DON EDDY: THE RESONANCE OF REALISM IN THE ART OF POST WAR AMERICA An art history monograph Internet publication by Virginia Anne Bonito, 1999. Published by ArtregisterPress.com. © Virginia Anne Bonito, 1999. All rights reserved.
HOME PAGE

Chapter 4: Color

While musing about the intentional evaporation of color from the“Glassware” paintings, and about the value of color to any artist and to his audience, I tripped into a free association of a kind with the medieval world of austere churches changed forever by the revolutionary thoughts of Abbot Suger of Saint Denis, and recognized in the enormity of this phenomenon the significance of color in artistic pursuit. The complex geometries of monumental Romanesque churches like Saint Etienne at Caen - spun with numerical rigor from thousands of linear elements seemingly generated by digital magic - came to mind. I was struck by how those crystalline stone structures were transformed into the ethereal realms of Chartres and Amiens through the daring dissolution of wall and with it the consequent necessary revisions of vault and wall systems that made way for brilliantly colored translucent stained glass. Transcendent images in gem-like colors now brought the Old Testament, the New Testament and the heavenly regions to life with overwhelming intensity. This infusion of intense color on a monumental scale into an essentially color-less world, furnished a vital new dimension for these stately buildings that witnessed repercussions for centuries to come. Among the writings of Abbot Suger there is a very clear statement that gives us a clue to the thought behind the inspired invention and implementation of stained glass on a grand scale that pointed the way to a whole new style - the Gothic. Of his efforts to construct his new Abbey Church, Suger wrote,

“Often we contemplate, out of sheer affection for the church our mother, these different ornaments both new and old; …then I say, sighing deeply in my heart: Every precious stone was thy covering, the sardius, the topaz, and the jasper, the chrysolite, and the onyx, and the beryl, the sapphire and the carbuncle, and the emerald. To those who know the properties of precious stones it becomes evident, to their utter astonishment that none is absent from the number of these... but that they abound most copiously.”

It is apparent Suger is concerned that his new church should be ornamented in a precious manner, befitting a holy shrine, and that color is a part of it. Further along he identifies more specifically the primary role of color in the development of his ideas:

“Thus, when - out of my delight in the beauty of the house of God - the loveliness of the many-colored gems has called me away from external cares (my emphasis), and worthy meditation has induced me to reflect, transferring that which is material into that which is immaterial, on the diversity of the sacred virtues: then it seems to me that I see myself dwelling...in some strange region of the universe... and that ...I can be transported from this inferior to that higher world in an anagogical manner.” (Footnote 47)

There were a number of Greek texts in the library of Suger’s Abbey that likely influenced his thought and, especially, the emphasis on the mystical qualities of colored light. One such text was authored by a mystic known as the Pseudo Areopagite. The text resonates the ideas of the philosopher Plotinus (3rd century A.D.) and is replete in phraseology such as ‘super essential light,’ and designations such as ‘the Father of lights’ for God the Father; and the ‘first radiance’ for Christ. These concepts had a profound impact on Suger's introduction of colored light into his Church. (Footnote 48) It is relevant to the discussion at hand that for as long as art has been the subject of commentary, color has been an important topic of consideration. Ancient authors had already engaged in deliberations about color. In fact, ancient literature demonstrated divergent viewpoints not only on art and aesthetics, but also on attitudes towards color. In the comments by the noted scholar Jerome Pollitt on Plotinus that follow, the reader will recognize that much of the dialogue of the critical commentary on art that we, in the 20th century, have depended upon and engage was already set millennia ago by the ancient writers on philosophy and art. Pollitt directs attention to a very important passage in Plotinus that bears, not accidentally on Suger's thought, but that also demonstrates the impact of Plotinian notions upon the larger issues attached to the subject of color and related arguments. Pollitt notes:

From the fourth century BC onward... there was a trend in the criticism of the visual arts away from objective analysis toward subjectivism. Interest in art began to focus on the artist’s personal perceptions and the connoisseur’s understanding of these perceptions. Concentration on the subject matter, the “content” of a work of art, began to supersede the analysis of form. Plotinus, it may be said, carried this critical subjectivism to a point where most of the terminology of previous Greek art criticism became unworkable. He even rejected the venerable Classical concept that beauty was to be found in the harmony of parts (symmetria), holding that it was possible to perceive beauty in things which had no parts - gold, for instance...

(The Plotinus text Pollitt refers to - with its important reference to color as something without parts but, nonetheless, beautiful - reads: “Almost everyone declares that the symmetry of parts towards each other and towards a whole, with, besides, a certain charm of color, constitutes the beauty recognized by the eye…But think what this means. Only a compound can be beautiful, never anything devoid of parts; and only a whole…All the loveliness of color and even the light of the sun, being devoid of parts and so not beautiful by symmetry, must be ruled out of the realm of beauty. And how comes gold to be a beautiful thing?” Enneads 1.6.1ff.). Pollitt continues,

...in doing so Plotinus introduced what I have called an “incipiently medieval” aesthetic attitude into ancient art criticism, an attitude in which feeling totally eclipses critical analysis of form. Perception of beauty, he noted, was often a direct unanalyzed experience. Beauty was that which the soul recognized, desired, and wished to become united with. This object of longing was ultimately the One, the godhead from which all beings and objects have come and to which they struggle to return. Immediate beauty in the sensible world was only of value to the extent that it pointed the way to transcendental experience. But to engage in formal analysis of the proportions and colors of specific statues and paintings, to write histories of technical innovations in art, or to classify the personal styles of different artists was simply to add complexity to what was already inessential. To Plotinus, what was “real” in art was beyond the range of criticism; and art criticism, as earlier generations in the ancient world had known it, has no place in the Enneads. (Footnote 49)

