Why I like my hero

Jennifer Bartlett's paintings always affect me in a needling way. I find myself returning to them again and again. However, I always ask myself "what is her relationship to great art?" Is Rhapsody a great painting? Okay, but if she is not Giotto, maybe she is just Duccio. Well, Duccio isn't bad either.

I guess my asking the question might be rather beside the point. So often in regard to contemporary art, artists' works are invoked with such seriousness. A lot of that is pretense. Maybe that's part of what I find attractive about Bartlett's images: the fact that they are beautiful without apology. They prove that something can be delightfully beautiful without hammering you with obvious meaning. They have depths to them, but they're also quite content to play at the decorative level.

So much criticism has been leveled at Bartlett for the decorativeness of her painting. Most that criticism comes from critics rather than artists. Few artists can create decoration on a parr with Bartlett's. The mistaken notion lies in supposing that her kind of decoration is easy.

Well, it's easy for her.

I guess the thing that brings me back again to this painting that I've never seen in person is its sheer delight. It makes me want to paint. Like the old masters, Bartlett is not afraid to make a bad painting. She cranks images out. The old masters didn't think it a waste of their time to be always painting. If something came out that was not up to ideal, they had at least garnered what was there to be learned by the continual act of drawing. Bartlett is like that. And she lacks pretension in just the living way that makes art exploratory and vibrant.

The artists who were truly innovative were never reluctant to keep pressing forward, and understandably they produced varying results. Some of Rembrandt's firmly attributed works have awkward elements (the Julius Civilis fragment is one prominent example). Bonnard is a very uneven painter and takes a constant whooping from critics for it. But his best paintings are awe-inspiring. No one has figured out Marthe in the Bath yet. So many people aren't even aware of it as something to be figured out. It is still very ahead of its time. So much that we haven't caught up with it yet.

I love Bartlett's paintings because they fill me with a desire to work. How I wish Rhapsody was on permanent exhibit.

[Top, Rhapsody installed at the Addison Gallery of American Art, next is Bartlett's Sea Wall 1985, last image is ArtRighter's painting in a simulated exhibit.]