John McNamara
By DeWitt Cheng
“Painting: The art of protecting flat surfaces from the weather and exposing them to the critic.”
—Ambrose Bierce, The Devil’s Dictionary
“In this empire the art of cartography had reached such a perfection that a map of a single county covered a whole city, and a map of the empire that of a whole county. Finally, a point was reached when these colossal maps were no longer considered satisfactory, and the institutions of the cartographers made a map of the empire, which was as large as the empire itself and coincided with it point for point. Later generations, who were less prone to practice the art of cartography, came to realize that this vast map was useless and through some neglect abandoned it to the forces of sun and winters. In the deserts of the western regions [of the empire], home to beasts and beggars, there remained dispersed ruins of the map, but otherwise there were no remains of the practice of geography in the whole land. —Jorge Luis Borges, On Exactitude in Science
It’s hard to imagine now, but only two generations ago, abstraction and figuration were locked in mortal combat. (The accusations of treachery that greeted Philip Guston’s 1970s abandonment of abstraction for his late, figurative style should be required reading for impassioned art revolutionaries.) Esthetic fashions come and go, but some, if not all, of the best art has always sought to capture the world of appearances and to examine it in some transcendent light, sub specie aeternitatis: to show flux and eternity fused. John McNamara makes surrealist photo collages and then slowly covers with them with a layer of oil paint, mixing not only figuration and abstraction, but also raising questions about representation in the way that many photographers of constructed realities are also doing. McNamara is a painter, however, who has explored the creation of presence, or “sense of place” in painting for his entire career. A Bostonian trained at Massachusetts College of Art, he initially painted turbulent Abstract Expressionist fields inset with stylized, totemic figures and rectangular apertures: sketches or photographs suggestive of windows or electronic displays. The free-association imagery (Marilyn, animal skulls, feet, lips, Einstein, daguerreotypes, Cary Grant) was evocative, but ambiguous, defying narrative, or, rather, suggesting multiple narratives, with an implied reality lying beneath the welters of brush strokes (“I have always loved the tiny mark.”). In 1982, the Boston Phoenix critic Kenneth Baker (now art critic for the San Francisco Chronicle) praised the works’ implied “presence of reality,” or “the impression of inexhaustibility that defines reality.” McNamara’s “meandering composition[s] ... present you with more than anyone’s memory can hold in the way of physical structure and color interaction.” In 1986, The Christian Science Monitor ’s Theodore Wolff admired the paintings’ “highly personal and provocative fusion of geometric and organic forms, their ability to objectify primal experience, and their knack of maintaining a dynamic, contrapuntal relationship between the products of impulse and those of calculation.” Prestigious art fellowships (AVA, NEA) followed, as did articles in art magazines (Art News, Artforum, Art in America) and purchases by major art museums (Metropolitan Museum; List Visual Art Center, M.I.T.; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston). In 1993, McNamara moved to the Bay Area, teaching first at San Francisco Art Institute and later the University of California at Berkeley, where his courses in drawing, painting, and Visual Studies, along with his mentoring of graduate student instructors, continue, both popular and academically well-regarded.
In 1989, McNamara felt the need for creative change: “the paintings I was making had less and less meaning for me.” After a five-month hiatus from painting, he decided to “make narratives” by incorporating photographic and other found imagery— “life’s realities”—into his paintings. The commandeering of pre-existing “low” vernacular material for “high” art derives from
Cubist and Dadaist collage, developing with Johns’ and Rauschenberg’s hybrid 2D/3D artworks and Pop Art’s mass media image appropriations. McNamara continues this rich tradition by assembling printed images from magazines and other sources. Instead of presenting the works as is, however, or re-photographing them (or composing them in the computer), McNamara repaints the images in oils, preserving the source material in idealized, unchanging form, atop the original material. His unorthodox practice is analogous to, say, decorating mummy cases with encaustic portraits of upwardly mobile dead Egyptians, or making a 1:1 scale map of the topography underfoot, as in Borges’ story quoted above. McNamara, fascinated with combining photographic frozen moments from different eras and areas, and preserving them in the amber of art, writes: “For me, collage is a time machine of sorts. The painted skin on top jettisons the photo document into the world of painting; but these people, places and things still speak from underneath the painted skin.” The artist thus practices a kind of Photorealist painting—he particularly admires the complex urban landscapes of Richard Estes—crossed with conceptual performance and ritual, the painting being the end product of his focused attention, even compulsion. “Total fixation activity—I admire that tremendously,” he says, of the paintings of Beat painter/collagist Jess Collins.
