent, for this viewer, is a luminosity that conveys a transcendent
universe. The artist recreates a dream-world of the psyche which goes beyond
the ordinary, while relating to everyday life with both irony and sensitivity.
Born Burgess Collins in Long Beach, California, in 1923, Jess -- he would
drop his surname when he became a professional artist -- came from a family
that was not artistically oriented. However, the poetry and imagination
of his early childhood perceptions, along with an occasional ambivalence
about the adult world, have helped shape his imagery (Figures 2 and 3).
Like Wassily Kandinsky, who also affirmed the world of the spirit and gathered
meaning from childhood insights, Jess began his career as a scientist. A
chemistry major, he was drafted out of college at the California Institute
of Technology during World War II and spent 1944-1946 working in Tennessee
on the Manhattan Project, developing plutonium for the first atomic bomb.
After completing his degree, he continued to work on plutonium at the Hanford
Atomic Energy Project in Washington State, painting in his spare time.
In 1949 Jess had a dream that impelled a dramatic career change. The dream
warned of an impending end to the world and convinced him to spend his time
doing what he really wanted -- creating art rather than plutonium. Given
impetus by a sense of world-wide danger, his artistic calling was to explore
his own inner truth and give it visible form.
Two months after the dream, Jess moved to San Francisco and enrolled at
the avant-garde California School of Fine Arts (now the San Francisco Art
Institute). In the Bay area he came in contact with a large community of
artists, poets, and writers. Among these was Robert Duncan (1919-1918),
a poet who was a center of energy in literary and artistic circles.
Jess and Duncan became life-long artistic collaborators and personal companions,
creating a permanent home together, with Duncan employed as a typist and
Jess doing part-time work in chemistry. They produced several illustrated
books (including a children's book for friends) and explored common artistic
themes of myth and psychological insight. Openly homosexual, they did not
favor a separate homosexual subculture, and their friendships reflected
this sense of integration, something which I believe is also seen in Jess's
art.
Jess's early paintings, several of which are included in the show, were
lyrical abstract expressions, displaying the poetic inwardness that frequently
distinguished West Coast Expressionists like Clifford Still and Richard
Diebenkorn (who was at the School of Fine Arts with Jess) from more dynamically
oriented New York Action Painters such as Jackson Pollack, Willem DeKooning,
and Kranz Kline. Collages, or "paste-ups," in the exhibition also
date from the 1950s. Tricky Cad, Case I is one of twelve notebook
collages of Dick Tracy comics, with the words as well as the images rearranged
so that the characters speak nonsense (Figure 1). The lyricism of the early
abstract paintings combines with the irony and surreal fantasy of these
collages in the later work.
In 1959 Jess began planning a mixed media piece, Narkissos (Narcissus),
which became pivotal in his art (Figure 4). Two early sketches for the idea
are in the exhibition. Jess had originally planned a painted rendering of
collage images, paired with a mirroring pencil drawing, that would parallel
Narcissus and his reflection. To develop techniques for rendering the paintings,
he initiated several painting exercises, which grew into independent artistic
expressions. Over the next seventeen years, he gathered visual and literary
material for Narkissos, while continuing his painting series and
collages.
One series, "Translations," transposes existing black and white
images into full-color, expressionistic paintings (Figure 2, Colorplate
I). The artist has paired each "translation" with a written text
from a literary source, often written on the back of the painting.
Will Wonders Never Cease (Colorplate 2), based on an 1887 engraving
by J. Dvorak, The First Butterfly Net, conveys a powerful ambivalence.
Like many of the paintings and collages, it is bathed in light; yet the
expressionistic colors and Jess's subtle changes in facial expressions suggest
that all is not totally idyllic.