We adduce a number of important points from Pollitt's comments. He directs attention to the essential ideas of Plotinus and elucidates a thought process that, in good part, mirror's what must have been in the mind of the medieval Abbott Suger. His comments underscore the longstanding relationship of philosophic thought and the creative process. The ancient literature of philosophy and art criticism had already sorted out many of the central issues endemic to a substantive discussion of the creative process and to the role of the psyche within that process. For Plotinus, color is located in arguments about intuitive, transcendent and subjective impulses that drive away from objectivity and objects towards a supra-reality existing outside of the sensible world. Within the context of our discussion, these notions from a distant past serve to underscore the time honored dictum "there is nothing new under the sun." They speak to the eternal swing of the pendulum between objectivity - objects and subjectivity - the concept of a 'supra' reality that exists beyond the sensible world (i.e. as taken in by the senses but processed through our sensibilities). The repartee focuses attention upon personalities such as Suger as barometers of the deep and abiding interest in color, particularly as it impacts the dialogue about the artistic process. Moreover, it highlights the primacy of the polarity "realism" - "abstraction," already acknowledged in the ancient world. The fact that the lines of battle between the now familiar camps of ‘the formalists’ (i.e. the draftsmen) and the ‘colorists’ (not identical but associated with painterly technique) were drawn as early as the fourth century BC, is further evidence - on the timeline of civilization - of the primary position allocated to color. Aristotle identified color as the distinctive element of painting, and acknowledged that we can enjoy coloring even when we do not know the subject of a painting (Poetics 1448b 19). However, he cautioned that if we do not understand the subject of the painting we can not learn. Thus the most beautiful colors are less valuable than a clear outline that describes forms (Poetics 1450b 2). With such remarks Aristotle weighted the scales towards an appreciation of outline and structure over color. (Footnote 50) In fact, deliberations on the relative merits of draftsmanship versus color were among the principal leitmotivs used by the 16th century author, GiorgioVasari, in his Lives of the Artists to identify the essential differences between the Central and North Italian schools of painting. He ultimately polarized his arguments around the great masters Michelangelo and Titian. This polarity, which developed into the above-mentioned ‘formalist’ versus ‘colorist’ camps and factions, reverberated through the academies and academic literature from 16th century Italy right up to the present. In one form or another, it found expression along the way, even in such extraordinary configurations as Roger de Piles’s “Catalogue of the Names of the most noted Painters, and their Degrees of Perfection in the Four principal Parts of Painting (those being, according to de Piles, Composition, Drawing, Colour and Expression). De Piles actually compiled a list of more that 50 master painters and graded them in each of those categories. In this case, the painterly colorist Rubens, in a tie with Raphael, won out over the likes of Michelangelo and Poussin. (Footnote 51) It is useful in the context of our discussion, to direct our attention to the dictionary definition of color. A quick synopsis fully acknowledges color as a precious component of the visible world, and, underscores its broad ranging character as it coincides with the diverse arenas of vision, science, art, mood, expression, and the like. Color: 1. that aspect of things caused by differing qualities of the light reflected or emitted by them which may be defined in terms of the observer (the appearance of objects or light sources described in terms of the individual’s perception of them, involving hue, lightness, and saturation for objects and hue, brightness, and saturation for light sources) or of the light (the characteristics of light by which the individual is made aware of objects or light sources through the ocular receptors, described in terms of dominant wavelength, luminance, and purity); 2. a substance, as a dye, pigment or paint, that imparts color; colors: variety of expression or effect; vivid and picturesque detail -vt: to impart color or to change the color of; to give a distinctive quality or character to. In his introduction to Light and Color in the Italian Renaissance Theory of Art, Moshe Barasch emphasizes the fact that light and color are essential elements of our visual experience,

“...they are the most pervasive elements of the physical world reflected in our eyes. The painter intending to produce a recognizable image of the external world, or of “nature” ...finds light and color to be ever present properties; whatever the object of his representation, it is illumined and it has color.

But Barasch also rightly stresses the factor of individual perception and consequent interpretation by the viewer;

...“nature” does not have as simple and clear-cut a meaning as many Renaissance artists and writers believed. What we call “visual experience” is an intricate process, and we do not have to go into a long scientific discussion to know that the light stimuli reaching us from the external world of “nature” pass through the mind’s filter of interpretation. Modern psychology, as well as everyday experience, has taught us that what we perceive in nature is conditioned by cultural traditions and inherited images, and that it is within this context that visual sensations acquire their specific character and meaning.” (Footnote 52)

