Reverberations

Mitchell Johnson, *Not Really Buoys,* 2020 oil on linen

As I hinted in a previous post, I’ve been playing with applying the term “enjambment” to artworks. Enjambment is a poetic term for a sentence or clause that runs into the next line, rather than having a period or end stop to each line. In poetry this creates a spilling over effect, allowing for emphasis of certain words or clauses, and creating a rhythm that is not tied to punctuation, per se.

Here's a lovely example in one of my favorite poems by William Carlos Williams.

This Is Just To Say

I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox

and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast

Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold

The entire poem is nearly one long line of enjambment. A period is implied after “for breakfast,” but is not written.

I’ve been meditating on enjambment in the work of Mitchell Johnson and Ed Lavino – two very different artists, combined perhaps only in my own mind. But this is part of the alchemy of being an art lover. The associations an individual makes between artists and artworks may well be unique to them - and they add to the larger conversation about art and between artworks. Which is all to say, trust yourself and your insights and interpretations. Your perceptions are what gives art meaning to you and that’s what matters most as you live well with art. My enjoyment of these artists’ work is enriched by comparing the two, and comparing them then to Giorgio Morandi. It’s my mental playground, and it keeps the artworks alive and relevant to me the more I think about them over time. I invite you to do the same with art you love.

Both Lavino and Johnson make compositions that “jam” objects together. This creates friction between the objects’ borders. A pulse or tremor reverberates where it would not if the two objects were on opposite sides of the room from one another. That tremor where two edges be seen as enjambment – where one object spills into another - creates a complete composition. I find these images energizing and peaceful all at once.

Take Lavino’s “Two Blue Chairs, Montana.” Like still-life master Giorgio Morandi, Lavino groups everyday domestic objects together and then makes a 2-D image. The “subjects” of this photograph occupy the background, which is a common foil Lavino uses. He urges you to look between the curtains of branches and leaves to behold the humble plastic chairs. The kind of chairs you can pick up at Walmart for $20. Here they are precious as robins’ eggs, casting their lattice shadows on the mint green wall. Patterns echo around the image; the diamond shape of leaves mirror the diamonds of the chair backs’; thin branches wink at the shadows of the stair railings. Grass bristles, tickles. Greens clash, blend, coexist. Two empty chairs enjoy the afternoon sun while the world hums and glistens around them.

Ed Lavino, *Two Blue Chairs, Montana*, 2022

Ed and I have known one another for some time and have collaborated on projects. I’m a huge fan of his work. I remember bumping into him one afternoon when he was en route to lunch with his friend George Leys who wanted to discuss Ed’s work in comparison to Morandi. The influence seems clear:

More recently I became familiar with the work of American painter Mitchell Johnson, who cites Morandi as a significant influence. As noted in his artist bio, “Johnson’s work draws on a vastness of experience and a persistent desire to make paintings that explain the world through color and shape. He has always moved seamlessly between abstraction and representation and the art historian Peter Selz described Johnson as an artist who makes ‘realist paintings that are basically abstract paintings and abstract paintings that are figurative.’”

Mitchell explores edges - between blocks of colors, shadows and surfaces, sky and land. In “Five Chairs (Beach Point)” five friends - chairs not people - have gathered to gaze at the sea. Notice how a tiny corner of the yellow chair nudges over to rest on the red and blue chair’s lap. The colors are talking to one another- what are they saying? Here is sea spray, here is Fourth of July? The more I gaze at this image the more I see brush strokes and the energy of paint itself. I see a rainbow of flags held tight by metal stays. Shadows, joy, presence. A shimmering effect takes hold; a still life that is anything but still.

Mitchell Johnson, *Five Chairs (Beach Point)*, 2022, 23 x 36, oil/linen

Circling back to William Carlos Williams, he painted still-lifes with words. Like the plums. Like the famous chickens by a rain-washed red wheelbarrow. Williams understood the potency of groupings of objects, how they shine, rust, shake, taste. When an image can flow into the next without a hard stop, something magic happens. The surface tension spills over and we are caught in the flow.

Mitchell Johnson v Georgio Morandi: Cones, vases, smokestacks, windows, blocks of peachy cubes:

How quickly the skies clear

Dissonance