Simon Dinnerstein’s The Fulbright Triptych (1971-1974) defies easy explanation. It adopts a form more suited to religious painting from the 1400s and updates it for the secular twentieth century. It takes creative labor as its central theme, yet the artist is inactive and at a physical remove from the tools of his trade. It came into vivid being during a period when painting was declared dead. It is a receptacle of centuries of Western cultural memory, all the while remaining exactingly personal. It features saturated color seamlessly situated beside subdued hues. It conflates our notion as time as it represents the past alongside the contemporary moment, a present that is now itself outdated.
But first, some basics: the oil painting on wood depicts at the most general level an artist and his family in his studio. Begun during Dinnerstein’s stay in Germany as part of the Fulbright Program (hence the title) and finished three years later in Brooklyn, the work reflects a progression in time and space. A testament to his experiences during the period, perhaps the most significant record included in Triptych is the inclusion of his daughter, Simone, depicted here at nine months, not yet born when he commenced work on the painting. Reproductions of letters and quotes, children’s drawings and well-known paintings crowd the wall, an exaggeratedly flattened space compared to the naturalistic landscape of a conventional mid-century German town of which the central panel’s two windows provide a view.
Yet I haven’t even touched on the most exciting, thrilling aspect of this monumental (in size and scope) work. That would be the fact that the preceding descriptions not nearly an exhaustive catalog of all the contradictions, themes, quirks, and intricacies essential to this masterpiece of American painting at the end of the millennium. Thanks to editor Daniel Slager’s The Suspension of Time: Reflections on Simon Dinnerstein and The Fulbright Triptych, published earlier this year, a fuller understanding of this complex portrait begins to emerge. Featuring a kaleidoscope of voices to match the diversity of interpretations and responses that Triptych encourages, this book seeks to contextualize the epic work through art historical essays, poetry, and personal recollections of the painting and its maker.
The hodgepodge of contributors, which includes art critics, filmmakers, and novelists, does prove to be overwhelming at times. A fine-tooth comb could be taken over all the texts and edit out the details each writer seems to insist on repeating. By page 95, we know that the work measures fourteen feet wide. Certain selections are just plain shallow, providing no insight into how we might look at and think about Triptych, but rather deal with trite generalities about the writer’s personal experience (I’m looking at you, John Turturro).
However, the sheer immensity of this ambitious interdisciplinary project means that the majority of efforts—even those that are less successful—expand upon our understanding of the painting and our relationship to it. Easily overlooked editorial decisions, like including numerous reproductions of details from the work, allow a greater understanding of the painting in all its complexity. When musician David Krakauer describes his experience of Triptych as it relates to his memories of New York culture in the 1970s, we are further confronted—and in such a vibrant manner!—with the dualities present in the work, which somehow exists in a conceptual space both German and American, rural and urban. At the intersection of the written word and visual information, essayist and artist play with our perceptions, illustrating via their own example the instability of definitely establishing meaning to time and place in this layered image. As Dinnerstein arranges elements in his painting to upend our expectations of pictorial narrative, merging into one confined area events and landmarks from across a referential spectrum, so do contributors like Krakauer, who refers to a personal “voyage of memory” when encountering Triptych, challenge us to rethink how we interact with such a work.
These writers provide alternative perspectives not usually found in the typical academic discourse surrounding art. Questions of international exchange, for one, are investigated in new and inventive ways. Former cultural attaché Richard T. Arndt uses his diplomat’s vantage point to explore how the artist’s experiences abroad influenced his entire oeuvre, while Ulrich Littmann, executive director of the German Fulbright Commission when Dinnerstein participated in the program, constructively provides us with the political context for Triptych. Engaging with the issue of national identity in the painting, film studies professor Roy Grundmann discusses the paradoxes that the cultural ambassador faces as a representative of a particular society while at the same time working towards the post-nationalist ideal favored after WWII by figures like Senator J. William Fulbright. To prove the continued relevance of this dialogue, the location of the most recent viewing of The Fulbright Triptych is far from the traditional realm of art spectatorship; that place would be the German Consulate General in Manhattan.
