Barnaby Whitfield, Irvine Contemporary, DC

Irvine Contemporary’s courageous show New Realism includes works that the distinguished art critic Donald Kuspit would consider part of the “New Old Masters,” genre. This term, coined by Kuspit in The End of Art, refers to a contemporary renaissance of spirituality and humanism in art. One artist in particular embodies this, Barnaby Whitfield. Working in the traditional medium of soft pastels, commonly associated with artists such as Degas and Cassat, Whitfield presents figurative and portrait works in a realistic manner that is directly defiant of the leading directives found in art schools today.

Barnaby’s Fresh Horses, 50” x 70” is a dexterously executed, dramatic self-portrait that attempts true pathos and slight satire. Crammed with metaphoric wit, the work depicts a glum and dejected Barnaby sitting in a pink petticoat with a cake adorned with ten lighted candles, prettily placed on his lap. What occasion he is celebrating, no one knows. Two nude men on each side attempt to urinate on him, while a variety of bird species surround him in interest. The appearance of these high metaphors not only clarifies the meaning in the work but also reveals much about the artist.

The “golden shower,” which metamorphoses into sprightly bubbles, denigrates Barnaby but also provides comedic relief, a visual version of the fool in Shakespeare. It is as if Barnaby is joining in in self-ridicule. This act is a sexual fetish associated with dominance/inferiority role-playing, a form of pleasurable pain. This leads us to consider the existence of a martyr complex in the work, which in psychology is described as willful suffering in the name of love or duty. One birds’ sly placement in the work supports this in that its torso is slightly obscured by Barnaby’s own, causing the wings to extend provocatively and angelically from Barnaby’s back.

The birds as a whole in the work are polysymbolic, engraved in our collective conscious as somewhat trite symbols of both freedom and madness. While Maya Angelou’s, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, (1969) is a clear example of the former, Hitchcock views them as symbols of the irrational. Tim Dirks wrote, “On an allegorical level, the birds in the film are the physical embodiment and exteriorization of unleashed, disturbing, shattering forces that threaten all of humanity, when relationships have become insubstantial, unsupportive, or hurtful.” These interpretations suggest that the work is depicting an unwanted freedom, a freedom from a relationship that has led Barnaby into a histrionic madness. The title of the work, Fresh Horses, supports this conclusion in that it is a reference to the 1988 film about lost love, starring Molly Ringwald.

The work does not represent a celebration, but a memorial. And yet, it should be noted, that the comedic presence in the work and the existence of the work itself, encourage us to consider a redemptive element. The Spanish philosopher, Jose Ortega Y Gasset wrote, “Were art to redeem man, it could do so only by saving him from the seriousness of life.” Laughable, tragic, courageously honest, this self-portrait accomplishes just this with adroit skill.