Julio Larraz by Miles McEnery Gallery

JULIO LARRAZ

MILES M c E N E RY G A L L E RY

525 West 22nd Street New York NY 10011 tel 212 445 0051 www.milesmcenery.com

TANGIBLE AMBIGUITIES: Paintings by Julio Larraz By Edward J. Sullivan

My association with Julio Larraz and his intriguing, always thought-provoking art began in the late 1980s. While working on a monograph on his art (Julio Larraz, New York: Hudson Hills Press, 1989), I spent considerable time with the artist in the homes he then had in Nyack, NY, and Miami. My visits to these places were crucial for understanding the stimuli from the natural world that constantly contributed to the aesthetic of Larraz. The more subdued light sources of the Northeast seemed to lend a meditative, sober quality to his compositions, while the Caribbean light of South Florida permeated every aspect of his palette in other compositions. Indeed, the pervasiveness of tropical light that literally obliterates many tones and hues, casting an aura of whiteness that in itself assumes the proportions of a protagonist in many of his compositions, has become a hallmark of the work of Julio Larraz. Nonetheless, I would be uncomfortable with promoting a North/South (New York/Miami) binary to explain the sensibility of this artist to light, atmosphere, and color. He has traveled extensively and, like all individuals with a heightened sensibility to places, sensations, air, and atmosphere, Larraz has internalized the specificities of the locations he has experienced. Italy has been another locus of artistic activity for Larraz over the years, and the umber tones of Tuscan architecture, the medieval structures that dot the hill towns around Florence, and the muted greens of the cypress trees of central Italy all appear at various times in his compositionsâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;albeit in a way that creates neither a specific reference to an individual venue nor a romantic postcard-like image. In fact, Larraz has always struck me as an artist who is highly resistant to anything approaching the picturesque. An air of suppressed skepticism (sometimes pronounced, sometimes muted) or an underlying note of caricature or parody adds a mystique of contrariness to much of his art. Thereâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s a resistance to any expectation of facile or pleasing images. In fact, Larrazâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s paintings are never beautiful in a conventional sense. They are always multilayered, and they require careful deciphering and thoughtful viewing, which ultimately rewards the beholder in ways that may not have been expected.

I entitled this essay “Tangible Ambiguities” because of the inescapable multitude of meanings embodied in an art form that relies on the use of suggestion in a realist vocabulary. Everything in a Larraz painting is believable—in some way. Its elements are always tangible, in so far as one can imagine their existence within the spectrum of lived experience. At the same time, everything is in flux, is ambiguous, and does not seem to represent what it purports to define on the surface. One of the sources of Larraz’s sense of ambiguity, as well as the sometimes-mordant character of his critical-satirical visual statements (especially in paintings that contain obvious or covert references to political events or people who have molded public opinion) is his early career as a caricaturist. As a young artist in New York, Larraz followed in the footsteps of artists steeped in the hallowed tradition of political satire. From the work of James Gillray and Francisco Goya in eighteenth century Britain and Spain, to Honoré Daumier and Thomas Nast in nineteenth century France and the United States, to George Grosz in twentieth century Germany, the work of Larraz, while not engaging in direct political commentary, displays distinguished roots in the annals of socially engaged art history. (Larraz’s own family history plays deeply into this as well; his father was a distinguished newspaper publisher in Havana). At times, the figures referenced in Larraz’s art bear a certain resemblance to the protagonists of the revolution in Cuba. Older men with beards have been cited as “looking like Fidel Castro.” While this may be true in an oblique way, the assertion of direct relationships with Cuba or Cuban historical figures buys into a stereotype that can sometimes overshadow Larraz’s art and distort its uniqueness and originality. In my early writing on the artist, I was interested in his links to Cuba. But I attempted to balance these references in my 1989 book with other, more trenchant discussions of his place in a wider art historical panorama. I have since become even less convinced of the significance of these supposed connections to Cuban pictorial traditions. Anyone with a modicum of knowledge of the history of modern Cuban painting, from the 1920s (the era of the first Vanguard generation) through the art of extraordinary figures like Wifredo Lam or Amelia Peláez, active in the 1930s through the ’70s, and into the era of contemporaneity and experimentation within the revolutionary era that was ushered in by the famous 1981 exhibition in Havana known as “Volumen Uno” will be hard-pressed to gauge any direct or even incidental affiliation with forms of Cuban art. Larraz’s early training with the visual satirists David Levine and Burt Silverman (among others) in New York (where he moved not long after arriving in Miami with his family in 1964) situated him squarely within the realm of American political humorists and cartoonists like Saul Steinberg. Larraz quickly moved beyond this mode of expression, but even his most lushly lyrical and coloristically rich paintings carry hints of this early preoccupation.