Paired with the painting, and partially lettered in at the top, is a quotation
from Gertrude Stein's novel, The Making of Americans:
. . . and this one, the little son wanted to make a collection of butterflies
and beetles and it was all exciting to him and it was all arranged then
and then the father said to the son you are certain this is not a cruel
thing that you are wanting to be doing, killing things to make collections
of them, and the son was very disturbed then and they talked about it together
the two of them and more and more they talked about it then and then at
last the boy was convinced it was a cruel thing and he said he would not
do it and his father said the little boy was a noble boy to give up pleasure
when it was a cruel one. The boy went to bed then and then the father when
he got up in the early morning saw a wonderfully beautiful moth in the room
and he caught him and he killed him and he pinned him and he woke up his
son and then showed it to him and he said to him, "see what a good
father I am to have caught and killed this one," the boy was all mixed
up inside him and then he said he would go on with his collecting and that
was all there was then of discussing and this is a little description of
something that happened once and it is very interesting. (p.284)
The painting appears to visualize the transparent illusions of picture-perfect
life in Stein's novel, which satirizes her own middle-class upbringing.
Ambivalence also appears in The Lament for Icarus (Colorplate I),
based on an 1898 illustration (Auping, p.170). The painting evokes multiple
interpretations, demonstrating a coexistence of differing meanings. Seen
positively, it affirms the beauty of the spirit, beyond all ordinary existence.
Yet the impact of the raw colors can shift, to evoke tragic images of death
and a sense of a delusive preoccupation. The juxtaposed quotation from a
letter by Rainer Maria Rilke expresses a mystical view, which can either
support or complement the painting's impact:
. . . The angel of the Elegies is that Being who stands for the recognition
in the Invisible of a higher degree of reality . . . All the worlds in the
Universe rush into the Invisible as into their next-deeper reality; a few
stars undergo immediate sublimation and are lost in the infinite consciousness
of the angels, -- others are committed to beings who slowly and painfully
transform them, beings in whose terror and rapture they attain their approaching
consummation in the Invisible.
--Selected Letters, p. 395
From the romantic standpoint of Rilke's letter, Icarus didn't exactly die;
he just subsumed himself in the infinite.
A second series, "Salvages," transforms abandoned paintings. These
too are accompanied by literary quotations. "...For Want of Stairs"
(Figure 2) portrays a toddler floating above a circle of dancers, accompanied
by a rather strange-looking rat in a parachute. The text, from the Oxford
Nursery Rhyme Book, reads:
There was a rat, for want of stairs,
Went down a rope to say his prayers.
(p.140)
While creating these series, Jess also developed his Expressionist paintings
in a figurative direction (Colorplate III). Stream-of-consciousness titles
provide the verbal supplement to these paintings, whose free-associations
parallel those of Surrealist Max Ernst (1891-1976) in their dreamlike logic.
Jess has expressed a particular indebtedness to Ernst's collages, as well
as an overwhelming interest in the open-ended meanings of James Joyce's
Finnegan's Wake (Auping, pp.24. 33. 48). Many of Jess's images evoke
more than one emotion. If all the World Were Paper and All Water Sink
may appear joyous or somber, mirroring the viewer's thoughts. Glowing oranges,
yellows, and beiges give life to the pervasive browns and olive-greens.
Little rectangles fall like confetti or snow near a circle of children.
A man and an eagle, depicted larger, gaze at each other from either side,
framing the children. Particularly fascinating, here and elsewhere in the
show, is the motion that appears when relationships between the larger figures
are noticed. The children literally seem to move, bringing the viewer into
a living dream experience.
Stream-of-consciousness, dream, and motion are particularly evident in Jess's
collages, made from the 1950s to the present (Colorplate IV; Figure 3).
Taken from countless magazine photographs, art reproductions, and picture-puzzles,
the collages display sensitive balances in color, lighting, and design.
A Cryogenic Consideration; Or Sounding One Horn of the Dilema (Winter)
-- one of a series on the four seasons -- conveys a lyrical transcendence
with its sky-blue lighting and ephemeral blue-white masses; at the same
time, its dark and light contrasts evoke drama.
When viewed from a distance, the numerous fragments become part of a sweeping
movement up the central mountain. Seen close up, the individual details
form their own spaces and create their own stories; yet each vignette merges
subtly with those around it. A Cubist figure with sunglasses stands behind
a canister of colored pencils (lower right). Nearby, blue-white water and
snow separate leaping dolphins from a dripping ice-,am, who staggers under
the weight of a heavy vase (right). Fish emerge from space in front of a
rock (left); one overlaps a ferris wheel. Circles of dancers (right and
center) repeat a theme that appears throughout the exhibition (cf. Colorplate
III; Figure 2). The vignettes are meticulously crafted, so that any part
of the collage becomes a sensitive composition.
