Ralph Waldo Emerson
Joseph Raffael's romantic journey pauses ever so briefly to share what has been revealed--revelations so beautiful that we quickly send him on his way to discover more.
Cezanne and generations of painters before him knew that ultimately nature stands as the greatest of teachers. Joseph Raffael's homage to natural form and clear dedication to timeless notions of beauty remain his strength. Aesthetic issues have somehow been abandoned in recent years by numerous artists whom I believe are humbled by historical achievements. Raffael, on the other hand, appears to revel in the challenge. His is an art of honest and passionate exploration. In both concept as well as technical execution, his reach is toward that universal manifestation of beauty which Santayana has called an "expression of the ideal...the finest flower of human nature." The paintings of Joseph Raffael are a clear reminder of what it is about art that we hold dear.
The artist's interest in Eastern thought is not surprising, given his steadfast devotion to the concept of a true human partnership with and interconnectedness to all living beings. His paintings have long celebrated the miracle and mystery of life and the environments which sustain it. However, his incorporation of Tibetan Buddhist imagery in the work serves to accentuate the significance of the tanka intellectually as well as visually. But on a strictly formal level the inclusion of the tankas in such works as Illuminations Spring and Illuminations Summer makes for extraordinarily complex visual poetry. In juxtaposing the tankas over a hand-colored lithograph created over 20 years ago and then restating the combinations in watercolor, he has created offspring of an entirely different personality. The intrinsic symmetry of the Buddhist pieces, placed dead center on the organic field of water and marine life, produces a sense of unity which, on a purely visual level, is not as easily accomplished as it appears. The artist's reliance upon intuition and experience make it work. Interestingly, Western art from the golden mean onward, has discouraged the centrally oriented composition. Virtually all of the works in this exhibition adhere to the tanka's central focus, a perceptual blending of East and West, independent of the more obvious symbolic or conceptual mixing of cultures. We must also recall that Josef Albers was an early influence, making the centering of imagery a not so unconventional approach in paying "homage to the square."
Vincent van Gogh's generation of painters was also drawn to a strong non-Western influence, the Japanese print. The effect of Japanese art on these earliest of modern painters is well known, but the influence of Japanese culture moved well beyond its known impact on pictorial space. Van Gogh, for one, was truly taken by the non-Western perspective on daily life. "Come now, isn't it almost a true religion which these simple Japanese teach us, who live in nature as though they themselves were flowers?" (Letter to Theo, September 1888.) It is no wonder that Vincent van Gogh, his life and his art, have meant so much to Joseph Raffael. In View, a self portrait by van Gogh is superimposed over Tibetan imagery. It is van Gogh's suffering and his response to it which has especially touched Raffael. Suffering exists as one of the four noble truths of Buddhism and is, in the words of the artist, "what we share as humans."
And just as van Gogh was impressed by the Japanese artists' need "to live in nature" and to study a single blade of grass and its ultimate relationship to all of nature, so too has Joseph Raffael absorbed the non-Western point of view of the interconnectedness of all life forms. In Harvest Moon, a pet cockatoo (Joseph and Lannis Raffael maintain an aviary of pet birds) is painted on an orange tree branch with an oriental landscape and a freely brushed border serving as a ground. Spatially this work is extraordinarily complex. In it the most prominent shape, the white bird, rests on a branch that transverses the landscape, which very typically portrays an oriental flatness. Add to the mix the blue sky-like border, which even without consideration of the dynamics of color within the Buddhist piece, offers us a breathtakingly beautiful ambiguity.
Although part of the same series, Bird and Tanka is distinctive in the manner by which the Tibetan tanka integrates with the tropical bird representation. At first glance, the piece resembles a Medieval tapestry, an observation which Raffael welcomes. It reveals what the artist calls "an interweaving of complexities "paralleling life itself, as a tapestry in which "one event, one thought goes to another." Technically, the work is a marvel. The watercolor medium is shown to full advantage, as the tanka explodes before us in a full spray of color harnessed masterfully to define every element of this enormously complex composition. The freely color-washed border in one sense frames the work, but in another possesses its own dynamic as we appear to experience a vaporization of the edge, an abstracted extension.
