Narcosis

Christopher Wool's abstract post-minimal compositions of the 1980s reflect the dual necessity to continue to explore the medium of painting, while simultaneously debunking older conventions of the medium. Executed in 1985, Wool's Narcosis is a prime example of his desire to stretch the boundaries of traditional painting, resulting in a remarkable work that both pays homage to earlier examples of monochromatic painting as well as stressing the armature of the steel beneath the paint. As a conflation between minimal and pop art, the work is neither, and both of these at the same time. Acknowledging this, one critic notes while "both withholding and selectively indulging some of the constituents of the act of painting, Wool seeks to betray the supposed conceptual and formal underpinnings of painterly practice while continuing to produce the artifacts themselves, thereby simultaneously debunking and reinventing the conventions of the medium" (D. Harvey, "Christopher Wool at Museum of Contemporary Art," Art Issues, no. 54, Sept/Oct 1998, p 42). Obscuring the line between different influences and factors, the resultant "Pop-Minimalism" speaks to the legacy of painting after a time when the medium of painting itself was considered dead.

Narcosis is a composition that predates Wool's later word and pattern paintings that proliferate throughout his career. The work is a stark and monochromatic black, yet plays with the multidimensionality and layering of the color, resulting in a multifaceted and textured surface that captures both the raking light on its surface and the materiality of the metal surface below. Reminiscent of Ad Reinhardt's trademark black monochromes and his concept of "ultimate painting," Wool presents the subtleties that emerge through the utilization of a single color. The work signifies the artist's desire to reconceive minimalist painting before transitioning to his text-based work; just as he challenged the viewer to decipher, not scan, his dissected phrases in his later compositions, Wool encourages a reexamining of the abstract monochromatic painting in Narcosis.

While earlier examples of monochromatic painting emphasize the uniform nature of the paint and the way in which it rests on the surface of the canvas, in this work Wool examines the very nature of the medium and thereby critiques it as well. Just as other artists from his generation were influenced by pop media sources--the very impetus of the Pictures Generation--Wool integrates these into his works, but in a nonliteral way. Similar to the way Cindy Sherman or Richard Prince utilized images from advertising, film, and television, Wool brings the very canon of Modern painting into the same arena, completely eradicating the distinction between high and low culture, and fine and decorative arts. With Wool's nearly monochromatic paintings, "viewers are denied entrance into the 'sublime' space of monochrome abstraction. It is tempting to see these works as...ready-made signifiers of sublimity that mock transcendence," and somehow "the paintings resist this impulse to parodic interpretation because each work has all the qualities that attend serious paintings and serious research into order and chaos" (B.W. Ferguson, "Patterns of Intern" Artforum, no. 30 Sept 1991, p 97). Wool's compositions have the ability to misdirect the viewer into at first thinking they are seeing something familiar only to defy the viewer's expectations by presenting something profoundly different. It is in this way that Narcosis both upholds and stands apart from its tradition, making the viewer aware of the fragility that permeates the medium.