The titles, like the images, invite open-ended exploration. A dictionary
definition of cryogenics is "low temperature research"
(which itself suggests ironic multiple meanings). Cryogenics have been used
for nuclear research and for life-support in space, as well as in making
and transforming frozen foods, in preparing nitrogen for fertilizers, and
in performing medical surgery. Horns of a "Dilema" are alternatives,
often disagreeable, between which one must choose. "Sounding One Horn,"
however, is a word-play that evokes music and suggests the affirmation of
making a choice.
One of the choices Jess and Robert Duncan made was to live together as a
permanent homosexual couple, within an integrated community of artists and
writers. A sense of integration is evoked by Midday Forfit: Feignting
Spell II (Spring) (Colorplate III). The central boy and girl (cut from
a piece of tapestry) are lovers; they may also be male and female components
of lovers' psyches (Palmer, pp.93-103). The Dance of Shiva sculpture (upper
left) reinforces the idea of androgyny. Shiva, a Hindu deity, is both male
and female; his dance symbolizes the spiritual transcendence that comes
with synthesizing complementary opposites in life and death. The Navajo
sand painter (left) echoes the spiritual theme. A radiant toddler dressed
in white (lower left) affirms childhood as part of the couple's world. Although
irony is suggested by the title (and some details like a saintly figure
with child seated on stained glass [upper center]), the effect of the paste-up
is one of balance.
Jess's pivotal piece, Narkissos, combines themes of mysticism, irony,
and romance found throughout his work (Figure 1). Jess began the drawing/paste-up
in 1976 and worked on it until 1991, when he dropped the idea of the accompanying
painting, the imagery having become too intricate to paint. The paste-up
consists of cut-out and combined drawing details, based on a vast collection
of collage materials (Palmer, p.93).
Narcissus, in Greek mythology, is the overwhelmingly beautiful child of
the ocean nymph Liriope (conceived as a result of her rape by the river
god Cephisus). Many girls and boys become enamored of the young Narcissus,
as does the mountain nymph Echo, but he rejects them all. Finally, a boy
curses him with being able to love only himself. Nemesis, goddess of retribution,
causes him to fall in love with an extraordinarily beautiful image he sees
reflected in the water. Unable to unite with it, he pines away until he
dies, becoming, in the end, a beautiful flower.
The myth has lent itself to numerous poetic and mystical interpretations,
in which Jess and Duncan both steeped themselves. The metaphor of a mirror
reflecting the soul is found throughout the world. Note the allusion contained
in Duncan's "Star, Child, Tree":
this Mirror of Narkissos
myth and mystery of what we mean to be
speaks in the downstream of what Is.
(--in Palmer, p.98)
Neoplatonist writings, examined by Jess, interpret Narcissus' reflection
as both an image of the true soul and the misleading enchantment of the
sensual world (Palmer, pp.99-101). These ideas parallel Buddhist and Hindu
conceptualizations of both our limited self-identifications and our fleeting
sense experiences as illusions (maya). Jess's symbolism, however, is as
much erotic as mystical. In his notebooks, he quotes a poem, by French troubadour
poet Bernart de Ventadorn (c.1150-1180), about the eyes of the woman he
loves:
Mirror, since I beheld myself in you,
the sighs from my depths have slain me,
and I have lost myself, as fair Narcissus
lost himself in the fountain.
(--in Palmer, p.98)
In the context of another notebook entry saying he was "seeking finally
to portray homoeros unprofaned, sensuous, joyful-fearful," the selection
again universalizes erotic love. The idea of a male/female psyche is also
suggested by another version of the myth, discovered by Jess, in which Narcissus,
grieving for his deceased twin sister, gazes at his own reflection to console
himself. Androgyny and twinning have been pointed out in the drawing's portrayal
of Narkissos, the hermaphrodite prophet Tiresies (the figure with hounds
over Jess's right shoulder), and a Gaudi sketch of Gemini (upper left) (Palmer,
pp.95-97, 102). Bipolarity is echoed in the Escher-like drawing (upper right),
where birds fly against dark and light backgrounds. Escher surfaces again
(right of Narkissos's wand) in a circular procession of reptiles, who pass
through a two-dimensional drawing to become real again.
