If
you had never seen the sky - if you had only ever heard
it described by other people would you know it if you
saw it? What are the essential features of the sky? What
does the sky mean?
The sky, of course,
can mean pretty much anything we care to project on
it. It's hardly - despite the way it just sort of hangs
there in the summer - what you'd describe as neutral
territory. In art and in literature it's done heavy
lifting in service of the pathetic fallacy (which requires
a storm to rage in the background of a fight to the
death); it's always there to deflect attention from
other, weightier matters. Never mind that it's pollution
that gives us those glorious salmon-streaked sunsets
that evoke romance and destiny and God; there is no
more convenient container for our unruly emotional
overflow than the glancing sky.
Linda Davidson
has let the sky overflow over 500 small paintings,
and when you stand back they come together like a whole
sky that moves from dull high haziness to unrealistic
blue to dramatic storm back to blue (somehow less unrealistic
this time) and then becomes a mass of clashing, noisy
color - the sky at apocalypse, perhaps. But each piece
could also be a whole sky unto itself, and I'm hard
pressed to think of any other entity that can survive
being divided so mercilessly, that is so infinite and
also irreducible.
There's a lot
of variety in among the paintings, and some of them
are less convincing than others, although it requires
some thought to understand that the meat of the question
is how far you can abstract the sky and still recognize
it.
|
