There was a “story” (an American story, written by Alfred Barr or Clem Greenberg) that told of how painting, like the truth, was marching in. Painting had a direction, and it strayed from its given path at its peril. Like in fairy tales, if we could just make sure painting stayed on the path, we would make it home safely in the end. But where home actually was became unclear – the final page in the story was torn from the book and we were left dangling, without the punch line or happy ending. Where were our travelling companions? Did the natives of this strange land we found ourselves in speak the same language as us? Painting may have been marching in, but it got distracted along the way.
In a way, the story of modernism in painting was a comforting fairy story. It asserted a language that had a structure and a system. Modernist painting permitted a certain type of conversation and exchange between painters, critics and the paintings themselves. The problem was always with the others: all those other people, ideas, histories and desires which couldn’t quite get the pronunciation of this assertive modern language right.
So, where were we left in the fairy story? Clem Greenberg was no longer around to chase away the wolf, and painting was left to be assaulted: it was killed off, it returned from the dead and went native in this strange post-modern fairytale land. Painting is now inhabited by contradiction and irrationality, it is multiple and fascinatingly messed up.
What do we see in Andrew’s paintings? Could it be the illustrations to this fairy story? A corrupting, funny, scary world (and it is some kind of world – we can recognise animals, objects and humanoid forms). It is a world with strange semi-familiar elements in it (is it always on the verge of raining in this world? Maybe it’s a Northern European light – Bosch or Brueghel? Maybe it’s the Old-Europe of Balthus or De Sade?). But it is never quite ‘right’ – however stable the horizon line and however convincing the shadow and perspective, the world has been slightly twisted off its axis. There’s a John Zorn track called Tex Avery directs the Marquis De Sade. Could this be the soundtrack the creatures in the painting are listening to? There are the art historical allusions, the psychosexual symbols, and the references to post-modern decay, but all refracted through Droopy Dog.
In Freud’s attempt to define the uncanny, he uses the German word unheimlich, and this is commonly translated as the sense of not feeling at home somewhere, or being ill at ease. Schelling describes the uncanny as “the name for everything that ought to have remained secret and hidden but has come to light.”
What we see in Jane Andrew’s painting is a world not too dissimilar from our own (it is our world, looked at sideways), but an uncanny mutation of our familiar surroundings. Whatever is occurring in this cryptic place, whatever these horses, dogs or mutants are plotting, it would have been better if it had remained secret and hidden. The problem is the cat is out of the bag, the dog is wearing the pearls – and we are entranced.
Andrew Warstat Sept 2003
