From January 6 through April 11 at the Chelsea gallery.
A renowned interpreter of Renaissance music as well as a painter,
the German-born painter Anton Franz Höger seems to inhabit a rarefied
mental realm where the trappings of the past collide charmingly
with contemporary irony in tableaux which allude to a host of
human foibles
.A veritable repertory company of antic costumed characters cavorts
symbolically throughout the highly expressive series of realist
paintings on view in Hoger's artist-in-residence exhibition "The
Muse of Paradox" at Agora Gallery, 530 West 25th Street,
in Chelsea, from January 6 through April 11.
At the center of the farcical dramas that Hoger depicts is the
ubiquitous figure of a king who reminds one, with his fey gestures
and histrionic posturings, of Taylor Mead, the internationally
beloved comedic actor who first came to our attention in the Warhol
films of the mid 1960s. Surrounded by a motley crew of doting
underlings, this far from royal personage preens and poses, assuming
a variety of roles, from drunkard, to dancer, to bumbling spiritual
seeker, as though determined to assert his primacy as the lead
buffoon in a realm where foolishness reigns supreme.
While one could draw comparisons in his king's persona to that
of more than one world leader today, Hoger's point seems less
political than a general statement about the plight of humanity
vis a vis the insurmountable distance between the nobility of
our intentions and the sum of our deeds.
Nor do fellow artists escape Hoger's scathing satire in paintings
such as "The King is Painting" and "The King as
a Sculptor" in which court flunkies fawn over the monarch's
mediocre creations like the critics, curators, and other camp
followers who flock around certain disposable "art stars"
until their fifteen minutes expires and they are promptly forgotten
in favor of the next flash-in-the-pan success.
Although they are executed in the flawless realist manner of
the Dutch Baroque school and are loosely based upon the epoch
of The Sun King, Louis XIV, one can't help reading allegories
about contemporary life into Hoger's paintings. And the artist
seems to concur with this view when he states that his "king
stands for all of us, in his tragic-comic solitude or in his masquerade
intending to hide his real personality".
Hoger's vision is truly timeless in its dissection of human character
as personified by figures incongruously garbed in flowing robes
and sporting World War II bomber caps whose flamboyant yet empty
histrionics call to mind the actors in Samuel Beckett's "Endgame".
Yet even as we chuckle at the hapless posturings of his pompous
protagonists, and possibly even squirm a little at the aspects
of ourselves that we see mirrored in their foolishness, we can
only marvel at the beauty of the artist¹s technique. His mastery
of chiaroscuro, his handling of draperies, columns, clouds, and
other incidental props and details in his artfully staged dramasall
contribute to the enduring quality of his work, making one aware
that Anton Franz Hoger is not only an insightful commentator on
our common condition but a sublime painter as well.
From January 6 through April 11 at the Chelsea gallery.
|
