Jon Serl: No straight lines at David Zwirner

Jon Serl: No straight lines
David Zwirner
34 East 69th Street, New York

By EDWARD WAISNIS November, 13, 2024

Jon Serl (aka Joseph Searles (1894-1993) is a highly regarded painter–mostly by artists which is always a good sign–who, having come from a vaudevillian family performed under the moniker Slats. Continuing with the use of an alias, Jerry and Ned Palmer were put to purpose when he later operated around the edges of Hollywood. Shoulder rubbing with the likes of Clark Gable and Hedda Hopper are touted as well as a bit of yard tending at the Howard Hughes’s estate. After a period of bumming around in the west he settled in Lake Elsinore just south of Los Angeles. Settling into a serious involvement with painting in the 1940s. For his efforts he has been cast into the field of outsider, untrained, or self-taught artist with a noble lineage from Grandma Moses to Bill Traylor, et. al. While there is evidence to track that filing, the sweep and range of perception speaks to a less defined branding. This being said, it is Serl’s eccentricity that lands him in the mystical realm the rarified populated by the likes of Albert Pinkham Ryder and Gustave Moreau due to the visionary quality found in his work; shamans of the paint brush one and all. 

Jon Serl, Untitled, 1985-1990, oil and oil stick on Masonite, 47 x 71 inches. Courtesy David Zwirner

A smattering of exhibitions make up his résumé. The early ones at off-the-beaten-path, or community center, venues. Followed by efforts at acknowledgement. by a line of prestigious curators and spaces, coming at regular intervals of a decade or so. And, often in sync with shifts in the cultural fabric that allowed openings for reassessment. This exhibition is in the latest in that lineage of endeavors brought about via a collaboration between the gallery (Marlene Zwirner and Katie Priest, Senior and Associate Directors, respectively) working with painter Sam Messer who had established a relationship with Serl in his final years. By way of his connections as professor emeritus of Yale School of Art Messer built a following among colleagues and students for Serl’s singular work. It is on this backbone that the show is articulated, interspersing nineteen of Serl’s paintings with approximately half as many works by seven of said converts/followers, strategy that intones reverence. 

There is a strain found in early Expressionism and the specifically in the work of Edvard Munch, leaning in on wonky composition, confrontation with death and loss, and a cool light that can be found in Serl’s Once There Were Four and Blue Poppy, both 1962; the latter a stunner of simplistic grandeur. Their placement beside two diminutive memento mori by Brook Hsu (both bearing the title La Victime, 2023) showcasing a Johnsian bent through a refined precision in handling and reliance on sequentiality.

  Jon Serl, Mining Pumice, nd., oil on wood panel, 37 7/8 x 23 inches. Courtesy David Zwirner

Brook Hsu, La Victime, 2023, oil and graphite on wood panel, 5 1/2 x 8 inches. Courtesy David Zwirner

Katherine Bradford’s Runaway Wife Shelters Her House, 2022 brings staged naiveté in the form of a gargantuan swimsuit-clad ‘wife’ protectively posturing–Is she a titan offering a protective gesture, is the house a miniature (doll’s house), or is foreshortening at play with the house set back in the distance?–channeling the whimsical quality of Serls figures as well as Chagall.

The largest work by Serl, Untitled, 1985-1990, portrays a gathering of more than a half dozen figures in what might be a social setting, or a more intimate engagement. The open question is whether we are being exposed to a church meeting–more feasibly carried out in the markedly more sedate Evening Chapel Parade, 1993–or social mixer. The work of Bob Thompson and Jean Dubuffet are called up here. As well as that of Gaston Chaissac, a French untrained painter and musician that Dubuffet championed, some may say exploited. Laid out with sophisticated tonal shifts in both ground and details of forms and figures, progressing, across the pectoral plane, from cool to lurid warmth. Conveyance of raw feeling comes through the brusque handling of his mediums. Untitled (Four Figures, Red Background), n.d., another group portrait of enigmatic goings on, is alternatively interpretable as a bathhouse, gym or a convening of performers preparing backstage, harking back to surroundings Serl would have had firsthand knowledge of. The proscenium manifesting as a composition building device.
 

Katherine Bradford, Runaway Wife Shelters Her House, 2022, acrylic on canvas, 16 x 20     inches.Courtesy David Zwirner 

Jon Serl, Blue Poppy, 1962, oil on wood panel, 26 3/4 x 23 inches. Courtesy David Zwirner

Other historical precursors ranged from the underrated Ken Kiff, summoned in several works including  Mining Pumice, n.d., Waltz, 1963, Here, 1973, Look Up, 1955 and Two Faced, 1947, to Jean Fautrier found in Cockfight, c. 1960-1979 and Untitled, c 1970-1979, and even a suggestion of  James Ensor (The Preset with the Proposal, 1962, Pahh’s Hat and Shirt, 1985 and Funny Man, c. 1988-1990) this latter comparison owing mostly the coal-black beady eyes he employs.

