Sequencing Modernist Hybridizations

In the early twentieth century, William Sommer (1867-1949) became one of Cleveland’s leading modernist painters exploring European avant-garde concepts and the relationships between reality and imagination. Hearing about new techniques and styles being executed in Europe from fellow artists Abel Warshawsky and William Zorach, Sommer immediately dove into abstraction and impressionism in 1911. One hundred years later, Mark Keffer re-examines Sommer’s paintings into a new body of work which gives a nod to a local history and speaks to Sommer’s lasting imprint on Cleveland’s artistic heritage.

The work in Sommer Sequence at Arts Collinwood shows Keffer’s stylistic continuity of mixing organically layered spray paint with hard edged geometric forms that continue his search for a futuristic landscape, however this time they reach for the past. Keffer reflects on these paintings, “I see his work as having many of the same directions and sensibilities that I try to explore. I love the existential openness that I get from his best work… He is simply addressing observable reality and handling it in such a way as to touch on human truths that can’t be communicated in any other way. There is an agnostic mindset at work, which simply acknowledges that ultimate truths regarding the nature of reality are unknowable. Everything is filtered through our subjective, individual points of view. To try to touch upon these realities (and love, hope, fear, desire, memory, the fringes of consciousness, etc.) is what painting is about.”

Mark Keffer. Viaduct. 2010.

William Sommer. Viaduct at Sunset. 1914. Cleveland Museum of Art.

Referencing the nearly century old works, Keffer attempts to invoke the spirit found in Sommer’s paintings into his own. Viaduct takes its composition from Sommer’s Viaduct at Sunset. Here, Keffer lays down a static-like linear background upon which he applies the geometric shapes that takes Sommer’s fluidity into a gaseous yet stiff construction. The reductive qualities transform representations of the man made structure and river, as well as plants and animals, into hard edge circular and rectangular shapes. This translation allows Keffer to use a set framework while maintaining his own stylistic experimentation of combining clean precision and foggy grit as a means of probing the diverse ways the human brain functions.

Working in a similar color palette adds to the compositional appropriation that connect the two works. However Keffer’s painting gives a stronger sense of weight than the lighter more spontaneous Sommer. Forms in other works in the series also appear heavy, yet without grounding his geometric shapes, they still appear to float above the surface of organic haze. This balance and counter balance creates what the artist calls a “secular mysticism” revolving around the unknowable realities that Sommer set out to capture through much the same means as he paraphrased the Vorticist’s, “Combinations of organic and inorganic forms give unity and variety to the picture.”

Mark Keffer. White Goat and Trestle. 2010.

William Sommer. White Goat and Trestle. 1942. Cleveland Museum of Art.

The selection of works Keffer chose to work from is also an interesting exploration of Sommer’s personal emotional experiences. One such work is White Goat and Trestle. Keffer loosely bases his painting on Sommer’s of the same title from 1942. While Sommer’s work became more locally focused with the onset of the American Scene movement he continued to interpreted his subjects in the modernist style. Feeling connected to the land on which he lived, Sommer said that, “the glorious state of Ohio gives all it has to the artist – ever rolling hills, miniature valleys, old farm houses, cattle grazing around great barns with splendid towers that do away with the straight line, towers that simply must be put on paper – they are not high but beautiful in form, and eternal in simplicity.”

Cattle having become a recurring theme in Sommer’s paintings, his wife purchased a pair of goats to pique his interest. While he executed several drawings and watercolors of the goats, Sommer was afraid of them and didn’t trust them. Keffer’s interpretation of the painting emits this sense of fear that Sommer must have felt through dark murky splotches that invade the composition. The geometric forms contribute to a sense of unease through their sharp diagonals cutting through the lower portion of the painting like blades. Confusion or bewilderment is another state that could be read into this work through the transformation of a tree in Sommer’s painting into overlapping colored oval shapes in a way that resemble seeing spots as if from a head injury (Sommer suffered from head injuries that often resulted in an exotic crystalline experience).

Mark Keffer. Blue Vase. 2010.

Mark Keffer. Corn and Fruit. 2010.

As Keffer’s work relies less on Sommer’s compositional elements to inform his creative process, the paintings become more truly his own. Blue Vase and Corn and Fruit both have roots in Sommer’s work, but through simplification and a broader interpretation they communicate more of Keffer’s personal esthetic that relates strongly to his previous works. These paintings successfully display his desire to create a perceptual interpretation of an unknowable reality, “Our daily lives are so structured by logic-based systems, it’s nice to have art as a force that doesn’t have to adhere to any of that.”

Woven together, Keffer’s concepts and those he identifies with of Sommer’s, result in an exhibit that tells of the continuity in Cleveland’s artistic past and reaches into its future. Further, it expresses an artist’s ability to reference the art that came before and revision it to make a statement of confidence in an artist’s own perspective. Sommer Sequence is on view at Arts Collinwood from August 12th through September 3rd, 2011. For more of Keffer’s work, visit markkeffer.com.