wordpress.com · created date 11/24/2010 5:44:56 pm

l l f i l l iam Schwedler 's t ragicUU deatn at the age of 40

(that 's r ight , 40) has robbedme of a f r iend, and the artwor ld of one of the more en'gaging and comPlex Paintersto emerge from that some't imes murky, Plural ist ic, "me"decade of the Sevent ies. Atragedy, yes, but the largememorial exhibi t ion that wasmounted in FebruarY at the Ti-bor de NagY Gal lerY wi l l helPsecure Schwedler 's Posi t ionas the major Painter that I a l -ways fel t he was. Being an ar-t is t isn ' t a lwaYs easy, butSchwedler always gave the aP-Dearance that i t was. Where If ound the waters to be choPPYand cold, he would beckon " tocome on in, the water 's f ine."

Schwedler 's Paint ings f romthe beginning to the bi t ter endwere r ipe wi th a surreal , ab-stract poetry f i l led wi th refer-ences to landscaPes (seenf rom above), archi tecture (seg-mented and blown apart) , tex 'ture (cracked), l ine (broken,chopped, and Pul led topieces), and del icate, but vo-luotuous color. His work alsohad a dark sense of humor of aBuiuel ish, Exterminat ing An-gel k ind, where You want toleave ( l 've had enough) butyou can' t .

Schwedler was born in Chi-cago in 1942,and the l i teraturethat has been wri t ten about

his work makes much of thearchi tectural inf luence this c i 'ty had on him. I can imaginehim in "potato c i tY," as heused to cal l h is home town,studying at the Art lnst i tutewith his f r iends CYnthia Car l -son, J im Nutt , Art Green, andKarl Wirsum, taking in thegrains, textures, spaces, anoelevated structures of th is oh-so-American ci ty. I have inf ront of me two catalogues ofhis work. How much l ikeSchwedler that the t i t les forhis paint ings say as mucnabout his l i fe and work as theessays included in the cata-logues do. A samPle Time FIies,ln The Long Run, Time ls Mon'ey, A Blessing In Dlsguise,Turn For The Worse, GoingOver The Edge, Al lShow-NoGo. Ups and Downs, Al l ThatGlitters /s Gold, lndividualNeeds, Misery Loves Com'pany, Fall ing For FlatterY, APerfect Stranger, Thank You,Come Again, An EasY Out, andAgainst The Grain. One wouldbe hard put to f ind more accu-rate and pungent t i t les to de-scr ibe an art ist 's sensibi l i tYand sty le of l i fe better thanthese autobiograPhical t i t lesassigned to Schwedler 's workby himsel f and his f r iends.

The ear ly work, which I f i rstsaw in 1970 (and there were afew f ine examPles of th is Per i -od in the de NagY exhibi t ion),

consisted of strange and mar-velous archi tectural e lementsrest ing in serene, sof t color-f ie ld landscapes. Contradic-t ions in both scale and image-ry abound in these works.Wooden phal l ic- l ike shaPesnest le cozi ly next to chain- l inkfences. Girders and beamsbend around each other inf r iendship; chunks of woodand br ick spheres and othergeometr ical shapes (al l won-derf u l ly rendered) f loat in andaround knotted roPes and l imPtrest les. LandscaPes of theweird. The stuf f that n ight-mares are made of .

In 1974 a dramat ic changecame about in Schwedler 'spaint ings. Gone were the ar-chi tectural references, to bereplaced by a more abstractv iew of the wor ld. These largecanvases, shown at the An-drew Crispo Gal lery in 1975,presented the viewer wi th animpressive body of workbased on landscapes as i fseen through the eYe of a birdin f l ight on acid. For the mostpart these beaut i fu l toPo-graphical paint ings consistedof what seemed l ike f hou'sands of f inely drawn, web- l ikecharcoal l ines, cr isscrossedby "states" of sof t colors and"zones" of wood-grain Pat-terns. Interspersed withinthese lands were more heavi-ly drawn charcoal l ines, some-

WILLIAM SCHWEDLERWil l iam Schwedler, Unt i t led, 1980. Acryl ic and

mixed media on canvas, 36 x 72". Courtesy Tibor deNagy Gallety.

t imes leaving a hazY laYer ofdust across the colored areasand zones. For me this modeof operat ion came to i ts f inestreal izat ion one Year later in hisone-person exhibi t ion at theAlessandra Gal lerY. HereSchwedler started to exPlorethe use of gel as a means ofsculptural re l ief or emboss-ment. Bui l t uP and uP, some't imes clear, somet imes t intedand patterned, bands of gelcr isscrossed and meanderedacross the canvases, l ike rest-less r ivers and lakes. Theseworks also contained a f inedose of h is now fami l iar amor-phic, microcosmic, and Phal 'l ic imagery. These can bemost readi lY seen in the workon paper ot 1975'76 lilled ltala.which can be read ei ther as apun on the maP of l ta lY or asan homage to his c lose f r iend.I ta lo Scanga.

The most recent worKsshown in the de NagY exhibi-t ion were the Painful (Painfulonly in the sense that thesewere the f inal works), i r regu-lar , densely Packed shaPed-paint ings on PlYwood of1980-82. Relat ivelY smal l andof var ious eccentr ic s izes.they were arranged on onelarge wal l , jut t ing out into realsoace to confront the v lewerwith a joyous sadness. Thesebending, curving, sculPturalpaint ings made extenslve useof the r ich vocabularY thatSchwedler develoPed over hismuch too br ief career of barelYtwenty years.

Br ight ly Painted woodendowels covered in texture anddesign, patterns of charcoall ines careening next to smal l .obsessively bui l t -uP areas ofcolor, and relaxed Patches ofloose washes that s i t comfort-ably next to shaPes of acidYpurples and oranges make uPthese f inal Paint ings. Thereare even col lage elements:wal lpaper borders, Pictures ofs la in President KennedY'sface cut f rom matchbook cov-ers, and membershiP cardsand vouchers f rom that notor i 'ous gay water ing hole andhangout, The Anvi l . ExPlodingareas of everYthing. In fact .these last works seem l ike somany explosions in a gay dls-co on a hot summer night. Inhis short , imPortant, h ighlYpersonal career as an art ist .Wi l l iam Schwedler has lef t uswith a r ich bodY of work. Tak-ing the t i t le of h is Paint ingf rom 1978-79, he wi l l be Sore/YMlssed. (Tibor de NagY, Febru-ary 5-March 9)

l ra Joel Haber