The present exhibition at Miles McEnery Gallery presents an opulent expanse of imagery representative of Larraz’s recent production. His paintings of 2015 to the present are thoroughly coherent within the spectrum of his development from the late ’60s to now. Indeed, considering my remark about the artist’s potential for social commentary, we observe a continued strength of purpose in some of the works exhibited here. Casabianca Maritime Power (2018), for instance, is a perfect amalgam of the artist’s subtle use of ambiguous figures (are we standing before the Colossus of Rhodes or a similar gigantic monumental sculpture?) with a thoroughly ironic comment about naval might. The artist implicitly asks: “Who owns power, and what does sovereignty mean?” A ship with no sails appears to glide over a dry sea of coral or some other coral-colored ground, forming a seaside idyll with thoroughly impossible details. Throughout his career, Julio Larraz has diversified the size and weight of elements within his canvases. Mars and Friends (2015) is a paradoxical picture. On one hand, it witnesses his expertise in and devotion to the still life tradition (and in this sense I detect a particular reverence for the Spanish still life tradition, as in the works of Juan Sánchez Cotán or Juan van der Hamen, the most distinguished members of a very long list of illustrious Spanish Golden Age practitioners of the bodegón). At the same time, however, this is a destabilizing image in the best Larraz manner. Playing with dimensions and the relationships (in weight and color) of the elements (two blueberries and a pomegranate set upon an ambiguous space), he throws the viewer off balance in an unexpected and dizzyingly playful, but also very serious, way. We are reminded, for instance, of the experiments with spatial disparities and disjunctions employed by René Magritte in some of his canvases that nominally use an almost photorealist technique to disorient the viewer with scenes of objects of wildly varying sizes and spatial relationships. Julio Larraz is, above all, an artist with an affinity for marine imagery. Boats, traveling over bodies of water, and aqueous situations are all integral parts of his repertory. In the current exhibition, several captivating works return to this constant theme within his repertory of images. Swords into Plowshares (2015) plays with the notion expressed by the prophet Isaiah that all things dangerous and warlike can be transformed into peaceful tools. Yet this painting presents a characteristic paradox. We see a portion of a boat (a pleasure craft) moored on a shore. There are no people at the scene. Instead, the vessel carries large containers of floral elements: flowers and plants. Here again, we are reminded of a covert message that may have had its birth as a political statement, but when the artist began to formulate his strategy for painting, it became an enigmatic scene that could easily be interpreted as a neo-romantic view of a tranquil river scene. Yet the title remains…and our doubts persist.