Photography has long been a valuable tool for Joseph Raffael, using it as a point of departure and to assist in the early conceptualization phase of the works. In Millennium as in Bird and Tanka, the bird is photographed and its cut-out image is carefully placed on the tanka, re-photographed as a unit, and then re-interpreted in paint. In Millennium, the artist pre-visualized a favorite white cockatoo on an orange branch in a lush environment of plant life. The photo-montage affirmed his vision, a more logical juxtaposition than occurs in Spring Bridge. In this work, a Chinese fan is placed atop a sheet of scrap paper from the studio which had been used by the artist to blot his brush. What a truly arresting work results as the regularity of the fan shape, with its intricate classical oriental decor, is set against a purely improvised, spontaneously applied ground. It works, and works very well. Perhaps the artist's comfort with such dissonant visual elements stems from his early works with abstract expressionist painter James Brooks at Yale in the 1950s. The spontaneity of the abstract expressionist method interested him then, and perhaps it can be said continues to reveal itself in more whispered tones. But Spring Bridge demonstrates the amazing ability of Raffael to appropriate the unexpected.
In Spirit, in which three tropical birds harmonize through color and placement with the Tibetan circular form, the artist enriches the dark green border with painterly markings. The freely brushed acrylic presents a wonderful contrast to the finely tuned technique demonstrated within the red square. In both works, two distinct sensibilities link effectively as one.
In Late Winter Bouquet and The Gift, we see the artist returning to the familiar floral theme, but with a wonderful freshness, as if approaching the subject for the very first time. In Late Winter Bouquet, a Chinese vase picked up at a flea market, with its stylized ceramic flower forms, holds fresh-cut garden flowers against shadowed foliage. Nature has not given man a more beautiful sight, and Raffael manages, as no other artist before him, to extract that beauty. The device of the Chinese floral vase, the contrasting cold metal table, and the darkened organic ground, conceptually and perceptually are a tribute to the universal and timeless allure of floral beauty. In The Gift, roses given to his wife, speak not only of the magnificence of the flower, but also of the delicacy of nature and the need for humankind to see it as a gift to be cherished.
In Morning Bird, an image from India taken by his wife during her visit there, Joseph Raffael returns to his signature theme of water and does so in glorious fashion. The dramatic horizonality of the work adds to the serenity of this most beautiful of subjects. So convincing is the portrayal, that we expect to hear the chirping of the bird, so gingerly perched on the lily pads. Joseph Raffael is the master of this genre. He supports a remarkable eye for the romantic in nature, with a level of skill which is without peer.
Morning at Kodai, also in India, is at once an ethereal abstraction and a wondrous document of natural phenomena. In presenting and interpreting this particular slice of nature, the artist has chosen a perspective in which the simplest of forms builds toward a dramatic illusionary display. Water and sky are as one, establishing a floating stage in which the plants move rhythmically away from the viewer. Adding richly to this visual treat is the sense of a gestalt in which the individual disk-shaped lily pads are seen by the eye as individual elements and then as a unified whole. This "grouping" effect presents a tasty icing to an already visually luscious work.
Along the Way, Raffael's third Indian image, carries a baroque-like quality in which stunningly beautiful flowering water plants appear to sway horizontally across the work. As in all of nature, what appears at first glance to be a sameness, is not at all. The artist has scrutinized each plant--honestly portraying its individual characteristics and praising that uniqueness. What a lesson we learn daily along the way--if only we pause to notice and hopefully applaud what is found. It is said that Beethoven spent as much time in nature as at the piano, and that Einstein spent a lifetime trying to decipher the mystery of nature's beauty. The Bible certainly reminds us of God's pleasure with what He brought forth. The artist's role is perhaps to remind us of that.
Raffael is dedicated to an imagery that, first and foremost, is most meaningful to him. Tigre's Spring recalls a favorite pet, painted in the twilight of his life, within the environment which he loved. This is obviously a very special portrait, a tribute to a treasured companion. The form of the cat, somewhat concealed by the brush, and its natural markings, emerges with the grace and nobility of a great jungle tiger. Joseph Raffael's reverence for and admiration of all things living extends also to the weeds. This is not a generic ground cover, but rather individual plants, carefully indicated and painted as if each were a trophied flower.
And while great art, the art which has endured through time, deals with eternal truths--it must also inspire on a perceptual level. Joseph Raffael's art not only reflects the highest of human values, it also entertains us, in keeping with the greatest of artistic traditions. For in the end, what interests him most is the very act of applying paint to paper. His paintings he says, are ultimately about painting. That's certainly enough for us.
Louis A. Zona
Executive Director, The Butler Institute of American Art