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Lot Essay
'What the Civil War gave me was cause to explore what I really wanted to do, which was to make a painting where the making of the painting destroys the story the painting is trying to tell. Depicting war got me to the point where I could destroy its depiction' (B. Furnas quoted in C. Dunham, 'Interview with Barnaby Furnas', pp. 144-151, S.M. Momin & C. Dunham (eds.), Barnaby Furnas, New York 2009, p. 145).
Covering the vast surface of Barnaby Furnas's Duel (July 4th) is an orgiastic mass of colour, darting up, down and across, sometimes arcing over the dark background, lending the painting an overpowering sense of dynamism. This epic picture, which towers over three metres tall, was painted in 2004 and has featured in several of Furnas's most important exhibitions in the United Kingdom. At the centre of the painting, on either side of the orb-like explosions of yellow, are two elongated figures depicted with top-hats, facing each other with guns, carrying out the duel of the title. These appear to be the historic abolitionist president of the United States, Abraham Lincoln, while the white-bearded figure seems to be John Brown, whose own sometimes violent pro-abolition campaign and subsequent execution after capture by General Robert E. Lee has been considered the starting spark of the American Civil War. Here, the two legendary abolitionists are shown as vast, striated figures, pointing revolvers at each other amidst an incendiary battle, with bullets strafing past, explosions bursting over head, and blood-like red spattered over the surface. Duel (July 4th) is a riot of colour that, while engaging the eye and pulling our attention hither and thither across the surface, also explores Furnas's explorations of history, the history of art and the nature of representation. In it, a dystopian view of American history is presented with a video-game aesthetic that at the same time clearly references various avant gardes from the Twentieth Century.
With the palpable gesturality of Duel (July 4th), Furnas' clearest reference is doubtless Jackson Pollock. Furnas has presented the streaking lines of the bullets and the gushing of the red paint as a new take on the legacy of the so-called 'drip paintings' of the Abstract Expressionist. Crucially, though, Furnas has dismantled the abstraction of Pollock's paintings: in Duel (July 4th), the Action Painter's drips and spills have become streaking bullets, fireworks and blood. With the red paint in particular, Furnas often uses syringes to fire it at the canvas, deliberately imitating the spray of blood: 'a Jackson Pollock splatter becomes a splatter of blood if you use red paint to do it' (B. Furnas quoted in C. Dunham, 'Interview with Barnaby Furnas', pp. 144-51, S.M. Momin & C. Dunham (eds.), Barnaby Furnas, New York 2009, p. 147). This is all the more the case through his use of a syringe. In this way, Furnas removes himself from the canvas, just as Pollock did, yet the resulting marks crystallise and record his own chance-driven yet figurative and associative gesture: the action becomes the image.
In Duel (July 4th), the tension between abstraction and figuration is also attacked from the opposite angle. The implied violence of the exaggerated movements and motions that were required in order to cover this monumental surface with this incandescent and kaleidoscopic range of marks echoes the energy of the Action Painters; meanwhile, that same energy, the vigorous application of paint, results in a haze of colour and motion that threatens to obscure and dissolve the pseudohistorical narrative at its core.
Duel (July 4th) simultaneously encapsulates facets of the sometimes heated dialogue between figuration and abstraction that challenged so many great artists throughout the Twentieth Century, not least in post-war New York. It is at once a battleground, using the arsenal of abstraction in order to create figurative effects, and a palimpsest containing references to many other artists. In particular, the fact that Duel (July 4th) features a simultaneity, with many actions depicted as happening at once, rather than in a sequential format, echoes the appearance of the Italian Futurists who made such an impact with their revolutionary depictions of movement at the beginning of the Twentieth Century. Their attempts to capture movement in paintings has been echoed by Furnas in the zig-zagging lines that cross so much of Duel (July 4th); at the same time, those lines deliberatley recall the games that Furnas himself played as a child, as have so many other people, when he would draw soldiers and then fire the pencil across the paper in order to imitate the shots being fired in conflict. This element of play remains vital in Duel (July 4th), which after all is presented as a sensory overload, yet an ecstatic one, overfilled with visual excess, demanding our continued attention and appreciation.
