Would I have purchased a painting by Susanne Doremus back when she had her first solo exhibition in 1980? I’m not sure. That’s what Dennis Adrian did when he discovered her work in a back room at Artemisia Gallery. Chicago’s leading art critic was probably responding to the very same sweeping spaciousness and high voltage marks that are evident in her work forty years later. The airy space suggests a gentle, light hearted, well ordered life - evident much more in the actual work than in internet images. The circularity of the overall sweep suggests a recurring routine, like the seven days of a week or the twelve months of a year. The marks, however, often evoke persistent attacks of anxiety and even despair. And the artist appears to have been obsessed: working the piece until all possible ways to pull it all together have been exhausted.
She’s definitely not among the Chicago Imagists whom Adrian was then making synonymous with art in Chicago. There isn’t the slightest hint of irony, adolescent rebellion or popular culture. But there is the same self-centeredness. She's not imagining places you'd like to go -- she's showing you where she's been. When objects are identifiable, they might resemble a model she had seen posing at the art school where she taught or the housecat who slept on her window sill.
Willem de Kooning, untitled, 1948/49, Art Institute of Chicago
She’s in the tradition of post-war Abstract Expression, as exemplified by the early De Kooning paintings at the Art Institute or Milton Resnick, with whom she had studied at the University of Wisconsin. But there’s nothing especially heroic about her work. Rather than drawing from personal life to make overwhelming expressions of power and despair, she uses the ABX lexicon to share the daily flow of a personal life that feels comfortable and ordinary, even if with persistent anxiety. Rather than human destiny being at stake, it’s more like whether she’ll be late for dinner if she gets stuck in traffic when picking up the kids. The virtue here is less the power of rhetoric - and more the truth of authenticity. These paintings feel like the daily journal of someone you might know.
Or as Holland Cotter put it in 1995: her work is "like a tough semester's lecture notes from life".
Looking back to her early work, as found online, the swirly spaciousness has not changed. But the mark making has become so much more calligraphic. She can’t do all the things that can be accomplished by an ink loaded brush in the hands of an Asian master, but she can certainly make her lines dance, from the slow and sensual to the anxious and frenetic. And she takes bigger risks by sometimes introducing large, bold, and very awkward shapes - possibly executed with eyes closed.
In this, her 10th solo or duo exhibition at Zolla Lieberman since 1981, the work seems driven more by aesthetic effect than in work seen online from previous decades. Perhaps she is moving further away from feelings about her life, and closer to how paint feels as it touches the canvas. But we really need a career retrospective to make that kind of determination. Wouldn’t the Chicago Cultural Center be the perfect place for that to happen? With no sense of gender, ethnic , or racial identity other than straight, middle class, white suburban American female, she is further than ever from what’s trending in the art world. So perhaps that retrospective won’t be happening anytime soon.
Looking back to her early work, as found online, the swirly spaciousness has not changed. But the mark making has become so much more calligraphic. She can’t do all the things that can be accomplished by an ink loaded brush in the hands of an Asian master, but she can certainly make her lines dance, from the slow and sensual to the anxious and frenetic. And she takes bigger risks by sometimes introducing large, bold, and very awkward shapes - possibly executed with eyes closed.
In this, her 10th solo or duo exhibition at Zolla Lieberman since 1981, the work seems driven more by aesthetic effect than in work seen online from previous decades. Perhaps she is moving further away from feelings about her life, and closer to how paint feels as it touches the canvas. But we really need a career retrospective to make that kind of determination. Wouldn’t the Chicago Cultural Center be the perfect place for that to happen? With no sense of gender, ethnic , or racial identity other than straight, middle class, white suburban American female, she is further than ever from what’s trending in the art world. So perhaps that retrospective won’t be happening anytime soon.
******
In an adjoining room, the gallery presented a collection of local artists as chosen by Doremus herself. Many have been associated with the School of the Art Institute where she once chaired the Painting Department. Mostly they make her work feel even more enjoyable by comparison. Except for Jackie Kazarian ( shown above)
Wow!
Such a small painting to present so much fear and deliverance.
We need to see more of her.
As Dennis Adrian discovered over forty years ago,
sometimes the real gems can be found in the back room.
*****
The paintings of Susanne Doremus are so distant from social/political commentary, I’m surprised that New City reviewed her show. Over the past three decades, they never have.
But now they have published a review by Hadia Shaikh, an assistant director at the Block Museum. And not surprisingly, the primary theme is that very distance.
She writes that:
Her work bears significant relation to the works of Julie Mehretru and Cy Twombly: multilayered, gestural, unbalanced and erratic.
As Slate.com has noted, Mehretu "has created a new language for political art" - so I’m not sure she has that much in common with Doremus - at least regarding intentions.
But the connection to Twombly is tighter than to the de Kooning piece I posted in my review.
The de Kooning is about to explode - the Twombly, like a Doremus painting, already has.