Au Revoir (2016) brings into perspective another challenge in interpreting the art of Julio Larraz. Strictly realistic drawing can be combined with bizarre juxtapositions of form, as in this painting, which depicts a boat careening through a hole in the firmament. Two worlds seem to collide, and we are thoroughly confounded. Are we observing a Lewis Carroll-like vision from a distorted looking glass? Is there justification here for speaking of Larraz’s purported relationship to Surrealism? Again, I believe it is far too facile to simply invoke a mode of visualization that is more properly associated with European artists of the 1920s and ’30s. Nor do I wish to suggest clichéd relationships between Larraz and the so-called “marvelous realism” of Latin American authors or painters. This, like many of Larraz’s pictures that show a world upside down, is a testimony to his own imagination and his own questioning of our continually more skewed and confusing reality (or unreality) in the second decade of the twenty-first century. Finally, I could not help but associate certain of the new canvases with Julio Larraz’s continual and relentlessly productive dialogue with American painting of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. At the risk of sounding pedantically art historical, I have for some thirty years been intrigued by the way Larraz converses with some of the principal figures within the flow of North American art history. There are many such examples, and a few of them are in the current exhibition. I mentioned that one of my earliest encounters with the artist was at his home north of Manhattan, which was near the house and studio of Edward Hopper. Hopper has continued to be an artistic touchstone in Larraz’s aesthetic consciousness. The Beginning of a New Morning (2014) makes reference to, while definitively transforming Hopper’s iconic 1925 painting House by the Railroad (now in New York’s Museum of Modern Art). While Larraz completely transforms the color sensibility, turning the Victorian structure into an enigmatic, almost cardboard-like stage set, behind which we can see the sea, we nonetheless sense the residue of his deep admiration for one of the most sensitive portrayers of early twentieth century American loneliness and modern disaffection. On a related note, I find that Larraz’s Forest Murmurs (2015) has an even richer and more multilayered series of art historical and musical references. First, there is the title. “Forest Murmurs” is arguably the most

Hopper, Edward (1882-1967). Art © Heirs of Josephine Hopper / Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY. House by the Railroad, 1925, Oil on canvas, 24 x 29 inches (61 x 73.7 cm). Given anonymously. The Museum of Modern Art. Digital Image © The Museum of Modern Art / Licensed by SCALA / Art Resource, NY

from the top Bingham, George Caleb (1811-1879). The Jolly Flatboatmen, 1877-78, Oil on canvas, 26 1/16 x 36 3/8 inches (66 x 92.4 cm). Daniel J. Terra Acquisition Endowment Fund, 1992.15. Terra Foundation for American Art. Photo Credit: Terra Foundation for American Art, Chicago / Art Resource, NY Bingham, George Caleb (1811-1879). Fur Traders Descending the Missouri, 1845, Oil on canvas, 29 x 36 1/2 inches (73.7 x 92.7 cm). Morris K. Jesup Fund, 1933 (33.61). The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Image copyright © The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Image source: Art Resource, NY

famous extract from Richard Wagner’s monumental operatic tetralogy Der Ring des Nibelungen. The “Murmurs” derives from Act 2 of the third opera of the cycle, Siegfried, which premiered at Wagner’s own theater in Bayreuth in 1876. Continuing along this vein of commentary in a historical manner, we also note in this same painting covert visual homages to two of North America’s most beloved painters of nineteenth century scenes of frontier life: William Sydney Mount and George Caleb Bingham. This composition differs considerably from two of Bingham’s masterpieces The Jolly Flatboatmen (1877-78) and Fur Traders Descending the Missouri (1845), both idealized views of the “taming of the West” (and both problematic in their dealings with race). But Larraz, an acute student of art historical traditions, may (or may not) have had these works in mind when creating his own splendid image. An incongruous concatenation of figures, including an African-American woman with a lion resting on a boat gliding down a body of water, as well as a tuxedo-clad gunman and several attendants guiding the boat into infinity. This is a prime example of Larraz capitalizing upon his knowledge of the art of the past to create puzzles that will tease and confuse, as well as delight, the sensibilities of a contemporary audience that yearns for answers but is destined to live with n tangible ambiguities.

Edward J. Sullivan is a professor of modern Latin American and Caribbean art history at New York University. He is the author of more than thirty books and exhibition catalogues in the areas of the Spanish and Portuguese-speaking Americas.

