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At the Menil Gallery and the Contemporary Arts Museum here in Houston, there is currently a retrospective of the American artist H. C. Westermann. While I was wandering, amazed past his beautifully crafted sculptures and cabinets of curiosity, the wonderful prints at the CAM, it occurred to me that he was an artist who seemed to be tapped into what I can only describe as the American Dreamspace. He works largely in wood and metal, using traditional American arts and crafts techniques, embellished with dollar bills, bottle caps, and iconography from newspaper strips and science fiction movies (Swingin' Red King, an eight foot robot formed of fire-engine red painted pine moulding looks like it stepped out of one of the less accomplished younger siblings of Forbidden Planet). Some of his pieces are wonderfully intricate model buildings, with tiny windows through which one can see the fantastic inhabitants going about their miniature insane lives. His prints draw similarly from the pop unconscious, with Indian heads, tattooed circus strongmen and human flies, and countless Death Ships of No Port (his infinitely repeating motif of his experiences in the Pacific during WWII).
I guess what made me feel that Westermann, together with artists like George Herriman, Robert Rauschenberg, Tom Waits, and Wallace Stevens, works in this vague American Dreamspace is that they work with indigenous forms and rhythms, bedecked with pop detrius and ephemera, using these elements not solely for their own sake, but in exploration of more fundamental themes and experiences, viewed through a uniquely American filter.
I don't know how well this babble holds together, but if anyone has any ideas about it, I'd like to hear them. Also, I'd like to know which artists you see as representative of the Dreamtime of your country. |
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