The quiet pool mirrors its own mysticism. Symmetry appears on its surface
in a Chinese hexagram from the I Ching (above Narkissos' reflection), and
two six-pointed stars (right and left of the hexagram), the smaller of which
contains a central inscription meaning "blessing" in Arabic. Lotus
flowers in the pool add to its poetry. In Hindu and Buddhist symbolism,
the lotus represents the world's unfolding and transcendence.
While the Greek myth (in its best-known version) warns against the pitfalls
of self-love or excessive pride, Jess removes himself from the story's moralism
through spoof and surreal fantasy. In a little circle near the top, Nemesis,
the spirit of retribution, peddles an old-fashioned tricycle -- a stand-in
for the spinning wheel used by the Fates. A rather stuffy-looking Eros is
standing behind Narkissos, about to do her bidding. Below Eros, Echo is
reclining on a hillside like a sunbather, while a mole with a shovel, a
snail, and a frog (lower left) gaze up at Narkissos. Narkissos carries in
his right hand a group of Krazy Kat cartoons: in one, Krazy Kat, with a
question mark over his head, peers at his reflection in a large glass. To
the left, a monkey examines his own image in a mirror (Palmer, pp.97, 101,103).
Incorporating ironic details, the drawing as a whole emanates lyricism.
The fact that Jess decided to leave the project unfinished seems fortuitous.
It is only in a state of incomplete becoming that Narkissos can exist; the
story's completion is his end. The tentativeness of a dream-in-the-making
suits the theme of reflection. The entire drawing has the delicacy of a
mirror image, shimmering on the surface of the water.
Jess has commented that the Narkissos project and his other works are really
the same (Auping, p.27). They all present continuing searches and open questions
rather than answers -- and invite viewers to add to the process of discovery.
A central focus is a sense of spirituality, which incorporates male-female
integration -- both within the psyche and in a full range of personal relationships.
Contradictions in life are addressed with an irony and humor that transcends
them. While ambivalences and multiple emotions appear in much of the art,
its ultimate effect is affirmative. When Jess chose to become an artist,
he was inspired by a dream warning of universal disaster. In a world threatening
to tear itself apart, he had found an artistic way to create wholeness.
WORKS CITED AND RELATED READING
Albright, Thomas (1985). Art in the San Francisco Bay Area:
1945 - 1980. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Auping, Michael (1993). Jess: A Grand Collage, 1951-1993.
Exhibition Catalogue. Buffalo: Albright-Knox Gallery.
Bertholf, Robert J., ed. (1979). Robert Duncan: Scales of the
Marvelous. New York: New Directions.
Bertholf, Robert J. "The Concert: Robert Duncan Writing Out of
Painting," in Jess: A Grand Collage, pp. 67-91.
Duncan, Robert (1964). Roots and Branches. New York: Scribners.
Duncan, Robert (1993). Selected Poems. New York: New Directions.
Duncan, Robert (1985). Fictive Certainties: Essays. New York: New
Directions.
Opie, Iona and Peter, eds. (1960). Oxford Nursery Rhyme Book.
London: Oxford.
Palmer, Michael. "On Jess's Narkissos," in Jess: A Grand Collage,
pp. 93-103.
Rilke, Rainer Maria (1946). Selected Letters of Rainer Maria
Rilke 1902-1926. Translated by R.F.C. Hull. London: MacMillan.
Rilke, Rainer Maria (1981). Selected Poems of Rainer Maria Rilke.
Translated by Robert Bly. New York: Harper and Row.
Stein, Gertrude (1925). The Making of Americans. New York:
Harcourt, Brace.
Stein, Gertrude (1971). Fernquest, Q.E.D. and Other Early
Writings. New York: Liveright.
Edna Garte came to the Salem State College Art Department from th eMaryland
Institute College of Art in 1993. With graduate degrees from Texas Tech
University, City University of New York, and Yale, her main fields are modern
and non-Western art. Her publication credits include Gazette des Beaux Arts,
the National Gallery of Art, and the Jewish Quartly Review.