JOHN FRAME

(I promised last week to write more about the artist John Frame’s work at the Huntington Library…)

So what are we to make of this endlessly fascinating work-in-progress, Three Fragments of a Lost Tale: Sculpture and Story by John Frame, currently on view at the Huntington Library in San Marino? It’s part puppetry, part kinetic sculpture; part grand opera, part grand guignol; part medieval morality play, part post-Armageddon futuristic narrative; part fairy tale, part visionary quest; part Luddite hand-carving and stitchery, part hi-tech animated movie.

Perhaps the German compound word does it best: Gesamtkunstwerk—the “all-together-art-work.” This link will give you access to a foretaste.

Frame’s work sets the mind reeling with cultural associations. Its art historical roots take us back to Breughal and Bosch, and bring us forward to the dream-worlds of the Surrealists and the dark vision of the German Expressionists following the first World War. There are powerful literary associations with visionaries like Tolkien and C. S. Lewis, even with the bleak Shakespearean landscapes of The Tempest, Hamlet, King Lear, or Macbeth. More recently, we think of movie epics like the Star Wars cycle, Harry Potter, or the Lord of the Rings--but the hi-tech effects look and act more like Rube Goldberg—or Heath Robinson, or Jean Tinguely. In theater, there’s Godot to think about; in opera, Wagner…

The work astonishes us, too, with variety and accomplishment of the skills involved. The exhibit walks us past numerous artfully lit cases, where we meet the small scale, cleverly articulated figures of not only the main characters...

(All images borrowed from the Huntington Library's website)

... of Frame’s megadrama—the Crippled Boy, Mr. R, O-Man—but also a myriad of bit players in three-dimensional stills, along with their intricately carved props...

... and multiple costumes; past large-scale photographs documenting the artist’s workshop and his process: and finally into a small theater where the some of the drama’s scenes play out for us on the screen. There is just enough completed footage for us to put together the outlines of a still unfolding story—a future-viewed-from-the-past in a post-Apocalypse world, where the quest is on for the Crippled Boy and the secret of salvation he alone might possess.

Basically, the exhibition is an adventure for us viewers, as for the artist, whose journey continues as his vision evolves. It started, we understand from the show’s catalogue, from a single dream, opening up a new path for the artist at a moment when he was fearful that he had reached the end of the aesthetic line he had been pursuing until that time. It’s a dark story, offering the vision of a world in torment, where the existential struggle for survival becomes the metaphor for the situation in which we find ourselves in the real world today. And as in the real world, Frame’s story offers us an inexhaustible set of choices as to how we may understand and interpret our circumstances, and how we may relate to our fellow travelers. His play is open-ended, bringing us back time and again to the impenetrable, richly textured mystery of life—and death.

It’s rare, these days, to come across work that is so inclusive, so ambitious in intention—and yet so content to unfold at its own pace, with such meticulous attention to detail. Clearly, Frame has struck a vein that will fruitfully occupy his time and energies for years to come, and will continue to engage the fascination of his viewer.

Big as this show is, Frame is also content to curate a concurrent, intimately scaled exhibition of work by the Romantic visionary William Blake...

... from the Huntington’s impressive collection. Installed in a tiny gallery, Born to Endless Night: Paintings, Drawings and Prints by William Blake Selected by John Frame is a timely reminder of the early influence of Blake on Frame as a young artist, and on the development of his vision. Blinded by formal and aesthetic concerns. contemporary artists have generally been loath to address the moral and philosophical mysteries of good and evil, life, death and the afterlife—Heaven or Hell—the existence of God and the presence of the divine. More to his credit that Frame looks to an artist like Blake, and finds in him the inspiration to take on those great and lasting issues with commitment and seriousness of purpose in his work.