RONALD DAVIS Paintings 1962 – 1976
by Charles Kessler
In
the sixties, Ronald Davis seemed the paradigm of the formalist painter.
Now, with ten years perspective, it appears that he has been concerned
with a multiplicity of influences – Surrealism, Du Champ, Pop
Art, as well as the more usually acknowledged modernist tradition (Cubism,
Abstract Expressionism, Minimalism, etc.).1 As a result, a
radically different interpretation of his work is evolving.
Almost
from the start, Davis' paintings were ambitious and displayed an awareness
of diverse contemporary trends. Tapestry, 1962, a work he did while
a student at the San Francisco Art Institute, shows Clyfford Still's pervasive
influence: thick, dark layers of oil paint, vigorously applied to large,
rectangular canvases. And early works like Ball Point Pen, 1964
and Roll Your Own (Zig Zag), 1964, both painted with acrylics,
have all the hard edged zappiness and optical play of Op Art while displaying
evidence of visionary surrealism, a la Robert Hudson and William Wiley,
so prominent in the Bay Area at that time. Further, the linear design
patterns were derived from such diverse sources as Byzantine mosaics,
Persian miniatures, Paul Klee, late Kandinsky, and even Scientific American
illustrations and advertising billboards.2
More
importantly, Davis internalized these influences and adapted them to
his
own ends – a process seen here in a yet unrealized state. For the
first time, he put forth the idea of a painting as a depiction of an
object.
Moreover, the painting is beginning to be shaped to the contour of the
object depicted, so that Roll Your Own (an isometric view of a
cylinder) is elliptical and Ball Point Pen (in part a sphere) is
circular. Following Clyfford Still's example, Davis orders color in space
by layering one on top of another. In later works, like Spoke,
1968, Single Sawtooth, 1971, and several of his "cubes," Davis
uses Still-like tears and holes which reveal the field underneath, thus
establishing their relative placement in space. Unlike Still, Davis
avoids figure-ground ambiguity, opting instead for a stable, clearly
defined spatial placement ... a critical distinction that differentiates
him from
fifties Abstract Expressionism.
By
early 1965, Davis had moved to Los Angeles, where he became friends
with
the painters David Novros, Paul Morgenson, and William Pettet, and the
sculptors Judy Chicago and Lloyd Hamrol (who were doing minimal sculpture
at the time). In the mid-sixties, being avant-garde was a major concern
to Davis and his friends. Frank Stella, whose "V" series
of paintings Davis saw at the Ferus Gallery, Los Angeles, in 1965,
was considered
the key painter to deal with; and the important issues were thought to
be monochromatic painting, shaped painting, series painting, and the
idea
of a painting as an object. Davis' initial response was a series of eight
monochromatic, shaped paintings on four-inch-thick stretcher bars (e.g., Large Red,
l965) done during the summer of 1965 and exhibited that fall in the
Nicholas Wilder Art Gallery, Los Angeles. These paintings
were a methodical working-out of the various possibilities: the shapes
consisted of a square, rectilinear planes viewed isometrically (i.e.,
parallelograms), and rectangles seen in one-point perspective (i.e.,
trapezoids).
The color was equally logical: the three primaries, three secondaries,
and black and white. Nothing appeared arbitrary – everything was
controlled, systematic, ordered. These works were far more than Stella's
without the stripes. Originally conceived as minimal sculptures, they
radically changed to become paintings of sculptures; and the idea of
painting
as an illusion of an object took a firm hold.
At
this point, Davis began a long process of technical and artistic innovation
and refinement. In works like Ultramarine, 1966 (still a rectilinear
plane), and Green Skew, 1966 (one of a series derived from a nine-section
plane with two or three sections removed), he employed two-point perspective
in order to make the illusion more convincing and the ideas more clear.
(The planes were mistakenly divided into equal portions – a drawing
error that somewhat negates the perspective illusion). Influenced by
the
techniques of Billy Al Bengston and especially William Pettet, whose
monochromatic paintings he admired, Davis tried spraying his canvases
with paint, rather
than rolling the paint on as he had done previously, to achieve a more
chromatically varied surface. However, the paintings were very time-consuming
to make, because in order to achieve the smooth surface he desired, it
was necessary to apply up to ten coats of paint, carefully sanding each
one. As a result, Davis began to search for a smooth, hard surface which
would not be so difficult and tedious to work with, and experimented
with
molded plastic.
