Richard Stipl

Richard StiplHumors

Richard Stipl PandemoniumRichard Stipl’s enormous, pink-black painting, Plato’s Revenge looks like Pandemonium to me.

Pandemonium sounds like a base metal or some end-of-the-spectrum element, but the name actually turns up frequently in pop cultural contexts (itcan be found in at least three video games, for example, and is the capital city of Hell in the Hellboy comic book realm). In its first incarnation,however, Pandemonium was the name given by the 17th century English poet, John Milton, in his Paradise Lost (1667), to the grand palace in Hellbuilt by the rebel angel, Lucifer, after he is thrown out of Heaven. More Pandemonium in a moment.

This present exhibition, at the Christopher Cutts Gallery—in which the “melancholic,” Pandemonium-esque painting is one of the highlights—istitled Humors, and is presumably, therefore, informed by the Czech-born, Toronto-based sculptor/painter’s more than casual understanding of thehistory and employment of the concept of the four humours—the choleric, the melancholic, the sanguine and the phlegmatic.

From the era of the Greeks, and continuing right on through medieval, renaissance and Elizabethan times (Shakespeare was a committed humour-ist)—and even fetching up in the theoretical musings of Austrian philosopher and social theorist, Rudolph Steiner (1861-1925)—there arose thispowerfully pervasive idea that the proportioning and interaction within us of different bodily substances (blood, yellow bile, phlegm and black bile),and the ascent to the brain of the “vapours” these gave off, could account for not only an individual’s physical characteristics (corpulence, thinness,red-headedness, etc.) but could also provide insight, as well, into the nature of that individual’s temperament (amorousness, generosity, vengefulness,sluggishness, etc.).

There is little way of knowing how stringently Stipl has had recourse to this established theory of the humours in the procedural and emotionalconducting of these recent epically scaled paintings (though during his long sojourn in hallucinatingly “realistic” sculpture, he has explored the terrainof the human personality in astonishing detail). He is a sufficiently virtuoso painter, that you are likely to feel the emotional (and indeed almostphysiological) payload of his humour-imbued paintings long before you have a chance to analyze them in a more level-headed way.

At the same time—given the operatic theatricality of these astonishing works (which can be so alarmingly transporting), it is necessary to be alert tothe possibility of Stipl’s having taken a rather wickedly objective stance in making them (he talks provocatively, for example, about “the kitsch ofpathos” lurking within them). How ironic is Stipl’s epic visionary sweep? Possibly very. An ironic stance, after all, would keep him wholesomelypost-modern. But Pandemonium nags at me.

Maker of high-style kitsch or not, Richard Stipl appears to have easy recourse, as well, to the workings of aesthetic sublimity. His roots, which maywell be in modernism, also seem to germinate and thrive—and profoundly so—in the works of certain visionary painters of the early 19th centurysuch as the English artists John Martin (1789-1854), Henry Fuseli (1741-1825), and even poet/etcher William Blake (1757-1827). He seems related,as well, to the late 19th century American Luminists—painters like Thomas Cole and Frederick Church. Martin’s Pandemonium from 1824 isreminiscent, in the grandeur of its concept and even in its lurid lighting, to Stipl’s Plato’s Revenge, while, for example, the swooping maelstroms oflight rolling through Martin’s Satan on the Burning Lake (1825), provide an eerie echo of the structure and bravura treatment of interior light in Stipl’sOn the Enlightenment of Civic Duties.

Did I point out, as well, how internal, how organ-like, how pinkly visceral, how vaginal, how womb-like, how full of wormhole-like passages to theotherness of (interior) experience Stipl’s paintings are? No? Well, of course, that’s another whole essay.

Gary Michael Dault, Napanee, Ontario, April 27, 2010 Yes No Maybe Never, 2009

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Humors, South Gallery Installation, Christopher Cutts Gallery, April 9th - May 5th, 2010Humors, North Gallery Installation, Christopher, Cutts Gallery, April 9th - May 5th, 2010

On the Enlightenment of Civic Duties, 2010, oil on linen, 86.25" x 118" (219cm x 299.7cm)Songs of Innocence, 2010, oil on linen, 86.5" x118" (219.7cm x 299.7cm)

Plato’s Revenge, 2009, oil on canvas, 86" x 118.25" (218cm x 300cm)Front cover: Yes No Maybe Never (detail), 2009, oil on canvas, 115" x 83.5" (292cm x 212cm)

Back cover: Closely Watched Strains, 2010, clay, oil and hair, 8" x 7" x 4" (20.3cm x 17.8cm x 10.2cm)

Christopher Cutts Gallery21 Morrow Avenue

Toronto, ON, Canada M6R 2H9Tel. 416 532-5566

cuttsgallery.com

Copyright 2010Christopher Cutts Gallery

Printing: C.J. Graphics Inc.All rights reserved

Photography: Isaac Applebaum

Richard Stipl, HumorsISBN 978-0-9783439-6-5