Some of McNamara’s eye-popping, obsessive-compulsive covers or coverlets include Wise Ass, a panoramic landscape reminiscent of Dali in its succulent palette and unfettered fantasy; Encroachment, a merger of two images of high-altitude maintenance workers in New York City and Dallas; The Suitors, depicting a Gothic Revival mansion and its upstart neighbor, a postmodernist work in progress; Unreal, a montage of children, wounded soldiers and movie spectators with the epic quality of nineteenth-century history painting, but without its canned sentiments; and White on Color, a large painting combining scores of images dealing with various types of “space” that have been edited with white paint and then preserved and muted by an overall glazing of white-tinted wax, resulting in a kind of artifact already dimmed and obscured by time. Social satire, surrealist fantasy and elegy vie with formal concerns in these works, but however ambiguous or enigmatic the narrative implications, the images are always compelling to viewers open to their eccentric seductions. With their surreal juxtapositions and cinematic jump cuts, they are, in the words of Gerrit Henry (Art in America), “ridiculous and sublime, all at once”—like real life.
High Stakes, oil, paper, panel, 40” x 48”, 2003
Real Light, oil, paper, panel, 40” x 48” , 2001
5.18.16, oil, paper, panel, 60” x 40”, 2016
Anthroland, oil, paper, panel, 48” x 40” , 1998
is
Realization,
Anticipation
Greater than
oil, paper, panel, 42” x 60” , 2015
Apex, oil, paper, panel, 60” x 44”, 2015–16
Bridges and Plumbing, oil, paper, panel, 48” x 60” x 2”, 2013–14
Compressed, oil, paper, wax, panel, 40” x 60”, 2017
Faceoff, oil, paper, wax, panel, 30” x 40”, 2016–17
Flux, oil, paper, panel, 12” x 32”, 2013
Rigor of Facade, oil, paper, panel, 36” x 80”, 2005
Larry’s Place, oil, paper, panel, 48” x 60”, 2006
Let’s Twist Again Like We Did Last Summer, oil, paper, panel, 48” x 40”, 1999
The Moment, oil, paper, panel, 48” x 40”, 2015
The Century, oil, paper, wax, panel, 40” x 30”, 2017
The Showoff and the Introvert,oil, paper, wax, panel, 48” x 40”, 2015
Transcendence, oil, paper, panel, 44” x 35”, 1997
Where Is Matthew Barrall?, oil, paper, wax, panel, 30” x 40”, 2017
Seduced Again, oil, paper, panel, 45” x 80”, 2005
John McNamara
www.macpainter.com
Education
1977 Massachusetts College of Art, Boston, MA, M.F.A. Painting
1971 Massachusetts College of Art, Boston, MA, B.F.A. Painting
Awards:
1985 Fellow, The MacDowell Colony
1982 Awards in the Visual Arts Fellowship 2(funded by Equitable Life and the Rockefeller Foundation)
Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art, Winston-Salem NC
1981 National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship
1980, 1983, 1986,1989
Massachusetts Arts and Humanities Grant
One Person Exhibitions
2017 University Art Gallery, Cal State Stanislaus, Turlock, CA
2013 The Painting Center, NY, NY
2012 Gallery Bergelli, Larkspur, CA
2008 Townsend Center for the Humanities, University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, CA
– “Ten Moments from the Twentieth Century” 2/20 – 5/15 - 2008
2002 Clark Gallery, Lincoln, MA
Ebert Gallery, San Francisco, CA
2001 / 02 Fuller Museum of Art, Brockton, MA
1999 Addison Street Windows, Public Art Venue, Berkeley, CA
1995 Miller / Block Gallery, Boston, MA
