As Artists Stanley Greaves AA and Akima McPherson wrap up their Conversations on Art series, they discuss Dominique Hunter’s Tug O’ War Kinda Love, which was done in graphite on paper and completed in 2009.
Akima McPherson: As we close off these Conversations on Art, I am simultaneously pleased and dismayed that we do so with one of the National Collection’s few young artists (I know with certainty of two), and one of very few works acquired while the artist was at her early stage.
Dominique Hunter will turn 30 this year (and somewhere the figure of 35 caps the “youth” designation). Three of her drawings are part of the very small body of drawings within the Collection.
This early work by Hunter is both competent and grounded in Surrealist aesthetics and motivation. Consequently the work is very relevant for today as significant international artists (Koons and Hirst for instance) continue to embrace aspects of the Surrealist mode. While there is much to be said about the demographic Hunter represents, the most exciting feature about this work is that it is not bound up in our perennial preoccupation with ethno-cultural identity. Simultaneously, the work launches boldly a conversation with a significant art movement – Surrealism.
Stanley Greaves: It is quite obvious that Hunter’s work is very much located in the Surrealist school and the finest sustained examples I have ever seen in Guyana. As far as I am concerned Koons and Hirst are just performers. Dorothea Tanning, Leonora Carrington and even Dali himself I would consider as better examples. Tug O’ War Kinda Love was the work that held my attention because of the manner in which the invented imagery held together and was very relevant to the theme. Among them we find the interacting cog-wheels as the intimacy of relationships; the blindfolded face referencing “love is blind,” the frog about to be kissed hopefully to become a prince is about hope; the explosion to the left signifying the dynamic force of love. The composition is very thoughtfully worked out and the pencil technique immaculate. It is great to see work that is not mere appropriation of the Surrealist methodology without an understanding of its tenets or philosophy.
AM: Tanning, Carrington and Dali were amongst the original players of the movement and as such their work defined it; Salvador Dali especially. Decades after the first Surrealist Manifesto and decades after the movement’s aesthetics and philosophical groundings were seemingly supplanted by successive avant garde movements, we see evidence of it in the gestures of those two hugely popular and financially successful artists I mentioned. A lot of artists lean on the ‘irrational’ juxtapositions also purposed by the Surrealists. This is the aspect of the movement that I think Hunter has leaned on. She has used universal symbols (and I realise that word ‘universal’ is loaded… I mean symbols meaningful in our Western context) in deliberate imagery. Work like this lends itself wonderfully to multiple interpretations. For instance, in addition to your own reading one could easily read a modern-day conflict and see a pull between the machinations of work and industry and the personal domain. I read the cog-wheel figure as androgynous, although I lean to a female identity and that proposes different layers of meaning, all within the theme proposed by the work’s title.
SG: While I do understand the nature of popularity and financial success I do not see them as the foundations of the significance in works of art. What is heartening about Hunter’s work is the unification of technical competence, understanding and application of the canon of an international movement without being just a copyist. Your statement that “Work like this lends itself wonderfully to multiple interpretations” is quite true to which I would add the word relevance.
Over the months I must say how much I appreciated exchanging ideas and perceptions in the dialogue with you, allowing space for agreement and disagreement. My appreciation is extended as well to Castellani House for allowing access to the Collection and to the Sunday Stabroek for use of space. Finally, I do hope that the Series did create interest in the production of our artists among artists and the general public as well.
AM: I am not surprised by where we are at this moment – the work of those two men, while very visible, does generate a lot of controversy. I actually never said they are the foundations of the movement. I used their substantial visibility only to underscore the point that some of the movement’s aesthetics and principles persist substantially in today’s art, 90+ years after the movement was first birthed. And, in closing, I say thank you for inviting me on this journey with you. When we began I wondered if the Sunday Stabroek’s readers would be interested. But over the two years I encountered men and women of all ages and relationships to art who have expressed their appreciation and views on our comments. To all who have read the Conversations on Art I say thank you. I also thank the Sunday Stabroek for facilitating and supporting us, especially when photography was needed. And thank you to the staff of Castellani House.
