Jake Berthot, graphite on Xerox (image from Artnet)
PART
ONE
Kazimira
and I arrived from Soho, around
twelve oclock. We could see through the front door, Mara, (Mara Held) and Jake
were sitting comfortably around Jake’s Kitchen table. Mara signaled through the
front door for us to come in. Jake and Mara were drinking tea with local honey.
Jake
lived in Accord, upstate NY, in a beautiful home converted from a chicken
coupe.
Inside,
the walls were covered with beautiful things. There were two Pisarro’s and
prints by Cezanne and Renoir. There was a Bill Bailey drawing and a small
sculpture by Bruce Gagnier. And there was a small masterpiece by Jake, an
earlier abstract painting that radiated a quiet silvery-blue light.
Jake and Mara were already engaged
in conversation and we joined right in.
I brought up the Al Held show at Cheim Read and wondered if anyone had
written about it yet. Jake said John Yau had. He felt John Yau hadn’t done
justice to Al Held’s place in the NY School. It was nice to hear one artist
defend the reputation and achievement of another with such affection and
reverence, especially since they could not have been further apart in
temperament and philosophy. When I read the article myself, it did seem
positive. I thought that it went into depth to describe Al’s history and
achievement. Al Held was a full generation older than Jake but they had known
each other. I was enjoying my good
fortune at being a part of this conversation. Al had been one of my teachers in grad school at Yale. I spent
two years working around Al. I liked Mara, his daughter a lot, and was pleased
that we had become friends.
Speaking more about Al’s show, I related
that I had sat on the floor near the big red painting during a panel, held
earlier that week at the gallery. As people spoke, I felt Al's presence, that
is to say his muscle and intellect, through the force and physicality of the
painted surface that was just over my left shoulder.
Mara
said she was too shy to say so at the panel, but felt there was more to be said
about his color in these paintings and that no one had really gotten to the
essence of what that was about.
Kazimira, who of us four, makes work
which most resembles Al’s geometric abstractions, spoke in interesting ways of
how it was both like and unlike her own work. Jake spoke in some depth about
all this also. Then for a while I had the pleasant feeling that although my
connection and understanding of what was being said was slipping away, I was
still enjoying the music of the conversation. It had veered into the more
abstract realms of space, shape, all over formalism, and the metaphysics of the
painted surface.
Later,
Jake spoke highly of Ivan Karp; a dealer who Jake said had been wonderful to
him, giving him a yearly stipend equal to that of his teaching salary so he
could be full time in the studio.
Margrit and Bill Jensen entered into our
conversation. They thought perhaps Kazimira and Margrit had gone to the
same Catholic school. Jake and Mara who know Bill and Margrit well,
agreed that Margrit was not quite a saint, but close. The conversation switched
back to Al. We all agreed that though Al loved nothing more than his own work,
his love and commitment to painting in general was monumental. He enjoyed
friendships with artists as romantic as Bill and Jake. I said I could
attest to his inclusive nature, remembering my student years when Al made sure
I was invited to join nights of eating, drinking and arguing with Joe Santore,
Judy Pfaff and Nabil Nahas. These were the nights he stayed over in New Haven
between his two teaching days. I don’t remember contributing much during those
nights. I was shyer than my friends.
This
March day in the Catskills was still cold and wintery, though the snow had
mostly been washed away on the weekend by warmer air and rain. Inside we were
toasty, the sunlight pouring through the large windows and the wood stove easily
heating the whole space. Now we were deeper into the warmth of afternoon light.
The
conversation swung back to our personal experiences painting. Jake and Kazimira
and Mara spoke of painterly technique and the perils and challenges of scale,
the meaning of touch, and how these interrelated. Eventually we realized that
hours had flown by and still we had not visited Jake's studio, so we made our
way outside.
Jake Berthot, 1994, oil on linen
Jake’s
studio was a nice size, large enough, but not immense, just the right size for
Jake's work. It was filled with the stuff of painting. It was orderly, studio-clean,
with a prevailing feeling of quiet meditative stillness and of life being lived.
The
first things Jake took out for us to look at were three very handsome pencil drawings
in different stages of completion. Each exposed the mysterious personal
geometry upon which he built his compositions. Earlier he had spoken of this
component of his work, its function and its evolution. Honestly, I didn’t
really follow his explanation at the time, but upon reflection I have some
insights. Since Jake came to landscape painting from a different angle than
everyone else, that is abstract painting, I imagine the grids provided a
scaffold upon which he could build and construct his compositions. They must
have made the space between things seem palpable and real, measurable in some
way. With them in place, he could more readily move and feel his way through
the warp and flow of form and space. Jake came to the sensuality of landscape
and representation not through direct observation, but through abstraction and
geometry which was also real to him. I bet he saw, felt or sensed those grids
underlying the physical world, connecting and flowing through everything that
we inhabit.
