LESLIE LASKEY WORK
LESLIE LASKEY: WORK March 14 - April 19, 2008 Bruno David Gallery 3721 Washington Boulevard Saint Louis, Missouri, U.S.A.
This catalogue was published concurrently with the exhibition Leslie Laskey: Work. Editor: John McLoyd Design: Sage Anna David Printed in USA G K All works courtesy of Bruno David Gallery and Leslie Laskey Artwork photos by The Columbia Foundation and Shawn Burkard Cover Image: Leslie Laskey, Hinge III, 2008 Acrylic on board, 47 x 57 inches (119.38 x 144.78 cm) Š 2008 Bruno David Gallery and Leslie Laskey
Contents:
Essay by Robert W. Duffy Foreword Checklist of the exhibition and Images Biography
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A TESTAMENT OF BLOSSOMS AND BONES Essay by Robert W. Duffy
A sure tip-off that the man is audacious is that big, bold, in-your-face L with the circle around it. Were this Wyoming rather than Washington Boulevard, were Herefords roaming the Grandel range rather than gallery-goers, theater patrons and music lovers, were this a time before marketeers gained control of the concept, that majuscule L would be called a brand. And the expectation would be, once such a brand were burnt into our consciousnesses, that that big loopy L would be emphatic proof that Leslie J. Laskey made this thing, whatever it might be, and by marking it so indelibly, proclaimed to be good. Who knows where such audacity came from? Maybe it was war. Laskey enlisted the day after Pearl Harbor, and came ashore into occupied France in the Allied invasion of the Normandy beaches on June 6,1944. Fifty years later, he told veteran newsman Harry Levins of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, “My combat engineer unit landed at Omaha Beach early on D-Day, but my most vivid memory is of a few nights later. We were moving inland through an orchard, and the apple trees were in full and fragrant blossom. We stopped near a church that the Germans had used until they were bombed out. Now the Germans were bombing back, and the bombs were literally raising the dead from the churchyard cemetery. I still remember it as The Night Of Blossoms And Bones.�
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There are various ways of coping with the experience of having almost been shot dead on a beach or in the midst of the disinterred dead. One response is perpetual fear. Another is ineradicable audacity. But perhaps it was not this brush with morbidity but with Weimar-era utopianism, and a sense that art has ineluctable, redemptive power, the power to remove us to places of greater meaning and a more thoroughgoing humanity. These qualities could have been instilled in him when he worked with the genius L谩szl贸 Moholy-Nagy, who was no slacker in the department of courage and conviction. In the 1930s, Moholy-Nagy carried the Bauhaus banner from Berlin to the south side of Chicago, and associated himself with what is now the Illinois Institute of Technology. Laskey was a student at I.I.T. and the spirit of the Bauhaus was very much alive in his day. It could have been bits and pieces of all of this, intricately wired into the mind of a man possessed of a keen sense of self, one whose DNA disposes him toward fearlessness, a man from whom both negative criticism and approbation roll like water off of the back of a duck. All this toughness of intellect, all this emotional and psychological complexity and assurance, all this muscle, is in the work, and in the 40 or so years I have known him, it always has been. I came in contact with Laskey during my student days at Washington University in the 1960s, and recall hearing the stories about his being difficult and scary and brilliant and uncompromising and so on and so forth.
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I regarded him first from afar with a sense of awe. Later the dynamics of his image making and the web of visual connections he wove into the work, whatever it might be, captivated me. Later I was invited into the Wunderkammer that is his house, and the sensations veered off from awe toward enchantment. But being physically present in Laskey’s private world, while intoxicating, was not a prerequisite to appreciating his art. If you were willing to take the time to look hard and to permit the transportive process to occur, you found yourself in leaping from Japan into the magical world of Paul Klee or into shadowy places constructed by the likes of the modernist Merlin Marcel Duchamp. Although this laundry list of influences may summon up dismissives such as derivative or inconsistent, in Laskey’s work it suggests exploration, investigation and absorption, coupled with an allegiance to modernism and its persuasive abstractionist traditions. While largely non-representational, it grows directly from roots set deep in the natural world and history. Soil, vegetation, the horizon, light, shadow, inky darkness, symbols, colors in concert and in conflict, clues, geometries, all are there together in various conspiracies.
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The prints, drawings, sculptures, lighting fixtures; the juxtapositions of objects; the arrangements of spaces and volumes; the understanding of materials; the surprises and the follies; the wit and the irony -- all inform and elevate this work. All art is infested with enigma or mystery. If one can say with any conviction he or she knows what a work of art “is,” that’s a sure sign it isn’t much good. Every critic, philosopher, artist or poet from Plato forward has understood that the more accurate the representation the less consequential it is. There has to be more, and the more resides in the artist’s ability to invest the work with the ineffable. That is what separates them from the great unwashed, untalented us. “The imagination here is the residence of truth,” Sir Joshua Reynolds said. And so it goes with Laskey. If ever a man dwelled in such a residence, it is he. How fortunate we are he furnished it with shapes and forms and shadows and colors in eternal orbits and in perpetual motion, and marked it audaciously with such a lyrical letter, an L apparently without end. —Robert W. Duffy, Saint Louis. Missouri (2008) St. Louisan Robert W. Duffy is associate editor of the Saint Louis Platform and former cultural news editor of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. This essay is one in a series of introductions to the gallery’s exhibitions written by fellow gallery artists and friends.