In his writings, the passionate Post Impressionist, Vincent van Gogh expresses this point most eloquently. We know that Van Gogh had academic training. From some early letters to Theo we also know that he was well informed regarding the familiar academic debates, dissection of, and rules for proper painting. However, in a letter to Emile Bernard, he unleashes the desire to “find out the effect of an intenser blue in the sky. Fromentin and Gerome,” he says,” see the soil of the South as colorless, and a lot of people see it like that. My God, yes, if you take some sand in your hand, if you look at it closely, and also water, and also air, they are all colorless, looked at in this way. There is no blue without yellow and without orange and if you put in blue, then you must put in yellow, and orange, too, mustn’t you? Oh well, you will tell me that what I write to you are only banalities.” (Footnote 53) I’ve fabricated this somewhat random sketch on the subject of color as a means of consciousness-raising in the consideration of just how overarching, dynamic and daunting it can be for an artist, both objectively and especially subjectively, to seriously engage in a dialogue with color. It also establishes a foil against which to consider the unique character of the scenarios that Eddy devised in his paintings of the early '80s. As a practicing studio artist, he was aware of the form / color polarities as they were configured in contemporary artistic thought (for example, the NY School Abstract Expressionists vs. Minimalists like Frank Stella). In fact, if we take a broad view here, color was an all-important topic for any artist practicing in the late '60s and early '70s. From the late 19th century into the early 1970s, the sequential unfolding of avant garde movements slowly stripped veristic painting and traditional illusionism of their components. The literal and the familiar were all but taboo. Art was placed in service of the expression of ineffable personal experience or to making itself so self-referential in the hands of such purist formalists as Robert Ryman (who divested it of everything 'extra-pictorial') that its only reality was as an object. While physicists unleashed the atom and scientists extracted DNA, artists were busy at work with their own brand of particle accelerators, scalpels and microscopes freeing the components of traditional picture making and scrutinizing them more fully for implications held within each as expressive devices of an expanded pictorial lexicon. Form and color were set free to serve other masters, each finding glory moments independently of the other - form, for example, in Analytical Cubism or Minimalism; color in the theosophy-based symbolism of Kandinsky and Mondrian, or later, in the tenebrous transcendentalism of Color Field painters like Rothko. Or, in concert, form and color could find themselves re-configured into taut equilibrium at the hands of Hard Edge painters like Ellsworth Kelly. The steady churning of ideas through the mid-century was a formidable catalyst for the quest upon which Eddy had embarked. Armed with academic training in art history, Eddy had the benefit of a broad spectrum of historic reference points from which to study issues surrounding the ‘form (or line) versus color’ polarities. (Footnote 54) In our discussion of the impact of Hans Hofmann on Eddy in the previous chapter, it was already noted that color continued to be a topic of special concern for artists even in the late '60s and early '70s when Eddy initiated his professional career. Color, depending on the school of thought, could be the surrogate of mystery, expressive of subconscious and psychological realms, or exalted for its own sake. None of these criteria suggested to Eddy the basis of a color system. Ultimately, his decision to come to an understanding of picture making by investigating issues of color in their own right (as differentiated from formal problems) came from a place much more deeply seated than the orderly, analytical process of clear reasoning. The level on which this exploration was taking place was being driven by a need to understand and to identify his own innate nature, of which being an artist is only a part. The rationale for the conscious act of having dropped color completely out of his artistic pictorial vocabulary (if only for a brief period of time) extended beyond a simple course of trial and error. It drove to places within him that superceded serious study and, ultimately, even what might be identified as the normal predisposition within the artistic persona of visualizing through form rather than color or, vice versa, with color guiding form at the expense of line. Eddy’s rigorous approach in defining the role and function of color in his work (and only through it, subsequent reconsideration of formal issues) comes down to the equivalent of a sort of psychoanalytical shakedown - through the lens of his picture making - on his journey of identification of the unique self. In the end it was a matter of the deepest soul searching that called forth his own true inner voice (a voice not guided by other masters, or fashion, or norms - art historical or otherwise) which commanded, once and for all, his own very personal artistic language. When Eddy decided to drop color out, it was the equivalent of reducing his palette to a tabla rasa. As an art historian, and before embarking on my own journey with Don, I had always thought of him as a consummate formalist. When I asked Don about his strategy of dropping color out, thinking that it was to make the form more pure, we finally came to understand that color was the life, the poetic part. Furthermore, I have come to realize and Don has come to verbalize something very important about his hesitancy with and the seriousness of his deliberations about what he refers to as “me” color. It was the acknowledgment that his aesthetic of color drives towards an attraction to and fascination with intense bold color - not an easy ingredient to integrate into bold, daringly complex pictorial space, but more of this later. For the moment let us turn our attention to the paintings, themselves. We recall that part of the exercise of purging color from the last of the “Silverware” and the “Glassware” paintings was to study the function of value - the range of lights to darks presented, for example, in a gray scale - as it might inform the structure of a painting, independently of line or forms/objects. In other words value was treated as if it were color. By late 1980 and into 1981, Eddy produced three paintings entitled C I, C II and C III (C is the code for color). They were sizable in format and dependent for their internal structure, or skeleton on the glass and mirrored display cabinet that was so crucial (once Eddy moved into his studio) to the dynamic pyrotechnics of light and reflection in the “Glassware” paintings. (Figs. 45 & 40) In these paintings, Eddy embarked on an exploration of 'color' - that was comparable to his study in the "Silver and Glassware" series of 'value' - as it impacts design and composition.

Fig. 40. Don Eddy, Glassware I, 1978 acrylic on canvas, 52 x 40 in. private collection. Fig. 45 Don Eddy, CIII, 1981 acrylic on canvas, 73 x 48 in. private collection.

It is worth recalling that the cabinet - with its open front and a series of glass shelves closed on its other five sides by mirrored walls - presented an exceptional synthetic environment upon which Eddy could capitalize to simulate and to heighten numerous challenges the natural world poses to the viewer. Being quite independent of the natural world (and, in this, true to the direction of avant garde art), the cabinet was a perfect, controllable construct. In this moment of a studied re-introduction of color into the work, Eddy, diving into the deep end of the pool, determined that it should have intensity, depth and richness. For this he needed objects that would allow the arbitrary application of intense color to their forms without seeming strange. As usual, the objects also had to reflect Eddy’s own life history and culture base, as well as reflect other aspects of being (i.e. that is ontologically). He decided to use toys, but toys that were part of his own childhood. He allowed himself 10 minutes in Woolworth’s, the imposed time frame to assure that he would pull things off the shelves instinctually. He had become very conscious by this point in his career, of the fact that as much as his art was a vehicle of investigation of qualities of timeliness and transcendence, it was also a vehicle of self-discovery. The new protagonists of the paintings were gathered, playful assistants in the daunting task ahead - Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, plastic flutes, kazoos and harmonicas, plastic water pistols, jacks, darts, cooties, marbles, mucilage, jars of model paint, a gum ball machine (always positioned conspicuously), a spring activated hand-held pin ball game, word puzzles, toy air planes, cars and trucks, and the like.

