DEAN PORTER: SANTUARIO
DE CHIMAYO
Paradoxes seem to abound in Porter's
painting,
challenging viewer preconceptions of the subject
and engaging the
viewer so that the artist's
enthusiasm for and interest in the subject
becomes infectious.
The
Brauer Museum of Art is proud to have in its permanent collection a
lovely 1998 oil on canvas painting entitled Santuario de Chimayo by Dean Porter
(born 1939), director emeritus of the Snite Museum of Art at the
University of Notre Dame, an accomplished artist, and a recognized
authority on the art of the Southwest. Porter in addition
received an honorary doctorate from Valparaiso University in 1995 and
currently serves on the Brauer Museum of Art's Collection
Committee. In 2002, the Brauer Museum held a major exhibition of
Porter's recent paintings of southwestern subjects which was
well-received by campus and community members. Santuario de Chimayo was an
anonymous gift to the museum in 1998 and was purchased from the silent
auction held by the Brauer's Friends of Art membership group in
conjunction with their annual ball.
The Santuario de Chimayo in New Mexico was built in
the early nineteenth century and has come to be known among the
faithful as the "Lourdes of America" due to stories of miraculous
healings taking place over the years when pilgrims visited the sacred
structure and its grounds. Built of adobe brick and stucco, the
Santuario receives thousands of visitors each year who admire the
organic appearance of the building's architecture and the atmosphere of
reverence and respect. Porter has represented the Santuario in
numerous paintings on canvas and paper.
While the subject of this painting is rendered
clearly enough for viewers familiar with the structure to see it
easily, the painting does have an abstract appearance. Fluid,
painterly passages suggest that the work was executed with the artist
keeping the entire surface of the canvas wet, so that Porter could move
with his brush from sky to earth, background to foreground, and create
an overall appearance that shows all elements infused with the same
energy. Santuario de Chimayo's
expressive method of paint application and active composition presents
both a subject dear to the artist and his delight in inventing from or
improvising on this subject. As much as the work is about a
specific building in a specific place, it also is a portrait of sorts
of the artist who, inspired by a certain area, gives his inspiration
form by manifesting through gesture and color the spirit of the scene
as it appears in his imagination.
Paradoxes seem to abound in Porter's painting,
challenging viewer preconceptions of the subject and engaging the
viewer so that the artist's enthusiasm for and interest in the subject
becomes infectious. For example, architectural subjects are typically
represented as being stable, immutable, objects of strength in the face
of time and the destructive elements. In Santuario de Chimayo, however,
straight lines indicating stability are absent, and the building
assumes an organic appearance, nearly capable of moving and twisting as
a person would. The nature of structural endurance is thrown into
question, as for Porter the structure seems to survive through its
almost living character, as opposed to the defiance suggested by a
building composed of hard angles, straight edges, and elements of
visual weight.
Likewise, one typically does not think of snow in
relation to a southwestern scene. Yet, snow does occur in this
setting, and Porter surprises by including the material in a scene
occupied by adobe and stucco. Viewers must take a moment to
reconcile this juxtaposition and enlarge their thinking about a
geographical area that possesses far more dynamism than the dry
lifelessness one commonly thinks of as characterizing a desert.
Assumptions can easily give way to re-evaluations as artists encourage
through their creations an engaged mode of seeing, free of
preconceptions that limit experiences and perhaps overall enjoyment.
The irregular contours of the areas of accumulated
snow and other landscape elements, the organic character of the
Santuario, and the gestural brushstrokes of pigment keep the eye moving
in such a way that viewers' eyes do not lock on the building's
configuration to turn the painting into a mere portrait likeness of a
single structure. Santuario de
Chimayo, then, becomes not just a significant place that the
artist is content to illustrate; instead, it grows out of the landscape
around and beneath it. Porter's metaphorical message seems
to be that the southwestern landscape is of such energy and life that
it affects, even has a hand in creating, all that comes in contact with
it. His representation of this scene and subject is one where
every inch of the canvas has equal visual weight; perhaps the spell of
artistic invention in this setting causes an artist to embody a force
that links man and nature so that everything is connected and made of
the same living material.
Finally, one typically thinks of shrines and
sanctuaries as being symmetrical, depicted in atmospheres of light that
symbolically present enlightenment and joy through a spiritual
appreciation of their sacred function. Porter is able to
communicate a sense of drama and respectful wonder through an
asymmetrical composition where viewers' eyes move from one stylized
form to another. The composition is active without being chaotic;
the picture's tone is mysterious and intriguing without being
threatening or unnerving. Conventional spiritual light is
replaced by the darkness of winter which offers its own enigmatic
peace. The white fingers of tree branches that reach into the painting
from the top edge offer a haunting detail to the picture, but the
overall effect never seems to lead the viewer into a land of gloom or
dread. Instead, one feels the drama of being alive and perceptive
in a place that follows the grand cycles of the seasons, and does so in
a way that is exciting and moving to experience.
Porter's vibrant colors, unusual in certain
instances because most do not see these colors frequently occurring
naturally, are indeed present in all their loveliness in the
Southwest's sky, soil, and vegetation. These colors, in fact
components of the restless and exotic spirit of the land itself, leap
from the real-world setting into Porter's artistic consciousness, and
the transcription that takes place is the artist capturing those
impressions, those inspirational details to produce a visual narrative
that begins to share his affection for and fascination with an
environment almost magical in character. By offering viewers
curious and interesting seasonal and environmental characteristics,
Porter is able to present a form of true seeing, not dependent on
conventions that could cloud or prevent an appreciation based in the
heart. The liveliness of his southwestern landscape is the
liveliness present there to the sensitive viewer, and one that leads
both the artist and admirers of his art to a plane of delightful
spirituality. The life of the Santuario and its surrounding
landscape is the same life that flows through Porter's veins as
he shares through his work the exciting experience of being in a place
and seeing and feeling all that the place has to communicate.
© by Gregg Hertzlieb