Since June, the work has been on view in the Consulate’s lobby, alongside other highlights from Dinnerstein’s decades-long career (a discussion of which would constitute another article in and of itself). By the very nature of the diplomatic space, issues of cultural interchange and national representation that might otherwise be overlooked are drawn to the forefront. The roots of the work under a very specific set of transatlantic conditions, already evidenced in the title, are further developed when, in a homecoming of sorts, this distinctly American painting, democratic in its embrace of cultural allusions both high and low, is thus re-situated in a certain European context. The idea of migration is pertinent here. The particularized quality of the landscape of Hessisch Lichtenau outside the generic studio, rendered specific thanks only to the artist’s (movable) tools and family, reflects ambivalence about this movement. Suggested is that the Dinnerstein, his wife and daughter, his labor and all its accruements could too easily be packed up and displaced, a feeling relevant when faced with the daunting task of creating such an elaborate project over years, between cultures, and across continents. Comparing the painting’s two settings, we could speak of realms: celestial and terrestrial, if we consider color choices as they related to the conventions of medieval art, but also European and American, the boundary between the two being as flexible as a window we can open or close. And now, decades later, Triptych returns, in a sense, to the place of its origin. How fitting, then, that a work unsure of its own national setting finds itself at a space of in-between, in the middle of New York yet taking German representation as its primary purpose. One of the beauties of Dinnerstein’s masterpiece is that it subverts our notions of place; now, it has found an exhibition setting that does the same.
Although the exhibition Simon Dinnerstein: The Fulbright Triptych and Selected Works closed September 15, the titular work will remain on display at the German Consulate through March 15, 2012. To learn more about The Suspension of Time, visit the website of the publisher, Milkweed Editions (milkweed.org).
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Portrait of the Young Man as an Artist, and a Husband, and a Father, and…
September 29, 2011
Simon Dinnerstein’s The Fulbright Triptych (1971-1974) defies easy explanation. It adopts a form more suited to religious painting from the 1400s and updates it for the secular twentieth century. It takes creative labor as its central theme, yet the artist is inactive and at a physical remove from the tools of his trade. It came into vivid being during a period when painting was declared dead. It is a receptacle of centuries of Western cultural memory, all the while remaining exactingly personal. It features saturated color seamlessly situated beside subdued hues. It conflates our notion as time as it represents the past alongside the contemporary moment, a present that is now itself outdated.
But first, some basics: the oil painting on wood depicts at the most general level an artist and his family in his studio. Begun during Dinnerstein’s stay in Germany as part of the Fulbright Program (hence the title) and finished three years later in Brooklyn, the work reflects a progression in time and space. A testament to his experiences during the period, perhaps the most significant record included in Triptych is the inclusion of his daughter, Simone, depicted here at nine months, not yet born when he commenced work on the painting. Reproductions of letters and quotes, children’s drawings and well-known paintings crowd the wall, an exaggeratedly flattened space compared to the naturalistic landscape of a conventional mid-century German town of which the central panel’s two windows provide a view.
Yet I haven’t even touched on the most exciting, thrilling aspect of this monumental (in size and scope) work. That would be the fact that the preceding descriptions not nearly an exhaustive catalog of all the contradictions, themes, quirks, and intricacies essential to this masterpiece of American painting at the end of the millennium. Thanks to editor Daniel Slager’s The Suspension of Time: Reflections on Simon Dinnerstein and The Fulbright Triptych, published earlier this year, a fuller understanding of this complex portrait begins to emerge. Featuring a kaleidoscope of voices to match the diversity of interpretations and responses that Triptych encourages, this book seeks to contextualize the epic work through art historical essays, poetry, and personal recollections of the painting and its maker.