Eddy’s first confrontation with color in his work, in 1969, had resulted in a dramatic change in his technique and approach to painting. In The Rat (1969, Fig. 4), he introduced his color system of superimposed layers built basically on what could be identified as secondary colors - green, sienna and purple. With the reintroduction of color into the work in 1980, he now delighted in the ability to turn the tables on the traditional mixing of primary pigments to form complimentary or secondary colors - for example, red and blue make purple; blue and yellow make green. With his system built on secondaries, he was able to suggest, or better, to give the illusion of primary colors. For example, the superimposition of purple and green suggests blue; the superimposition of purple and sienna, red. Recall the importance of illusion for Eddy in bringing awareness to the function of perception rather than the affirmation of factual, or scientific, observation. (Eddy's intention is, after all, to use painting as a tool of consciousness raising, in contrast, for example, to Alberti who used it to develop the one point perspective construct as a means of recreating the laws of nature and vision as understood in the 15th century). Fig. 4. Don Eddy, The Rat, 1969 acrylic on canvas, 48 x 48 in. private collection.

In this series where color reappears, Eddy continued his challenge to the spatial perception of the viewer. For example, he purposely confounded the ability to recognize the actual depth of the individual glass shelves and the point at which the mirroring begins by alternately emphasizing or underplaying the presence of the front or back edges of those shelves. The shelves were presented exclusively at an angle looking down, either head-on or from the right. The repeated horizontals of the shelf edges begin to function, as we will see, in a more dynamic way than in the "Glassware" series where they were used only to establish a pattern as a contrast to illusionism. Furthermore, as intense color is introduced, areas of light - for example reflections of the studio flood lights, or other reflections given off by the shiny surfaces of some of the toys - begin to have the weight again, as they had in the past, of independent ‘figures.’ Color now vies with form, locked in a battle for control of the picture surface and for the ability to navigate, and in some cases, drive the eye across it. The less and less clearly definable environment of the paintings, lush with colorful, precisely detailed toys, their reflections and re-reflections, reverberate striking re-formulations of the concepts of universal focus and selective inattention. The uneasy viewer finds ever more challenges in the attempt to differentiate the varied components and space of the painting. For his own part, Eddy responded to the very challenges he posed by reformulating his pictorial space altogether in the canvases he painted next.

Fig. 46 Don Eddy, C VI A, 1982, acrylic on canvas, 30 x 40 in., private collection: Fig. 47 Don Eddy, C VI B (Mickey in a Half Moon Midnight), 1982, acrylic on canvas, 31 x 40 in., private collection: Fig. 48 Don Eddy, C VI C/B.N. (Un Diluvio di Speranza), 1982, acrylic on canvas, 31 x 40 in., Contemporary Art Center, Honolulu, Hawaii, promised gift of the Honolulu Advertiser: Fig. 49 Don Eddy, C VI D (Then There Were Two), 1982, acrylic on canvas, 31 x 40 in., private collection: Fig. 50 Don Eddy, C VI E, 1983, acrylic on canvas, 60 x 78 in., private collection.

The dense compositions offered numerous possibilities. Eddy decided that these would best be studied and articulated by a series of sets; thus "C IV" through "C VIII" offer groups of related paintings where he began to work through options. (Figs. 46 - 50) The "C IV" set - a head-on view of the cabinet - had three paintings. The non-variable features were the arrangement of the objects on the shelves and the viewing angle. One of the important variables established was shift in scale - for example C IV A, 30 x 38 in. was doubled in C IV C to 60 x 76 in. The more significant and seminal variable was suggested by the spatial anomalies presented in the increasingly complex constructions. It was introduced in C IV B in the form of the most profound and incisive commentary on pictorial space that the artist had developed to date. Eddy deleted approximately 50% of the imagery (i.e. the toys and shelves) from the picture surface. He could have chosen to leave the empty areas primed canvas or to adopt his device of painting those areas white. But areas painted white have the weight of a figural element, of a solid of sorts. Instead, he filled the empty areas with black to suggest a new, Fig. 51 Don Eddy, C IV B, 1981 acrylic on canvas, 30 x 38 in. private collection.

different sort of 'space.' (Fig. 51) To make this point emphatic he reduced the geometries of the cabinet - the surrogate of traditional perspective - to a three-dimensional quadrilateral drawn in white. In this first of the quadrilateral 'boxes', some of the sides were extended by dashes as a reminder of its connection to traditional geometry but symbolic of the process of reduction to a weightless (in every sense of the term) entity, like an astronaut outside the earth's field of gravity. The open quadrilateral, having the aspect of an architectural axonometric drawing, offers the illusion of being read as tall or wide depending especially upon where vision is concentrated. Released from its Euclidean dimension, this displaced, now fragile 'box' floats tentatively in an unfamiliar, novel 'universe.' We know that we are, yet again, in a new dimension, this time cued for the artist by his tussle with color. Much like outer space, this new realm functions beyond reference to natural law, demanding a new interpretation of sensory data from the viewer (one that goes beyond Euclidean perception). This novel universe is the dimension of the mind, and, to that dimension, Eddy, now joining the ranks of numerous ideologues, began to offer his own redaction as a pictorial reality.

