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Lot Essay
Crashing together as waves upon a jagged cliffside, the text and visual imagery utilized in Mark Tansey’s Archive not only exemplify the artist’s penchant for theoretical and artistic intersections but also create a stunning and compelling depiction of pure human experience. Possessing an almost ethereal quality just outside of reality, Archive allows us an intimate look into the blissful relaxation of this group of beachgoers. In the midst of the stirring ocean, a lone surfer rests calmly on his board, existing in harmony with the wild, white-capped tides around him. Perhaps the surfer’s friends or simply a chance group of like-minded individuals, a small crowd of sunbathers lie strewn across the midnight blue rocks along the shore. All appearing in a state of peace and bliss, the lounging bathers and surfer seem oblivious to the harsh crashing of waves mere inches away, but for one standing figure. Hands on her hips, gazing up towards the towering sapphire cliff, Tansey’s female character watches in awe as the majestically powerful forces of the natural world collide in a soaring spectacle. Yet as she stares in her bewilderment, one might imagine her gazing on the muddled, silkscreened text of Paul De Man’s Blindness and Insight as it intermingles with the rocky facade. Not alone in her engagement with text, another bather sits curled up to her left, engrossed in a book of their own, as Tansey masterfully toys with boundaries of pictorial and literary representation.
The son of an art historian, Mark Tansey entered into his artistic career well versed in art historical and philosophical theory, a skill which he utilizes across his entire oeuvre and which is notably apparent through his incorporation of De Man’s Blindness and Insight within Archive. Though the words are scarcely visible on the canvas, layered over and across each other in order to morph into a pictorial form, the meaning behind them remains intertwined with the depiction they compose. This series of essays by De Man is regarded as one of the most influential pieces of deconstructive criticism and in it, the author argues that text and written theory alone cannot provide meaning that is fully comprehensive; that visual representations, such as the cliffs and bathers of Archive, are necessary for informing meaning. In this work then, we see Tansey combine text and imagery, interweaving the two so that one might inform the other. Amidst the roaring sea and pale sky, the few words Tansey leaves legible – “experiences,” “[m]oments of genuine…,” “destiny” – appeal to the true heart of the work: the pure and human experience of bathing by the sea, basking in the sun, floating on pastel blue waves, and the capacity of painting and literature to illuminate those.
Highlighting the capabilities of painting as a medium is a key facet of Tansey’s practice, especially during the time period of Archive’s creation. Painted in 1991, only a year after his explorations into textual representations began, Archive embodies the poststructuralist sentiments of its time, which emphasized a return to painting and figuration in the wake of decades of abstraction, minimalism, and sculpture. Not content to simply return to painting as it had been decades prior, Tansey’s work reexamines the medium and finds new footholds to continue its development. Coupling his textual elements with a unique painting process the artist is able to delve even further into what the medium could be. Beginning with thick layers of gesso covered with a surface layer of color, Tansey scrapes away at his canvases, exposing the white gesso beneath in a reductive method almost akin to sculpting. Executing this challenging practice with photo-like precision in addition to experimenting with theory and philosophy, Tansey truly breaks through to a level of painting entirely his own.
Tansey’s engagement with philosophical ideas such as De Man’s collection of essays is not the end of his incorporation of wider theories into his art. The key characters of Archive, the lounging figures basking in the sun’s warm glow, provide an essential reference to an art historical troupe that has stood the test of time: the bathers. From depictions of voyeuristic Romans such as Actaeon, who in Titian’s 16th century painting stumbles across a bathing Diana before being transformed into a deer for his leering, to the dreamy scenes of Cezanne’s luxuriating waterside gatherings, bathers have fascinated artists across the globe for centuries. A deeply intimate moment, bathing, whether in a river, the ocean, or alone in a tub, breaks down the subject to their purest form. Naked and enveloped in a body of water, the bather is incredibly vulnerable, and thus, to the artist, incredibly interesting. A reflection of the most exposed and intimate human moments, Tansey’s use of relaxing bathers ignites the memories of generations of painting tradition.