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Forword by Bruno L. David Bruno David Gallery is pleased to exhibit WORK in three parts by Leslie Laskey. PORTRAITS (Front Room), HINGE (Main Gallery), WOODLAND SKETCHES (Project Room). In the New Media Room, an excerpt of a documentary directed by David and Lulu Wild currently on production shows Leslie Laskey working in his studio. In the hit-or-miss world of contemporary art, longevity in itself is a virtue. Mr. Leslie Laskey’s lengthy biography can at times read like the artistic history of the 20th and 21st century. Now in his eighties, Laskey remains a working artist—and a central and engaging one at that. Longevity is one thing, but combine that with integrity and a drive to continually advance contemporary art and you have an (St. Louis) artist who has long been in our midst and deserves our admiration. Leslie Laskey demonstrates again that working in the studio is crucial to a creative mind and longevity. His new work explores and engages us in images found in things and places. Showing us how they work, finding sensuality in surfaces and rich mystifying colors. Laskey never separates his art from its viewer as he always engages them in the process of his work. Born in Michigan in 1921, Laskey served in a combat unit in Europe and was among the troops that landed on Omaha Beach early on 1944 D-Day. Leslie Laskey is Professor Emeritus of Architecture at Washington University in St. Louis. Laskey studied at the Institute of Design in Chicago (now the Illinois Institute of Technology) with founder and American Bauhaus pioneer Lászlò Moholy-Nagy and Indiana University. He currently divides his time between St. Louis and Manistee, Michigan. This is his second solo exhibition with the Bruno David gallery.
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Checklist of the exhibition and Images
Hinge III, 2008 Acrylic on board, 47 x 57 inches (119.38 x 144.78 cm) 10
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Hinge I, 2008 Acrylic on board, 17-1/2 x 23-1/2 inches (44.45 x 59.69 cm) Private Collection 12
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Hinge 11, 2008 Acrylic on board, 48 x 66 inches (121.92 x 167.64 cm) Private Collection 14
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Hinge (Ceromonies), 2008 Acrylic on board, 17-1/2 x 19 inches (44.45 x 48.26 cm) Private Collection 16
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Hinge II, 2008 Acrylic on board, 20 x 24-1/2 inches (50.80 x 62.23 cm) 18
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Hinge IV, 2008 Acrylic on board, 48 x 57 inches (121.92 x 144.78 cm) Private Collection 20
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Hinge V, 2008 Acrylic on panel, 52-1/2 x 47 inches (133.35 x 119.38 cm) Private Collection 22
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Wait! (Woodland Sketches Series), 2008 Acrylic on paper, 44 x 30 inches (111.76 x 76.20 cm)
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Dolls II (Portrait Series), 2008 Acrylic on paper, 44 x 32 inches (111.76 x 81.28 cm)
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Dolls III (Portrait Series), 2008 Pigment-based print on fine art paper, 44 x 32 inches (111.76 x 81.28 cm)
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Dolls IV (Portrait Series), 2008 Pigment-based print on fine art paper, 32 x 44 inches (81.28 x 111.76 cm) 30
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Dolls V (Portrait Series), 2008 Pigment-based print on fine art paper, 32 x 44 inches (81.28 x 111.76 cm)
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Tomte (Woodland Sketches Series), 2008 Monotype on paper, 26 x 34 inches (66 x 86.40 cm) Private Collection 34
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Once There Were Demons (Woodland Sketches Series), 2008 Mixed media on paper, 44 x 30 inches (111.76 x 76.20 cm)
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LESLIE LASKEY American, b. 1921 Lives and works in St. Louis, Missouri and Manistee, Michigan EDUCATION Institute of Design (Illinois Institute of Technology), Chicago, IL ONE-PERSON EXHIBITIONS 2008 2006 2005 1995 1987 1985 1984 1980 1979 1978