Fig. 52 Don Eddy, The Morocco Study, 1981 acrylic on board, 12 x 10 in. private collection.

An unassuming, seemingly unfinished painting helps us to understand Eddy's route to the condition he originated in the B paintings. The Morocco Study, 1981, as it is called, was produced during a hiatus from the artist's studio, when he traveled to assist Juan Gonzalez, his colleague, to open a visual arts center in Morocco. (Fig. 52) He planned it to be a condensed version of the first "Color" paintings, to keep his hand and mind on the new scenario that he had begun with the mirrored and glass cabinet where toys had replaced glassware as the protagonists. The painting needed to have limits because of the constraints of travel. He completed the complex under drawing across the entire surface of the little panel before his departure. Once he began to work on it, the small size of the picture liberated him from the task of controlling the multiple distinct parts of a large complex composition that demanded enormous technical concentration. He could not take his airbrush with him so he shifted to painting with a very fine brush in a hatching technique inspired by the 14th century Italian masters of tempera painting (recall his fascination with this technique, discussed in Chapter III, and its impact upon the development of his own innovative technique and pictorial gesture). These conditions freed him to approach the painting differently as he began to apply pigment to the surface of the panel. At this point in his career, when Eddy began paintings with his airbrush he applied the pthalocyanine green network of small circles across the entire surface; then the burnt sienna layer, then the dioxazine purple layer, then local color where necessary. In dispensing with the mesh network and adopting the hatching technique with a brush, he found that he went straightaway to certain of the toys that were especially appealing to him. He found that he, quite unconsciously, enjoyed working on some of the toys more than he did others. For example, he enjoyed Donald Duck's surly side, and pairing him off with the 'universally good' Mickey (whom incidentally he found less interesting as a personality). He decided to follow these newfound impulses and to 'paint in' only those items that held his interest. Leaving the rest untouched, he discovered that this impulse could provide the rationale for a new kind of pictorial space - a space representative of that faculty of the mind belonging to memory, and on the experiential level so important to the artist, belonging to recall of past experience, especially selective recall related to emotions such as pleasure and reverie. Recognizing the expressive potential of selective memory he developed it pictorially; C IV B was its first expression.

Fig. 47 Don Eddy, C VI B (Mickey in a Half Moon Midnight), 1982, acrylic on canvas, 31 x 40 in., private collection. Detail showing a photograph of Sarah as a baby.

In the context of this discussion regarding the relative significance to the artist of certain of the items collected on the shelves, it is important to note that images of photographs were introduced in the "C" series. We have already signaled the importance of the photograph among Contemporary American Realists as a tool in the fabrication of paintings and as a reference to the mechanical reproduction of images. (Footnote 55) It is a well known fact that some Post War American Realists like Gregory Gillespie began and continue to incorporate photographs and postcards into his paintings, collaging them onto the picture surface and then painting over parts of them. (Footnote 56) Another artist named Jan Dibbets, who used photographs as a component of his mixed media picture making process, had been of particular interest to Eddy and his work provided insights, in this particular moment, in the developments with pictorial space that were taking place in the "C series" paintings. Dibbets - a Dutch artist categorized somewhere between the "Earthworks" and "Minimalist" movements - photographed horizons, the surface of water, building facades and interiors in incremental sequences based on time lapse photography or on shifting his camera by degrees around a pivot point. He then rearranged the photographs (with their self contained references to such natural phenomena as the effects of light and atmosphere at different times of day, or as the perspective that belongs to seeing a body of water, for example) according to patterns established by two dimensional plane geometry. Thus, for instance, in Construction Sea, 1973, a sequence of photos of a horizon were collaged into the form of an arc that were echoed by a painted linear arch and circle. (Fig. 53) The end result and physical aspect of Dibbets's work were entirely different from Eddy's.

Fig. 53 Jan Dibbets, Construction Sea, 1973 mixed media, 60.5 x 183.5 cm., whereabouts unknown. ©1999 Jan Dibbets/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.

However, Eddy found in Dibbets a kindred spirit in the articulation of issues that he was considering in his own work. Both were examining the nature of perception through a study of the interrelationship of planes, Euclidean geometry and pictorial perspective. For Eddy - already primed by the ongoing dialogue with photography as part of his working process - Dibbets's use of photographic images incorporated into picture surfaces articulated with geometric shapes to contrast photographic, pictorial and natural space was especially thought provoking.

Photographs are also instruments that hold a key to the interpolation of memory and vision, to nostalgia. The photographs that appear in C IVA and C IV C are a baby picture of Eddy's daughter Sarah, and the corner of a photograph of a sandy beach from Eddy's Hawaii days - two very meaningful moments in Eddy's life. It is interesting to note that the baby picture of Sarah was among the items selected to remain in C IV B, the painting that offers a new visual interpretation of mental dimension through pictorial space; the photograph floats containing within it its own 'realities'. With "C V" and "C VI," Eddy amplified the sets - in "C V," a fourth painting was introduced; in "C VI," a fifth one follows the fourth. The sets begin in the normal fashion with the arrangement of toys and photographs on the shelves. The cabinet in "C V" and "C VI" is presented at an angle rather than head on, establishing a diagonal format for the floating toys and photos as they appear in the paintings of the set that follow. The presence of each of the three shelf edges is fully asserted in the A paintings of both sets, taking the form of black bands that interrupt the objects visually 'behind' them (that is, that block out the parts intersected by the edges). The B paintings present the white diagram of the quadrilateral we encountered in C IV B, now relieved of its dashed lines and floating freely, accompanied by some of the toys, in the new 'black space' (the new pictorial dimension). In these B paintings, the floating structure derives its linear geometry from the shelves, but it does not correspond exactly to the actual stepped arrangement of the shelves. The dematerialized quadrilateral is the constant reminder that in the B paintings we have been released from any reference to the pictorial illusion of the natural world of substance, mass, solid and plane geometry. In C V B, for example, the box appears to rest on the ghost of one of the glass shelves. (Fig. 54) Some of the lines along which it is scribed are only reflections of shelf

