Contributed by Jonathan Stevenson / Farrell Brickhouse’s recent paintings, on view at JJ Murphy Gallery, embody aging and stamina and the grungy inventiveness that comes with them. In these terms, perhaps the signature piece is Summers End II, tucked away all by itself in the gallery’s rear alcove. Just a foot-and-a-half square, it is a still life of Rauschenberg-grade grit that holds court, depicting what looks like a vase of motley flowers on a stand, waning but defiant in the face of time. Distressed as they are, they look not just alive but capable of aggression. The work is textured in the extreme, Brickhouse having affixed to the canvas the congealed detritus of students’ pigment and painted thickly around it. It’s as though Chaïm Soutine or Frank Auerbach had possessed Morandi and gone to town.
The other paintings reflect a stable stylistic equilibrium and dexterous control of a penchant for rough-hewn impasto, which Brickhouse extends to the figure and applies to the jangled impulses that life and especially troubled times trigger. Three small Offering paintings segue tonally from urgent to angry to subdued. He toggles easily between the topical (Tree Huggers, New Bather, Rescue, probably Atop 24 and Big Fish 3) and the pastoral (Big Fish, Study to the River, Tip Toe Spring). And he is at home with the mordantly existential: Dress Rehearsal II, Expulsion 3, Gift of Flight 1, and Little Deeper Down can all be read as brisk comments on the irony and gravity of mortality. As leavening, Brickhouse proffers the frisson of seeing – painting’s sine qua non. The relationship is complicated, since the quality of that sensation might itself turn on fragility, as in Study Yellow Bird, or jeopardy, as in Study Odalisque in a Tub.
Now 74, Brickhouse has long embraced art as an irrepressible incident of street-level life. He squatted in Tribeca in the 1970s, joined and advanced the AIR movement, renovated lofts once it got purchase, fished off Montauk when the opportunity arose, and back in Tribeca endured and absorbed 9/11. The deliberate and unapologetic rowdiness of his technique combined with an undeniable lyricism suggests a firmly twentieth-century sensibility: a little Hemingway, maybe some Kesey, but more centrally the one who came between them – Kerouac. Brickhouse’s work, distilled in the title “Looking Back at Tomorrow,” recapitulates the The Beats’ preoccupation with the visceral moment while stirring in the natural sagacity of weathered reflection. At the core of his work are snippets of the past too fraught to be grand or mythical, thus ineligible for sentimentality. He is not a blithe nostalgist. The moments he frames are precious because they are for better or worse formative, having aged, survived, and encrusted themselves in memory.
In setting before the viewer a figure presenting flowers that the artist might paint, Woman With a Vase could be riffing sardonically on the artifice of painting. But Brickhouse seems to have firmly hedged against the artist’s bane of insularity by self-consciously venturing outside the canvas in fact and in spirit, as evidenced in tactile surfaces that sometimes threaten to bolt the picture plane. If there is any squarely autobiographical piece here, it might be Night Gardener. The haunting yet heartening vibe of Brickhouse’s earthy, insouciantly painterly work is that of a solitary artist, to be sure, but one reveling in the mud and the worms between his toes.
“Farrell Brickhouse: Looking Back at Tomorrow,” JJ Murphy Gallery, 53 Stanton Street, New York, NY. Through May 18, 2024.
About the author: Jonathan Stevenson is a New York-based policy analyst, editor, and writer, contributing to the New York Times, the New York Review of Books, and Politico, among other publications, and a regular contributor to Two Coats of Paint.
Oh, I like this work alot. Thanks for the write up and for including so many photos of his paintings for us on the left coast and not often inclined to come east.
” It’s as though Chaïm Soutine or Frank Auerbach had possessed Morandi and gone to town.” Love it!
Thank you Jonathan, I know I will read this again and again. Often standing in front of a painting brush in hand, I need to remind myself that this can be done, there is merit in it. That others see what I hope is there, see it in their own way is so heartening. FB
I fell in love with the line about the vase of waning flowers: “Distressed as they are, they look not just alive but capable of aggression.”
Farrel has always been one of my favorites. This show as seen in these photos is an extraordinary example of a unique artist working at the highest level. Bravo 🙌
Bravo, dear Farrell!
I LIKE YOUR WORK EVEN MORE AS EACCH YEAR GOES BY!
Wonderful review. Congratulations Farrell!
Very moving paintings, Farrell. Wonderful review! Keep reveling in the mud and worms between your toes!
Farrell,s work is truly unforgettable. His past and present come together in such unique ways both through image and its creation. Beautiful tribute to an incredible artist.
Congrats Farrel!
Gorgeous, ruggedly sensitive work in full bloom! I can’t wait to see them!
Thank you all for taking the time to Comment and for offering such support expressed so sincerely. It’s a treasure of a Review.
Wonderful to see all this work and excellent review of your work.