"At this moment you’re trembling because of the situation and the prospect of
the hunt. Where would the tremor be if I were as precise as a railway timetable?"
Arthur Conan Doyle, The Valley of Fear
Fictional Theatricality in a Cyber Age
By Elaine King
Since its revival in the 1980s, under the banner of Neo-Expressionism, the figure has
returned with a vengeance in contemporary art. Today, figuration provides artists with a
symbolic vocabulary enabling them to explore a spectrum of topics, from and to the value
of the body itself. In contemporary figurative painting, however, the figure is withdrawn
from traditional issues of representation even though recognizable images are evident. The
figure no longer functions as a conveyor of factual essences. It now functions
fundamentally as an elusive surrogate, a substitute for other meanings. The art of the
1990s represents a conglomeration of information; it is not a complete manifestation, but
signifies a denotation of something other than itself.
Art, especially painting, no longer refers to immediate realities that derive identity
solely from the conventions of painting. Today’s artists incorporate the history of
the transmitted image from everyday life and from a larger cultural history of the world.
A new aesthetic is emerging which reveals an altered cultural context that has been
transformed by the experiments of late Modernism, the crisis of Postmodernism, and the
reconstructed codes influenced by technology—all resulting in a world of the moment.
For some artists, figural references act merely as an extension of a performance, a mirror
of culture, a window into another world or a proof for critical theory. The body is linked
more and more closely to a character in literature, as a fiction of the mind. Many
artists, however, use it as a motif to express the conditions of a collapsed social
structure, conveying an air of suspicion and disenfranchisement in a world of the
immediate. Moreover, a sense of fleeting transformation characterizes much Postmodern
figurative work. Themes of denial, loss, cynicism and identification have replaced the
linear narratives of an earlier society that lived in a unified world of prescribed
culture. Aspects of this inform the complex farcical and ironic paintings of such an
artist as Martin Beck.
Beck's art belongs to a genre of figuration that demonstrates a sensibility akin to
European master painters, despite his acknowledgment that our postindustrial society and
its social fabric are radically changing. Artists that combine elements of the fantastic
in their works such as Hieronymous Bosch, Peter Bruegel the Elder and Francisco Goya, as
well as those who depicted aspects of prosaic reality, such as Gustave Courbet, Eduoard
Manet and Edgar Degas have significantly shaped his visual language. Like them, Beck
struggles to depict the human condition of his age but within an altered framework. As a
member of an "information society" he recognizes the significance that language
plays in establishing perception and shaping information. Elements that resist the old
framework—such as instant global media coverage, computers and digital
photography—are critically important in shaping culture. Through a unique synthesis
of allegory, psychological perceptiveness and idiosyncratic invention, Beck constructs
manifold enigmatic puzzles depicting critiques of bourgeois and working-class cultures.
As a painter, he is a master of social and socio-political satire and lampoonery. Working
with powerful, whiplash candor and employing the drama of light-dark contrasts, Beck
brings forth intelligent pictures that are filled with wry commentary about our Postmodern
era. His use of the recognizable image is comforting and inviting to the viewer, despite
the bizarre content of the dramas portrayed.
Martin Beck manipulates a unique brand of visual rhetoric to scrutinize a materialist,
lost society, using insight and wit. Beck and his brand of farce at times echo the satires
of Moličre and Swift. Unlike many contemporary artists who prefer to deconstruct history
or to make political jabs at conventional society, he neither perpetuates academic theory
nor produces political illustration. One might conclude that he is somewhat out of step
with the times because of his determination to remain connected to historical and
allegorical painting. I caution one not to draw such a simplistic and erroneous
conclusion. Just as Marcel Duchamp was a master at playing language and intellectual
games, in Beck’s art, what you see may not be what you think you see! Notwithstanding
the prevailing esoteric extravaganzas enacted in his work, each composition is resolutely
constructed to characterize the unbalanced social, political and psychological
configuration of life at the close of the 20th Century.