edges seen in the mirrors, or belong to upper or lower shelving made visible by the transparency of the glass. In the B paintings of other sets, once the excerpted lines are detached from the actual cabinet and connected in white, the floating quadrilateral looses its reference altogether to the geometric construct of the cabinet. Floating freely on the black field, the quadrilateral takes on the appearance of being titled oddly off axis in comparison to the shelf construct and in relation to the picture plane. It has the aspect of having been released from the accurate perspectival illusion of parallel lines. A comparison of C VI B and C VI C is revealing in this regard, since the quadrilateral seems to tilt even more so in different directions depending upon whether it is seen floating in the 'black space,' or, is superimposed upon a scene. (We will discuss the appearance of scenery in the paintings momentarily.) Fig. 54 Don Eddy, C V B (Mickey and the Magic Flute), 1981 acrylic on canvas 36 x 36 in., private collection.

Fig. 48 Don Eddy, C VI C/B.N. (Un Diluvio di Speranza), 1982 acrylic on canvas, 31 x 40 in., private collection. Fig. 47 Don Eddy, C VI B (Mickey in a Half Moon Midnight), 1982 acrylic on canvas, 31 x 40 in., private collection.

Remnants of the black edges of the 'actual' shelves of the A paintings appear arbitrarily only where the artist allows them to be seen as they cut through the objects displayed. In C V B for example, a totally red Donald Duck is missing part of his head, and the hand operated coin dispenser and its reflection are missing their upper portions. In C VI B the rubber tip of the mucilage in the lower left, and Mickey's head and the 3-D yellow plastic circle in the upper right have been intersected by the band of black. In fact under scrutiny, the black band can be read, alternately, as the shelf edge or as a void left in the aftermath of dematerialization of the shelf to make way for the new 'space' of the painting to filter in. It should be noted that the black bands do not interfere with the white lines of the floating box, as if to state that there exists some simultaneous functioning between visual reality and the space of the mind, in other words acknowledging simultaneous functioning of alternate mental activities.

Fig. 55 Don Eddy, C V C (Spirit of the Space), 1981 acrylic on canvas 36 x 36 in. private collection.

The C paintings of these sets offer a new scenario. A 'real' scene is introduced in place of the 'black space' of the B paintings. In C V C, Sarah, represented at her then current age - as opposed to as a baby in the photograph - is shown seated at a table intent on a game. (Fig. 55) Alternately entitled Spirit of the Space, the experience of the moment is expressed by the toys that float as if magically making her reverie visible. A shinny, domed shape reflects the scene in another way, reminding the viewer that reflection is a loaded reference point for Eddy the artist, and, in this case, Eddy the father, who might be alluding to reverie of his own childhood, re-experienced as the parent. In C VI C/B.N. (Un Diluvio di Speranza - a flood of hope), above, the rhythmic movement of the sea washes over and exposes rocks, referring to both another dimension of the sentient realm - sensuality - and to associations with the way we are at times awash with dreams and memories.

The "C V" and "C VI" sets end with a large version of the cabinet. In the "C VI" set a second scenario is inserted between Diluvio and the last painting of the cabinet. Much like Spirit of the Space, the painting that follows Diluvio is entitled Then There Were Two. (Fig. 49) It represents Sarah and Leigh Behnke (now Don's wife) seated at a table, engulfed by the realm of floating toys, playing a game of cooties. We know from the title that it also represents the richness of a moment offering the potential of a new, completed family for the artist. With the "C" series, time becomes an important factor in the pictorial dynamic and message of the paintings, taking its place on stage in the form of reverie (i.e. the past), of the present (in the activity represented), and of the future (holding promises and possibilities). The artist's dispassionate, analytical observations of the fabricated 20th century environment in the decade of the 70's have now given way to the expression of significant personal life experiences; infused with color, the paintings themselves have begun to come 'alive'. Fig. 49 Don Eddy, C VI D (Then There Were Two), 1982 acrylic on canvas, 31 x 40 in., private collection.

It is important to note that as the subject matter of Eddy's work has begun to shift in the later "C" series paintings, the titles of the paintings seem to have 'come alive' as well. From here on titles begin to play an increasingly important role. They do not function any longer like signs, but begin to evolve as integral verbal counterparts of the artist's visual imagery, helping to evoke message and mood. In this sense the "C VI" set was a watershed. Even the B painting, the 'black void' with its floating incorporeal 'box,' has a sub-title which evokes a 'visual/conceptual' fantasy: "Mickey in a Half Moon Midnight." In the artist's continuing dialogue with the nature of experience and perception, and coaxed by renewed flirtations with color in the "C" series he allowed levels of his subconscious to emerge, enriching and lending color to his work via his own life experiences. And as the struggle with color stimulated a personal dimension to enter the work, Eddy had discovered and structured a most original and extraordinary pictorial vocabulary to express alternate realities of conscious thought and memory. At this juncture in our discussion, I beg the reader to suspend for a moment tripping too quickly into an association of this new vocabulary with surrealism; we will address this issue in due course. For the moment, I would like to continue tracking Eddy's evolution of thought in the important "C VII" set, 1983-84. (represented by Figs. 56, 57 & 58) In this set, confidence in his artful command of the strategies and technical execution of the complex constructs that he was developing freed him to weave new characters and to shape new scenarios into more highly evolved compositions. We meet Dreamreader (Don's daughter Sarah), Daydreamer (Don), landscape, cityscape, skyscape, architectural interiors, daylight and air, the first among a cast of players that from this point forward continues to expand and to vie with the toys for center stage.