1992 Nina Nielsen Gallery, Boston, MA
1990 Nina Nielsen Gallery, Boston, MA
1989 Stavaridis Gallery, Boston, MA
1988 Bess Cutler Gallery, New York, NY
1987 Stavaridis Gallery, Boston, MA
Honolulu Academy of Fine Art, Honolulu, Hawaii
1986 Massachusetts College of Art, Boston, MA
Bess Cutler Gallery, New York, NY
1985 Stavaridis Gallery, Boston, MA
Bess Cutler Gallery, New York, NY
Mary Wright Gallery, Dallas, TX
1984 Bess Cutler Gallery, New York, NY
Stavaridis Gallery, Boston, MA
1983 Stavaridis Gallery, Boston, MA
1982 The Exhibition Space at 112 Greene Street, New York, NY
Cutler / Stavaridis Gallery, Boston, MA
1981 Cutler / Stavaridis Gallery, Boston, MA
1980 Cutler / Stavaridis Gallery, Boston, MA
1971 Massachusetts College of Art, Boston, MA
1969 Hundred Souls Gallery, Plymouth, MA
Selected Group Exhibitions
2017 “Happy Paintings To Bring Mirth” Compound Gallery, Oakland, CA
2016 “Polychrome Stew” Work by John McNamara and Bob Stang, Compound Gallery, Oakland CA
2015 “Livin’ Large: Works From The 1980’s” Tucson Museum of Art, 4/24 – 7/12
2014 “Unique Surfaces, A Collage” Gary Francis Gallery, Alameda,
2013 “Urban Grit” Gary Francis Gallery, 2013 / 14 “In Our Hands” Croatian Association of Artists, Zagreb, Croatia
2013 “Open Loop: The Life of an Art Object Before, During, and After” Worth Ryder Gallery, University of CA., Berkeley
2012 “Natural/Constructed” The Painting Center, NY, NY
2010 Small Works Show The Painting Center, NY, NY
2008 / 09 “Decades of Abstraction:” Honolulu Academy of Arts, Honolulu, Hawaii
1994–2013 “U.C.B.” Faculty Show, Worth Ryder Gallery, University of CA, Berkeley
2004 / 05 “New Faces: New Vision” Danforth Museum, Framingham, MA
2002 / 03 “Painting in Boston: 1950 – 2000” DeCordova Museum / Sculpture Park, Lincoln, MA
2002 “Selections from the Permanent Collection” Danforth Museum, Framingham, MA
2000 / 01 “Abstract Expressionism – Figural Expressionism” Common Ground, DeCordova Museum / Sculpture Park, Lincoln, MA
2000 “Visual Memories: Selected Paintings and Drawings” Rose Art Museum, Brandeis University, Waltham, MA
1996 “A Gift of Vision – William A. and Susan Small Collection, Tucson Museum of Art, Tucson, AZ
“James Breslin Memorial Exhibition” Berkeley Art Center, Berkeley, CA
1995 “Current Acquisitions” Smith College of Art, North Hampton, MA
1994 “Treasures in Our Midst” Fuller Museum of Art, Brockton, MA
1993 “Works in Progress” Walter McBean Gallery, San Francisco Art Institute, S.F., CA
“Healing Arts” Somar Gallery, San Francisco, CA
871 Fine Art Gallery, San Francisco, CA
“Crossing the Line: Abstraction / Figuration” Nielsen Gallery, Boston, MA
1992 “In the Spirit of Landscape” Nielsen Gallery, Boston, MA
“Big Ideas” Tucson Museum of Art, Tucson, AZ
1990 “Paintings, Drawings, Sculpture” Nielsen Gallery, Boston, MA
“Invitational Small Painting Exhibition” Nielsen Gallery, Boston, MA
1989 / 90 “New England Impressions: The Art of Printmaking” Fitchburg Museum of Art, Fitchburg, MA
Travels to: Galerie Kunst Im Turm, West Germany
“Resonant Abstraction” Fuller Museum of Art, Brockton, MA
1988 “American Painters and Sculptors” Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
1987 Bess Cutler Gallery, New York, NY
1986
“Boston Collects” Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA
“25th Anniversary Exhibition” Rose Art Museum, Brandeis University, Waltham, MA