Next
we looked at a gorgeous sketchbook from the 60s and 70s that was exclusively
geometry. It reminded me of the flavor of abstraction in the air at that time
among some artists I thought were very advanced.
The first oil painting Jake showed us was
the largest we would see that day. When he
had carefully placed it on the wall a
surprising thing happened. All the easy talk ceased. We were struck dumb. What
Jake had said about his geometry and the structure of his landscapes had been
totally realized in this canvas. We all recognized it and felt its presence and
depth immediately. It got inside my head. We spent the rest of the afternoon
looking at other new work. Slowly, silently, one at a time.
The end of the day was bittersweet. After
a meal at Japanese place in town we said our goodbyes, as that cold, kind-of-scary
Hudson River Valley winter twilight settled in. There was plenty of that
purplish grey color Jake had spoken of earlier in the afternoon, the color of
trees in a Catskill winter.
We met
up several more times, usually at a museum show that Jake came down to
see. At the Gauguin show at MOMA
the beautiful painter and mutual friend, Power Boothe, joined us. It was a show
I was prepared to love but didn’t. Jake did. He was already weak, but spoke of, harmony, tone, color
and dissonance. There was something in every painting. Jake was opened and
easily moved himself into a position of appreciation.
I
saw Jake for the last time 2 months ago, and he was dying. He was still a handsome
man. His mind and his talk were fresh and sharp. He wanted to die because he
didn’t have the energy to paint. He was angry because he did not feel he had
finished what he had started.
Still it was a wonderful visit. I must have been there five hours or
more. Still, I wished I could have left him more at peace. I was told that soon
after my visit, he had gotten back into the studio for a short time. I like to think I had something to do
with that. We had talked a lot about painters and painting and it was energizing
and fun for both of us.
Jake
was a courageous explorer, an adventurer and since I have known him, a solitary.
When I imagine where he is now, I see him fully engaged creatively with his
imagination and his curiosity. He is exploring in an infinitely interesting
place, an infinite space that we call death.
Jake Berthot, Ashton's Tree, 2010, oil on linen
ON JAKE BERTHOT
I
got to know Jake, a few years before he hurt his wrist. My family and I were
staying near Accord one summer and I called him out of the blue. We hit it off. He was funny, down home and brilliant. I
was very happy to get to know a kindred spirit. Our dark, moody tree
paintings resembled one another's, as did our search for resonance, depth and
meaning.
The
search for meaning is an aspect of painting we don’t often speak of. It is a
slippery slope. I think everyone knows about it, but I will try to say
something about what I mean. Hmm, well soul is another word for it, like soul
music and soul singer. It’s a funny thing that a lot of great modern artists
and writers have made it a point to take everything including soul and spirit
out of painting. Amazingly you can actually make great work without it. Maybe
the shear force of intention and creative intelligence or playfulness can
actually be another guise for what I am calling meaning. But some work emphasizes the mind
primarily while some speaks to the body and soul.
I
remember a conversation Jake and I had about this. Jake was referring to what
he called sensation painters. Cezanne used the same word. Sensation painters
evoke a feeling response, in contrast to more conceptual artists. Ironically,
Jake said Van Gogh was the first conceptual painter. He saw Cezanne as his primary sensation painter and I
For me, taken as a whole, the work was an expression of faith and philosophy.
After
his accident, I remember, in an attempt to see something positive in his
suffering, I said to him that perhaps his pain had driven him deeper into
himself, and that the work reflected this in a positive way. He would have none
of that idea. Still I wonder at the role suffering had in Jake’s painting and
Jake’s world. I read recently that at this time in man’s evolution, the ‘way of
the cross’ is no longer a necessary component to spiritual growth. Jeeze I hope
so.
We
artists are drawn to our paths unconsciously, by character and personality,
even by nature. But at the same time, through trial and error, we make choices
about who we want to be and what we want to do. I thought of Jake as a person of character and I think he consciously
became a painter of soul. I admit
that his paintings are not easily understood in modernist terms. However,
painters with an emotional and humanist bent who bring warmth, and sensuality, and
a measure of peace into our world may be considered among the most modern of
painters. They seem to paint with optimism and responsibility toward the
future.
Jake Berthot, Skull, 2012, oil on linen
Images courtesy of Betty Cunningham Gallery