Covering the vast surface of Barnaby Furnas's Duel (July 4th) is an orgiastic mass of colour, darting up, down and across, sometimes arcing over the dark background, lending the painting an overpowering sense of dynamism. This epic picture, which towers over three metres tall, was painted in 2004 and has featured in several of Furnas's most important exhibitions in the United Kingdom. At the centre of the painting, on either side of the orb-like explosions of yellow, are two elongated figures depicted with top-hats, facing each other with guns, carrying out the duel of the title. These appear to be the historic abolitionist president of the United States, Abraham Lincoln, while the white-bearded figure seems to be John Brown, whose own sometimes violent pro-abolition campaign and subsequent execution after capture by General Robert E. Lee has been considered the starting spark of the American Civil War. Here, the two legendary abolitionists are shown as vast, striated figures, pointing revolvers at each other amidst an incendiary battle, with bullets strafing past, explosions bursting over head, and blood-like red spattered over the surface. Duel (July 4th) is a riot of colour that, while engaging the eye and pulling our attention hither and thither across the surface, also explores Furnas's explorations of history, the history of art and the nature of representation. In it, a dystopian view of American history is presented with a video-game aesthetic that at the same time clearly references various avant gardes from the Twentieth Century.
With the palpable gesturality of Duel (July 4th), Furnas' clearest reference is doubtless Jackson Pollock. Furnas has presented the streaking lines of the bullets and the gushing of the red paint as a new take on the legacy of the so-called 'drip paintings' of the Abstract Expressionist. Crucially, though, Furnas has dismantled the abstraction of Pollock's paintings: in Duel (July 4th), the Action Painter's drips and spills have become streaking bullets, fireworks and blood. With the red paint in particular, Furnas often uses syringes to fire it at the canvas, deliberately imitating the spray of blood: 'a Jackson Pollock splatter becomes a splatter of blood if you use red paint to do it' (B. Furnas quoted in C. Dunham, 'Interview with Barnaby Furnas', pp. 144-51, S.M. Momin & C. Dunham (eds.), Barnaby Furnas, New York 2009, p. 147). This is all the more the case through his use of a syringe. In this way, Furnas removes himself from the canvas, just as Pollock did, yet the resulting marks crystallise and record his own chance-driven yet figurative and associative gesture: the action becomes the image.
In Duel (July 4th), the tension between abstraction and figuration is also attacked from the opposite angle. The implied violence of the exaggerated movements and motions that were required in order to cover this monumental surface with this incandescent and kaleidoscopic range of marks echoes the energy of the Action Painters; meanwhile, that same energy, the vigorous application of paint, results in a haze of colour and motion that threatens to obscure and dissolve the pseudohistorical narrative at its core.
Duel (July 4th) simultaneously encapsulates facets of the sometimes heated dialogue between figuration and abstraction that challenged so many great artists throughout the Twentieth Century, not least in post-war New York. It is at once a battleground, using the arsenal of abstraction in order to create figurative effects, and a palimpsest containing references to many other artists. In particular, the fact that Duel (July 4th) features a simultaneity, with many actions depicted as happening at once, rather than in a sequential format, echoes the appearance of the Italian Futurists who made such an impact with their revolutionary depictions of movement at the beginning of the Twentieth Century. Their attempts to capture movement in paintings has been echoed by Furnas in the zig-zagging lines that cross so much of Duel (July 4th); at the same time, those lines deliberatley recall the games that Furnas himself played as a child, as have so many other people, when he would draw soldiers and then fire the pencil across the paper in order to imitate the shots being fired in conflict. This element of play remains vital in Duel (July 4th), which after all is presented as a sensory overload, yet an ecstatic one, overfilled with visual excess, demanding our continued attention and appreciation.