“Expressionism in Boston” DeCordova Museum, Lincoln, MA
1985 “Contemporary Art of the Commonwealth” Offices of Congressman Edward J. Markey, Washington, DC
1984 / 83 “Brockton Museum Triennial Exhibit” Brockton Museum, Brockton, MA
1984
“Awards in the Visual Arts Exhibition Tour” Mint Museum, Charlotte, SC Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, IL DeCordova Museum, Boston, MA
“Selections from the A.V.A. 2 Show” Equitable Life Insurance Society Gallery, New York, NY
1983 “Boston Now” Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, MA
1982 “New England Painters” Currier Museum of Art, Manchester, NH
1981 “Epic Abstractionists” Fitchburg Art Museum, Fitchburg, MA
“Boston Now” Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, MA
1980 “Brockton Museum Triennial Exhibit” Brockton, MA
1978 “Fresh Images” Rose Art Museum, Brandeis University, Waltham, MA
1977 Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, MA
1970
New York University, New York, NY
“Upcoming Young American Artists” The Arts and Science Center, Nashua, NH
“Salon 70” Warde-Nasse Gallrey, Boston, MA
Selected References:
Margaret Regan
“Livin Large: Paintings from the Power Charged 80”s, The Tucson Weekly, May 28, 2015,
Alice Losk “The Artsicle Blog” June 26, 2012 NY,NY
http://www.artsicle.com/blog/serenity-despite-the-heat-at-natural constructed-spaces-i
Allara, Pamela “Artists of the Eighties” Dialogue, Feb. 1989, No. 84
“The Scope of Boston Art is Much Broader Than it Would Appear” Art News, Nov. 1981, 80,9: 126-131
Baker, Kenneth “Abstracting Reality” The Boston Phoenix, March 23, 1982
“Local Color at the I.C.A.” The Boston Phoenix, May 26, 1981
“Seeing is Believing: John McNamara’s Maximum Spaces”
The Boston Phoenix, April 21, 1981
Banks, Gail “Six Boston Artists Who are about to Make it Big” Boston Magazine, May, 1983
Bauld, Harold “The Collectors” Boston Magazine, Sept. 1987
Belz, Carl “John McNamara” Arts Magazine, Nov., 1982 57, 3:13
“Painting in Boston” pgs. 184, 103, 217, 231
Bonetti, David “The Boston Phoenix May 5, 1989
“John McNamara” Art News, Feb. 1988
“Boston” Art News, Summer 1988
The Boston Phoenix Dec. 24, 1987
“An Artist Capable of Surprise” Boston Musica Viva News, Sept.1985
Chawky Frenn “100 Boston Painters” Schifferbooks.com 2012
Cheng, DeWitt “Ten Moments in the Twentieth Century” Paintings by John McNamara
East Bay Express, Feb. 20, 2008
Collier’s Magazine February 2012
Collier’s Magazine April 2012
Couture, Michael “Two New Exhibits to open at Fuller” Brockton Enterprise, Dec. 9, 1989
Croke, Katie ‘Folly” Interview with John McNamara July 2006
DeWitt Cheng Essay for 2012 Catalog/Gallery Bergelli
Henry, Gerrit “John McNamara” Art in America, Summer 1984
Jeppson, Gabriella “John McNamara and Roger Kizik” Art New England, Jan. 1980 1,2: 6
Joselit, David “Epic Abstractionists: John McNamara and Rick Harlow”
Art New England, Dec. 1981
Marquis Publications “Who’s Who in American Art, 1984 – 2010
McClaran, Stephen “John McNamara: Specchio e Figura” HAA Docents’ Newsletter, May 2009 McFadden, Sara “Report from Boston” Art in America, May 1983
McGill, Douglass
New York Times, May 29, 1985
Mitchell, Charles “Art Space” Dallas Fort Worth Letter, Summer 1985
Morse, Marcia “Two Artist’s Redefine the Word “Abstraction”
Honolulu Star Bulletin, August, 9, 1987