Bustling with life, nature, and literature, Mark Tansey’s monumental Archive challenges ideas of what a painting can be in the contemporary era. The bathers, vulnerable and free on their rocky perch, embrace the world around them while also looking to text, in the form of novels and cliffsides, as a guiding principal. Simultaneously, the text comprising the cliffs above urges one to explore the ideas that can only be found through pictorial representation. Working in harmony, these disparate modes of representation Tansey so joyously toys with, combine to create a new form of expression divulging the multitudes of life and meaning that cannot be contained within one or the other.
The son of an art historian, Mark Tansey entered into his artistic career well versed in art historical and philosophical theory, a skill which he utilizes across his entire oeuvre and which is notably apparent through his incorporation of De Man’s Blindness and Insight within Archive. Though the words are scarcely visible on the canvas, layered over and across each other in order to morph into a pictorial form, the meaning behind them remains intertwined with the depiction they compose. This series of essays by De Man is regarded as one of the most influential pieces of deconstructive criticism and in it, the author argues that text and written theory alone cannot provide meaning that is fully comprehensive; that visual representations, such as the cliffs and bathers of Archive, are necessary for informing meaning. In this work then, we see Tansey combine text and imagery, interweaving the two so that one might inform the other. Amidst the roaring sea and pale sky, the few words Tansey leaves legible – “experiences,” “[m]oments of genuine…,” “destiny” – appeal to the true heart of the work: the pure and human experience of bathing by the sea, basking in the sun, floating on pastel blue waves, and the capacity of painting and literature to illuminate those.
Highlighting the capabilities of painting as a medium is a key facet of Tansey’s practice, especially during the time period of Archive’s creation. Painted in 1991, only a year after his explorations into textual representations began, Archive embodies the poststructuralist sentiments of its time, which emphasized a return to painting and figuration in the wake of decades of abstraction, minimalism, and sculpture. Not content to simply return to painting as it had been decades prior, Tansey’s work reexamines the medium and finds new footholds to continue its development. Coupling his textual elements with a unique painting process the artist is able to delve even further into what the medium could be. Beginning with thick layers of gesso covered with a surface layer of color, Tansey scrapes away at his canvases, exposing the white gesso beneath in a reductive method almost akin to sculpting. Executing this challenging practice with photo-like precision in addition to experimenting with theory and philosophy, Tansey truly breaks through to a level of painting entirely his own.
Tansey’s engagement with philosophical ideas such as De Man’s collection of essays is not the end of his incorporation of wider theories into his art. The key characters of Archive, the lounging figures basking in the sun’s warm glow, provide an essential reference to an art historical troupe that has stood the test of time: the bathers. From depictions of voyeuristic Romans such as Actaeon, who in Titian’s 16th century painting stumbles across a bathing Diana before being transformed into a deer for his leering, to the dreamy scenes of Cezanne’s luxuriating waterside gatherings, bathers have fascinated artists across the globe for centuries. A deeply intimate moment, bathing, whether in a river, the ocean, or alone in a tub, breaks down the subject to their purest form. Naked and enveloped in a body of water, the bather is incredibly vulnerable, and thus, to the artist, incredibly interesting. A reflection of the most exposed and intimate human moments, Tansey’s use of relaxing bathers ignites the memories of generations of painting tradition.
Bustling with life, nature, and literature, Mark Tansey’s monumental Archive challenges ideas of what a painting can be in the contemporary era. The bathers, vulnerable and free on their rocky perch, embrace the world around them while also looking to text, in the form of novels and cliffsides, as a guiding principal. Simultaneously, the text comprising the cliffs above urges one to explore the ideas that can only be found through pictorial representation. Working in harmony, these disparate modes of representation Tansey so joyously toys with, combine to create a new form of expression divulging the multitudes of life and meaning that cannot be contained within one or the other.