Fig. 56 Don Eddy, C VII A, 1983 acrylic on canvas, 40 x 40 in., private collection.

The first three paintings of set "C VII" are presented head on and viewed from above. Paintings C VII A and C VII C follow the familiar cabinet arrangement of toys given in square and rectangular formats. (Fig. 56) The B painting includes the floating 'box' in its black environment. However, in C VII D and E, the scenes behind the floating toys engage more broadly developed modes of naturalism than in equivalent segments of the previous sets. (Figs. 57 & 58) More complete information is given about environment and location. For example, we are not just confronted with the image of a sea, as in Diluvio, where, without other reference points, the active water functions symbolically rather than in specific space and time. (recall Fig. 48) Nor are we in the realm of the cootie players of Then There Were Two, seated at a table but whose environment is Eddy's remarkable new surrogate of the dimension of the mind. (Fig. 49) C VII D (Paris Spring) presents a fully developed aerial view detailing a park and surrounding buildings in Paris. C VII E (Dreamreader) presents young Sarah seated on an oriental carpet, that because of our high view point, fills the space of the painting; she looks at an art book open to a image and enlarged detail of Raphael's famous tondo, theMadonna della Sedia. Paris Spring and Dreamreader are both are lit by daylight. Both are lush with exquisite detail ranging from the brightly colored toys, now constrained to respect arrangement in a smart octagonal format, to the Spring foliage of a perfectly tended park, to foliage translated into the elaborate geometric patterns of the oriental carpet.

Fig. 49 Don Eddy, C VI D (Then There Were Two), 1982, acrylic on canvas, 31 x 40 in.: Fig. 58 Don Eddy, C VII E (Dreamreader), 1984, acrylic on canvas, 40 x 40 in., private coll.: Fig. 57 Don Eddy, C VII D (Paris Spring), 1984, acrylic on canvas, 40 x 56 in., private coll.

The floating 'box' finds its way into Paris Spring and Dreamreader. There is no mistaking that we are expected, more resolutely than ever, to consider the many dimensions of mental activity from sensory experience to memory. We are, furthermore, now called to concentrate on the diverse time frames that this activity implies as well. The artist weaves distant past, nearer past and the present into a stunning pictorial fiction where the floating toys and photographs of landscapes and baby Sarah add richness, depth, dimension and interest to the natural scene they overlap. Reference to the mirrored and glass cabinet and to the artist's studio, that is, to artifice is still quite evident. The flat white arcs of the studio lights take bites out of the natural scene, but are bitten into by the after image of shadows whose logic belongs to the construct of the cabinet. The bands that reference the edges of the glass shelves, and objects that remain on the shelves are sufficient to provide the sense that reflection and looking through the glass are still taking place. The studio lights are reflected in the convex and concave shapes of the shinny silvered and glass surfaces of the floating items that belong to the cabinet construct. It is also clear, especially in these paintings, that when figures or landscape are present, the bands representing the shelf edges read as voids. In other words, the artificial construct of the studio cabinet gives way to the scene behind it. Memory-reverie defers to the visual experience of the natural world, as if to proclaim that the function of the eye is the most powerful of our sensory faculties.

Fig. 58 Don Eddy, C VII E (Dreamreader), 1984 acrylic on canvas, 40 x 40 in. private collection.

Paris Spring was produced from a photograph taken by Eddy from the Eiffel Tower on a trip to Paris. Yet, in both this painting and in Dreamreader, we are still far from rote 'photographic' translation of the natural environment into painting; in addition to the floating 'box', details such as the Hawaii photographs and commercially printed art book are a familiar and, here, quite deliberate reminder of that condition. Each, in its own way, signals the multiple strategies operative in these paintings. For example, the addition of a book with color images of Raphael's Madonna is a gesture of homage by Eddy to that master and to masterful past achievements by artists. The color plates in the book are also a reminder of the fact that the painting, Dreamreader, in which this book with its images appears is, like Raphael's painting, a pictorial fiction based on comparable rigors. The image of Sarah studying the Madonna, and her baby picture resting on the page showing a detailof the Virgin holding her Child are a subtle and tender expression of the nature of parental love.

Taken with the Hawaii photograph and baby picture of Sarah, the color plates of Raphael's painting represent a complex overlapping of phases of actual past time. The Raphael images reference the historic past through art history. The Hawaii photos freeze within them the time Eddy spent in that part of the world. The photo of baby Sarah appearing in the same image as Sarah as an adolescent reference time related to the course of her life. Along with the toys, the commercially printed items also direct attention to the thought time implied by Sarah's and Don's individual reverie. Within this frame of reference, Sarah's experiential time, evident through her poised concentration on the pictures in the book, is echoed in the time required by a thoughtful viewer to unlock the multiple levels of meaning inherent in the imagery. Eddy adroitly underscores this message even through such simple compositional devices as the reverberation between Raphael's tondo and the circular forms of the round toys. Throughout recorded

art history artists have been intrigued by the challenge of finding ways to express time in inherently static media such as painting and sculpture. With the development of such a unique scheme to express passage of time, phases of time, and even mental 'time travel' in the "C" series paintings, Eddy added a fresh blueprint to a cache already rich with such devices as continuous narrative, the diverse rhetoric of dramatic gesture, or sharp diagonal compositional arrangements that have enhanced the level of viewer interaction with and credibility in the representational expression of time.

