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Requiems for a lost future? Epic scale and forceful geometric forms have long preoccupied Al Held, perhaps nowhere more than in his "Requiem" and "Siena" paintings of the mid-1990s. Reacting to the debut of four of these works in New York, the author ponders the relationship of this "futuristic" esthetic to 19th-century landscape painting

Art in America, June, 2003 by Joe Fyfe

More than half a decade after they were completed, four monumental paintings by Al Held were finally unveiled last year at P.S. 1 Contemporary Art Center in Queens. Held's interest in working on a large scale goes back to 1959 when he began the friezelike "Taxi Cab" series of paintings, some of which are 8 feet high and up to 30 feet long. Held, who divides his time between upstate New York, where the works were made, and Todi, Italy, regularly shows at New York's Robert Miller Gallery, but his giant mid-1990s canvases, which range in size from 15 by 18 to 15 by 30 feet, couldn't fit into Miller's space. Hence the belated P.S. 1 debut.

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Among contemporary American painters, only Julian Schnabel and Alex Katz come immediately to mind as having worked regularly at or near these dimensions, but they seem more interested in intimate or anecdotal subject matter. Also, their large work contravenes the traditional use of very big paintings: addressing big themes. Cy Twombly, too, has worked very large and with heroic, mythic narratives, but once again, seems to take an ironical stance toward monumentality by his use of magnified sgraffito and scrawled imagery. Held, on the other hand, does not undermine this scale in any way, but embraces it, with all of its historical baggage.

The centerpiece of the exhibition was in P.S. 1's third-floor gallery, a former gymnasium, where the Requiem triptych hung on three adjoining walls, with another large canvas, Siena IV, on the fourth one. The three Requiems were hung in the same configuration they occupied in Held's upstate studio, where there is a left, a right and a larger central working space. A glowing horizon continues from canvas to canvas and bisects the penumbral atmosphere of all three pictures. Since the central 15-foot-high, 30-foot-wide painting, Requiem H, is the largest of the group, Requiem I and III seem slightly ancillary. These solemn and refined canvases reprise Held's earliest gestural paintings, where deep light penetrates primordial darkness. But here, 50 years into developing his particular synthesized space, an unfamiliar world is created with the tools of perspective and chiaroscuro.

Requiem I is framed by a large, hollow cylinder, placed slightly off-center. Beyond it, rows of volumetric purple boxes above and below the horizon recede toward the bright distance. In the foreground, some floating red ribbonlike forms in a concentric arrangement stealthily enter the center of the picture. They also function as a kind of abstract repoussoir motif that helps lead us into the triptych. Befitting the requiem theme, the pictures are dark. These hues inadvertently make visible the scuffing of the underpainting, which again harks back to Held's earlier work, when he considered under-painting part of the content.

The middle painting, Requiem II, invites the viewer to look onto a vast, geometrically patterned plain from atop an outcropping of geometric solids that include crenellated forms, flat donuts and compressed ziggurats. The presence of an overhanging, stepped form in the upper foreground suggests that the viewpoint might be from a kind of cave. Extending toward the horizon, the wide multicolored landscape features patterns that seem borrowed from the mosaic floors of an Italian Renaissance church. The "sky" is made up of similar patterns painted in brighter colors. All these planes converge on the distant, burning yellow horizon.

Requiem III, which suggests an enormous parking garage with a horizontal slit of light at the far end, is the most architectural in feeling of the three. It also has the most pronounced contrasts in internal scale, thanks to a checkerboard-pattern sphere hovering in the foreground and, back near the horizon, some small slabs and a delicate cylinder.

In contrast to the "Requiem" paintings, the illumination in Siena IV arrives as if during an eclipse, erupting in wedges at the perimeters and upper corners of the painting. Across the shadowy foreground is a wide, reddish-brown ziggurat that masks the light. Its form and scale make you feel as if you were staring at the prow of an aircraft cagier. The exhibition also included five other paintings that explore similar territory at less grand dimensions, and a group of large watercolors (from 3 by 5 feet to 4 by 6) that relate closely to the big paintings without being strictly preparatory.

As the P.S. 1 exhibition closed, a small two-person show at Washburn Gallery in Manhattan examined the early 1960s work of Held and sculptor George Sugarman [see p. 143]. In a pamphlet accompanying the show, essayist Carolyn Lanchner says that Held's aim at the time was to "bridge the gulf that separates the painting from the viewer." Anyone who has stood in front of Held's large works from the 1960s, such as The Big N (1965) in the collection of New York's Museum of Modern Art, can attest to their powerful physical presence. The heavily painted white wall of acrylic paint that fills practically the entire picture plane fully activates the space directly in front of the painting, much as in a Sega sculpture or a Stella relief painting.

Art in America, June, 2003 by Joe Fyfe

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