Man is the measure of all things
The paintings of Lowell Boyers

by NICHOLAS ROBINSON

"Man is the measure of all things," a statement by Protagoras that is most commonly taken to mean that the individual being, rather than unyielding moral law handed down to us by religious dogma, is the truest source of value. In this context, the paintings of Lowell Boyers can be seen to trace the lineage of this dictum, referencing those elements of our accumulated cultural history that most clearly reflect an honest and enlightened appraisal of our humanity.

His works evince a striking array of familiar and universal themes, though one suspects that many of these echoes result not from the turgid erudition of a library troglodyte, but emanate more from an innate sense of mans' place and role in the world, and from an encyclopaedic and automatic absorption of those story-telling elements in our culture that most vividly speak of it.

Most of Boyer's paintings consist of a central figure, outlined by a painted-drawn line. Their rendering is at first glance classical - an assured contrapposto and linear clarity characterizes their bearing and motion. However, their anatomies and facial features betray the blemishes and imperfections of reality, as if aware of the classical world's descent into the dark ages, or perhaps of mans' expulsion from the Garden of Eden, and the impending struggle forced upon him by exile. Their bodies are not given flesh by modeled paint, but rather function allegorically like the saints and sinners of a didactic woodcut, stamped in bold on the surface of the canvas. We see them as symbols of images we have seen before in the history books, in the cathedrals of the Old World, or in the Bible or literature of the Enlightenment - as agglomerations of various figures from mans' past, from myth, and from parable, whose actions and experiences collectively describe and define the vagaries of 'being'.

In many of the works the motif of a ladder occurs in varied forms - at times sweeping skyward with dramatic foreshortening, on other occasions laid horizontally so as to fence in or corral the figures. In the painting Fence and Ladder this ladder motif encapsulates the paradox common to all of the protagonists in Boyers' works - that of the conflict between spirit and flesh. The figure can climb the ladder, soaring in spirit and striving for truth, like Jacob who used his ladder to traverse the terrestrial and celestial, but is also encircled by it, limited in his endeavors by the weaknesses of the flesh. This metaphor is continued by the varied states of bondage displayed by the figures. Sometimes trussed to the point of inertia - the characters appear unable to transcend the realm of the physical, weighed down as they are by the meat of their flesh. In several canvases we also see a grouping of conical forms, shaped liked cornucopiae and perhaps emblematic of abundance. Alternatively, they could signify trumpets, issuing a shrill clarion call to the figures in the paintings, warning them of their frailty. Their literal meaning is unimportant - these, and other, motifs create a visual language of forms, the narrative power of which derives largely from the manifold connotations these already familiar pictographs conjure.

In order to differentiate between the physical and metaphysical Boyers employs a number of pictorial devices. In most works, the figures are depicted alongside their viscera, their verterbrae, or even brains. In Boyers' world the figures are able to remain sentient in spite of their physical weakness through a sheer force of the will - this literal wearing of the heart on sleeve is depicted as an oozing, primordial substance, a physical manifestation of what the artist calls "the creative imagination". In any case it flows forth, variously viscous and nebulous, realized on the canvas as blood and guts, but existing as metaphor for the straining spirit, captured in the throes of giving its all. Alongside the carefully rendered human forms, evidence of a careful and fastidious draughtsmanship that requires significant skill, Boyers spills and pours pools of sumptuous color and puddles of diaphanous resin. The chaotic abstraction of these passages serves to mitigate the illustrative nature of the figures, exploring in a very direct way the expressive potential of gestural painting - an elemental force to support the literal, if you will.

A number of Boyer's canvases are compositionally similar to Japanese hanging scrolls. Tall and narrow in format, the narratives unfold vertically, and consist less of the heroic struggle of one figure. In the diptych Each Rung, one great step, building to blossom the left hand panel consists of many vignettes, each representing some form of human endeavor, of toil or journey, ritual or craft, depicted, like in the paintings of Bosch or Brueghel, to somehow show the human and mystical simultaneously.

However, it is the non-specific nature of all of these allusions that give his paintings their potency. Boyers' works resonate with the melodies of myth and legend, of the Renaissance and Baroque, of East and West. As the figures in his paintings float in their temporal vacuum they call to mind numerous pictorial traditions. Ungrounded by geographic locale or by specific era in history they narrate a generalized human drama rich in nuance, as opposed to the 'human condition' rather disingenuously described in existential thought.

The paintings are romantic, in a specific sense - like a Baroque apotheosis, or even a fairytale, and feel opposed to the capricious romanticism of a Watteau or Pater fete galante, in spite of their obvious beauty. The manner in which the vibrant palette and sure line co-exist reconciles once and for all the disegno and colore factions of early sixteenth century Italy, or even the Rubenist/Poussinist rivalry of early nineteenth century Paris. They aspire to make history painting for today, inspired more by the visceral power of Goya, than by the salon paintings of Bougereau and his contemporary voluptuaries.

The paintings feel literary too - in places exploring the Apolline/Dionysian dichotomy with lyrical but succinct image-words, in others recalling the appearance and dress of the characters in Swift and Voltaire, involved in a picaresque journey of discovery and loss. The artist's desire to capture the essence of epic themes does not prevent his recognizing absurdity. It is testament to his modesty and truthfulness that many of the figures are distended and distorted, appearing victims as much of their own quixotic folly as of fate. Whether satirizing vanity with the ruthlessness so beloved by Hogarth or Daumier, or whether espousing the incisive common-sense of Rousseau, Boyers' works are marked by the imaginative and emotional appeal of that which is heroic, adventurous and revelatory. At their best, the unfleshed-out physicality of Boyer's mortals point out the full gamut of the human experience with both poignancy and piquancy, trying to grasp an emotional and passionate side of man, so that the humor and irony inherent in his condition is also keenly felt. In Boyer's work the worlds of the physical and imagined are not divided - they collectively summon a poetic vision of the soul that answers a very contemporary need to return profundity to cultural production, a need ignored by an increasingly mythless, kitsch-fixated world.