Living
in Los Angeles meant easy access to plastic technology. The production
of fiberglass automobiles, boats, and surfboards had become a booming
industry, and several sculptors (including Terry O'Shea, Ron Cooper, and
Robert Morris, whose fiberglass minimal sculptures he saw at the Dwan
Gallery, Los Angeles, in 1966) used these processes in their art. Davis
first attempted to apply resin to canvas in order to seal it like a gesso;
but that still left pock marks which needed to be sanded in order to achieve
a smooth surface. Next, he tried eliminating the canvas and substituting
fiberglass as a support for the sprayed paint (e.g., Small Tray,
1965), but that also needed sanding; moreover, commercially available
fiberglass sheets came in widths no more than thirty-six inches, making
it impossible to create large paintings without seams.
Finally,
after obtaining a book on how to make fiberglass boats and cars, Davis
developed the technique of painting with colored resin – a process
he continued to employ in substantially the same form until the spring
of 1972, when he returned to canvas and acrylic paints. In addition
to
providing a smooth, hard surface, resin affirmed the painting as an
object; the paint and ground were the same substance and, therefore,
as in staining
oil on canvas, were on the same surface plane.
The first resin paintings of this type, including No-Ninths Violet, 1966, Six-Ninths Red, 1966, and nine other paintings, were exhibited at the Tibor de Nagy Gallery, New York, in 1966. They are seminal not merely because of their new process; more importantly, because the illusion is no longer of a two-dimensional rectilinear plane but is of a three-dimensional object – a slab.
Eleven
Colors, 1967, one of the best of the early resin paintings, clearly
illustrates the way Davis relates to Stella and other contemporary artists.
Like Stella's paintings, Eleven Colors is a logical ordering of
parallel light and dark stripes which echo the shape of the painting;
but rather than repeating the literal framing edge, Davis' paintings echo
the edge of the depicted object (in this case a thick slab with a quarter
section removed). It is a tribute to Davis' skill that one readily accepts
the edges of the illusion as the real, literal edges of the painting.3
The result is a painting with the compelling immediacy of a real object
and much of the bold, aggressive, single-image impact of Pop Art. One
should note, however, that the immediacy of Eleven Colors and most
of Davis' other works, is pictorial whereas the immediacy of objects is
literal. Davis underscores this effect by employing a literally impossible
point of view. That is, the viewer would have to be much farther away
than he actually is in order to see the painting in its proper perspective.
The result is a disorientation and an impression of closeness that is
quite disconcerting.
Having
established a tight perspective structure, Davis became freer in his use
of color. Dodecagon, 1968, an excitingly bold and clear statement,
is a relatively rectangular and therefore, neutral shape. As a result,
colors are al lowed to interrelate freely since they are not locked tightly
in place. Zodiac, 1969, which resembles Dodecagon in format,
is even looser, and structure and shape dominate color even less. Zodiac's segments
are experienced more as backgrounds or color fields than as distinct,
solid shapes; and, as with Jackson Pollock's all-over
drip paintings, the biomorphic, Abstract Expressionist forms defy figuration.
One is encouraged to skim over the surface of the painting rather than
examine its composition piece by piece because the optical interaction
of complementary colors and the "all-over" rhythmic play of
biomorphic configurations hinder any attempt to focus on any one incident.
Moreover, the colored drips in Zodiac are perceived as applied to, but
distinct from, the depicted object in much the same way paint is perceived
on sculpture. Consequently, color does not delineate or deter mine shape,
nor does shape determine or contain color. Rather, shape seems to exist
on its own, and color is free to advance and recede freely in space.
But
only up to a point! The painting is free and spontaneous only within controlled
limits. The perspective grid still holds the configurations in check, placing
them firmly in space by attaching them to an easily grasped illusion of
an object. And the configurations themselves, upon closer examination, are
carefully drawn and contained within each segment. Some times puddles, even
drips, change hue as they cross a border not some thing easily accomplished
without a great deal of control. This carefully controlled spontaneity,
a studied casualness, adds another expressive element to Davis' painting,
sometimes evoking a surrealist mood.
