~GREGG HERTZLIEB~
ABRAHAM
RATTNER: STILL
LIFE COMPOSITION NO. 3
Rattner’s
selection of a scene, treated in a lively
abstracted fashion
and isolated against an off-white
background, gives the represented
subject an iconic
feel that suggests more than simply the artist’s
interest
in transcribing its appearance. However, Rattner’s
attentions
seem to focus more on the subject’s ability
to inspire pictorial
invention in him than on a specific
reference or narrative . . .
Abraham Rattner’s painting Still Life Composition No. 3, 1950,
is one of the Brauer Museum of Art’s more popular permanent collection
pieces, a major work by the artist that demonstrates well the rich
qualities and expressive capabilities of oil paint. Painted on a
panel surface, this work stands astride abstract and representational
realms and silently invites viewers to discover or discern the subject
matter while simultaneously delighting in the effects of color and
varied texture.
Rattner (1893 or 1895-1978) spent most of his career
creating works that were of a religious nature, particularly dealing
with Jewish themes. His application of thick paint, use of areas
of strong color, and division of these color areas through heavy linear
elements, all constitute stylistic similarities to Georges
Rouault
(1871-1958), another painter interested in exploring religious themes
and an artist whose works are reminiscent in appearance of stained
glass, so often seen in sacred settings. Rattner’s still life
discussed here does not seem to relate literally to any religious story
or custom, although the apparent subject matter of several fish
unwrapped on a table surface does remind one perhaps of various
devotional meals or an offering of some sort. Rattner’s selection
of a scene, treated in a lively abstracted fashion and isolated against
an off-white background, gives the represented subject an iconic feel
that suggests more than simply the artist’s interest in transcribing
its appearance. However, Rattner’s attentions seem to focus more
on the subject’s ability to inspire pictorial invention in him than on
a specific reference or narrative, although a good chance exists that
the artist would have appreciated viewer interpretations on whatever
level, especially those that speak to the frequency of certain images,
subjects, or themes appearing in history or ritual.
Still Life
Composition No. 3 refers in its title to previous still life
paintings in which Rattner used the still life subject as a vehicle for
explorations relating to space, texture, and
color. His manner of fragmented abstraction refers back to
Cubism’s goal of capturing on a single picture plane a number of points
of view; Rattner’s approach in other words allows viewers to experience
multiple views of the fish and table surface without their having to
move physically around the still life arrangement. Cubist efforts
to bring all these perspectives together in a single picture arose not
out of a concern for viewer convenience, however. Rather,
Cubist abstraction strove to in some sense replicate or bring to
conscious
awareness the act of seeing as it takes place in time, with the views
adding up to a coherent image and making viewers more aware of the
composite nature of human perception and awareness or understanding
through that perception. Rattner’s painting takes Cubist goals to
greater lengths and an overall greater abstracted or invented effect;
since the artist painted this piece in 1950, he seems to have linked
Synthetic Cubism (the later and more imaginative variety) to the later
style of Abstract Expressionism, a movement holding sway in the
mid-twentieth century. Abstract Expressionism’s goal was to have
paint and pictorial surface be satisfying and meaningful in its own
right, to the point where subject matter would be unnecessary given the
visual rewards that the language of the art-making media could
provide. Cubism and Abstract Expressionism are both movements
within the larger category of Modernism, with its aims of establishing
the artist and his stylistic choices as being central to an
appreciation of the art form. Whereas Cubism urged viewers at the
beginning of the twentieth century to acknowledge and appreciate
artifice in art, though, Abstract Expressionism, further along the
Modernist continuum, encouraged even more experimentation and rule
breaking in attempting to discover a primal force at work in the making
of art.
With the notion of a Modernist continuum in mind, a
useful art historical figure to consider at this time is Willem de
Kooning (1904-1997). De Kooning is regarded as one of the most
important of the Abstract Expressionists, yet the artist’s best known
paintings belong to a series from the 1940s and 50s where he
worked with individual women as his subjects. De Kooning’s women
from this period are recognizable as human figures but are primarily
subjects the artist can abstract or distort, or from which he can
invent; that is, these works paradoxically represent a subject but also
claim surface and gesture as the main subjects, with the female form
acting largely as a carrier or vehicle (although de Kooning’s comments
during his life indicate that the women subjects too had their
significance to him, and viewers in general would find it difficult
certainly to see a represented human form and not view it with some
level of empathy or identification). Thus, in the realm of
Abstract Expressionists, some artists such as de Kooning held onto a
recognizable subject and had attitudes about these subjects even though
coloristic and painterly effects were at the forefront of their
minds. Rattner’s virtuoso paint handling and heavily abstracted
still life bring up parallels with de Kooning (in the mind of this
author particularly), and a comparison/contrast of Still Life Composition No. 3 with
one of de Kooning’s women paintings would be instructive and
interesting. But Rattner’s career-long embrace of subject matter,
religious and otherwise, seems to put him at a slightly different spot
along the aforementioned continuum, perhaps nearer to Cubist origins
than to mostly nonobjective products of Abstract Expressionism’s
heyday. The idea that a stylistic continuum seems to exist at all
is helpful in realizing that Rattner with this picture is engaged in a
working dialogue with art history. Movements of his lifetime inform his
selected vocabulary and approach, enabling him to see anew and
inspiring viewers to do the same.
The surface of this painting is truly extraordinary,
with areas of pigment nearly two inches thick and showing complex
blending taking place at every stage of the picture’s creation. Rattner
adjusts his representational style so that the fish, wrappings, and
table are recognizable as such but simplified so as not to be
portrait-like or realistic. Viewer identification of the subjects
is but a part of the viewing experience, with spaces between objects
and shapes of objects and their component parts all of interest
because of the artist’s expressive handling of each. Fish on a
table become opportunities for Rattner to transform, to court chance
effects, to convey through gesture his state of mind, to encourage
viewers to see how complex the visible world is and how exciting a
source from which to create and improvise.
© by Gregg
Hertzlieb
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