Thierry W. Despont at Marlborough Chelsea - New York

The French-born, Harvard-educated architect Thierry W. Despont has designed homes for the likes of Bill Gates and Calvin Klein, as well as planning the principal galleries of the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles and redesigning interior spaces for Claridge's hotel in London. Early on, he received classical art training from the Ecole Nationale Superieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris, where he spent two days a week drawing sculpture in the Louvre and another day drawing from life. Widely recognized as an architect, Despont has now gone public with his work as an artist. His show of large-scale, mixed-medium paintings, comprising a sequence of what Despont calls "nebulas," offered viewers the chance to determine how Despont accomplishes his goals in the field of fine art.

Donald Kuspit, in his catalogue essay, describes Despont's paintings as "sublime orbs"--images intended to transport us toward a state of visionary excitement, attended with a sense of mystery and grandeur. I am not sure why Kuspit insists on calling Despont's work abstractions--the paintings are very clearly images of celestial bodies--but it may be that he wishes to point out those remarkable passages in the paintings that are much more a matter of texture than recognizable imagery. While the paintings' general gestalt, a luminous sphere against a dark ground, is often the same, the surface of these constructed planets is intensely varied, ranging from a shallow, matte skin to palpable ridges that give the image a remarkably three-dimensional presence. Despont works up his surface with a broad spectrum of materials, including enamel, acrylic, oil stick, asphaltum and epoxy resin; the resulting effects highlight the orbs with an otherworldly glow, which appears to radiate from a great darkness and distance. These works are very large, and Despont creates surfaces with great depth; they are also massively framed. To accommodate their weight, many of the paintings were exhibited on handsomely constructed steel supports.

All of this is well and good. However, the works also project a feeling of theatricality, of the consciously sought tour de force. These paintings border on the overstated; they are so flamboyantly exquisite that they tend to provoke, on the viewer's part, a certain detachment, even a bemused skepticism. And this happens not only because contemporary audiences no longer trust statements of transcendence, but also because Despont clearly wishes to seduce us with the sheer beauty of his vision. But whether or not he succeeds in his desire, beauty is not equivalent to the sublime, even if it can speed us on our way toward the sublime.

NB 03 (2001), gorgeously surfaced, consists of a brilliantly white upper hemisphere, while the bottom half is a golden, copper tone. NB 06 (2001) casts a molten glow, its right edge suffused with an orange-red, flamelike flush. The dimensions of both paintings (86 by 151 1/2 inches) are grand; their size lends them an epic sweep meant to captivate the audience. With images of such reach and magnitude, it becomes clear that whatever reservations we may have about Despont's intentions, we cannot disregard the proficiency with which he attains his remarkable effects.

COPYRIGHT 2003 Brant Publications, Inc.
COPYRIGHT 2003 Gale Group