Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, January 10, 1993 TAG: 9301080325
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 6 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: BOB CRAWFORD
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
WILLIAM DUNLAP EXHIBIT IS LIVELY AND CHALLENGING
Works combining several traditional art media and many varieties of found objects comprise William Dunlap's exhibit at the Art Museum of Western Virginia. Tipping Dunlap's hand in the show title, "Re-Constructed Re-Collections," the show samples the past decade's output of an artist who loves to construct with words as well as with objects and paint. A strong narrative quality prevails, and wordplay is found in many titles.This is a lively and challenging show. Because the artist is concerned with historic, literary and visual matters, a broad segment of the public should find the works engaging.
Depicting mostly rural scenes, these works convey a Southerner's love of the land and tradition, together with the ambivalent pride and regret that go with the territory. Broad landscapes with Victorian houses and neatly laid-out farms appear in many paintings and drawings, though there is always a spoiler - an industrial smokestack, a jarringly superimposed mark or juxtaposed object. These spoilers become more objective in later works, for example, a snakeskin in a bird's nesting gourd in the exhibit's namesake work.
Typically, much empty or negative space is used in Dunlap's images, partly to push houses and farm buildings into the middle distance in the landscape. An idealization and poignancy results but so does an emotional distancing. The atmosphere is both brooding and lonely and is sometimes made more so through cloud and sky effects.
Another pervasive feature of the paintings and drawings is the presence of various scribed marks, mostly perspective gridlines, and miscellaneous numerals and letters, drawn or of transfer type. Perhaps intended to express the currency of the work, these elements mostly detract, and they read as what in artists' circles are termed "art marks."
While earlier works tend to be single, framed images, later ones are multipart assemblages of images and found objects. In these later works, Dunlap appropriates the display techniques of the history diorama.
Although in form these assemblages allude to the "combine" paintings of Rauschenberg and other neo-dada and Pop precedents, Dunlap's approach differs in both the selection and handling of objects. In particular, his are obviously well-used and antique - what he calls "charged" objects. Furthermore, most of the objects are presented relatively unchanged, often displayed on a small built-in shelf. Dunlap's use of objects is both the most interesting and the most problematic aspect of the artist's work.
The objects, except a few that are painted over or otherwise significantly altered, have the presence of artifacts, particularly since most are apparently old and worn. They have the compelling aura of objects in an antique shop.
With their physical separateness also opposing the unity of the work, the "charge" or uniqueness of the separate objects often wins out. This is a predictable outcome, given the artist's reverential attitude toward the objects selected.
There are striking juxtapositions of objects and images, especially in the more playful "Object Lesson" series, all triggering a barrage of multiple and often conflicting associations. To the extent that this multiplicity is resolvable, it is usually in the form of questions, giving the work an enigmatic and sometimes inscrutable air.
Dunlap disavows the need for consistency and perhaps unity in a work by citing a notion attributed to Thomas Jefferson that the test of a superior mind is the ability to hold two opposing ideas at the same time. While this test would not seem to apply to what one might do on paper or in an artwork, Dunlap sees it as permission. In the same spirit, he associates his art strongly with the Southern literary tradition of Williams, Welty, fellow Mississippian Faulkner and others.
The literary association rings true in two ways. Foremost is the narrative quality of Dunlap's work, especially the assemblage pieces. The objects seem to serve as the details of an account broadly overviewed in the painting or drawing with which they are arrayed. In feeling and function the images serve as contextual devices - backdrops for the staging of the objects.
Secondly, Dunlap's works evoke central themes of those literary lights. There is melancholic expectancy, vitality and decay, and love of the land tempered with uneasy thoughts of slaves and the American Indian. There is an emphasis on the past and a stillness that is not peaceful.
Where the present or future are seen, they are in the form of threats, for example, a polluting industrial blot on the landscape.
A haunting figure recurs in several works. Seen by Dunlap in an old photograph, it is the corpse of a dead soldier, killed and flayed by Indians. Is this Dunlap's image of heroic oblivion, or is it the ultimate question of justice?
Bob Crawford is an area artist an occasional reviewer for the Roanoke Times & World-News.
"Re-Constructed Re-Collections," works by William Dunlap, on view at the Art Museum of Western Virginia through Feb. 7. Tuesday-Saturday, 10 a.m.-5 p.m.; Sunday, 1-5 p.m. Center in the Square, Roanoke City Market. 342-5760.