Steven P. Mc Cowan

 Contemporary art has two ways of dealing with reality: either by denying its existence or by confronting it. The first one led to abstractionism and later on to different forms of conceptualism and minimalism. In general terms, the second began by deconstructing its different elements, by reproducing in terms of dreams and desires its hidden side or by representing its tragic, grotesque or even comic condition. Cubism, Surrealism and Expressionism, respectively, correspond to these three approaches to reality. While the Surrealists maintained vis a vis the act of painting an equivocal attitude corresponding more to their aim of creating a poetical environment above and beyond any purely pictorial preoccupation, the Expressionists dealt head on with the materials of their art. Inheritors in that sense of the Renaissance, the Expressionists had to face reality in all its complexity, including their own disturbing inner visions.  Far from escaping the intensity of human feelings that arouse from daily experiences in life, the Expressionists tried to face them in their art with strong shapes and colors. In the last instance the Expressionists revolted against reality while accepting the inevitability of its existence. It is in that context that I would like to place Steven McCowan’s art.

 The first impression that I received when I walked into the rooms filled with McCowan’s paintings was of listening to an orchestral crescendo. The mechanics that made possible the composition of such an avalanche of forms and colors were translated in terms of rich musical sonorities. Then came the second stage where as any viewer I began to sort out certain details until finally I was able to explore some of his paintings. But before it was the spirit of Ensor that I had to invoke. Ensor was a *strange painter indeed. His masquerades belonged to a visionary tradition, that of the German and Swiss engravers of the Renaissance and to the apocalyptical visions of Bosch or Brueghel.  On the other hand, the ‘’busy’’ elements that their Italian counterparts utilized as an indispensable component of their narrative found their way in the mottled compositions of the Belgian master. It was Ensor, then, who gave me the key to Steven McCowan’s world. Once I began to venture into his paintings others came to my aid. Bacon no doubt, and Jawlensky, Beckman also appeared and Goya, the Goya of the grotesque imagery of his ‘’Capri- ‘’ chos’’, ‘’Desastres de la Guerra’’ or his black paintings. All of these names are part of what I will like to call ‘’magical encounters’’. It has less to do with the obvious influences (which have little or no interest to me) than with what the philosopher Fourier called ‘’the passionate attraction’’ between a spirit that seeks and the objects of his search. McCowan, then, has managed to create around him a net of references that can be useful for the art critic but misleading at the same time if they are not taken as they are: ‘’magical encounters’’. With this in mind lets now proceed to ‘’deconstruct’’ the main elements that in my opinion bind together McCowan’s paintings.

 THE HUMOROUS ELEMENT

 One of the most fundamental expressions of human emotions is to face the mysteries of life with a sense of humor. The Surrealists (Andre Breton in particular in his famous anthology) invented the term ‘’Black Humor’’ to go even further in their exploration of the human condition. Without being a Surrealist, Steven P. McCowan creates in his paintings an environment where he increasingly represents situations charged with black humor. In his homage to Ensor, ‘’The Entry of Christ Into Disney World’’, the painter creates a setting where Christ is surrounded by circus-like characters. Some of them remind us of Mickey Mouse , one holds in his right hand the penis of a figure next to Christ apparently dressed with a tutu, another holds his in front of an usher.  Two acrobats   (one of them with a mask that suggests the devices used by the schizophrenic Aldous Wolffli in his paintings) balance from the ceiling while three characters with their arms raised smiles at the whole scene. Facing Christ the rest of the assisting public seated in two rows one of the Mickey Mouse characters looking backward-watches the scene. Under one of the acrobats a hybrid figure (taken probably from Assyrian imagery) stands on top of a balcony. Like all of McCowan’s paintings the ‘’Entry of Christ into Disney World’’ is a busy one. Painted with a rich palette, the role of Christ in this painting underlines the desire of the artist to create an equivocal situation, a situation that furnish an atmosphere of black humor. The contrast between the figures with their gestures and grotesque appearances is a truly hallucinatory vision not of the beauty of mankind but of its fascination with the most obscure side of its soul.  It is a major premise with the Expressionists to polarize their scenarios with contrasting situations, thus providing an atmosphere where the opposite may occur: we cry and laugh simultaneously in front of their paintings. Mc Cowan’s visions of excess are just that: provocations or better still transgressions that push us to the limits.