Dana Schutz’s buttery Gustonesque Driver, 2024 that focuses on the central titular figure filling and spanning a roadway, rising or setting sun on the horizon as background, and wielding a steering wheel, ferris-wheel like against the sky. There is a harmony with Serls’ own primitive vacillating figuration, particularly in her depiction of skeletal wishbone legs that support the goliath by full-spreading the roadway and the meaty lobster claw hands she has fitted the figure with. All while cozying up to its apt neighbor, the aforementioned Waltz, 1963, wherein the central couple reverberate gymnastic contortions.

Installation view, John Serl: No Straight Lines, David Zwirner. Courtesy David Zwirner

Outliers in the a show, presided over by the preeminent outlier Serl himself, include Josh Smith whose Untitled, 2024, encapsulates a grove of palm trees (one of Smith’s motifs from an artist who is rife with signature motifs) echoing simultaneously the droopy spider plant-like forms in Serl’s Untitled, n.d., hanging nearby while connecting with the distant palms in Mining Pumice, n.d., found in an adjoining gallery. Serl’s District, c. 1960-69, represents a street scene bereft of people that preceedes the series of paintings Smith made during the pandemic that conveyed the isolation of the era. Meanwhile Smith’s Little Eagle, 2023, a rendering of the bird of prey utilizing a coat hanger as armature onto which he has glommed pine cones with hot glue and resin brought a note of his recent work in sculpture and jewelry.

Dana Schutz, Driver, 2024, oil on canvas, 37 x 37 1/4 x 1 5/8 inches. Courtesy David Zwirner

Jon Serl, Once There Were Four, 1962, oil on wood panel, 39 1/2 x 32 5/8 inches. Courtesy David Zwirner

Andy Robert’s echoes Pollock, Rauschenberg and Duchamp, bringing the readymade into the conversation. With his stimulating Autumn, 2024, though there is the note of the orchestrated slapdash of Pollock, it nevertheless cribs a certain surreal atmosphere and even Dubuffet’s art brut . While the stark uninflected Bird, 2024 appropriating a taxidermy chicken; an intonation of a natural history display, enhanced by the townhouse parlor-turned gallery space, to be found museums focused on the display of fauna.

Andy Robert, Autumn, 2024, oil on linen, 48 3/8 x 30 1/4 inches. Courtesy David Zwirner

Louis Fratino’s bright festive Self with Pitcher and Candle, 2017 relying on a brocaded decorativeness, with shifting surface treatments of color and pattern, plays well with Serl’s Untitled, c. 1980-85, its cosmetically embalmed head wearing a chapeau worthy of a pasha.

Sam Messer, and “here no longer” (for P.A.), 2024, oil on canvas, 29 3/8 x 23 1/4 inches. Courtesy David Zwirner

Finally, Messer’s two contributed works vacillate from one of his signature typewriter ‘portraits’, and “here no longer” (for P.A.), 2024, dedicated to his departed friend the writer Paul Auster, who he turned on to Serl, thicker than a van Gogh, to “Even my dogs know that”, his portrait of Serl, begun in 1993 and finished for the show, improved by the experience of his long career and the reflection that time allowed.

Messer posted the following on Instagram:
       
"Jon telling me that the artist steps in when the picture is done speaks to my understanding of a way I and many artists work-it can start with your subconscious but then when you are looking at what you have brought forth you consciously make decisions in response to your subconscious….it can start with your subconscious but then when you are looking at what you have brought forth you consciously make decisions in response to your subconscious. Often you may over respond and it doesn’t work out. That action is heart of this exhibition for me and my promise to Serl-that not only would his paintings not be forgotten but that he would be seen in the same conversation as all artists and not seen only in the world of ‘outsiders’ like Bill Traylor…Many people mistakenly and superficially look at Jon’s life and the footage of his studio home Enviorment and find it “outside” or weird,-how could it not when it’s hard to travel the world and not find the same stores clothes music, etc.-everywhere-to me Jon’s life and how he worked seems so natural and desirable and an Envioment to work where you can imagine the impossible. and how he worked seems so natural and desirable and an environment to work where you can imagine the impossible."

Sam Messer, Even my dogs know that, 1993/2024, oil on canvas, 30 x 22 inches. Courtesy David Zwirner

On the point of the promise made by Messer to Serl that he would do his utmost to keep the late artist’s work alive, Sam you have accomplished and exceeded your obligation with this rocking outing. WM

Exhibition was on September 19 – October 26, 20