Encyclopedia : One Hundred Works on Paper by John Bailly

BY JERRY HABARTH

With the Encyclopedia series, John Bailly offers a glimpse into the complex, and often contradictory workings of the mind. In both conception and execution, they reflect the constant struggle to determine what is and what is not, what is good and what is bad, what is right and what is wrong. By taking the encyclopedia as their point of departure, they suggest an indictment of man’s intellectual hubris, reflected in his attempts to know, to understand, and above all, to control his surroundings. With these paintings, confusion, ambiguity, and even chaos, reign; and the ensuing haze calls into question not only our oft times pat answers to the mysteries of reality and consciousness, but also the whole construct of the individual as a sovereign and self-determining entity, independent of the world around it.

Bailly’s work has consistently waged battle against the twin values of individual autonomy and intellectual pride. It has also been characterized by a pronounced spirit of struggle, particularly against the many forms of oppression, be they political, moral or intellectual. In previous paintings, he plied these concerns in the form of historical and mythological narratives. Invariably they emphasized such themes as collective solidarity over individualism, righteousness over moral indifference, and faith in the face of impossible odds. With the Encyclopedia series however, having evidently found those stories too easily digested to reflect the slippery character of reality. Bailly dispenses with the narrative altogether. In an ironic twist, these works turn to take aim at the very underpinnings of the narrative structure: the idea that the world, or parts thereof, can be explained by abstracting and ordering separate aspects of it derived from experience. By this definition, the encyclopedia itself might be thought of as man’s greatest narrative: a meta-narrative, that takes on all branches of knowledge. As much as anything else, it epitomizes the spirit of the Enlightenment that Bailly seems to call into question - that with reason alone, all can be categorized, understood and placed into the service of progress. Thus, in place of the logically structured compositions of his previous narratives, in this group of paintings Bailly randomly plucks and copies images from a series of old encyclopedias. He then repaints them in seemingly spontaneous and unexpected combinations. The capricious character of this process undermines the encyclopedic principles of order and control, and the excessive confidence with which we endow our capacity to reason and explain the world through such abstractions as language itself.

Here the focus on struggle becomes more explicit, less literary. No longer confined to the context and the structure of the narrative, it comes to the fore and is given free reign of the canvas, expressing itself through the language of paint and painting. The resulting pictures are distinguished by competing and contradictory images, and an often aggressive - at times even haphazard - handling of paint in development of those images. In their manner of execution they seek to reveal, rather than conceal, mistakes, changes of mind, revisions, and the like. As a result, we are made to experience the multiple and conflicting impulses that went into their making: images appear to establish themselves in the composition, they are then violently buried beneath rapid and successive layers paint, only to battle back once again to reestablish a foothold in the picture. They become veritable battlegrounds between representation and abstraction, between clarity and confusion. Bailly’s signature, wandering line remains. Here however, it is no longer just the protean stuff out of which his narrative elements previously grew. The familiar tangle of lines now sometimes rises to the surface, corroding like a cancer the images it produces, while clamoring for its own recognition. Multiple elements as varied as anonymous portraits, architectural structures, anatomical renderings, and random dates, merge and overlap. Distinguished by an array of color and syntax, they jostle for our attention. Abstract patterns and forms parade across the surface, eclipsing the images they pass over. Spills and splotches quickly and thoroughly obliterate carefully articulated figures. Repetitive, ghostlike impressions, spaced evenly apart, pulsate against static images such as floor plans and diagrams. Sometimes the layering of imagery, usually two or three deep, becomes so dense as to confound identification completely. There is an overriding quality of desperation, as the opposing representations fight for legitimacy. The struggle that was earlier contained by the narrative now plays itself out in the open arena of pure painting and imaging.

The dynamic in these paintings is curiously suggestive of the erratic workings of the mind. As we look, we bounce from image to image, like a restless pinball, sometimes alighting upon one representation to reflect for a moment; and then - distracted - quickly moving on to the next, and the next, in a vain attempt to make sense of it all. Our minds, in general, seem to behave in a similar fashion, ricocheting back and forth incessantly: from stimulus, to emotion, to memory, to impulse, to idea, and then back again to the constant inflow of stimuli from the “outside” world coming to us through our senses. And here we come to the problem of the individual consciousness, and perhaps to the root of Bailly’s persistent assault on individualism in his earlier work. We tend to think of ourselves - of our minds - as neatly bound and separate entities, moving unhindered through the world, free to engage it where we choose, but always in control. It is an interpretation of the individual hotly contested by philosophers for centuries, ever since Descartes established the separateness of mind, and the Enlightenment asserted the autonomy of the self. And it is one that Bailly thoroughly disagrees with. Instead of self-contained entities moving through time and space, he seems to suggest that perhaps we are more like open-ended spaces with fuzzy limits, filtering the world as it moves through us, and struggling to find meaningful relationships. Similarly, with the Encyclopedia paintings, the picture plane becomes an open-ended space in which all manner of fleeting images pass, glimpsed momentarily as they come into focus, before succumbing to rival images or quickly moving on. Or maybe we are more like the pinball, driven not so much by its own power, but by the determining world of bumpers and flippers, endlessly propelling it in different directions - our sense of individuality and autonomy but illusions we erect to satisfy the need to feel in control of our destinies.

Bailly’s paintings do not shrink from contradiction. At times in fact, they seem to revel in it. A sustained inspection of these paintings begins to reveal what might be experienced as a wholly new kind of narrative. As much as their representations may appear to be random associations, they nevertheless betray a kind of guiding and organizing principle. To begin with, it is Bailly himself who ultimately decides which images go into the picture, and which do not. Moreover, he must decide which of these will remain, and which ones will have to go. It is here that one starts to discover connections and associations. Of the thousands of possible images one might come across in a typical set of encyclopedias, Bailly has chosen to focus on certain ones which repeat many times over from painting to painting. For example, images of church interiors, particularly Gothic churches, and images of ancient, deserted amphitheaters consistently reappear. The empty Roman Coliseum is another recurring vision. All of them were places that greatly inspired the people who once congregated in them, as reenacted myths and narratives, or real life struggles to the death, unfolded before their eyes, defining their world or reaffirming their ideals. Also noteworthy is the ever-present image of the human figure, the one feature constant in all of Bailly’s work, past and present. In the Encyclopedia series however, it is almost always fragmented and incomplete. Many are renderings of the bare skeleton. In these pictures they become, much as the abandoned architectural structures, the hollowed remains of once vibrant entities. Finally there are the numerous images of diagrams, maps and floor plans - instruments we turn to regularly for guidance and instruction. Taken together, these repetitions become elements in a kind of jumbled narrative, which seems to speak to the obsolescence of old institutions and ideas, and the dire need to construct new, more appropriate ones to fill their place.

Jerry Habarth is a Professor of art as well as a working artist. This essay originally accompanied the exhibition Encyclopedia at Borders Art Gallery in Miami in December 2002. It was also featured in the Dunedin Fine Art Center exhibition Passion for the Ineffable, curated by Janis Gallo.

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