Barnaby Fitzgerald’s exhibition “An Eye For Ballast,” comprising two dozen paintings made over the course of the last three decades, offers an unusually direct connection between the culture of Greco-Roman antiquity and the world of contemporary art.
Not only do viewers meet figures such as Io, Terpsichore and Trimalchio, who have stepped from their ancient myths onto Fitzgerald’s canvases, but also the sunlight and skies suggest those of Umbria, in central Italy, where the artist lived as a child and still maintains a studio.
Like visiting Italy itself, spending time with Fitzgerald’s paintings makes the timeless world of mythology seem suddenly present and alive — an otherwise all-too-rare experience in modern culture. It lifts one’s mind out of the day-to-day bustle and prompts one to reflect on what, if anything, of present reality might survive through future centuries.
Fitzgerald’s depictions of artists’ studios, such as Ubi Sunt and Ozymandias, allude directly to this question, since many works of art are created as monuments to secure the memory of their creators or their patrons. But, as with the fate of King Ozymandias in Shelley’s poem, even the greatest monument is no guarantee against having one’s reputation obliterated by the passage of time.
The most direct depiction of mortality is in Morte d’Io, in which the skeleton of the unfortunate princess, prey to the predatory Zeus, reclines among the clouds, with no signs of life anywhere nearby. The subject is addressed more indirectly in other works, such as Bocca, a conch shell that memorializes a godchild killed in the 2010 Haiti earthquake, and Caesura, which allegorizes the assassination of John F. Kennedy, an event that Fitzgerald lived through as a fifth-grader in Italy.
Not that the paintings are uniformly melancholic — far from it. Rather, they are also full of scenes of eating, drinking, dancing and other life-giving activities.
For example, in Clouds of Unknowing, a joyful nude banquet takes place in the foreground, adjacent to a hefty wild boar being spit-roasted over a fire pit. While some of the revelers threaten to topple over their chairs during an enthusiastic toast, others have already hit their limit and are sprawled out on the ground under the table. The whole tableau is set in front of a gorgeous sunset that turns the background landscape into a contrast of bright colors and lengthening shadows.
In Ubi Sunt, even as a seated model casts an impassive glance at the balding, paunchy sculptor covering himself with stone chips as he works, two colorful plates of pasta on the floor draw the viewer’s eye toward their simple, mouth-watering pleasures.
To be sure, Italian antiquity is not the only frame of reference. Other landscapes, including the occasional baobab tree, belong to the country of Togo, in West Africa, where Fitzgerald has visited for many years and also maintains a studio. Dallas’ influence is less explicit, though Fitzgerald has been here since 1984, and taught for 39 years at Southern Methodist University.
In the metaphor that gives the exhibition its title, the eye is what steadies, or stabilizes, an artist throughout the odyssey of his or her life, much like the ballast or keel of a ship. The steadiness and consistency of Fitzgerald’s work proves the aptness of the title, and the solidity and strength of the paintings mean that they stay with a viewer long after leaving the show, like truly classical monuments.
Details
“Barnaby Fitzgerald: An Eye for Ballast” continues through Sept. 22. Meadows Museum, 5900 Bishop Blvd., Dallas. Tuesdays through Saturdays from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. (open till 9 p.m. on Thursdays), and Sundays from 1 to 5 p.m. $12 for adults; $10 for seniors; and free for members, youths age 18 and under, and SMU faculty, staff and students. Free admission Thursdays after 5 p.m. meadowsmuseumdallas.org, 214-768-2516.