The
paintings gradually became more painterly, more involved with color, and
less locked into a closed, orderly structure until a conclusion of sorts
was reached in work exhibited in the fall of 1971 at the Pasadena Art
Museum. These paintings (e.g., Diagonal Rectangle XV, 1971) revived
the rectilinear plane that Davis had dealt with as early as 1965 in Diamond
Lock. They were flatter, more frontal and allowed for more
push-pull color relationships than any of his previous work. These were
nearly the last resin paintings Davis made (the last ones were painted
in May, 1972) before returning to acrylic on canvas; and, for a period
of about six months beginning in June, 1972, he did not paint at all.
Most of this period was spent building and adjusting to a new studio –
the planning – of which had begun as early as the winter of 1969-1970.
The
studio – a spectacular five-thousand-square-foot trapezoidal structure
– was a collaborative effort with his friend, the architect Frank
Gehry. Inspired by some resin sculptures Davis made in 1971 and 1972
(never
publicly exhibited) and a hay barn and auditorium that Gehry had designed
earlier, the architect and artist conceived the studio as a large cube
seen in two-point perspective.4 The resulting structure is
quite eccentric: the roof slopes from thirty feet to ten feet and the
walls converge from ninety feet to forty-five feet. The immense interior
space was awesome and intimidating for a painter of Davis' sensibilities,
and the precious, pristine condition made it difficult for him to bang
a nail into a wall. Davis withdrew to a small corner room to paint; but
most of the time he spent alone, adjusting to his new surroundings and
composing music on an elaborate Buchla synthesizer.5
This
was a period of psychological, physical, and artistic withdrawal, a state
expressively revealed in the paintings: small, hard-edged, rigidly aligned
geometric objects, compulsively self-contained by up to four or five internal
frames. Color relationships were established according to pre-determined
ratios of light to shadow; and a scientifically controlled color system6
was used to insure the utmost precision in value gradations. Unlike his
earlier shaped paintings, which use the wall as a background and therefore
depend on neutral surroundings (light switches, wall paper, paneling,
etc., all be come part of the painting and disturb the illusion), these
rectangular paintings provide their own backgrounds. The results are airless,
hauntingly still worlds reminiscent of De Chirico.
By
the summer of 1974, Davis was not only adjusted to his new environment
but was exhilarated by it. In response, the new paintings were enormous
some over fourteen feet loosely painted, as extroverted as his resin paintings,
and, although still containing geometric bodies in a perspective structure,
as open and airy as landscapes. On an atmospheric, stained back ground,
painted with great freedom and spontaneity, Davis plotted a network of
fuzzy-edged grids (only implied in the earlier paintings) which determined
the perspective structure, the source of light, and the shadows cast.
In the best paintings, the geometric bodies and their shadows seem to
be organically integrated with;their! ambiance; and decoration, rather
than appearing to be applied to the structure, seems to evolve out of
it. The large scale, bold illusionism, lush color and glowing light make
these the most exuberant, rich and unabashedly lyrical paintings in Davis'
oeuvre.
At
the same time, the "all-over" grids, the translucency of
the geometric bodies, the general monochromatic tonality, and the high
point
of view which eliminates a horizon line, give the works a sameness of
surface, a homogeneity, that merges figure and ground, thereby unifying
the work into a whole very much in the Modernist tradition.
1 In 1962, Davis saw an "L" shaped painting by Frank Stella and was told by a friend that it was
2 This and similar information used in this essay was conveyed to me in a series of interviews
3 See Michael Fried's essay, RONALD DAVIS: Surface and Illusion ARTFORUM , April, 1967.
4 On Davis' studio, see Paul Goldberger, "Studied Slapdash," The New York Times Magazine,
5 The music began as an experiment in creating space through the location of sound and
6 A vinyl-acrylic copolymer paint manufactured for animators by Cartoon Colour Co. Davis
RONALD DAVIS Paintings 1962 – 1976
by Charles Kessler