Ben Wilson in Black and White
There seems no reason to doubt that art may, on occasion, thrive perfectly well in hermetic isolation, insulated from the world outside itself. Indeed an appreciable aesthetic charge may inhere in its having grown in splendid indifference to being seen. But what happens when such private material is finally exposed to the public gaze?
Many artists thrive on the paradox whereby the primary impulse to produce images that bring private satisfaction – the expressive impulse, which arises from a profound and intimate dialogue with one’s secret being – modulates into a desire to show the results to other people – to communicate what one has discovered, sharing with others the experience of looking at shapes and meanings which are often startling in their freshness and directness.
Ben Wilson is not alone in being on the defensive when most intensely engaged in his artmaking. At one time, he went to great lengths to camouflage his wood installations in forested areas where few passers-by were likely to stumble upon them. And even now, after four years and more of lying on the pavements of North London to produce his chewing-gum cameos, he still manifests a distinctive brand of secretiveness. The miniaturism of the format which now seems to define his artistry means that, despite being open to the public eye, his imagery remains essentially intimate. There is a rare intensity here, a special quality of taciturnity within the communicative that enhances the sense of a hidden purpose. Wilson’s tiny pictures speak in modest terms; theirs is not the resounding grand gesture but a discreet hinting, a sign passed from individual to individual, a softly spoken complicity. We, as viewers, lean down to the visual traces and accede to understanding by virtue of an effort of both physical balancing and mental concentration. Our little efforts are rewarded by a sense of contact that is as persuasive as it is fragile. The complicity arises once we feel ourselves to be party to the image-making. The pavement display also partakes of the illicit, which adds an extra tinge of adventure.
Wilson first became known through his woodwork installations and sculptures, and later found notoriety through his chewing-gum paintings: both are site-specific modes of artmaking, while each tends to one or other end of the scale between the grandiose and the minimal. The present exhibition focuses on a phase of his creativity which has remained almost unseen, a year’s work which took place as it were in the interval between the two extremes. Wilson’s so-called Black and White Series was completed in the space of a year during 2003-2004 and represents a curious interlude. During the previous five months, he had been working in Finland at the Folk Art Museum in Kaustinen. The work he produced there, a large installation in wood comprising a chapel and large sculpted figures, began as a commission but then led its maker into more and more exasperating difficulties, as if refusing to let him leave the site before everything was properly finished. Whereas the museum staff thought it high time for him to stop, Wilson felt bound to continue, trapped in the compulsion to complete something that had developed its own demands. A dramatic conflict arose between his dedication to his art and the demands of a normal life.
Once he got back to England in October 2003, Wilson felt depleted and withdrawn, and evidently turned to the medium of black and white painting as a form of refuge or autotherapy. Week after week, he would visit the same coffee shop in Muswell Hill, carrying long scrolls of paper and paints, to enact a kind of ritual based on fidelity to the place and to the imperious momentum of a serial output. Engrossed in an intimate relation to the paper surface, he leaned in over the emerging patterns of his doodling, gradually nourishing a vibrant ground out of which figures and forms could be elicited. The process represented a long and silent struggle between repetition and spontaneity. Day after day, the scrolls – each measuring between a metre and a metre and a half, and 10 to 15 centimetres wide – were painstakingly filled with his markmaking When, some twelve months later, he at last called a halt to the activity, he had amassed no less than 47 completed scrolls. The current exhibition represents a first public display of 31 of these secretive works.
There is something fastidious and ceremonious about such artmaking, the more so in that its essence seems inseparable from the context of an everyday public setting, a North London café complete with the sounds of conversation and the transactions of the counter. Wilson recognizes that background noises and the passage of other people close by can be acceptable and indeed welcome conditions: he could, after all, have made his pictures at home, with the door closed on family and the rest of the world. To have settled for such an unsettling studio environment must in itself have been a meaningful factor. Perhaps he saw himself as much as a customer in a coffee shop as a practising artist, and found this dual role to be relevant to the themes he was exploring. Perhaps indeed the company of strangers was a means to exorcise some of his tangled feelings about creativity, which is nearly always a solitary undertaking. Perhaps again he was able to use the coffee-shop hubbub as a screen that could filter off superficial parts of his sensibility in order to liberate other parts, the creative urge being thus released within a context of irrelevant aural chaos. With sheer existence buzzing all about, he was able to focus upon the priorities assailing him, grappling with social and moral concerns that had apparently reached crisis point.
