Camille Eskell
Selected Reviews
New York Times, Sunday, December 22, 1991
"ASSESSING EMOTIONAL IMAGES"
Emotional images invite interpretation and empathy. As works of art, however, their success is evaluated by the way methods and materials are used to further the message and to create something original.
The high-impact soul-bearing paintings by Camille Eskell at the Bryant Library in Roslyn have a literary as well as a visual intensity and in each there is much to ponder.
Those 12 works are from two series that have occupied the artist for some time, "The Roots of Terror" and "Icons of the Self." "The Roots" concerns anguished reactions and tends to border on the allegorical. "Icons" emphasizes morose painful introspection and can sometimes appear to be metaphorical. Selections from both series have been exhibited in New York and other cities.
Each painting explores a specific trauma and tries to depict its emotional thrust through gesture, facial expression and dramatic light contrast, basic devices widely used to illustrate an idea for a broad audience. But surrounding the images are witty three-dimensional components, hand-cast sculpture or found objects, that add a significant degree of originality and success.
In most instances, a single female figure conveys the sense of suffering. Questions about the extent of the artist's identification with her personages are inevitable, although black backgrounds and timeless garments tend to suggest that figures belong to a generalized historical context.
Technical reinforcement for the various themes come from the mysterious darkness, agitated strokes and intense highlights that can add a metaphysical aura.
Expressive hands carry a large portion of the theatrics. They push away an invisible force in "Break Through" and in "Unwelcome Release" they shield the eyes as well.
Speculation about narrative content increases in "The Visitation" which allows the hands of a screaming child covering a woman's eyes. Hands block the ears of a suffering figure in "Shutting them out II." Another figure uses her hands in a frightened self-wrapping gesture of protection.
In two other paintings, tucked, contained hands reinforce the figure's tortured introspection. Thematic references are deeper and more complicated in "The Divided Self" and in "Coming Out."
In the former, a satyr's hands tear at the figure's flesh, and in "Coming Out," hands ritualistically stretch upward. The work recalls the devotional character of 17th century Spanish painting.
Throughout the exhibition it is the startling way that this murky disquieting drama collides with its heavy boarder of cleverly related three-dimensional components that makes the Eskell art distinctive. Illusionistic literary qualities are matter-of-fact objects play off one another in a manner that is frequently engaging. The more elaborate structures make the paintings themselves seem like objects, and this is a special, welcome tension.
Occasionally, too, the borders raise questions about whether frames function as windows or as decorations. In the best examples, they wrap and compress the powerful angst being acted out, adding significantly to the intensity.
The witty conceptual interaction between painted theme and surrounding object is central to the intended impact. The range can be from the obvious to the subtle.
Large metal clamps gripping the frame sections of "Shutting Them Out" augment the expression of pain that the victim seems to be experiencing in her head and ears. A regimented placement of carved lips and ears surrounds the anguished torso in "Silent Strain."
With varying degrees of cleverness, appended materials always develop the specific subject. In one piece the supposed emotional force makes the frame split, revealing it's blood red interior.
Oddly enough, for all their importance, the frames make us seem to be on the other side of the emotional action, and therefore detatched. The psychodrama appears to be fiction, and the strength of ant intended universality is muted.
The exhibitions remain on view through Jan. 5. The library, on Paper Mill Road, is open 9 A.M. to 9 P.M. weekdays - the opening on Wednesdays is at 10 A.M. - 9 to 5 on Saturdays and 1 to 5 on Sundays.
--Phyllis Braff
