The Art of Lee Cunningham: A Retrospective

Visual arts, like performance arts, are another thing I’m coming to later in life and finding a passion and joy I wish I had developed earlier.

The most fascinating experience of art, for me, has been learning to intentionally observe the way my brain processes abstract representation into more concrete forms and story. Taking complex ideas and feelings and finding ways to successfully communicate them to an observer with colors and shapes and juxtapositions which shouldn’t reasonably be expected to mean anything is like magic: the special ways our minds work, the pattern recognition and associative linking, allowing art to have greater meaning than an obvious, concrete representation.

Magnifying my wonder of this feat is how it happens across the gap of time and space, from one mind to another, using a common visual language and mental function so a fluent artist can expect to communicate in their medium as effectively, if not more, than if telling the story of their work directly to the audience with words. Admittedly there will be cultural and experiential gaps and differences, but even so, the effectiveness of the mechanism fascinates me.

I’m finding the exposure to an artist’s language, both within a single work and across multiple pieces, like learning to read. Beyond the obvious shapes and schemes of a work, the way she uses shapes and colors, style and themes, dissonance and subtlety to communicate more than just the obvious subject of the work, to communicate meta-narratives and evoke emotions greater than those involving any single piece.

I found myself moving back and forth with Cunningham’s pieces, discovering themes and shared symbology, as well as an evolution of the stories she was telling and the way she was telling them. This was particularly effective due to the volume and variation of the works currently showing: the general paintings which spanned from the early seventies to her passing in 2010, the completely abstract works of her Duke Ellington series, and the sculptures and masks made from found objects.

Outside of the differences in style and language of her ‘regular’ paintings, the Ellington series and the sculptures were almost in a different language, yet shared a stylistic accent with her other works. Looking beyond the differences to identify the similarities was its own joy and I look forward to doing more of it over my remaining visits.

The work I found most intriguing was a series of three paintings titled “Woman Ascending to Heaven”. All three are of a woman sitting in the cradle of an upward facing crescent moon.

In the first, done in 1970, the woman is in muted colors, similar to other works from this period, and reminds me of Marilyn Monroe in a white dress. It seems a simple piece of a woman resting.

The second, done in 1976, has the figure with a more abstracted face, her dress threadbare, disappearing, a shoe print on her middle, a face looking up at her from below. Her breasts have been highlighted with red circles and her pose seems more focused. She sits still on her crescent moon, but the background's changed a bit, giving a sense of her being boxed in.

The final piece, done in 1986, is transformed dramatically from the first. Her features are sharper, breasts and teeth more prominent, bits of her skeleton visible supporting a more muscular frame. The palate is brighter, the background moved to space, perhaps.

Moving from one piece to another, noting the differences in setting and the changes in the character. The first character, not necessarily at peace, but presented more quietly, the final one appearing like an angry, empowered alien, alone in the cold void. For me it was impossible not to wonder and speculate as to what the artist is trying to communicate, both with the individual pieces as well as their progression. Six years after the first painting, her perspective on the character and the setting had changed, and ten years after that it had changed even more dramatically. Was the story of how her subject would change in the artists mind from the beginning? If so, how did that story evolve from it’s start to it’s end sixteen years later? If not, what thoughts, feelings, events did she experience prompting her to revisit the subject in the way she did at these intervals? How much of the artist was represented in the subject? Her own experiences and changes? Do those questions even matter?

And there’s the magic. That I can experience all these feeling and questions without having anything but reflected light caught on my retinas. I will never know what Ms. Cunningham wanted me to feel or think with this or any of her other works, but through her art she has reached across nearly half a century to create a pattern of thoughts and feelings which have entranced my mind and challenged my understanding.