The Beginning of a New Morning

Bahia de Las Animas

Forest Murmurs

The King

Mars and Friends

Swords into Plowshares

Au Revoir

Betelgeuse, Winter Prince

The Collector

El SueĂąo de la Razon

Enlace a Contrapunto

The Innisfail on the Santa Ana

Not a Day for Flying

“Two Poets for a Walk” Punta Agravox, Cumae

UFO

An American Poet Lives Here

The Flight of Daedalus

The Letter

Near Miss

Ognissanti

Sara and Gerald Entering Casabianca Through the Sea of Flowers

The Wine Dark Sea

Casabianca Maritime Power

On Duty

Too Far to Know

Plate List

page 9 The Beginning of a New Morning, 2014 Oil on canvas 60 x 72 inches 152.4 x 182.9 cm

page 19 Swords into Plowshares, 2015 Oil on canvas 60 x 72 inches 152.4 x 182.9 cm

page 27 El SueĂąo de la Razon, 2016 Oil on canvas 72 x 98 inches 182.9 x 248.9 cm

page 11 Bahia de Las Animas, 2015 Oil on canvas 60 x 72 inches 152.4 x 182.9 cm

page 21 Au Revoir, 2016 Oil on canvas 60 x 72 inches 152.4 x 182.9 cm

page 29 Enlace a Contrapunto, 2016 Oil on canvas 39 1/2 x 51 1/2 inches 100.3 x 130.8 cm

page 13 Forest Murmurs, 2015 Oil on canvas 60 x 78 inches 152.4 x 198.1 cm

page 23 Betelgeuse, Winter Prince, 2016 Oil on canvas 72 x 60 inches 182.9 x 152.4 cm

page 31 The Innisfail on the Santa Ana, 2016 Oil on canvas 60 x 72 inches 152.4 x 182.9 cm

page 15 The King, 2015 Oil on canvas 84 x 78 inches 213.4 x 198.1 cm

page 25 The Collector, 2016 Oil on canvas 72 x 60 inches 182.9 x 152.4 cm

page 33 Not a Day for Flying, 2016 Oil on canvas 60 x 72 inches 152.4 x 182.9 cm

page 17 Mars and Friends, 2015 Oil on canvas 60 x 72 inches 152.4 x 182.9 cm

page 35 “Two Poets for a Walk” Punta Agravox, Cumae, 2016 Oil on canvas 60 x 72 inches 152.4 x 182.9 cm page 37 UFO, 2016 Oil on canvas 72 x 96 inches 182.9 x 243.8 cm page 39 An American Poet Lives Here, 2017 Oil on canvas 60 x 72 inches 152.4 x 182.9 cm page 41 The Flight of Daedalus, 2017 Oil on canvas 60 x 72 inches 152.4 x 182.9 cm

page 43 The Letter, 2017 Oil on canvas 60 x 72 inches 152.4 x 182.9 cm page 45 Near Miss, 2017 Oil on canvas 71 x 81 inches 180.3 x 205.7 cm page 47 Ognissanti, 2017 Oil on canvas 60 x 72 inches 152.4 x 182.9 cm page 49 Sara and Gerald Entering Casabianca Through the Sea of Flowers, 2017 Oil on canvas 60 x 72 inches 152.4 x 182.9 cm

page 51 The Wine Dark Sea, 2017 Oil on canvas 60 x 60 inches 152.4 x 152.4 cm page 53 Casabianca Maritime Power, 2018 Oil on canvas 84 x 96 inches 213.4 x 243.8 cm page 55 On Duty, 2018 Oil on canvas 60 x 72 inches 152.4 x 182.9 cm page 57 Too Far to Know, 2018 Oil on canvas 60 x 72 inches 152.4 x 182.9 cm

Published on the occasion of the exhibition

JULIO LARRAZ 12 July – 17 August 2018

Photography of the art by Christopher Burke Studios, New York, NY Studio image by Silvia Ros, Miami, FL Catalogue designed by HHA Design, New York, NY ISBN: 978-0-9994871-7-4 Cover: Enlace a Contrapunto (detail), 2016

MILES M c E N E RY G A L L E RY