subject: Vincent Desiderio Pitiless Pathology: Vincent Desiderios Paintings By Donald Kuspit [print this page] Narrative, drama, the indecent human story -- all that was beside the point of pure art, the human interest that Greenberg
dismissed as lacking esthetic interest.
the all too human that had to be repressed if the artist was to come into his own as
superhuman, an immortal among mere mortals, a seer among the sightless, as Rimbaud said, an bermensch among the masses with
their herd mentality, as Nietzsche described the healthy artist -- returns with an ironical vengeance in Vincent Desiderios
paintings. In Window (2010) we see, in grim flattened outline, the two figures in Goyas Fight with Cudgels, one of his Black
Paintings (1820-23). It is the oldest of human stories: the biblical story of Cain and Abel -- of brothers in violent conflict,
fighting unto the death -- of ingrained aggression, hatred, envy, destructiveness. At the least, it is the story of a family tragedy
-- the Bible is as full of them as Greek tragedy. More broadly, it is the story of the insane human condition -- of the war of all
against all that Hobbes said was the natural human condition. Goyas two figures stand knee deep in a field of wheat, supposedly an
allusion to the civil war raging in Spain at the time, suggesting that is also the story of social insanity -- a social as well as
psychological allegory.
More insidiously, it is the story of the vulgarization of art, as Goyas vulgar figures suggest, and, more pointedly, as the
tarnished bust of a noble Roman and empty gold frame in the foreground of Desiderios picture suggests, of classical art, with its
civilized character and civilizing purpose, suggesting the collapse of civilization into the barbarism signaled by Goyas figures,
and, some think, of his painting. In Desiderios painting, Goyas painting, with its proto-modernist features and morbidity, rises
above the classical bust and frame, suggesting the triumph of modernism over traditionalism. Even as Desiderio attempts to achieve a
new modern classicism, as the noble Mennonites in Mourning and Fecundity II (2011) suggests -- an ironic classicism, for the pious
Mennonites hark back to an earlier age of religion -- he cannot help but suggest the black shadow that modernism has cast over art.
And also that modern secular science casts on traditional sacred art, as is suggested by De Umbris Idearum (2010), in which the black
mechanical figure of a planetarium projector stands out against a tarnished, flaking fresco of Christ Pantocrator framed in a cosmic
dome. Desiderio is obsessed with perspective, as he has said, and the projector and the Pantocrator offer very different -- seemingly
incommensurate -- perspectives on the world and life. Desiderio strikes an uneasy balance between them; each is intimidating,
omnipotent, and they are in conflict like the figures in Goyas painting.
Goyas Black Paintings, with their nihilistic black and blank humor, brutally frank painterliness, emotionally and often physically
ugly figures, and unmitigated pessimism, have been said to be one of the inspirations of the spirit of negation, to use Duchamps
word, typical of modernist art. Desiderios use of one of the Black Paintings suggests his black outlook on life, but also his dismal
view of modernist art, for the Roman bust and gold frame stand out of the darkness and emanate light, suggesting that they are
inwardly alive -- spiritually intact -- however outwardly dead and dumbly material, just as the white Roman Effigy (2011) stands out
of its surroundings, indeed, is front and center. There is a profound ambivalence at the core of Desiderios pictures, suggesting
that he does not so much unite the classical and modernist opposites as tie them in a Gordian knot, making his paintings uncannily
