Jeff Whipple - a retrospective of work 1977 - 2002

For more than the past twenty-five years Jeff Whipple has impressed the art world with his painting, sculpture and works on paper. Challenging the viewer to read beyond the representational elements of his compositions, our reward is an immersion in a world where Whipple both controls and liberates us. Narrative is suspended and time becomes both a gift and a burden as we struggle to define a direction or movement. Painted surfaces may be compartmentalized with balloon forms that float images and ideas before us. Words woven into the paint may inform or perplex us. And when we least expect it we may fall prey to Whipple’s personal sense of fun and wit.

We recognize the subject matter that references elements and issues of everyday life. His work probes aspects of American culture and its influence. We soon discover his art can be complex and serious, layered with nuance and charged with elements of surprise and suspense. The object of his satire, commentary or concern may be nuclear bombs, human rights or romance. His presentations are convincing, engaging and thought provoking. His works remark on decisions we have made as individuals and as a nation.

Whipple’s work manifests his dual interest in the structure of abstract gesture in painting and a realist depiction of subject matter. During the seventies, in an academic environment that mostly championed abstract expressionism, Whipple spent some time gaining acceptance for his particular interpretation of realism. He liked the formalism of abstraction and learned about color from a professor who had studied with Josef Albers.

Whipple’s contribution to the dialogue in contemporary visual art includes his uncanny ability to suspend the viewer in the midst of some narrative about which we soon discover we know very little. As he is a writer, playwright and filmmaker, his painting and sculpture benefit from his endowing these media with what can cause us to scratch our head and laugh out loud. Projecting ourselves into the scene he creates in a painting or drawing we hope that Whipple has given us enough information to break the suspense of the moment. We may find it and at other times, as much as we search, he leaves us unaided to smile, to laugh and to think.

Jeff Whipple has had an interest in film since he was a boy and had his financial circumstances been different he may have become a filmmaker much sooner. He has been a successful playwright and recently has made some short films. Early in his career he decided making art was a way to combine all his interests. Whipple discovered a way to invest his static art with a dimension that we usually find in film or theatre. He suspends the viewer in a narrative and thereby charges his art with the element of time that allows the viewer to participate in the work.

There is a long tradition of narrative in the history of art, mostly in painting of religious and historical subjects. In a single drawing, painting or sculpture the artist was required to tell a story with one object or in one scene. It was the artist’s responsibility to provide the viewer all the clues to identify the event, subject, theme and characters. Whipple has adapted these requirements to suit his own approach to making art in the twentieth century.

In an untitled painting from 1981, the viewer observes what appears to be a domestic setting. We can see the floor, two walls and the ceiling. Two women and a man look away from us. The coffee table to the far right seems pregnant with motion or purpose. We look for a couch that we would expect to find in a room like this. We locate ourselves with the woman in the lazy-boy who seems most like us – normal. The woman whose pants are falling down and the man who seems to be some service provider like a repairman or carpet cleaner perplex us. But what is he doing inside the paper bag with some instrument? The stray shoe in the foreground provides further distraction. The painting seems determined to convince us to accept this scene as an out-take from life or a Polaroid view we decide we do not like. In this and other paintings from 1981, Whipple established a successful approach to composition, framing and color that offered him limitless options.

In the same manner as many modern artists of the nineteenth and twentieth century such as Edgar Degas and Thomas Eakins, Whipple has used photography as a tool to commit ideas to paper for later reference and appropriation. For his paintings such as Glider, 1991, he prefers to have actors pose for him because they know how to become a character. He makes notes of them with his camera. Some of the ideas for the characters in his art come from his writing. He also uses ideas from photographs that he has taken of images on television.

Often lacking models, Whipple has turned himself toward the mirror and becomes the object and vehicle of study. These works beginning with Self Portrait with a Phone Call, 1978, and Portrait of the artist strapped to a vacuum, 1981, provide us not only with a history of Jeff’s physiognomy but also a record of his experimentation with symbols and metaphors such as telephones and vacuum cleaners.

