Word: artfully
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...16th century there was virtually no contact at all between Japan and Europe. Yet by one of the odd coincidences of history, art began to move in a similar direction in both places at the same moment: there was a slow shift from high religious subjects toward the themes of everyday life. As Caravaggio painted his gamblers, gypsies and tavern scenes, so dozens of Japanese artists began to set down the details of street festivals and bathhouses on the largest "official" scale known to Japanese art -the byōbu, or folding screens, closely detailed and richly ornamented with gold...
...basis of Westermann's art, which provides both the curt humor and the haunted pessimism with a formal matrix, is craftsmanship. After quitting the Marines in 1952, Westermann eked out his G.I. Bill income by working as a handyman and carpenter-precariously, since his standards of joinery and finish soon became too high for him to be employable in the quick-profit building trade. His sculptures have always been exquisitely made, the rare-wood inlays done with a skill almost vanished from modern American joinery, every miter and dovetail fitted to perfect tolerances. This pitch of care gives...
...also gives Westermann's pieces a typically hermetic and defensive look: protected by their glass enclosures and crates, armed with hooks, hasps, locks and hinges, they take their stand as small fortresses of care and responsibility against an inimical world of non-art-ratty execution, sloppy thought. This point is neatly made by A Close Call, 1965. Inside the box, a wooden doll with an ermine's head reels backward to avoid a dagger that has penetrated the glass ceiling...
...outside world is breaking in. It is a very funny and slightly poisonous image of paranoia. But it also has a lot to say about how frail privacy is (can the creature be, in fact, an artist: Westermann himself?) and how vulnerable are the fictions that art erects...
They do not. Handke's techniques only seem casual, even haphazard; in truth, they are rigorously philosophical. His power stems from the very limitations he clamps on his art. While refusing to spell out anything other than rudiments, he hints at vast areas of life that are beyond the power of words to express or minds to grasp. By the standards of conventional fiction, his characters are little more than ciphers, but they arouse considerable interest and sympathy simply by facing up to the ominous atmosphere that pervades their lives. If something terrible has not already happened to them...