The scrolls may be read horizontally from left to right, though many contain material set at other angles, and some demand to be examined vertically, from above to below, or vice-versa. There is, in short, no fixed procedure for addressing the images, nor are there any clear guidelines as to a narrative sequence. In fact, a sequence may not strictly have been the intention here, though there is an implicit chronology of production. Even so, there appear to be certain recurrences of textural material, certain key scenes and thematic coherences which allow a general outline of preoccupations to be inferred and highlighted. Here are some observations.
Wilson’s fundamental scheme proceeds from the generation of grid-like patterns, typical of the doodling process (see No. 31). Dominated by a rigid general symmetry, these range between zones of fine mesh, rougher netting, orderly rows of squares, whole planes inscribed with checkerboard or lattice patterns, and large bold square-cut framing lines. Wilson’s obsessional black and white zones are reminiscent of similarly insistent patterns in the work of the Outsider artist Madge Gill, or of the semi-abstract painter Maria Elena Vieira da Silva, who conjures up oneiric spaces through the deployment of subtly fluctuating planes. However, it should be noted that each of these female artists introduces rippling curvature and fluency into her checkered patterning, whereas Wilson maintains a tireless commitment to the right angle (see No. 26).
Of course, zigzag patterns do erupt from time to time in his work, their sharpness shattering the exactitude of those rigid lines and right angles, so that the work embodies an implicit tension between implacable symmetry and startling outbursts of jaggedness. Here may be sensed an underlying psychological battle between orderly progression within established guidelines and an impulsive spontaneity: this seems characteristic of Wilson’s functioning as an artist, insofar as he revels in improvization yet also inclines to a perceptible shapeliness. The same sort of conflict also underlies his thinking as a social animal.
The observer whose eyes cross the scrolls in search of continuity and sequentiality will almost certainly notice one regularity about the compositions: for nearly every separate piece contains a central line or pathway stretching from one end to the other of the unfolding sheet. Given that the artist had to work at each scroll in a succession of café visits, without sight of the whole, this central line provided a reliable base from which to keep track of the emerging detours and variants. One can hardly avoid seeing the pathway as the key to the whole series, for it immediately suggests a direction to be honoured, a track to be explored, a meaningful route toward some distant goal. The pathway conjures up associations of pilgrimage, of a physical progress which involves some sort of spiritual or moral progression: the journey is a well known metaphor for inner development. More simply, the analogy could be with the landscape scrolls of classic Chinese painting, where a lengthy route is mapped in an unfolding succession of prospects attached to a path or road running from left to right, shifting gradually from the known environment to the distant destination. However, I don’t think Wilson’s pathway is altogether a coherent single entity, a chain of linked sections, but more a matter of successive forward lunges, as it were daily attempts to strike out into the unknown, a matter of dogged fits and starts. Sometimes the path multiplies and creates unsettling criss-cross mazes (No. 5). One scroll transforms the pictorial space into a honeycomb of conjoined hexagonal cells attended by bees (No. 8). Many single scrolls seem to take us nowhere, while others orchestrate an explosive climax. Once or twice, for instance, the twin lines that define the regular path modulate into a straggling form which could suggest a sudden surge of water, the tendrils of a plant, or a savage burst of flame (No's. 7 & 13): each of these alternatives marks a climactic resolution.
The territory which the path crosses seems fraught with menace. The checkered design instils a sense of insistent regularity that makes one feel that any deviant form, any organic shape, any curve or arabesque is altogether doomed. We are witness to the imposition of an express stylistic precept of repetitive orderliness which governs the proliferation of non-human, deadening, unnatural forms. In due course, Wilson’s relentless grids are seen to be buildings, and specifically skyscrapers or office blocks, that typify his vision of the contemporary metropolis (No. 10). Here is the city of steel and glass which, in his interviews, Wilson has identified as the faceless horror of our age. Much of the time, this territory of squared windows remains cool and neutral, but every so often there is a clear signal of the brutal effect of urban architecture upon the individual. A prisoner gestures impotently from inside a cell (No. 2). A schematized face is held within the confines of an oblong island, its features converted into the ground-plan for a dehumanized Docklands (No. 3). More often than not, Wilson restricts his portrayal of human beings to the merest stick-figures: with their angular limbs and featureless circular heads, they are ciphers rather than people, numbers rather than individuals. There is a suggestion that they have become mindless robots, or that they are no more than pinned-down butterflies (No. 5). Frequently depicted in conformist rows, or sent trekking across a featureless void, these manikins are from time to time shocked into falling, as though carried away in surges of violent dispersal, thrust off tall buildings into the abyss or washed from sight by apocalyptic floods or winds. One scene shows a break in the path where three people are attacked from above by some sort of electrified shower-head (No. 18). Another shows a figure losing an arm and a leg (No 6). An early drawing (No. 1) shows an amputated foot. A hand is caught in some sort of electrical device (No 4). Figures are trapped in black cells or squeezed into black coffins (No. 21). There seems no hint of hope, no prospect of survival.
