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Alexis Rockman walks line between science and art, not quite doing either well

The large scale work at the Grand Rapids Art Museum, up through the weekend, has garnered plenty of praise from national publications. But I have some concerns.

Large-scale oil paintings in the series by Alexis Rockman. Photo credit Holly Bechiri.

“I haven’t ever seen you this angry about art,” a friend said to me days after we visited the Alexis Rockman exhibit when it opened at the Grand Rapids Art Museum (GRAM).

Really? I quizzed her. Never? I regularly have ideas of how artwork could do its job better, whether it’s a matter of craft or concept. I have high standards. But she was adamant:

Never.

Well, I lamented. I guess now I have to write about it.

But I dragged my feet. I also dragged others back to the exhibit multiple times with me to get their thoughts, to check my instincts (they were confirmed). I asked gallery attendants what they were hearing from other visitors (to sum: wow, they’re big; wow, I love the Great Lakes).

Why was my response so different than the national attention this show has garnered? After all, USA Today raves about this exhibit as one of just 10 in the entire country that you shouldn’t miss. The New York Times, for crying out loud, is talking about this exhibit.

Image credit Holly Bechiri.

The work, titled “Alexis Rockman: The Great Lakes Cycle” includes large-scale “watercolors” (I’ll explained those quotation marks later), “field drawings” (note more quotations marks), and then a room filled with five large oil paintings. All of the work depicts the Great Lakes or life forms within it; all of it is something of a clarion call to take care of what is one of the world’s most ecologically significant ecosystems. Abuse of the Great Lakes has widespread effects. It’s an important thing to talk about. But there are significant problems with this work.

The first thing a viewer encounters is the wall text, full of information about scientific research and investigation, about realistic representation. It sets me up to expect something like scientific illustration — a very detailed, exacting, realistic presentation of natural phenomena.

Top: field drawings (left) and a large-scale “watercolor.” Bottom: Painting of trillium and detail (right). Images credit Holly Bechiri.

But Rockman’s work is much looser than that. A trillium appears almost flat, one viewer not realizing what flower was represented until they read its title. There’s some lovely loose background flow happening with watercolor, but then instead of mastering watercolor, an unforgiving medium admittedly, instead Rockman seems to take the easy way out, plopping acrylic paints on top of his watercolor background washes. Even the acrylic work, though, feels messy, unkempt, at too many points like a student still learning how to control the paint.

The “field drawings” are again not what one thinks of when encountering that title. Some of Rockman’s little individual watercolor-and-dirt sketches of individual creatures are, for me, the most successful—if not what I expected by their name—work in the show. The best have an ethereal quality to them, almost shadowy references to the creatures he’s interpreting.

“Field Drawings” by Alexis Rockman, including a selection of the particularly successful works with their shadowy, ethereal quality. Images credit Holly Bechiri.

The second gallery holds five paintings, all massive, pano-style stories moving from left to right. There are still a few bits where it doesn’t appear that Rockman has mastered his work in these oil paintings, but it’s a clear improvement over the watercolor/acrylic set in the first room.

The storytelling itself is messy. It seems a bit of a jumble, a bit of a Where’s Waldo, with so many different objects floating across the plane, many of them in disproportionate sizes for reasons I cannot decipher.

Top: “Cascade” by Alexis Rockman. Bottom: Details from watercolors and oil paintings. Images credit Holly Bechiri.

When I step back and look at it though, it’s more than poorly-painted bits or strangely-executed storytelling of the dangers of ignoring environmental concerns. When I walk away, the most significant thing I’m left with is that I don’t trust this work.

I don’t trust that the artist is using the art historical references, so clearly harkening to the Manifest Destiny landscape painters, in a way that tells me he knows what he’s saying, that he understands the white colonial undertones of the history he’s lifting visual cues from—in the large oil paintings in particular.

Just a couple of the “Noble Savages” to be found in the Where’s Waldo of imagery in Rockman’s work. There are plenty more, significantly all off to the left before “progress.” Images credit Holly Bechiri.

