“As you grow older, it dawns on you that you are yourself – that your job is not to force yourself into a style but to do what you want. I saw that if I would accept subjects, I could paint with more absorption, with a certain enthusiasm for the subject which would allow some of the aesthetic qualities such as color and composition to evolve more naturally.”
Narodni Galerie, Prague, Czech Republic
Art © 2020 Estate of Pablo Picasso / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
Right: Richard Diebenkorn, Woman on a Porch, 1958
New Orleans Museum of Art, Louisiana
Art © Richard Diebenkorn Foundation
Executed in 1959, the year before David Park’s unt.mes ly death, Two Heads shows an artist at the pinnacle of his creative output and exhibits the command of color and mastery of abstract gestural figuration for which he is best known. A leading member of the West Coast Abstract Expressionists in the 1940s, having studied under Clyfford Still at the California School of Replica Handbags , Park radically broke away from the nonobjectivity of the movement later that decade and re-embraced figuration in his painting, a pioneering shift which solidified Park as a preeminent leader of the nascent Bay Area Figurative School. Synthesizing the gestural aesthetic language of Abstract Expressionism with an interest in figurative subject matter, rendering his subjects in confident swathes of rich impasto, Park’s approach to figuration provides a counterpart to the work of Willem de Kooning on the other side of the country, sharing the boldly indexicality of de Kooning’s Women, but evincing feelings of serenity and calm, as opposed to hysteria and machismo.
Painting the Figure: David Park and Art in Postwar San Francisco
By aligning himself stylistically with the Abstract Expressionists but thoroughly distancing his work from their non-representative subject matter and bravado, David Park proved unequivocally that figuration could return to American painting and remain both relevant and fresh. Working alongside contemporaries Richard Diebenkorn and Elmer Bischoff, Park effectively translated and integrated the experimental painterly techniques and palpable zeal of Abstract Expressionism to more recognizable everyday subjects, as epitomized by the present work. Relying on hue and light to delineate his figures, Park draws the background of Two Heads forward until it.mes rges nearly seamlessly with the subject plane, the murky reds, ochres, maroons, and silvers which outline their faces recurring in the background behind them, just as the bodies of de Kooning’s Women echo the landscapes in which they are situated. Park’s use of the figure as a purely formal vehicle rather than a narrative subject is also closely linked to a similar evolution of de Kooning's works, a radical break from the traditions of figurative painting that occurred simultaneously on both coasts.
Digital image © Whitney Museum of American Art, New York / Licensed by Scala / Art Resource, NY
Art © Estate of David Park; courtesy Hackett Mill, San Francisco.
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra. Art © 2020 The Willem de Kooning Foundation / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
An exceptional example of Park’s later body of work, in which the artist began to focus on the bust portrait rather than depicting the whole figure in space, creating a more intimate compositional atmosphere while also flattening the image plane, Two Heads sees Park at the height of his painterly prowess. Rusty, earthy hues of purple, red, ochre and brown, offset by swathes of white, black, and even silvery paint strokes oscillate between the figurative and the abstract. While never reverting to pure abstraction, in Park’s later paintings he became looser and more gestural in his application of paint, embracing a more vigorous construction of form and an almost paradoxical flattening of space. As stated in the catalogue for the authoritative 1989 exhibition on Bay Area Figurative Art, "[the] hard-worn hegemony of Abstract Expressionism as the first national style rendered any deviation from it doubly suspect...The individuals who conducted the Bay Area 'defection' perceived it quite differently. Like others in New York and abroad, they viewed the dominance of Abstract Expressionism as a form of stultification. Figuration seemed to be a way of saving that which was still vital and dynamic in the Abstract Expressionist style, a way of moving forward, of encouraging a more generous personal vision." (Caroline A. Jones, in: Exh. Cat., San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Bay Area Figurative Art, 1950-1965, 1989, p. 11) This distinction is what divides so absolutely the work of Park and de Kooning. Despite their using a similar aesthetic vernacular, where the latter’s Women pulsate with an aggressive and unt.mes d sexual energy, Park’s tableaus are deeply contemplative as they seep into the lush shadows of his palette. Bold brushstrokes give way to a quiet.mes ditation rather than a burst of machismo and turmoil, a serenity that would come to characterize the works of the West Coast artists who followed, such as Diebenkorn, even as he turned away from figuration and back into pure abstraction.
