Benjamin Jones' Art: A Review of His Drawings in New American Paintings #52

Benjamin Jones' Art: A Review of His Drawings in New American Paintings #52

The most important quality for a work of art to have is the ability to move us, to make us feel.

By this standard Benjamin Jones drawings in the series New American Paintings, issue #52, succeed.

The most moving of the three works depicted is Leaving Behind, executed in 2003. In it a crudely drawn black and white stick figure contemplates a prone cartoonish teddy bear-like figure.

Contrasted with the contemplating figure, the teddy bear is drawn in color, a yellow body, one ear colored blue and red, the other brown and red.

Also in contrast to the contemplating figure, the teddy bear has, however crudely drawn, arms and toes on his feet.

The contemplating figure is little more than a head. There is no hair and just dots for ears and a nose. It has no arms, is dressed in a black variegated tunic with no hint of an underlying body and its feet are drawn as child-like, stick-figure clubs.

Significantly Mr. Jones has articulated the eyes of the figures, the proverbial windows of the soul. The contemplating figure is looking at the teddy bear and looking back at his childhood or perhaps at a child-like innocence lost, a state when he was more than a "brain in a vat," to a time when he was more complete and had arms and hands and fingers and toes and useful ears.

There is a bit of a sorrowful look on the contemplator's face but mostly it is a look of contemplation from a distance, of acceptance, but acknowledgment of loss.

In between these two figures is a disembodied head at the feet of the contemplator. There is no mistaking the look of anguish on the face of this head. It is drawn in the style and in the black and white spareness of the contemplating figure and so can be taken to be the contemplator at a slightly earlier period in life. The grief of the disembodied head is also what the contemplator has left behind, in addition to the teddy bear innocence.

The mouths of all three figures are clearly articulated and the teeth are aggressively portrayed. This aspect of the drawing does not work. There should be nothing of ambiguous intent in the depiction of bared teeth. They are universally recognized as a symbol of aggression, but here they are drawn alike on all three figures, one that is smiling (the teddy bear), one that is grieving, one that is contemplating. Teeth-baring aggression is not what is being left behind in Leaving Behind.

If Mr. Jones meant instead to convey the pain of words by the frightful teeth, that intent also is not realized, not the least because the symbolism of bared teeth without more does not convey the one-step-removed pain of words issuing from sharp-toothed mouths.

Mr. Jones has drawn this moving scene against an empty off-white paper background that enhances the dramatic effect of the theme by not distracting the viewer by superfluity. In this way, the drawing is reminiscent of those striking Chinese portraits done even more sparingly with fine tip against a bare background that is overwhelming in its emptiness.

Mr. Jones' skill in movingly expressing his feelings has already gained him recognition. According to his c.v. his work is displayed in several museums, including the Whitney in New York.

It is hoped that Mr. Jones, possessing the preeminent quality of artistic greatness, is dedicated and ambitious enough to generalize from the particular, that is to connect his soul to the condition of his fellows, to society's, to mankind's. That would be ambition indeed.

However, in the brief summary on his biography page in New American Painting, Mr. Jones writes, inter alia, the following:

.....isolation......not invited....exiled.....apart....

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.....BAMBI.....choice+no choice.....cage.....freedom lost.....jail

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.....Pavarotti's NESSUN DORMA.....

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.....Capote's A CHRISTMAS MEMORY.....

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.....CHINA.....

And so on. That kind of Rorschach test/word association summary of his life is (1) revealing of deep feeling and manifold experience, and (2) revealing of his lack of generalizing from those particular emotions and experiences, of not bringing them together into a coherent whole, or at least, wholes.

This disjointedness is apparent in Leaving Behind. The figures stand against an empty background, away from anything--history, society--that is larger than the self.

There is also no connection between Mr. Jones' art and the art of this time. There is no expression of how art history has informed his work, of how he got to this point as an artist. Again, it is conceded that this is to judge Mr. Jones' art by a very ambitious standard. The three paintings in N.A.P #52 are in every way indicative of an artist who lives and works apart. Connecting his disconnectedness would take Mr. Jones art beyond where it is now.

There is also no indication of Mr. Jones ability to draw or paint in his three N.A.P. works. If he possesses such ability and has just eschewed it in these works for effect that is one thing, the efficacy of which itself can be debated, but if he hasn't that ability it would be nonsense to say that that lack doesn't matter in evaluating a work of art. It certainly is not fatal but painting is non-verbal expression and clearly the impact of that expression can be enhanced or detracted by artistic skill. Can Mr. Jones draw?

He can express himself movingly. That alone makes his art worthwhile and stand out against much of the background of his contemporaries.

Benjamin Jones' art can be seen in the Whitney Museum, the High Museum and the Museum of Contemporary Art, both in Atlanta, and at the Mennello Museum of American Folk Art in Orlando, Fl.

Leaving Behind is listed as not for sale in N.A.P.; his two other paintings are priced at $1600. He is represented by the Barbara Archer Gallery in Atlanta and can be reached at 404-815-1545.


-Benjamin Harris