Beck remains steadfast in his dialogue with other visual art traditions despite his need
to express the reeling realities of this era. He functions as a type of trickster who
comprehends the power of surprise and camouflage. He is an astute student of film and
popular culture. His brand of black comic drama stems not from a frenzied mind, but from
an artist who is an ardent observer. Beck’s respect for the old masters and
Europe’s grandest traditions conjure up the philosophical aesthetic stance of Manet
and his controversial works, handled with luscious, painterly fluency and rich tonal
contrasts, inspired by the 17th-century Spanish master Diego Velázquez. Beck’s
painting Lazy (1997), imparts such a propensity.
Unlike Goya, Beck does not condemn humanity for its evils but acknowledges its absurdity
and how it informs our fractured everyday realities. In his jewel-colored, emotive
ambiguity, Beck presents emotional confusion with lucid exactitude. Although he employs
the traditional medium of painting, the resulting outcome represents a fundamental break
with tradition. Film, photography and electronic technology are influential in shaping his
vision. Beck provides viewers with imagery that packs a powerful punch because he
recognizes the spectator’s predilection for television’s sound-bite productions
and exotica.
In his paintings, Beck unleashes a natural strength and power that might have elicited
Nietsche's approval. At times, Beck freely mixes parody with elements of strangeness,
hinting at a macabre vision. Through the employment of theatrical invention he visualizes
the inherent anxiety of a floundering society. In his extraordinary range of subjects, he
focuses on middle-class American social rituals, the human psyche and the frequently weird
behavior of individuals at ceremonial (but lackluster) gatherings. His pageants delve into
the hypocrisy of external appearance and the coexistence of aberrant social behavior of
the highborn.
The biting commentaries of his potent and sagacious compositions inspire reflection long
after a painting is out of sight. Everywhere in Beck’s work, quirky psychological
elements pervade, revealing tormented and confused characters. The world he presents is a
playing field of uncensored personal expression in which he shares his notes about
contemporary American life. Acute observations of human interactions, as well as an
uninhibited mind that is in search of truth and meaning inspire this art. He invents a
strange world of infinite spaces, limitless vistas and conflicting characters that coexist
within a single frame. Beck’s diligent focus on humanitarian social consciousness
calls to mind such French independents as Daumier, Millet and Courbet who constituted the
fountainhead of liberal thinking in the 19th Century. Beck also shares a consciousness
with Eric Fischl, whose work recalls an art of the most traditional kind. Both artists
depict American psychological states and the particular conditions of a precise moment;
both utilize a technique of switching from one historical period to another in a fleeting
manner that resembles electronic communication. Nonetheless, unlike Fischl, Beck does not
merely focus on the dysfunctional suburban family—he implicates the viewer in
narrating unresolvable conditions, mixing time references, symbols and places of diverse
reference.
His proletarian characters and themes, more frequently than not, are disturbing in these
phantasmagoric, realist works of art. Beck perceives today’s society through unique
personal insight and attempts to locate his position as a male member of a society that is
in the midst of radical social and technological mutation. As Courbet worked from a
tangent to a circle relationship in order to capture on canvas essences of his era, Beck
likewise creates his visual arrangements in a rather disjoined manner.
Repeatedly, as was the case with Alfred Hitchcock, Beck appears as a removed personality
in his masterfully executed paintings that elude an affinity with film noir. Although
subtle at times, Beck employs a mordantly witty genius for caricature in expressing his
contempt for hypocrisy, bourgeois stupidity and the rampant desire for spectacle. This is
most evident in Tarzan’s Hollywood Party (1996), based deliberately on John
Gardener’s novel, "The Sunlight Dialogues." On the surface it appears that
something significant is happening in this crowded masque. Upon closer examination,
however, the arena is revealed as only a dense, frieze-like palisade depicting a crowd of
absurdly gesturing and isolated people, ostensibly acting out their individual fantasies.
Through his use of contrasted color and exaggerated postures, Beck appears to stress the
tangible presence and shape of a superficial reality. Formally, Beck utilizes the
Hitchcockian signature cameo device by presenting himself in the composition, as he and
one of the apes are centrally placed in the forefront of the painting. They are laughing
hysterically as if they are part of the "maddening" crowd, but actually they are
separated from the assembly by an illusory wall composed of a red line. Perhaps Beck is
merely producing a 1990s parody of Shakespeare’s "Much Ado About Nothing."
Is that not what most spectacle is about, despite its overt importance in popular culture?