Nemser, Rebbeca Art Listings, Galleries, The Boston Phoenix, Section 3, July 20, 1990 Narrett, Eugene “John McNamara” Art New England, Jan. 1991
“John McNamara” Art New England, Dec. 1990
“Art and Culture” Art New Engaland Oct. 1989
“John McNamara, Stavaridis Gallery” New Art Examiner, Jan. 1988 Parks, Addison Art Deal, May, 1995
Poirrier, Maurice “John McNamara” Art News, Sept. 1986
Saulnier, Bonnie
“John McNamara’s Cathedrals” New Boston Review, June/July 1979 Stapen, Nancy “A Landscape Artist Moves to Cyberspace – John McNamara”
Boston Globe, May 4, 1995
“John McNamara” Art News, Nov. 1990
“From Epic to Expression” Boston Sunday Globe, Sept. 30, 1990
“Passion Power, Expressive Abstraction Show at Fuller”
The Boston Herald, Jan. 5 1990
“Art in Boston: An Overview” Art News, Summer 1987
“John McNamara” Art New England, May 1981
Swan, Christopher Christian Science Monitor, June 23, 1983
Taylor, Robert Boston Globe, Jan 10, 1988
“The Best Shows of 1981” Boston Sunday Globe, Dec. 27, 1981
“Heroic Works: Disaster and Nature in Three Shows”
Boston Globe, April 5, 1981
“Big is Beautiful” Boston Globe, Jan. 15, 1981
“Images at Brandeis: Vital, Engrossing” Boston Sunday Globe, Nov. 26, 1978
Temin, Christine
“Thoughtful Amalgam of Several Styles” Boston Globe, Dec. 21, 1989
“Perspectives, John McNamara” Boston Globe, May 4, 1989
“McNamara Cuts Loose in New York” Boston Globe, March 15, 1984
“Lives in the Arts” Boston Globe, Jan. 4, 1984
“Best Shows of 1981” Boston Globe, Dec. 26, 1981
“McNamara’s Shimmering Bands” Boston Globe, March 31, 198
Weinreb, Brea Art Practice Faculty Show, Caliber Magazine, November 2012
Wolff, Theodore
“Young Talent on the Trail of Greatness” The Christian Science Monitor, April 14, 1986
“New York Artists Speak to Each Other- On Canvas” The Christian Science Monitor, April 23, 1984
“The Home Forum” The Christian Science Monitor, April 7, 1983
“Where have all the Painterly Painters Gone?” The Christian Science Monitor, Dec. 21, 1982
Public Collections
Boston Public Library, Boston, MA
Bridgewater State College, Bridgewater, MA
Clark University, Worcester, MA
Currier Museum of Art, Manchester, NH
Danforth Art Museum, Framingham, MA
DeCordova Museum and Sculpture Park, Lincoln, MA
Federal Reserve Bank, Boston, MA
Fitchburg Art Museum, Fitchburg, MA
Fuller Museum of Art, Brockton, MA
Hale and Dore, Boston, MA
Honolulu Academy of Fine Arts, Honolulu, Hawaii
J.B. Speed Museum of Art, Louisville, KY
Joan Sonnabend Collection
List Visual Art Center, Cambridge, MA
Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, MA
Massachusetts College of Art, Boston, MA
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA
Rose Art Museum, Brandeis University, Waltham, MA
Smith College of Art Museum, North Hampton, MA
Tampa Museum of Art, Tampa, FL
Tucson Museum of Art, Tucson, AZ
Davis Museum and Cultural Center, Wellesley College, Wellesley, MA
Worcester Art Museum, Worcester, MA
Academic Bio
1975–1993 Visiting Instructor/Professor, Massachusetts College of Art and Design, Boston, MA
1982/83, 1988–1992 Visiting Professor, Boston Museum of Fine Arts School
1985/86 Montserrat College of Art, Boston, MA
1992–1993 Visiting Instructor, San Francisco Art Institute, San Francisco, CA
1993–Present Continuing Lecturer, Art Practice Dept., University of California, Berkeley
