Page 46 - Studio International - August 1966

Excavating the recent past

New York commentary by Dore Ashton

The resurrection of the work of John Graham (1881- `All art produced in America bears a strong, unmistake-
1961) at the ANDRE EMMERICH GALLERY is the first of what able stamp of precision or speed.... Young outstanding
will probably be a series of backward glances. Many of American painters: Matulka, Avery, Stuart Davis, Max
the minor figures that constituted the world that pro- Weber, David Smith, W. Kooning (sic) . . . and a few
duced Gorky, deKooning, Pollock, and Smith during the others.'
late 1930's will come into focus when these excavations Probably his impress on the minds of younger artists was
into the recent past get underway. Minor figures, like largely critical. His own work was always the work of a
pottery sherds, often tell a great deal about the epoch gifted dilettante with intriguing eccentricities. His
under study, and this is especially so in the case of John mystical bent led him to arcane signs and symbols which
Graham. he never fully developed stylistically but merely anno-
He was an intimate of many younger artists, an incal- tated. His narcissism and introspection, similarly, are
culable influence, a stubborn remnant of another long- never carried to the point of plastic invention. His
past world, an alluring eccentric who stood for something paintings remained mannered. Yet there is no question
almost inaccessible to the young before World War II. about the authentic interest his work elicited among
His renown was limited to the avant-garde underground artists, particularly Gorky, deKooning, and Smith.
which fully appreciated his idiosyncracies and his deep One of the earliest paintings on view, for instance, is
culture. His very foreignness was a comfort to them. titled Poussin m'instruit and dated 1944. Despite its
Graham alighted in the United States after a career as stylized self-portraits and its Leon Bakst-like details, this
a cavalry officer in the Tsar's last campaign and a brief painting clearly shows kinship with works of deKooning
sojourn in Paris. In time he became a prominent local of the same period. The two painters shared an obsession
representative of European culture—something the young with Poussin (and Ingres), and Graham's drawing on the
Americans desperately yearned for. He drew them into wall is almost identical with a drawing by deKooning.
his magic circle partly by virtue of his remarkable format This is not a question of who influenced who, but rather,
(` the ramrod bearing and fierce countenance of an of the direction fantasy was taking a younger and older
Imperial Cossack officer', as Everett Ellin writes in the artist at the same moment.
catalogue) and partly through his broad range of I can remember passing a decorator's shop around 1950
interests, which included mysticism and yoga. In texts and seeing two pseudo-Renaissance portraits, both on
discussing the late 1930's and 1940's, Graham is invariably black grounds, which irritated me. I disliked the easy
described as a connoisseur first, and only then as a contrasts of black and lavender and found the crossed or
painter. wall eyes of the ladies affected. Yet, seeing them again in
His connoisseurship is indisputable. His gift for dis- this exhibition, surrounded by Graham's other obses-
cerning quality even in the most rudimentary first efforts sions, I can understand how a deKooning or a Gorky
of younger artists is apparent when we see that already would have responded with delight to the perversity, the
in 1937 he was writing in his book, 'System and Dia- recherché quality of the work. Similarly Graham's cabbalis-
lectics in Art' : tic allusions must have baffled and intrigued his viewers.

John Graham
Left
Celia
Oil
48 x 36 in.
Right
Kali Yuga 1950
Oil on board
25+ x 21+ in.