The hodgepodge of contributors, which includes art critics, filmmakers, and novelists, does prove to be overwhelming at times. A fine-tooth comb could be taken over all the texts and edit out the details each writer seems to insist on repeating. By page 95, we know that the work measures fourteen feet wide. Certain selections are just plain shallow, providing no insight into how we might look at and think about Triptych, but rather deal with trite generalities about the writer’s personal experience (I’m looking at you, John Turturro).
However, the sheer immensity of this ambitious interdisciplinary project means that the majority of efforts—even those that are less successful—expand upon our understanding of the painting and our relationship to it. Easily overlooked editorial decisions, like including numerous reproductions of details from the work, allow a greater understanding of the painting in all its complexity. When musician David Krakauer describes his experience of Triptych as it relates to his memories of New York culture in the 1970s, we are further confronted—and in such a vibrant manner!—with the dualities present in the work, which somehow exists in a conceptual space both German and American, rural and urban. At the intersection of the written word and visual information, essayist and artist play with our perceptions, illustrating via their own example the instability of definitely establishing meaning to time and place in this layered image. As Dinnerstein arranges elements in his painting to upend our expectations of pictorial narrative, merging into one confined area events and landmarks from across a referential spectrum, so do contributors like Krakauer, who refers to a personal “voyage of memory” when encountering Triptych, challenge us to rethink how we interact with such a work.
These writers provide alternative perspectives not usually found in the typical academic discourse surrounding art. Questions of international exchange, for one, are investigated in new and inventive ways. Former cultural attaché Richard T. Arndt uses his diplomat’s vantage point to explore how the artist’s experiences abroad influenced his entire oeuvre, while Ulrich Littmann, executive director of the German Fulbright Commission when Dinnerstein participated in the program, constructively provides us with the political context for Triptych. Engaging with the issue of national identity in the painting, film studies professor Roy Grundmann discusses the paradoxes that the cultural ambassador faces as a representative of a particular society while at the same time working towards the post-nationalist ideal favored after WWII by figures like Senator J. William Fulbright. To prove the continued relevance of this dialogue, the location of the most recent viewing of The Fulbright Triptych is far from the traditional realm of art spectatorship; that place would be the German Consulate General in Manhattan.
Since June, the work has been on view in the Consulate’s lobby, alongside other highlights from Dinnerstein’s decades-long career (a discussion of which would constitute another article in and of itself). By the very nature of the diplomatic space, issues of cultural interchange and national representation that might otherwise be overlooked are drawn to the forefront. The roots of the work under a very specific set of transatlantic conditions, already evidenced in the title, are further developed when, in a homecoming of sorts, this distinctly American painting, democratic in its embrace of cultural allusions both high and low, is thus re-situated in a certain European context. The idea of migration is pertinent here. The particularized quality of the landscape of Hessisch Lichtenau outside the generic studio, rendered specific thanks only to the artist’s (movable) tools and family, reflects ambivalence about this movement. Suggested is that the Dinnerstein, his wife and daughter, his labor and all its accruements could too easily be packed up and displaced, a feeling relevant when faced with the daunting task of creating such an elaborate project over years, between cultures, and across continents. Comparing the painting’s two settings, we could speak of realms: celestial and terrestrial, if we consider color choices as they related to the conventions of medieval art, but also European and American, the boundary between the two being as flexible as a window we can open or close. And now, decades later, Triptych returns, in a sense, to the place of its origin. How fitting, then, that a work unsure of its own national setting finds itself at a space of in-between, in the middle of New York yet taking German representation as its primary purpose. One of the beauties of Dinnerstein’s masterpiece is that it subverts our notions of place; now, it has found an exhibition setting that does the same.
Although the exhibition Simon Dinnerstein: The Fulbright Triptych and Selected Works closed September 15, the titular work will remain on display at the German Consulate through March 15, 2012. To learn more about The Suspension of Time, visit the website of the publisher, Milkweed Editions (milkweed.org).