Hans Hofmann: Works on Paper is the Museum of Contemporary Art Jacksonville’s third show since 2012 centered around Abstract Expressionism and its legacy. Curated by Karen Wilkin and Marcelle Polednik, it’s the most satisfying of the three; scholarly, thoughtful and, like Hoffmann himself, at times playful. Also, it is the first comprehensive survey of the artist’s works on paper.
Works on Paper stands as a literal testament to the tenacity of the creative spirit. I know that sentiment is so schmaltzy as to be unprintable — but it is true and it bears repeating. Hofmann was Jewish, he made works through two world wars, and still found it within himself to establish a rigorous school of thought, reinforced with marathon instruction.
Right now it’s no exaggeration to say that as a nation, we are facing a crisis that may see the reshaping of our republic before our very eyes. The causes of the climate of hatred and uncertainty that has blossomed in Donald Trump and Steve Bannon’s wake need not be enumerated here. What bears remembering, however, is that artists work — and that work can be formidable dissention. Here in Jacksonville, where our mayor supports the White House’s travel ban, the Hofmann exhibit offers a quiet object lesson in resilience and the importance of drawing.
In the greater context of art history, Hofmann is most lauded for his abstract slab paintings, and for the painting school he led in Provincetown, Massachusetts. This wasn’t his only school; in fact, Hofmann’s influence as a joyful, fearless and sometimes overbearing teacher paralleled much of the arc of his — taught from 1915 (Munich) to 1956 (Provincetown). Stories trickle down from Hofmann’s students that are a part of a kind of glorious, absurdist canon. Anecdotes from the exhibit catalog include: “He was obsessed with cars, [had no idea how to drive his old blue Buick], and he had no regard for Stop signs, speed signals or anything else. He just stepped on the pedal, said ‘Whoopee’ and away we went.”
But slipping through the cracks of the painted/anecdotal mythos are the works on paper. Like passages from a diary, they give the viewer a glimpse into the way Hofmann’s mind worked. “It is not an overstatement to say that working on paper allowed Hofmann to give free rein to an aspect of his personality rather different from the one he demonstrated in his canvases. On canvas, he had what can only be described as a ‘heavy hand,’” wrote Wilkin in the accompanying exhibition catalog. Here, in these drawings, one can detect the departures and solutions he sought in his canvases.
The drawings seem to reveal not just a solid, dedicated work ethic, but a voraciousness manifested as a kind of omnipresent hunger to document, edit and experiment. Ranging from funny and self-deprecating self-portraits, nude studies, landscapes and gestural abstraction (experiments), the works are intimate — the size of easily transportable sketchbooks — and bear marks of surety and haste, of ideas just barely pinned down.
Drawings serve another purpose, too: that of specificity. A facility with rendering forms make it easy to slip into formulaic depictions, pulled from memory. Drawing from life, in addition to honing observational skills and rendering techniques, presents specific problems, the kinds of things that when tackled add depth and nuance. The mixed-media painting, Dr. Brichta’s House (1943), exists in two versions, both of which are on view in this show. Hung side-by-side, the changes — including simplification, a shifted stairwell and ramped-up color — suggest that by using a fixed subject, Hofmann was free to improvise and alter it as the dictates of his aesthetics and goals deemed fit.
Because Hofmann’s works encompass so many art historical categories, it would be hard to exhaustively delineate them here. Instead, the curious viewer should look closely at the manner in which Hofmann annotates his thoughts in these drawings. Polednik points out that, in a 1934 untitled nude, the viewer can see how even within the form, he is subdividing space, and juxtaposing geometric forms against organic forms — as if he’s parsing the space of the figure to allow for “containment and punctuation, diagrams of trajectories through space.”
Looking at the quick self-portraits Hofmann executed, Wilkin notes the heraldic components, especially focused around the face (in the color studies). However, in the India ink self-portraits on display, Hofmann’s face is obfuscated with objects, or with bulbous forms that act as shorthand for his meaty features. They’re funny and modest … they seem at once to function in a reflective manner, and also undermine the seriousness of his study; as if while acknowledging the earnestness with which he undertakes his pursuit, he recognizes the absurdity there, too.
Perhaps absurdity, married to an incredible work ethic and a physical joy of life is the lesson (in addition to the delightful historical information) to be learned from this show. That artistic curiosity works best when acted upon, and that sometimes the best tools are the simplest ones.
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