The photographs of the Hawaiian coastline, one of which is present in Dreamreader, but which in Paris Spring are anchored to the upper left and lower right corners of the floating 'box' are indicators of yet other readings embedded in the complex pictorial imagery. They prompt us to consider the 'unseen' photograph of Paris used to produce the painting. Both the seen and 'unseen' photographs - representing past and recent experience respectively - mark important autobiographical moments in Eddy's career as an artist. The French were early collectors of Don's work - thus the trip to Paris where the photo was taken; we know the significance of Hawaii for the artist. The Hawaii photos - painted reproductions of photographs - make explicit the fact that Don has reproduced the photographic process through a pictorial one. They flag the artist's continued interest in painting as a synthetic process, and in finding new ways to comment upon and to express that concept. There is no mistaking that photographs would continue to play an important role in Eddy's picture making process both as part of his pictorial lexicon and as a reference point for tension between flatness and depth that, in combination with his airbrush technique, imparted a synthetic or modern 'look' to the surface of his paintings - his constant reminder that paintings are objects.

Fig. 57 Don Eddy, C VII D (Paris Spring), 1984 acrylic on canvas, 40 x 56 in., private collection.

The fact that the viewer never gets to see the photos that Eddy uses to produce his paintings reminds us that he chose painting over photography as his profession. By analogy, this fact directs us to consider the constraints inherent in commercially produced records of experience. Notwithstanding the emotive or intellectual factors that might provoke 'snapping' a picture, levels of detachment are endemic even to the medium of photography. By setting the various conditions offered by photography into high relief, the elaborate pictorial strategies at work in Paris Spring and other later "C" series paintings lead us, ultimately, to the alchemy at work in the actual painting process. Notwithstanding Eddy's dependency upon photographs for the many reasons we have discussed here and elsewhere in this text, the fact of the matter is that the specific photographic record of an image chosen to be the starting point for a painting, always underwent an inspired transformation guided by the many individual filters of the artist's fertile, diagnostic and logical mind. By the time he had all but completed the "C" series, these filters referenced not just the logistical aspects of the experiental domain that we have come to understand as the equivalent of the artist's personal exegesis on the psychology of perception. They were expanded to embrace dimensions of life belonging to the realm of personal experience. The "C" series paintings are a celebration of the infinite flexibility and expressive range offered by the medium of painting; they are a celebration too of the artist's personal rite of passage from strict logician to burgeoning poet. In a sense, the ultimate message of paintings such as Paris Spring directs itself to the art of painting. It calls attention to a medium that, depending upon levels of sensitivity, command and originality of the artist, grants infinitely greater possibility than commercial printing processes for the visual expression of thought. In their own way the later "C" series paintings raise questions about what the real issues regarding the creation of images might just be, given the benefit of hindsight at the end of the 20th century. We could, for instance, surely pause to reflect upon the deeper significance of the surprising reversals in attitudes towards art movements or individual masters, revered once as avant garde but that have with the passage of time been reduced in the eyes of a younger generation. For argument's sake, one could cite the example of Salon painting at the end of the late 19th century, perceived of as effite by the practicioners of the next avant garde style. Perhaps, as we approach the turn of the millennium and find ourselves at the brink of becoming a global village through communication technologies that fuel the instant exchange of idea, we might consider it more astute to focus on whom is behind the brush putting marks on a canvas, rather than continue to concern ourselves with the viability of one versus another style or mode of pictorial expression. Perhaps we need to shed outmoded dependencies on polarities such as realism versus abstraction, that served a purpose in an earlier moment. Should we not, rather, pay attention to who makes the marks, and to whether or not those marks - whatever form they take - measure up as signifiers (to borrow a term from the semioticians) of the grander scheme of the place of art within its culture and within the general fund of the diary of mankind. Is what the artist produces timely and timeless? Does it carry a full expression of its age and of its genus (that is, art). In the age of advanced technology - an age characterized by putting our brains and intellect to the task of inventing machines and artificial intelligence to produce virtually every material component of our society - the blank canvas, the block of wood, the empty page stand, in the end, as the consummate reminder of what our own creative energy and nature hold possible, and of how very necessary it is for us to never lose sight of our need to make, do and create with our own hands. On another front, but still with the benefit of hindsight, I would like to consider the aims of another Realist practitioner who, in fact, used subject matter similar to Eddy, but for different ends. The comparison offers criteria that help to redress certain attitudes towards post war Realism that might perhaps be skewed by the continued adherence to a restrictive interpretation of the terminology used in such popular titles as "Super Realism" and "Photorealism." As the post war American Realist movement has unfolded, it has become evident that the artistic aims of Eddy and many of his Realist associates extended well beyond parameters such as the photographic techniques, the dependence upon the camera and the exploded scale that launched this noteworthy movement. (Footnote 57)

NEXT PAGE: Chapter 4 continued
| HOME | FRONTISPIECE | DEDICATION | TABLE OF CONTENTS | PROLOGUE | NOTE to the READER | ACKNOWLEDGMENTS |

| CHAPTER 1 | CHAPTER 2 | CHAPTER 3 | CHAPTER 4 | CHAPTER 5 |

| FOOTNOTES | LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS | SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY | LIST of NAMES & SUBJECTS |

artregister.com: a division of: ArtRegister Network™ | artnewschannel.net | artregister.com | artistregister.com | museumregister.com | artregisterpress.com | artdevivre.net Creation, implementation & maintenance by: ArtRegister Network™ PO Box 256 - New York NY 10028-0003 - Tel.: 212.327.0401 - E-mail: info@artregister.com