 THE GROTESQUE ELEMENT

 Ever since the publication of Mikhail Bakhtin’s classic study on ‘’Rabelais and his World’’ the ‘’grotesque’’ have acquired an important status in the cultural panorama of our time. Dealing with the Romantic sense of the grotesque Bakhtin points out that  ‘’Something frightening is revealed in that which was habitual and secure’’ while ‘’the medieval and Renaissance folk culture was familiar with the element of terror only as represented by comic monsters, who were defeated by laughter.’’ (1). The ritual spectacles of McCowan’s paintings seem to point into that direction, a direction where the ‘’grotesque in art is related to the paradox in logic. At first glance, the grotesque is merely witty and amusing but it contains great potentialities’’ (2) If we examine the different elements that populate McCowan’s nightmarish paintings we could arrive at the following identical conclusions:

 First Conclusion: ‘’Something frightening is revealed’ In the ‘’Entry of Christ’’ what is revealed is a transgressive interpretation of Christ’s entry into Jerusalem. Like its famous source of inspiration, Ensor’s ‘’Entry of Christ in Bruxelles’’ the use of weirdly deformed figures could be interpreted as a blasphemy against the Son of God. We may recall that Veroneses two versions of the Last Supper were deemed blasphemous by scandalized cardinals who tried to censor them. A fundamentalist believer will be frightened by this rendition of the New Testament. Certainly he or she would repel it as a diabolical manifestation thus creating a dramatic communication between him or her and the painting. The ‘’habitual’’ and the ‘’secure’’ are then deprived of their logical substance and replaced by the insecurity of having to deal with a grotesque Christ almost to the point of caricature.

 Second conclusion: Mc Cowan’s elements of terror. In paintings such as ‘’Man in a Red Suit’’ a simian figure showing his penis is seated among various characters, one of them covering his nose with one of his hands while pointing with the other at an unknown direction.  Two of the characters seem to be immersed in a profound conversation judging by the intense look on the face of one of the figures. The other two in the foreground are not connected with the others. The first looks amazed by something and the other with his hands covering his mouth looks upwards. In the middle of the whole scenery presides a seated figure with his faced blurred and a heart painted over his clothes. What concerns us here is the presence of the simian figure that, like a collage, is inserted in the scenario. His presence could be taken as a comic attempt by the artist to disrupt a narrative between the other characters in the painting. By doing so he places a uncanny image offsetting the rest of the composition thus providing the viewer with an element of laughter. Here again, laughter is used as a device to unleash an uneasy feeling of complicity with the artist’s theatrical renditions. Looking at an album of Dianne Arbus photographs I experience the same sensation. Her extreme renditions of deformed people make us laugh while we reject them at the same time. We run from her monsters but we can’t help feeling a strange attraction towards them. Laughter in that context masks our sense of guilt.

 Mc Cowan’s views of the absurd like Samuel Beckett or Franz Kafka’s own visions are part of a radical attempt to create new forms of identifying some of our most unspeakable nightmares. Kafka gave a body to one of them: a repugnant bug, while Beckett created his clownish characters always waiting for what it appears to be the Supreme Being of all monsters: Godot. Both writers create absurd interpretations by paradoxically making them look as real. Mc Cowan’s paintings convey in his ‘’grotesquerie’’ a parade of human beings or hybrids that remind us constantly of the sharp contrasts that plague our existence. In one of his paintings untitled ‘’The Faster the Parade the Faster I Bang The Symbols’,’ we experience the sensation that the jester in the foreground is ready to jump outside of the painting in order to torment us. His terrible look seems to confirm our fear.

