Richard Artschwager (1923–2013) was 42 when he had his first solo show. The exhibition, which was at Leo Castelli gallery, included the Formica sculpture “Table with Pink Tablecloth” (1964), now in the collection of the Art Institute of Chicago. The pink top of the short, square box represents a tablecloth; on each side of the box a corner of the tablecloth hangs down between the table legs. The negative space underneath the table is rendered as a flat black void. The impenetrable cube is both a picture and an object. Although the work had affinities with Pop Art, Minimalism, and Conceptual Art, it did not fit into these categories or any others. Artschwager was a maverick from the outset.
Artschwager once described his cube as “the way a table with a tablecloth is in a painting, in a still life — a three-dimensional still life,” calling attention to the deceptions inherent in pictorial illusionism. However, I would claim that his deceptions had as much to do with his life as they did with his art, particularly his assignment in World War II to move high-ranking German POWs across Europe, often so they could stand trial for war crimes.
This thought came to me when I visited Richard Artschwager: Boxed In, an exhibition celebrating the centennial of the artist’s birth at David Nolan Gallery and saw a photograph of Artschwager standing next to Nikolaus von Falkenhorst, a German general whom he transported to Norway to stand trial. Seeing the photograph reminded me of something Artschwager said to me a few years before he died. The gist of it went like this: In order to be effective as an interrogator, you had to befriend your prisoner and get him to trust you; you had to pretend to be sympathetic.
I think Artschwager’s experience with institutionally sanctioned duplicity was one of the strongest influences on his work. Even at his most formal, his art is not only about art, certainly no more than Jasper Johns’s “Flag” (1954–55) is just about a flat piece of colored cloth. His cool surface or use of rubberized hair to make a body suggests that something is being kept under wraps or has gone terribly wrong, and that perhaps there is no place of sustained comfort.
What are we to make of the fact that something is askew in each of the three perfectly made Formica cubes, mimicking tables, in the current exhibition? “Table (Wannabe)” (2009), which is one of an edition, is only 12 inches high. Does it wish to be bigger and unique? The negative space between the four legs is mint green, for which light and shadow cannot account. In “Small Red Table” (2008), the negative space on the four sides alternates between red and green. These unexplained changes are part of what holds our attention — we see the object but cannot explain the color choices. The tables exist in our world, but we cannot access their world. We have become estranged from the things around us.
Also part of Artschwager’s diverse oeuvre are his drawings. Except for the title, I think the linear ink drawing “Door, Window, Table, Basket, Mirror, Rug” (1974) fits right in with one of the great postwar series of drawings, documented in the publication, Basket Table, Door, Window, Mirror, Rug: 53 Drawings (Leo Castelli, 1974). In this recombinant series, Artschwager maintained the essential features of each object while subjecting it to scale shifts and receding perspective. By using perspective and scale to attain something unexpected and even surprising, he suggests that distortion is integral to every set of rules.
Four of Artschwager’s wood shipping crates, collectively titled “Untitled (1000 cubic inches)” (1996), are also in the exhibition. In these, we encounter a sealed-off world. The shape of each box conforms to its invisible contents, leaving the viewer to surmise as to what’s inside.
Artschwager’s interest in surfaces is unrivaled. Along with smooth, shiny Formica, he used fabricated bristles, rubberized horsehair, glass mirrors, melamine laminate, rubber, velvet, flocking, chrome-plated brass — non-art materials you don’t necessarily find in a hardware store. He was interested in anonymous graffiti, or what he called a “blp.” Made of Formica and painted wood, his “Quotation Marks” (1980) sculptures are literally quotation marks on the wall. What is being cited? That absence is moving; it is as if the content has been erased. What legacy have we already forgotten?
After many years of drawing only in black and white, Artschwager took up pastel. One of three examples on view (along with “Yellow Window,” 2007, and “Orange Wall,” 2008), “Untitled (Red bookcase)” (2006) was rendered on flocked paper, resulting in a sensuous surface enhanced by the warm color. And yet, inviting as the red surface is, the cropping and the oversized overhead lamp, jutting down from the top edge, don’t sit right. Something seems odd and foreboding about the color and scale of the things within the drawing that cannot be explained away.
In “Running Man (triple)” (2013), made the year he died, we see three smooth, identical silhouettes in different colors running from left to right across a rough, gray field made of Celotex. The diminishing height of the figures suggests they are in a receding in space. Why are they running? What are they running away from or toward? Artschwager never specifies.
My only quibble about the exhibition is the absence of any paintings on Celotex, a coarse surface insulation board on which the artist began painting in the early 1960s, before his debut exhibition. Among other things, the ragged surface makes mastery impossible. Artschwager is quoted on the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art’s website as saying “Celotex … had this roughness, the look of pinhole photographs. You see, it replaced the human touch that the photo didn’t have. … I wanted something that had the feel of drawing, the character of painting, and introduced the look of mechanical reproduction.”
This is another side of Artschwager that has not been explored enough. He had a high regard for the masterpiece tradition and all the skill and knowledge it required, but he was not nostalgic. He felt that the tradition had been broken by the war.
Seeing the photograph of Artschwager standing next to General Falkenhorst, I began thinking about the fact that he was bilingual, learning both English and German as a child. The son of immigrants, he was an outsider from the beginning and never forgot that. He enlisted in the army, but because of a head wound he ended up transporting German prisoners — largely, I suspect, because he spoke German. Remembering what he said about being an interrogator, I wondered if the well-known words of the cartoon character Pogo had come to his mind: “We have met the enemy and it is us.”
Richard Artschwager: Boxed In continues at David Nolan Gallery (24 East 81st Street, Upper East Side, Manhattan) through January 20. The exhibition was organized by the gallery.
