Arthur Lerner

Lerner has a longstanding affinity for the figure as a universal metaphor capable of expressing the full range of human experience.[18][22] His early work, influenced by Expressionism, mythology, and the existentialism of Sartre and Camus, consisted of frontal paintings and conté drawings that featured isolated, fantastical creatures (Phoenix, 1955; Harpy, 1957), anguished heads (Screaming Head, 1962), or agonized, cadaver-like figures (the Torn series, 1960-2), often dissolving into painterly color-field backgrounds.[23][4] In addition to their emotional charge, these works have been noted for their "fascination with surface and the interplay of light and shadow" and compared to the work of Moore, Baskin, and Bacon.[24] Lerner exhibited extensively at the time, locally and abroad, notably in several Art Institute "Chicago and Vicinity" exhibits, shows at the Seattle Art Museum, Brooklyn Museum and Antioch College, and solo exhibitions at the John L. Hunt (1963) and Anna Werbe (Detroit, 1964) galleries, Elmhurst College (1972), and Alverno College (1973).

Over time, Giacometti's influence on Lerner grew and his work became more detached and ethereal, with "substantiality and concreteness displaced by diffusion of light" and color suppressed in favor of tonality and pale hue.[1][25] The shift, glimpsed in portraits, such as Laura I (1975), continued into the 1990s when Lerner returned to the figure after abandoning it for roughly a decade. Inspired by a visit to The Museum of the Mummies in Guanajuato, Mexico, he began exploring the beauty of decay and the feelings evoked by death through depictions of mummified, skeletal or hanged figures, corpses, and mythological subjects.[26] Reviews commented on the epic tone, muted horror,[27] "delicate animation and expressive grace" of works like Descent (2001) that considered humanity "variously as puppets in the game of life, pure physical matter, or tortured souls."[26][28] Artist Neil Goodman, who curated an Indiana University show of this work, described the paintings as "both troubling and enticing, yet beautiful in the way that only visual language can embrace a paradox."[29]

Lerner has said about this work, "Mummies and mythical figures in my work are not intended to represent specific political or historical events in any way, but rather to act as symbols or metaphors for the terror, the anguish, the tragic, the comic—even the absurdity and the beauty of life as we experience it."[30] In subsequent years, Lerner exhibited similar work in shows contemplating the effects of war, genocide,[31] and the Holocaust.[32]

Arthur Lerner, Bones, Gourd and Shells, oil on linen, 48" x 60", 1990.

In the late 1970s, Lerner made a major shift to still lifes and landscapes, prompted by a trip to the French maritime Alps, and later cemented after the purchase of a summer home in coastal Maine. Upon returning to Chicago, he began working on minimalist paintings of paper bags (1978) that, formally, recalled the mountains for him.[18] He then turned to spare groupings of natural materials like rocks, shells, driftwood, leaves, bones and gourds that have been likened to Zen gardens in their "calculated casualness," careful arrangement, and spatial tension.[20][9] Contrasting them to his other work, Lerner describes the still lifes as "a more direct approach to the pure pleasure of looking at things."[30]

Like the landscapes that would follow, these new paintings were simultaneously more precise and concrete—sometimes suggesting the detachment of Philip Pearlstein[3]—and yet more abstract.[1] Critics attributed this to Lerner's "opalescent light,"[33] which gave his shadows palpable form[21] and created the "effect of a hazy, delicately colored, and possibly mystical procession of shapes across the canvas" that suggested landscapes.[3] This artistic fiction transformed what appeared to be simple paintings, such as Bones, Gourds and Shells (1990), into metaphysical works[20] that evoked a mood of mystery and quietude critics likened to the work of Giorgio Morandi.[21]

Arthur Lerner, Canyon Series V, oil on linen, 50" x 72", 1996.

Concurrent with the still lifes, Lerner began painting Maine coastscapes. Describing the contrast between Maine's "dramatic, almost brooding landscape" and Chicago's urban unruliness as "a kind of epiphany," he said, "I became drawn into the more spiritual, psychological and atmospheric qualities and the sense of oneness that pervades everything in nature."[18][30]

Critics described these new paintings as "landscapes of wonderment"[21] and "hard-headed poetry";[34] and compared them to the work of Hopper[3] and Rothko,[1] noting Lerner's use of light as an agent of transformation to harmonize what he sees in nature.[9] In reviews covering four shows at Jan Cicero Gallery (1986-1997), Alan Artner observed that the light alternately gave "shadows the solidity of rock and rock the buoyancy of snow"[2] or bleached out land and seascapes in its intensity, detaching them from their natural contexts.[35] He wrote that paintings like Coastscape Series III (1985-6) revealed keen observation, yet diverged from reality to create a sense of feeling and atmosphere that became almost abstract.[2] In later series, Lerner focused on the brighter reds, yellows and blues of Arizona's red rock country and the subtler palettes of the Grand Canyon, in works like Canyon Series V (1996).