Occasionally, it is the pathway itself which betrays any expectation of its being a symbolic route to something better. For the path itself can be evil, and in one scene appears to lunge forward like a spear to pierce a man’s brain (No 12). The path’s most typical manifestation is as a rigorous straight line, or a sequence of lines (like the corridors of an infinite labyrinth) linked at successive right angles (No. 9). But its underlying treachery is most obviously manifested in those zigzag formations which, built uniquely of thick black lines in parallel, create moments of extreme disharmony, of panic, of terror (Nos 14 & 15). I’m reminded here of the disturbing zigzags in those medieval drawings which portray the uncanny visions of the nun Hildegard von Bingen, and which Oliver Sacks cites in his book Migraine; and of the lexicon of hallucinatory form constants which Heinrich Klüver drew up during his researches into the psychedelic imagery released by mescalin. The indications are that zigzags are related to states of extreme mental agitation, and that their appearance in a work of art is either a matter of involuntary reflex or else a deliberate way of alluding to shocking experiences. Comic strip convention similarly relies on zigzags to indicate electrical shocks or similar paroxysmic events. The zigzag path brings to a head the sense of helplessness amid violence. Those repeated figures blown away like chaff into blackness or nothingness are part of the same basic scenario of horror (Nos 15 & 17). A giant bird snaps at wriggling bodies; chimneys belch smoke in the background of scenes of human extinction; manikins choke amid compulsively hatched margins. There is no escape from the stark fact of banishment and death. An oracular glimpse of utter dehumanization is offered in one of Wilson’s most chilling geometric designs, a space rendered utterly barren, yet mesmerizing in its imperious abstractness (No 31).
Wilson’s scrolls bear a dark warning. I think their message is clear: humankind has reached a sorry impasse in its history, and we as human beings (and above all city dwellers) are on the verge of witnessing the last flickers of individualism and creativity. At first glance, the cartoon-like minimalism of the drawings may seem mildly comical, but it soon becomes harrowing. Individuality, Wilson seems to be saying, is nowhere to be found: his figures are almost invariably anonymous, alienated, or, in his vocabulary, disconnected. Just here and there comes a hint of individuality, as when a boy's face is shown, albeit with eyes closed in a frown of apparent pain (Nos 19 & 22). One scene involves a hand bearing a bloody stigmata; next to it is another hand out of which sprouts a tendril (No 19). Wriggling roots arise within vistas of unyielding geometric rigour (No 20). Could these be signs of hope and renewal? A rare touch of tenderness occurs in one vignette where a naked human figure is shown asleep, curled within a cosy frame: tendrils stir within its body, which lies upon its own shadow, softened and fluid (No 11). This tiny image reminds me of a woodcut by Paul Gauguin (Manao tupapau) that shows a girl snuggling into a restorative dream.
My reading of the Black and White Series is surely not the only way to interpret this remarkable work. I have emphasized the context of darkness and starkness, and have tied it to Wilson’s avowed aversion to modernity, in its pressure to conformism. I have also been tempted to suppose that Wilson’s year of no colour represents a ritual cleansing, a private act of exorcism in which he was able to confront the spiritual darkness and shake off his demons through acts of relentless extremism, as if scorching himself with sustained visions of the very worst. Be that as it may, the paintings are undoubtedly compelling and remain a vivid testimony to an artist’s integrity and perseverance. Here is private psychic material made visible some while after its making. Its entry into the public domain cannot be unproblematic. These truthtelling scrolls can hardly meet our normal criteria for beauty, but they do challenge us to meet them without flinching. And through an uncomfortable contemplation of a harrowing social and moral outlook, we may yet find cause to celebrate the value of uncompromising frankness.
Roger Cardinal
August 2009