Bruno David Gallery, Leslie Laskey: Work, March 14-April 19, St. Louis, MO Sheldon Art Galleries, Leslie Laskey, September 29, 2006 – January 27, 2007, St. Louis, MO Ellen Curlee Gallery, Leslie Laskey: Lilium, September 29 – October 21, 2006 Bruno David Gallery, Leslie Laskey: Realms, May 5-27, St. Louis, MO St. Louis Community College Gallery (Forest Park), Journeys, Territories, Adventures, February 7-25, St. Louis, MO Cherokee Gallery, Doll (Portraits), St. Louis, MO St. Louis Community College Gallery (Forest Park), Opus 1995 Variations, September, St. Louis, MO Bixby Gallery, Leslie Laskey Retrospective, St. Louis, MO Elliot Smith Gallery, Leslie Laskey, St. Louis, MO North Carolina State Museum, Leslie Laskey, Raleigh, NC Elliot Smith Gallery, On Paper: Leslie Laskey, St. Louis, MO Martin Schweig Gallery, Leslie Laskey, St. Louis, MO Talisman Gallery, Leslie Laskey, St. Louis, MO St. George’s Gallery, Leslie Laskey, London, England
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SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS 2007 2006 2005 2004 2003 2002 2001 1999 1987 1986 1983
Rivulet, Bruno David Gallery (Project Room), St. Louis, Missouri. ArtsDesire, Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis, St. Louis, Missouri. Archeologie, Bruno David Gallery (New Media Room), St. Louis, Missouri. Overview, Bruno David Gallery, St. Louis, MO Inaugural Exhibition, Bruno David Gallery, St. Louis, MO RITUAL, Zeitgeist Gallery, Nashville, TN Mentors: Inspiration, Influence, Expertise, St. Louis Artists’ Guild Gallery, St. Louis, MO Redux, The Columbia, (with Frank Schwaiger), St. Louis, MO The Bauhaus Legacy in St. Louis: Woodcuts, (with Werner Drewes, Leslie Laskey, and Jim Harris, Curated by Olivia Lahs-Gonzales, Sheldon Art Galleries, St. Louis, MO Duet, The Columbia, (With Frank Schwaiger), St. Louis, MO New Works, The Columbia, (With Frank Schwaiger), St. Louis, MO Directions ‘88, Elliot Smith Gallery St. Louis, MO House, Garden: A Sense of Place, Elliot Smith Gallery St. Louis, MO Directions ‘87, Elliot Smith Gallery St. Louis, MO Group Exhibition, Print Club Gallery, Philadelphia, PA
BIBLIOGRAPHY Duffy, Robert Gay, Malcolm Friswold, Paul . Drury Dubinsky, Yvette. Duffy, Robert Miller, Rob.
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“A Testament of Blossoms and Bones.” Bruno David Gallery Publication (catalog) March 2008 “Everything’s Coming Up Laskey.” Riverfront Times, September 28, 2006 “Coin of the Realms.” Riverfront Times. p. 25, May 4, 2006. “Leslie Laskey: Realms.” Bruno David Gallery Publication, May 5, 2006. “Ars Botanica: Works by Leslie J. Laskey.” Riverfront Times, November 2006 “’Leslie Laskey: Realms” Saintlouisart, May 24, 2006
____________. Murphy, Ann ____________. Crone, Tomas. Beall, Hugh. Miller, Rob. Cooper, Ivy. Bonetti, David. Crone, Tomas. Miller, Rob. Bonetti, David. Sieloff, Alison. Bonetti, David. Murphy, Anne. Miller, Rob. Beall, Hugh. Web Griffin, William Bonetti, David. Sieloff, Alison. Bonetti, David. Murphy, Anne. ____________. Otten, Liam. Church, Amanda
“Doll face”, St. Louis Post Dispatch, April 21, 2005 “ARTful Living,” The Healthy Planet, February 2005 “Leslie Laskey”, St. Louis Post Dispatch, September 27, 2005 “Bruno David to Open on Friday”, 52nd City, October 2005 “The Bruno buzz”, West End Word, October 26, 2005 “’Over hung’ show or ‘Hung over’ critic?” Saintlouisart, November 17, 2005 “Bruno David Gallery: Inaugural Exhibition”, Riverfront Times, November 9, 2005. “Bruno David Gallery”, St. Louis Post Dispatch, November 9, 2005 “Bruno David Gallery”, 52nd City, October 2005 “Bruno David Gallery: Inaugural Exhibition”, Saintlouisart, October 25, 2005 “Bruno David Gallery: Inaugural Exhibition”, St. Louis Post Dispatch, October 20, 2005 “Grand Grand Center”, Riverfront Times, October 19, 2005 “Gallery musical chairs”, St. Louis Post Dispatch, October 1, 2005 “Art News”, The Healthy Planet, September 2005 “Bruno David Gallery: Inaugural Exhibition”, Saintlouisart, October 25, 2005 “Bruno David Gallery: Inaugural Exhibition”, Illusion Junkie, October 25, 2005. WebVideo, <http://illusionjunkie.blogspot.com/2005/10/bruno-david-inaugural-exhibition.html> “Bruno David Gallery: Inaugural Exhibition”, St. Louis Post Dispatch, October 20, 2005 “Grand Grand Center”, Riverfront Times, October 19, 2005 “Gallery musical chairs”, St. Louis Post Dispatch, October 1, 2005 “Art News”, The Healthy Planet, September 2005 “Leslie Laskey.” Riverfront Times, September 25, 2002 “Three degrees of Bauhaus”, Record, February 15, 2002 “Beautiful You.” Artnet Magazine, October 24, 2001 http://www.artnet.com/Magazine/reviews/church/church10-24-01.asp
GRANTS & AWARDS 1982 1986 1987
Rockefeller Foundation Grant (Print Making and Graphic Arts) Washington University Distinguished Faculty Award Distinguished Professor Award (Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture) Washington University Professor Emeritus 41
Untitled (Hinge Series), 2007 Inkon paper, (Private Collection)
Bruno David Gallery 3721 Washington Boulevard Saint Louis, Missouri, U.S.A. info@brunodavidgallery.com www.brunodavidgallery.com