Why can’t I be a suburban hyper-voyeur noir master…like Zachary Thornton?
Zachary’s paintings inspire my inner theorist…such that I find myself compelled to write about his work, even apart from how in awe I am of it and how much I wish I had painted these impervious twenty-first century darlings in their natural habitat.
Zachary Thornton, One AM, oil on canvas, 2007
Zachary Thornton works in an old-fashioned style of art making - a style that ‘rewards on many levels’. It’s the sort of work a person might actually ruminate on; consider both on its own terms as well as in its historical context. One might really enjoy it, even, draw pleasure from the act of looking at it, without having to glean most of that enjoyment from one’s own simultaneously smug and self-deprecating sense of humour or other demonstrations of general mental dexterity, as has been the case with much of the contemporary Art in my recent experience anyway.
Yet Thornton’s style isn’t retrospective, and it isn’t reactionary. It’s the sort of thing that might come out of post-modernism, might extract itself urbanely from that school of mirrors, brush itself down and step out into the real world again. It has the look of someone who’s checked their appearance in the glass and then turned to face the world armed and assured. What I mean is, that it addresses the post-modern theses, and then goes on, leaving the endless reflections and dimensionless relativisms behind, but not without pocketing a little subversive star-dust with a smarmy sniff.
Zachary Thornton, Pool, oil on canvas, 2008
Thornton’s work does this by speaking to the post modern method of incorporating the banal in the quest for High Art, thus flattening that particular spectrum into a classless middle ground. It waves remotely at parody and its poorer cousin: kitsch, whilst simultaneously avoiding the long-winded conversation they inevitably provide at close quarters. Thornton uses the framing techniques, voyeur’s prerogative, and various other recognisable traits of the realm of television, film and commercial art (think romantic thriller book covers), but he does this without stinting on technique, aesthetical enquiry, or – perhaps most importantly – earnest pursuit. Don’t laugh – you’ll only reveal how beholden you are to the soul sucking clankiness of the post-modern sensibility. What I mean is, it is not the sort of art perpetrated by a nihilistic, oblivion seeking, anti-artist.
Of course, impossible to ignore from the outset, is the gaze of the male artist – Thornton exclusively chooses women in the suburban environment for his subject matter. Its sort of irrelevant though, that his nubile femmes sometimes avert this gaze, sometimes submit, as they alternately eye the viewer with dispassion from the snugness of their evening gowns, and fret at their predicament… after all, what are they doing out alone at night? It’s irrelevant because pressed to the point of redundancy – it’s not as if Thornton has attempted this subject without self-awareness - the theme is duly noted in every mystery laden, hyper-voyeuristical tableau.
Thornton is by no means alone out there. The hyper-voyeur has been at play all along the late twentieth century way. Photographer Gregory Crewdson comes to mind, with his familiar suburban dioramas, counterpoised by shrewd borrowings from the film industry, the thriller genre in particular. His photographs speak directly to society via its favourite form of entertainment, about its favourite form of entertainment.
Gregory Crewdson, Untitled
Thornton demonstrates the same flexibility of approach. Its the sort of flexibility demanded of artists who aim at ‘relevance’ after the contortionist, reflexive somersaults required by the post-modern milieu. But what survives, what sets these artists and those like them apart from their post-modern contemporaries, is the earnest pursuit. What’s important here, is the maker’s mark. The signs of construction. The plastic signs: the brushstrokes and trademark lighting effects – but also the discursive intent – the marks of earnestness, signified in the instance of Thornton and Crewdson by the simple presence of narrative. The narrative in both is implied of course, not prescribed, but its existence is like a big, rambunctious uncle waving excitedly from the periphery. It’s a straightforward mode of making, that coupled with skillful manipulation of medium, gives so much more than the usual remote nod. It translates more to a friendly human ‘hoy.
Hyper-realists or super-realists like Gerhard Richter and Chuck Close fall short of the earnestness implicit in the hyper-voyeur’s position. For all their finely wrought faces and evocative borrowings, they choose not to step down from their respective meta perspectives, and own their own subjectivity. They might touch this sort of purity of purpose, but from the other side of the mirror – ultimately they fall backwards into the post-modern event horizon, arms flailing, grins lingering. What I like about Thornton’s work that sets him apart from those realists and hyper-realists who seem to be stuck saying something cute about viewer expectations and systems of deconstruction – is that it’s innate narrative is not subsumed by the meta narratives it references. Thornton et al are revisiting the world of the earnest, albeit with tainted eyes – and I for one am cheering.
