An Unprofessional Analysis of the Paintings of Judson Vereen

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by Lauren Cline

February 16th, 2016

 

"To deny the past for the sake of being conscious only of the present would be sheer futility. Today has meaning only if it stands between yesterday and tomorrow...Only the man who is conscious of the present in this sense may call himself modern. Many people call themselves modern - especially the pseudo moderns. Therefore, the really modern man is often found among those who call themselves old-fashioned."

 

Carl Jung wrote this in 1928, in a paper titled "The Spiritual Problem of Modern Man." He was concerned with the tendency in his generation for people, especially artists and intellectuals, to become obsessed with the pursuit of progress, romanced by the idea of the new, of the improved, of innovation for innovation's sake. This is a problem, of course, not limited to Jung's time, but shared by every era - certainly our own. The idea of innovation and newness is always seductive, and we are now generating the "new" faster than ever. With new materials, new technical capacities, new realities crafted in an abstracted, virtual sphere.

 

In part this is an act of narcissism: if progress is always better, then we are always better, better than the past and all the people and ideas it contains. The cult of newness saves us from having to question ourselves about the value of our era. What are we doing, other than moving blindly forward? What do we value? Deeper and further than our technical innovations, how are we different from those who came before us? What have we added and why? What do we really want, individually and collectively? It cannot be progress, not innovation alone. Those are simply the easiest available answers, but empty when not connected to a purpose. Even a child can identify what is new, point out what is different. If we are a different sort of human now who needs a new kind of art to speak to us, then why is this the case? What changed us, and what do we need in response? We are shielded from these questions by the immaculate facade of the cult of newness.

 

This brings me to the paintings of Judson Vereen, which are not innovative or progressive, not broken from the past. They are familiar like a feeling you've had since childhood, like a folk song, or a soft old jacket: broken-in, the smell of leather delicately permeating the air as the garment is slipped across the shoulder blades. "Old-fashioned," in Jung's use of the term. They are heavy, aged-looking things, caked in layers of paint. They seem timeless, as if they've been there forever and will always remain. In the era of the digital, the repeated image, the virtual, these paintings are grounded in reality. Solid objects that cannot be replicated in a photograph in any truly satisfactory way, because the photograph will miss the heft of them, the tactility, the artist's sensitivity to texture: as finessed and subtle as an Impressionist painter's sensitivity to color and to light. These paintings are not so much the voice of our era as they are the antidote for it. In this, I would argue, is their genius.

 

The antidote: we need things that exist. Things that are objects. We are afraid of this of course. Objects: one can lose them, they can be destroyed. We have sought and found safety in the realm of the virtual image, which can be hidden, saved, drawn out again when desired. Ignored when it is inconvenient. We do not just do this in art. Across the board we are becoming increasingly afraid of taking risks. We want all the benefits with none of the commitment, none of the danger. Our wars are fought with drones and are no longer called wars at all, do not have to be sanctioned by Congress and officially waged: they are just a trickle of violence running off from our state of peace, perpetual, easy to ignore when we would like to. I bring this up not to digress from the idea of art, but rather because I hold the (self-indulgent, perhaps) notion that our art both reflects and influences the state of our world. Our world right now, as it moves from past to future through the undefinable thing we call the present. Our present can only be defined retroactively, by the critics of the future, reflecting on us as their past. We hope they will see progress, innovation. But what have we lost?

 

Vereen's work answers this question for us before we knew to ask it, gives us back what we have been missing before we noticed it was gone. We felt its absence of course but weren't sure what should have been there: something real, and human and natural, as Vereen's paintings are. His brushwork is sometimes fiercely confident and instinctual, powerful to the point of near violence; sometimes scumbling and searching, reaching, missing. It is not polished. It is not finished. It is not new. It is not the past or the future, for those are both more solid. It is evolving, changing, living between the those two solid realities in the uncertain present, just as we are. Fecund. Stretching across them like a  bridge we can't see the end of. Entering into the world of his paintings, we are forced to take the risk of walking down this bridge towards an uncertain future. Refusing to deny the past as what has brought us there, to the precipice, the start of the bridge. Engaging with his paintings involves taking a risk, being vulnerable. It is the risk of trusting something that you can't be sure of, something that is dictated by impulse and passion. Something that might fail: his paintings, because they are living and not dead, always run the risk of failure. They embrace that risk, as a prerequisite to being truly alive, to having value. They invite us to embrace that risk as well.

 

But Vereen's work does more than beckon to us. It begins to show us the way. In looking at his paintings, we feel our own hand at work in the place of his. We are invited into the creative process. All of the marks are exposed. We can see where something has been covered over, and how hastily or carefully, with what temperament or sensation. Everything is told in those marks, nothing hidden. We see the painting's whole birth, complete with its difficulties, cul-de-sacs, dead ends. All of this is exposed, open like a wound uncovered. One uncovers a wound because it needs the air around it in order to heal, because the flesh inside it is still alive and subject to change, to influence from the outside. In this way, Vereen's work is open and ambiguous enough that we can understand it viscerally, in whatever way we need to see it. It has high emotional resonance. It is honest and open and we understand that about it instinctually, and can see in it our own vulnerable truths. 

 

But all of this aside, Vereen's work is valuable to us because it does what needs to be done, without caring if it is correct, or beautiful, or relevant. Whether it is innovative, or special, or - that most poisonous of all modern words -  cool. In not caring, by serving the unknowable needs of their artist, Vereen's paintings are able to accomplish all of this and more. Tastes may change. The idea of what is progressive will certainly change, because that is the nature of the idea (or illusion) of progress. But what is honest will always remain. Honesty is beautiful. It is simple and old-fashioned. Vereen's paintings will continue to be relevant, showing us what we have always known about ourselves but forgotten. Showing us how to walk the invisible line of the present, as it stretches both backwards and forwards between future and past.