Article: Abstract/Figurative: Paul Allender on George McNeil
Figure, 1937, oil on canvas, 22 x 18 in (55.9 x 45.7 cm) Collection of the George McNeil Charitable Trust
The Estate of George McNeil is pleased to offer here the full length version of an article by Paul Allender originally published in excerpt on Turps Painting Magazine, Issue 26, December 14, 2022.
Abstract/Figurative: the work of George McNeil
by Paul Allender, Sheffield, UK
Insta @pauliepaul55
I was first attracted to George McNeil’s paintings by his combination of strong, saturated colours and the ways in which he explores a space between figuration and abstraction in each painting. The latter has something to do with his early introduction to Cubism. In his early twenties he studied Cubism with first Jan Matulka and then Hans Hoffman. Amongst other things, this affected the ways in which he divided up the picture plane and this continued to be important right through his career. George had something to say on the matter of figuration and abstraction: “…my work has always had not a human figure image, but it always had a figural image. There always seems to be some kind of center image ... that is figural, or imagistic ... [The figure] is not only found: it's completely abstract. You see this is the whole thing: I'm not a figure painter at all. I'm an abstract painter where I hope that bringing in the figure brings in certain human or psychological connotations or associations.” What is a figural image that is not human?
Untitled (Figure Study) 1937 provides some clues. The image has no obvious references to the human figure. It does have something of an appearance of cubist form but not one which is dividing up a human figure. But there is a central ‘figure’ which presents itself as the subject of the painting. In later paintings, there is often a recognizable human figure or figures featured but this wasn’t always the case.
“A related point is that George’s paintings appear to lack ego and arrogance. His bold and brave playfulness and experimentation are childlike and eschew control and manipulation.” – Paul Allende
Asphodel (1962)
Oil on canvas
78 x 72 in (198.1 x 182.9 cm)
Collection of the Estate of George McNeil
For, me Asphodel (1962) presents clearly an abstracted human figure on its mid to right- hand side. (To add a further level of complexity, not everyone sees it this way.) More on Asphodel later.
I suggest that George’s treatment of the abstract/figurative relationship in painting is a somewhat novel one in that he combines a Cubist (something) with an expressionist approach. But there are lots of other things that are part of his treatment of this relationship. One is his playfulness. This ‘playing’ with the painting process, form and colour is present throughout his career. And, in 1991 at the age of 83, he featured in a short video The Painter’s Painter in which he demonstrates his painting process. It shows a painter embracing an approach to his work that has fun, experimentation and chance built into it. There are formal concerns, but these don’t make the painting rigid or stuck. Instead, they provide a framework within which George can play and discover. His daughter Helen, in a memoir published in 2002, wrote: “Even in his 80’s, he worked in a kind of expressionist dance, darting up to the canvas, darting back, squinting, sighing, even grunting, having another go.”
A related point is that George’s paintings appear to lack ego and arrogance. His bold and brave playfulness and experimentation are childlike and eschew control and manipulation. They are fun. While his paintings, from the 1950’s onwards, have qualities that could be characterized as ‘abstract expressionism’, they are not bound by it. He was an expressionist way before the 1950’s. There is a spontaneity and positivity to his paintings that seem to come from the man rather than the art scene. He doesn’t ‘run with the crowd’ (Abstract Expressionist or otherwise).
I have a strong interest in the relationship between figuration and abstraction in my own work. So, in an attempt to relate to George’s approach to painting, I copied two of his works, one of which was Asphodel (1962) In attempting to copy it, the first thing I noticed was the vigour of both his under and overpainting. He liked to paint quickly and with abandon. The speed of these loose brush strokes is impressive and comes with years of experience. The combination of strong blues with strong yellows is something else I noticed and have used this in many of own paintings subsequently. George’s colour combinations are often vivid and startling but, for me, usually work. As regards the form of this painting, it is somewhat unusual. The human figure is accompanied by a strange somewhat geometric yellow form that dominates the whole of the left side and half of the top of the painting and on it’s right an orange and red surface that could represent a table or be a painted bottom right hand corner. The painting works because the forms within it have a unity and balance that makes their presence seem natural. It is as it is because it is.