Since 1995, Beck’s paintings have become darker, with large contrasting black areas
and increasing compositional complexity. Gone is the playful sensibility once conveyed in
the earlier works. Now, images share a type of socially serious realism akin to the Die
Brücke artists in Germany. Unlike Beck’s earlier compositions, his new works possess
an overriding psychological subject matter and lay bare the depths of tormented, even
pathological, characters. Multiple dramas are enacted concurrently within the picture
plane and Beck delivers eerily disquieting messages that require analytical decoding. In
these more recent works, Beck’s familiarity with photography and film is all the more
evident. As Degas harnessed photography for his picture-making processes, Beck employs
photographs to piece together his idiosyncratic narratives. In the painting Nation (1994),
the viewer is witness to a banquet that could be a political fundraiser. It can easily be
interpreted as a media event captured by CNN; however, this painting filled with
disjointed elements and historical references reads more as a scene from a Fellini or
Bergman film.
In the work Lazy, what presumably resembles a type of family gathering is actually a
bizarre adulterant of contradiction. This agitated image is almost equally divided into
two parts by a flowing red curtain. We behold interior and exterior scenes from different
moments in history. In this jangle of complexity and dissonance, Beck presents absolutes
about human reality in a formidable setting that is laced with symbols of death and
destruction. It appears the artist is trying to make sense of certain aspects of human
history, but without passing judgment. The theologian Martin Buber has addressed the topic
of good and evil, and his conclusion that each is a dual aspect of life is brought to the
forefront in this image, which depicts a civilization that has a fluid and unstable form.
Such sacred popular icons as motherhood, Santa Claus and the United States flag coexist
with symbols that conjure up associations of blood and hatred—skulls and cross-bones,
alcohol and the Nazi and Confederate flags.
The most mysterious of all his paintings is Jumping Off (1997). This is a disquieting
piece devoid of humor. A Gothic obscure urgency prevails in this potent work which is
filled with jarring contrasts of colorful enigmatic spaces, forced distortions and bizarre
juxtapositions. One cannot but ask, what is going on here? Why are bathers standing on a
pier out in "the middle of nowhere," with a seaplane docked along one side and
two canoes on adjacent sides? Why does the sea abruptly evolve into a brilliant country
club-like green island? And, off in the distance, why do rolling hills fill the horizon
line against a sunset like one that might be found in Thomas Cole's "Voyage of
Life" series? Manifold scenes are present, and the subject matter is transformed into
new levels of meaning by Beck’s use of incongruent relationships.
Like many artists of his generation who were raised with the omnipresence of the media and
its powerful impact, Beck ardently knows that surface is everything and appearance has
become the essence. Perhaps it is because of these insights that Beck deliberately
constructs paintings that withhold the hidden plot and disorder. In his conglomerate
environments densely filled with historical characters, friends and colleagues that are
treated with "black humor," Beck never intends to be blatantly cynical about
humanity—so often the case in much late 20th-century art. Unlike the existentialists
who despaired about a world filled with absurdity, Beck accepts and tries to make the best
of it. Beck's effusive embellishments carry complex meanings and represent a rich
diversity of cultures and generations. Myth, reality, folklore and comedy successfully
coalesce in these crowded visual fields of human culture. The pageants unveiled remain
ambivalent—they have no beginning, middle or end. The viewer enters and is invited to
only investigate and then freely interpret the theatrical performance. Beck learned long
ago that crisis infiltrates all decades and he opts to be a storyteller of a world in
flux. With the death of Modernism and universal systems of meaning, however, art must be
unraveled carefully.
How do we untangle the visual language and content in Martin Beck’s art of changing
and shifting horizons? Beck has suggested using Hannah Arendt's famous descriptive term
for Nazi brutality, "the banality of evil," as a guidepost for the
interpretation of these pictures. If there is evil here it is certainly banal. I have
found that the following line from J. Cazotte, The Devil in Love, also works quite well as
a key: "The truth is that the devil is very cunning. The truth is that he is not
always as ugly as they say."
Elaine A. King, 1998
Professor, Critical Theory & History of Art,
Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh
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Lazy, 1997
Tarzan's Hollywood
Party, 1996
Nation, 1994
Jumping Off, 1997
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