Whipple understands that the culture as a whole is most comfortable with what is recognizable and so he connects with it by providing us with what appears to be familiar. There is tremendous potency in making that initial connection. And when Whipple creates figures or characters they inhabit a space that is between the viewer and the artist’s mark making on the surface of the canvas, paper or resin. Psychologically we can project ourselves into the space they occupy to negotiate the situation of the scene. His Post Modern Heroes series that includes The Office Heroine, 1993, shows men and women who have somehow survived an everyday disaster. Whipple creates a comical or absurd pose for them to appear triumphant over the challenges in their lives.

In Orbit, 2001, Whipple sets up a formal opposition of abstraction and realism that coexists in a balance charged with tension. A ground of blue gray paint strokes a surface where peach pigment emerges. Floating within and above this background a man in business attire painted upside down stopped in a free fall frustrates the viewer who wants to right him. Out of arm’s reach we see a full cup of coffee also upside down. However, not a drop spills. The viewer is trapped in the inertia of the moment. In this work we are left to ponder how much we see in our lives that is beyond our control.

Fixations or obsessions such as food or coffee become the inspiration for Whipple to investigate and question our culture’s habits. In Hot Dog Breeze, 2000, a female figure startled by hot dogs floating in the planes of space both in front and behind her is perfectly located within the dimensions of the canvas. Compositionally she occupies a central diagonal line from lower left to upper right. The humor of the situation instantly disarms the viewer. Her hair flowing almost vertically over her head indicates a hasty turn or a very strong breeze. Either would suggest the hot dogs are moving very fast. Her backward glance suggests some apprehension and this places the viewer on edge as well.

Whipple is an artist who when challenged with the mechanics of creating anything on a different scale or dimension masters the process. Although his work may appear as if he has studio assistants he accomplishes his tasks alone. This was the case with Attitude, 1999, a sixty-five inch figure of a woman he made in clay and then cast in Hydrocal (a plaster-like gypsum cement.) The bomb in her hand has the power to ignite a narrative for the work.

The theme of struggle or staged conflict has been a part of Whipple’s work from the beginning. We see this in Jenny and Jeff, 1978. Figures seem to act out the strain and tension of romance and relationships. They are sometimes caressed, bound or blinded by hands. In Domestic Discussion, 2001, a man and a woman hold coffee cups while engaging in a conflict where one has employed a saw blade and the other a drill. In paintings such as this Whipple’s humor can be dark. In an earlier painting from 1979, Whipple created a scene charged with sensuality using red and green on a narrow plane of space where a barely dressed woman stands in front of a wall where all the phones are off the hook. What provides the viewer with some comfort level within the tension of this scene is the very strong formal relationships Whipple has created in the foundation of his composition.

In The Big Catch Doesn’t Come Easy, 1991, the artist presents us with parallels to ponder: the capture or release of fish in sport and industry; the capture and release of criminals; the responsibility of the captor to the captive; the responsibility of the citizen to the captive; the discipline that is required to do a job well and be successful in a sport. In the appropriation of a scene from a black & white television crime story that the artist pairs with an image in color he suggests we consider how the recorded time of television functions in the real time of our lives.

Whipple’s work is not so much about truth and consequences or cause and effect as it is about the quality of the time in between. What happens when we pause and reflect? What happens when we don’t? The paintings, works on paper and sculpture provide a vehicle for that contemplation. The narrative elements do not convey a sense of action and reaction as much as they present a stage or moment of inaction. It is our choice to determine what happens next and contemplate the various options.

Many of Whipple’s powerful and enigmatic early works such as Head in a drawer, 1979, Parking Space, 1979, Woman holding giant laces, 1981 and The Duck Club, 1983, have no words and rely on the viewer’s sensibility to respond to Whipple’s visual stimuli. It is in viewing and considering these that we remember that comedy can arise from absurd elements in a visual narrative. Humor can originate in pain, sadness or vulnerability. Laughter can be connected to anxiety and the recognition of truths we may be uncomfortable acknowledging.

I am grateful to Ken Rollins, the Director of the museum, for his invitation to plan this exhibition. I thank Jeff for his hospitality and kind assistance. He has created work that not only reflects contemporary culture but also inspires and challenges us to consider the myriad of issues and emotions that affirm our place within it.

Mark Ormond

Curator

July 2002