Howard Kanovitz essays about the artist

The Impulse to Autobiography in the work of Howard Kanovitz
by Michael Florescu

continued from page two

Frank O'Hara wrote memorably of "the red of ambition, the blue of despair;" more relevant to our present inquiry, however, is the appearance in the composition of the artist himself. Kanovitz is the trombone player in the left foreground. Note not only his self-absorption and his absorption in his horn, but also his location on the outer edge of the group. The painting was done at a time in his life when Kanovitz was becoming obliged to re-think his priorities: a full day spent in the studio, painting, followed by an evening at the legendary Cedar Bar, and playing jazz through the night and early morning -had started to exact a price in physical and psychic exhaustion. And so, in a manner comparable to that with which he soon came to arrange and rearrange, to freely dispose the several discrete constituents of his paintings, Kanovitz rearranged the various elements of his life. In so doing, in assigning to painting the major part of his energy and attention, he was following, albeit unconsciously, the implied structure of Theodor Adorno; which was to make of the distinction separating experience into subjective and objective, a focus for the artist's most attentive concern. By locating himself on the edge of the group, Kanovitz was acknowledging his past as a member of the group, while keeping his options open in respect of an uncertain and possibly isolated future. This painting's title too has both appositeness and irony: "4 A.M. Eastern Standard Time" locates the artist himself quite precisely in both time and place.

4 AM Eastern Standard Time

The phrase is also an elaborate double entendre: it refers not only to the specific time zone, but also to the fact that the scene depicted is a standard (that is, an unexceptional) occurrence at 4 A.M. on the East Side of Manhattan, where the painter lived at that time, and played jazz. Yet the use of the double entendre is more than a mere play on words, it is a reiteration of the painter's place in the social pattern at that period, a result of

his need for identification in terms of his role. The title also has, incidentally, the irrefutable resonance of an airline schedule: Estimated Time of Take-Off. In "New Yorkers 2," Kanovitz again depicts himself in a relationship to a group, but in contrast to "Four A.M. Eastern Standard Time," the spectator receives the impression that although the artist (the grey-suited figure to the right of the window, cigarette in hand) is not directly involved with the order of business evidently under discussion in the scene he is nonetheless secure in his position.

New Yorkers II

His facial expression is tentative, to be sure, but it is a tentativeness that owes nothing to the positions taken up by the other members of the group; rather it is an indication of the role the artist has assigned himself in the frozen drama he has chosen to depict. And adding to this sense of the temporal is Kanovitz's use of a red backdrop. Use of the word backdrop is deliberate: At no time are we led to believe that these New Yorkers are meeting in a real urban landscape despite the realistic view beyond the window: Only in a transforming dream do the emotions of the protagonists transcend palpability: Only in a transforming dream do the figures cast no shadows. And even as we look at this work and find our eyes returning always and irresistibly toward the seated figure of the artist himself, we find ourselves not merely looking, but actively watching, as the artist appears to recede, powered by invisible stage machinery back into Frank O'Hara's "Red of ambition." Nine years separate "New Yorkers 2" from "Icarus" of 1975, and what a remarkable development has taken place in that comparatively short time! From a concern with what may be termed media scenes and themes-popular mythology originating in photojournalism, Kanovitz's work after 1968 commenced to express a meditation on the division between the private and the public. A rather straightforward but extremely