 Third conclusion:    “The elements of terror’’. The Expressionist painters liked to emphasize the elements of the grotesque and the terror provoke by the use of masks. The mask has been and instrument of magical powers in all ancient cultures. By masking himself the Shaman or the Priest assumed supernatural powers. Therefore the mask was an object only to be used by the initiates. The Twentieth Century painters ‘’tired of the ancient world’’ as the poet Guillaume Apollinaire said in his famous poem/manifesto ‘’Zone’’ broke with the Greco-Roman tradition by incorporating those primitive objects in their paintings. But if Pablo Picasso used them as a purely pictorial device or the Surrealists Wifredo Lam or Victor Brauner as poetical instruments, the Expressionists saw in the mask a powerful means of conveying another kind of message. In many of their paintings the Expressionists transformed the human face into a mask. By doing so the altered details of the face transmitted a sense of terror in the same way that in films like Doctor Jekyll and Mister Hyde the face of Spencer Tracy began to acquire the same qualities. It is that moment, when the human face loses his or her identity by becoming a mirror of the inner self that the powers of terror are unleashed. The mask becomes not a mere aesthetical object like in Picasso’s ‘’Demoiselles de Avignon’’ but a ‘’sign’’ in its most profound meaning. McCowan’s use of masks follows this trend by evoking in his theatrical renditions what we may call ‘’the poetics of terror’’.

 

THE ELEMENTS OF THE INNER SELF

 Like the Surrealists, McCowan’s makes use of his dreams, but unlike them he is not interested in creating a dreamscape in the manner of a Dali, Tanguy or Max Ernst. McCowan’s dreams are more real in the sense that he limits himself to juxtapose in his paintings some of its main components. These components are intrinsically linked to icons of his youth: toys such as soldiers or trains. Another component is the male sexual organ, treated in my opinion as a toy. But toys are part of a complex world where the child relates to reality in a dream-like dimension. When a child plays he or she also dreams and when we dream we play with images that appear without any apparent control. In any case life is interpreted as a playground where anything can happen.

 McCowan’s paintings even those with more dramatic overtones, possess a tendency to bypass reality in favor of a more lucid interpretation of it.  What happens in reality is what most of his paintings makes evident: namely that life has an irresistible tendency of becoming a circus, a tragic one granted, but a circus nonetheless. The Expressionist painters, such as Rouault were attracted by this fact while McCowan went even further bringing back his memories, his fears and his dreams into the spectacle of his canvases.  The presence of the penis is for example emblematic of his proclivity for play. Far from becoming a symbol of male power, the penis is treated as a toy that one can ‘’play’’ with, as masturbation is often referred to.

 Dreams and Play are basic components of McCowan’s visions of things. His ‘’totems’’ and ‘’taboos’’ are well represented in the narrative of his paintings where nothing is left out. On the contrary, if we may regard some of his compositions as overcrowded is because the artist himself has been eager to relate the richness of his visions without making any concessions to certain aesthetical values. Furthermore he is ready to transgress them in favor of authenticity.

 FINAL COMMENTS

 For Steven McCowan, Expressionism has been a means of providing a suitable technique. The bold use of color and brushstrokes, the distribution of the figures in the composition, the imagery (some of them basic in other Expressionists such as Christ, clowns, the use of masks etc.) all are part of the main ingredients of his paintings. At the beginning of this essay I mentioned the first impression that I received from his paintings ‘’that of an orchestral crescendo’’. I will be more precise: facing McCowan’s canvases I hear the music of Richard Strauss. The histrionics and carnivalesque atmosphere of his ‘’Till Eulespingel’’, the patheticism of his ‘’Death and Transfiguration’’, the colors of his sensual ‘’Salome’s dances’’ or the dramaticism of ‘’Also Sprach Zarathustra’’, together produce the special effects of a crescendo that continues in each one of his paintings as a link between them. From that point of view this artist expressionism has, in my opinion, a musical value. McCowan’s crafty use of color is the result of working with it in the same manner as a composer uses his notation, thus giving to their respective works the solidity of an architectural structure in the same way as the ancients define it as ‘’frozen music’’.

 

Miami Herald

 (1)  Mikhail Bakhtin’s: “Rabelais and his World’’ Indiana University Press, page 39
 (2)  L. E. Pinsky ‘’Realism in the Renaissance’’ quoted by Mikhail Bakhtin, idem, page 32.