This is what is most concerning in that storytelling: the blatant lifting of the tradition of the Manifest Destiny landscape painters of the 19th century. That tradition, in itself, holds plenty of concerning issues: the idea that man is here to conquer the lands they’ve “discovered,” the idea of the “Noble Savage” portrayal of Native Americans, the elevation of the white male as the person here to create some sort of utopia. Even within the tradition there were those who were digging deeper and pushing against those concepts, but here we are two centuries later and it’s being lifted with, it feels to me as a viewer, little understanding of the messaging that comes along with these visual cues.

Manifest Destiny paintings generally have this sweeping landscape, with a left to right story happening, ending in the top right with a shocking glow of a sunset accompanied by dark ominous clouds. Look closely at many Manifest Destiny paintings and you’ll find a detailed little figure of a Native American, the “noble savage” to be redeemed.

So far, I could just as easily be describing one of these paintings by Rockman. Manifest Destiny is colonial prowess at its height. It’s colonialism when colonialism thought it was cool, when it purported to be “saving the earth.” It’s not something that we should emulate unless we, say, flip the script to have the Native American the character in the story that actually rescues us from our disastrous disrespect for the earth—and our fellow human beings. At some point, at least, it should be pretty clear that this Manifest Destiny concept is a disaster.

There are points where I wonder if this is Rockman’s intent. But I, as a viewer, along with anyone else taking in his work, don’t get clues to this in the wall text. The work itself doesn’t convince me this is the case either. Our “noble savage” is not at the right of the story, rescuing us. He’s still in his primitive boat on the left, or curiously in the composition in stark relation to an animal building a similarly-structured home.

I don’t trust the storytelling. And so, even though there’s just a few days left in the show (it closes Sunday) and I have finally gotten up the nerve to bring up concerns when so many others are bringing praise, we need to talk about this.

Because the level of expectations we have for a work now at the GRAM has implications for what expectations we extend to future exhibitions, wherever we encounter them. When an artist chooses to make work about an important cause, like climate change in this case, I expect them to do it well enough that we trust the message they’re trying to share.

Otherwise that messaging becomes dangerous. It says things you don’t intend or, perhaps more honestly, recognize within yourself. The visitor should trust the artist and be able to follow along with their story. We should feel like the artist knows—at least at the art museum, national publication attention level—what they are doing.

We should see indicators that there is a purpose behind the onslaught of colonial white people conquering the land, “noble savage” visual cues that are everywhere in Rockman’s work. But I don’t. I want to give the benefit of the doubt—but it’s not there in the work. I’m left feeling uneasy.

School children talk about earth care at the GRAM. Image credit Holly Bechiri.

Which is disappointing, because I’d really like to do nothing but bring rave reviews to the GRAM, an organization I love, who does such an incredible job in so many ways, not least of which helping our children understand art—a job they’ve done so well that the NEA is noticing.

The golden ship of progress. Image credit Holly Bechiri.

But this exhibit—these works—are not doing their job well.

There’s plenty of dystopia, for sure. It is giving a sense of our need to take better care of the earth, a blatant theme within the work. But even that isn’t convincing. Even in dystopia, the big ship at the right of the story is a gleaming gold, powerful and pretty.

I’m left thinking either the artist thinks we’re doomed, it’s too late, so continue to gild your ships with gold, or that he doesn’t understand the references and messaging he’s putting into his work.

The jumbled inclusion of so many different stories into one canvas, too often noticeably disconnected and incongruous from one another, makes me think that unfortunately it may be the latter.

Which is too bad, because whenever you have a powerful message that needs to be listened to, whenever you’ve got the attention of The New York Times and USA Today—and all the children brought through that exhibit with the incredible educational programming the GRAM has created—one would hope for a more masterful story.

Image credit Holly Bechiri.

Alexis Rockman: The Great Lakes Cycle

at Grand Rapids Art Museum (GRAM) through April 29.
This is a traveling exhibition. For a full list of upcoming viewings around the country visit the GRAM website.
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