The contemporary figurative painting revival is a multifaceted phenomenon. This spring Eleanor Ettinger Gallery in
New York City presented a solo exhibition of works by one of the true believers of classical realism, Daniel Graves (b. 1949). In 1991
Graves founded the Florence Academy of Art, predicated on a “return to discipline in art, to canons of beauty, and to the direct study of nature and the old masters as the foundation for great painting.” Graves’s belief in academic tradition is reflected in his own training, which includes study at the Atelier Lack in
Minneapolis and with Nerina Simi, whose father, the Florentine painter Filadelfo Simi, had studied with Jean-Léon Gérôme. The Ettinger show demonstrates
Graves’s skills across a range of genres—portrait, still life, landscape and figure subject. Some handsome drawings, mostly in the Pierre-Paul Prud’hon manner, round out the selection. (All works are dated 2006.) Graves is adept at capturing the vibrancy of flesh, and this talent seems more effective in individualistic portraits, such as
Johan (The Competitor) and
Innocence, than it does in big allegorical set pieces, as in the diptych male and female of
The Gift I and
The Gift II.
 |
Daniel Graves, Afternoon Sky, 2006
Courtesy Eleanor Ettinger Gallery, New York City |
According to
Graves, “the classically trained artist selects from and arranges reality to fit his idea.” The generalized rocky cliffs and approaching dawn of
The Gift belong decidedly to the topography of the mind.
Iris works better with similar resources. If the rock the introspective nude woman perches on seems somewhat amorphous, the sky behind her makes a fine background for her elegant profile. Iris, Juno’s messenger, is associated with the rainbow in classical mythology, and the arc of prismatic color is subtly played against the stormy greys of the sky.
Graves loosens up as a painter in his sky studies and finds dynamic movement in transient meteorological effects.
Afternoon Sky builds a rollicking mass of bright white clouds over a muted blue landscape, while
Approaching Storm shows us the billowing masses, this time tinged with a warm grey-brown, sailing above hills veiled by a downpour.
September Sky plays with the rose, peach and mauve palette Frederic Church used for his spectacular dawns and dusks. A set of more modest landscapes—depicting fields, barns and country lanes in soft earth colors—has an attractive modesty. The plein-air practice of nineteenth-century painters, notably the works of Corot and his circle, adds another strain of influence to
Graves’s work, primarily rooted in a fervent belief in academic craftsmanship and humanistic tradition. In the nineteenth century the academic figure and the Romantic landscape were separate enterprises, both capable of carrying moral and spiritual content and not necessarily tied to the more radical experiments of the avant-gardists. Whether today’s generation of realists can find a way of integrating these fields remains a question.
Eleanor Ettinger Gallery, 119 Spring Street,
New York, New York 10012. Telephone (212) 925-7474. On the Web at
www.EEGallery.com. Florence Academy of Art, Via della Casine 21/r, 50122
Florence, Italy. On the Web at
www.florenceacademyofart.com
