ROBERT COTTINGHAM: W.
12th
. . . his works
communicate to the viewer a real affection
for those vignettes or
individual objects that display beauty
or nobility in the abstract
qualities of their materials
and in their existence as part of a
greater, thriving whole
that keeps the eye active and engaged.
W. 12th, a 1992 gouache painting on paper,
is a fine example of the work of Robert Cottingham (b. 1935), an artist
usually categorized as belonging to the movement known as
Photorealism. Photorealism as a style rose to prominence in the
1970’s and involved the artists affiliated with the movement creating
works that not only offered
extremely realistic depictions of various subjects, but also replicated
visual elements arising from the photographic process. In other
words, photorealist artists strove for faithful representations
not so much of objects and scenes as those objects and scenes recorded
photographically. The wit and challenge of photorealistic work
comes from (typically) painted creations representing areas out of
focus, an overall color palette faded or curiously unreal due to the
often peculiar characteristics and appearance of photographic pigments
(especially as they change over time), and areas overexposed presumably
by light entering the camera body during the taking of the photograph
that served as the inspiration or source image. In addition,
photorealist works preserve the casual arrangements or compositions
often seen in snapshots and seem to be preoccupied with depicting
highly reflective man-made surfaces that introduce passages of abstract
patterning to further infuse these works with a spirit of questioning
the nature of representation. While Cottingham’s paintings are
certainly realistic and deal with the visual textures and
properties of man-made materials in the urban landscape, his creations
seem to reflect a direct interest in the arrangement or particular
object of emphasis he extracts from the din of visual detail found in
the environments that interest him. Cottingham does use a camera
to frame and capture areas of the cityscape that he identifies as
inspiring, but his focus is not apparently directed toward presenting
aspects of photography’s unique vocabulary. Rather, his works
communicate to the viewer a real affection for those vignettes or
individual objects that display beauty or nobility in the abstract
qualities of their materials and in their existence as part of a
greater, thriving whole that keeps the eye active and engaged.
Cottingham’s art, then, relates significantly to the
warm visions of Edward Hopper and Stuart Davis in their artistic
explorations of the city and feels less fundamentally connected to the
cool and brittle ironies of his photorealist colleagues in their
deadpan and strangely disturbing treatments of reality as seen through
an intermediary documentary device prone to dramatic distortions.
Photorealism as a movement further builds upon the distanced
perspective first established by Pop Art, whereas Cottingham’s art
reads as an invitation to see and delight in the intricacies and unique
rewards to be found in small portions of the city’s tapestry. The
signs and portions of architectural detail feel like they relate to a
human or lived existence and thus metaphorically speak to viewers in
ways that lure them in emotionally, rather than hold them at arm’s
length through a more intellectual exercise. Cottingham’s
paintings are seamlessly executed and highly refined in technique, as
are virtually all photorealist works. However, his pieces seem
not to lie sealed beneath a conceptual layer that asserts photographic
intervention; rather, they demonstrate an artist seeing and selecting
and encouraging others to modify their focus to find worth in those
items that, in their commonness, cease to be seen either in isolation
or as part of a context.
Cottingham frequently chooses a particular subject
or item (a sign or letter, for example) to be the central object of
attention, as if the painting were a portrait of this chosen
object. W. 12th,
however, is more generalized in its distribution of components.
Some of these components, such as the street sign, the walk sign, and
the beer and Pepsi signs, are specifically represented, enabling
viewers to locate themselves conceptually through recognition.
Overall, though, the highly compressed space in the picture, the
blue-gray color that unifies the painting from top to bottom, and the
lack of visible ground and sky all work together to create the
impression that while the specificity of the scene is important to the
artist, the scene’s existence as an active abstraction scintillating
with bits of color and areas of darkness and shadow is as much a part
of its fascination for artist and viewer. Thus, while Cottingham
finds pleasure and interest in the city’s wealth of disparate details,
he is able to blend this pleasure and interest arising out of a delight
with man-made textures and commercial design with a keen sense of
abstract compositional arrangement. The two perspectives work
well together and provide a point of identification or understanding
for Cottingham’s art: the reality of the place and viewers’ recognition
of that reality as they have experienced it grounds the picture in life
and actuality, while the artist’s compositional and coloristic
decisions reflect a degree of stylization that moves the picture
simultaneously into an arena of formal considerations and design
elements. W. 12th
occupies a ground where it can be seen and understood as a carefully
transcribed body of lights and darks, colors and tones, arranged in a
busily intriguing fashion in a shallow pictorial field, and at the same
time a street corner that wears its history, its vitality, in its
jumble of component parts that each have their own identity but speak
with most force as part of the city’s mosaic.
Of particular interest in this example of
Cottingham’s work is his use of gouache as a medium. Gouache is a
water-based pigment similar to tempera or acrylic paints that dries to
a flat yet pearly finish and that does not blend with the ease of oil
paint. Gouache must be carefully layered to achieve a translucent
opacity and requires a slow and deliberate manner of application to
maximize its ability to achieve illusionistic effects. For
Cottingham, then, the act of creating W.
12th is an act of devotion to a context or environment that
fascinates him, and to the notion of the exterior world offering in its
seeming chaos balanced arrangements of color and shape more complex and
multi-faceted than the imagination could conceive.
Each stroke of gouache painstakingly layered onto the various forms in
the picture symbolically represent human contributions and natural
effects over the years that give his slices of urban landscape depth,
substance, and a lovely patina that viewers can feel and appreciate
even if they may have never thought to consider such time-based effects
as being possible aspects of beauty. The recognition of truth
through the artist’s veracity to his subject, his virtuoso use of his
medium, and a formally satisfying composition is what draws viewers
toward the picture and what encourages them to see in a more attentive
and analytical fashion.
Cottingham, through W. 12th, examines the works of art
and design that constitute the city, itself a sprawling creative
product that ages and weathers alongside its human inhabitants.
From that examination, the artist offers an opportunity to marvel at
the shift that takes place between formal considerations and emotion or
empathy-based understandings. His faithful recording of the
elements in the scene, all vibrating together in a shallow space that
feels like the environment within a cubist creation, is a call for
viewers of the painting to slow the internal pace enough to feel the
vibrancy and continuity of the grand collaborative installation that is
the city. Cottingham, through W.
12th’s jewel-like colors and relatively small scale, seems to
indicate that in every corner, every detail, one can find material for
experiencing sensory delight and appreciating the complexity of human
endeavor as it unfolds in time.
© by Gregg Hertzlieb
