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Max Lieberman .... an
essay
Max Lieberman selects his subjects
for their visual qualities, their simplicity of shape, their
colour and their symbolic nature. He is interested in the drama
and tension created by their arrangement, and often paints fewer
objects than is conventional in the long still life tradition.
In his paintings and drawings, ordinary
objects become symbols or archetypes charged with subtle philosophical
overtones. His work lives and breathes in the counterpoint between
the strangeness of the world and its ordinary, domestic familiarity.
The things we use and often overlook, he insists, imbue something
of ourselves within them. They have their own histories, which
they carry into the present.
Usually practical and useful by nature,
in the process of their representation in paint his subjects
spring free from daily contingencies. Old glass bottles, jugs,
wooden bottles, used kitchen utensils, boxes, ceramics, a shaving
brush, a mobile phone, toys, and a pair of kitchen scales find
a complex life in this work, and their juxtapositions defy customary
domestic groupings.
Objects may be clumped together -
rather like a cityscape, or they may be separated so that the
individuality of their form and texture is emphasized. He often
works in low light conditions such as those in the late afternoon
- leading to subtle colour variations and temperatures. Humble
subjects - like 'take-away' coffee cups, or a pair of cut tomatoes
sitting side by side like a contented couple - are presented
to us almost as if they are posing for their portraits.
His paintings are composed with the
simple, formal device of the horizon line. The specific placement
of this line charges his work with tension, creating a stage,
and a shallow space that he explores and manipulates with great
effect.
Some objects create the uncanny sensation
of a presence rolling forwards through the painted surface. Sometimes,
like Cezanne, who painted his objects so that their size was
in proportion to their importance to the composition as a whole,
he distorts the scale of things, or tilts them conspicuously
forwards.
The notions of 'inside' and 'outside'
form a dialectic in his work. When we look at these vases and
vessels tilted so far forwards to the picture frame, the space
they enclose assumes an importance equal to that of the subject's
form. 'Inside' and 'outside' are not abandoned to their usual
geometric opposition but instead become supple, intriguing and
continuous extensions of each other.
The plastic values of Lieberman's
painting create tensions between the strategies of his compositions
and the actual process of painting, between the issues of depth,
gravity and weight, and of flatness. Whether broadly applied
or finessed to the point where no brush strokes are visible,
these plastic values permit the viewer to enter into the actual
process and action of painting.
Lieberman is deeply interested in
Indian culture and travels to India regularly. His work often
includes household items from India such as tins, jars, and balls
of string. His painting even celebrates Indian packaging in which
he finds miniature summaries of the Indian aesthetic.
A number of his paintings are so
small they can easily be held in the hand. Through this reduction
in scale the poetic idea of their subject is heightened and emerges
with the immediacy and vitality of a drawing.
The exhibition also includes a number
of drawings, notable for their spontaneity, freshness, and Lieberman's
disciplined probings into the mysteries of his subject matter.
***
It is easy to locate the erotic,
the sensual, and the playful dimensions of Max Lieberman's paintings,
their deadpan directness, vitality and fun. It is not so easy
to tease out the air of implacability of these images, the manner
in which Lieberman awakens a sense of the world that seems to
have already lived, but covertly - a world which is habitually
passed over, or made obscure by its familiarity.
In his book 'The Poetics of Space', Gaston Bachelard writes:
'Art, then, is an increase of life, a sort of competition of
surprises that stimulates our consciousness and keeps it from
becoming somnolent.' Something like that seems to be going on
here. Lieberman's compositions challenge indifference, they create
whirlpools and disturbances in contexts that we find commonplace,
and to which we usually give the briefest attention. Their wholly
unexpected nature reverberates within the field of the human
psyche.
In his hands the casual connection
between things acquires a magical quality, as though a gust of
wind unites them. They open up to a vista of the present in which
we feel the casual, unremarked breath of humanity. Lieberman
sets out to surprise himself, he says, and in so doing he engages
and surprises us.
Cathy Peake, 2005
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