What is this space between abstraction and figuration? Can we talk about it? Can exploring it just be ‘spontaneous and playful’? There is no doubt that the Cubism of Picasso and Braque in the very early years of the 20th century was a new and unique approach to painting. The way that objects and figures were depicted involved fragmenting the image into interconnected planes. As already stated, George studied Cubism with Matulka and Hoffman. There appears to be something of the scientific about Cubism. It is often stated that the Cubists were depicting the object or figure from multiple viewpoints, but this idea really doesn’t really hold up when looking closely at Picasso and Braque’s work. However, it is clearly something of an analytical and formal approach.
After that early introduction to this formal, analytical approach, George developed his own more spontaneous and playful treatment of the relationship between figuration and abstraction. This is my conclusion. While his early introduction to cubism provided a formal (and formal in the other sense) approach to the art of picture-making, he later developed his own experimental process which, combined with the cubist analysis, to produce the kind of results I refer to. Sometimes, after engaging in this kind of experimental process, the painting is just right as it is.
And, as George states: “I'm not a figure painter at all. I'm an abstract painter where I hope that bringing in the figure brings in certain human or psychological connotations or associations.”
Spending hours looking at George’s work and copying a couple of his paintings led me to think a lot about his treatment of the abstract/figurative relationship. I think his comment above not being a figure painter provides the biggest clue. His main concerns in painting are abstract and painterly and his ‘use’ of the figure has a specific aim and role within that.
On his use of strong saturated colours, he created form with them. His experiments with placing different colours alongside each other led to visual sensations that surprised and excited. He used the term Form/Energy in his written notes to try to capture this.
Moving on now to briefly think about his status as a painter and muse upon why he is not better known today, perhaps George’s work could be compared to that of Willem De Kooning. Both combine abstraction with figuration and have somewhat similar approaches. Both were members of the New York School of Painting which became known as the Abstract Expressionists. And Helen McNeil, in the memoir of 2002, reports that De Kooning had expressed strong surprise that George McNeil – one of the best he said – had not had the success that he deserved. His daughter Helen suggests that this may have had something to do with his feelings of being an underdog. He expected life to be a struggle and so it was. This is a very familiar feeling to those of us from working-class backgrounds, as George was.
Demonic Disco (1984), oil on canvas, 64 x 78 in (162.6 x 198.1 cm) Private collection
The memoir is entitled George McNeil, Bathers, Dancers, Abstracts, A Themed Retrospective and was published in 2002 to accompany an exhibition at Provincetown Art Association and Museum.
I began this article thinking that George had achieved a lot of recognition during his lifetime. After all, he had over 40 solo shows in his almost 70 years of painting. However, it seems that despite his prodigious and high-quality output of work, he never made it to the dizzy heights of being ‘a famous painter’ and that this explains why we now know so little of his work. Becoming a famous painter is certainly no guarantee of quality and concomitantly not becoming well known says very little, if anything, about the quality of a painter’s work.
Forty-Seventh Street (1987), oil on canvas, 78 x 128 in (198.1 x 325.1 cm) Collection of the Estate of George McNeil
For me, maybe in contrast with the notion of ‘life as a struggle’, his work has the effect of producing strong and positive emotions. His paintings excite, seduce and delight! They engage me in stories or events or happenings which, while not explicable in written form, open up questions and possibilities and opportunities. I get a sense of part of his personality from viewing them. John Russell wrote in his review of a 1983 exhibition of George’s work in The New York Times: "The dark night of the soul plays no part in these paintings. McNeil sees the world as a place in which people kick up their heels as often as they can, and he has taught his paint to do the same."
So, to conclude this short article, I would like to show some of these later paintings that, without doubt, ‘kick up their heels’.
Zero Zero Two (1987), oil on canvas, 78 x 128 in (198.1 x 325.1 cm) Collection of the Estate of George McNeil.
By the time the 1980’s came along George sadly knew that he wasn’t going to get the recognition he deserved in the painting world, so he felt free to ‘let rip’ in his work and, ironically, got a great deal of recognition then, riding the neo-Expressionist wave that was led by Jean-Michel Basquiat and others. These dazzling, energetic paintings were created when he was in his 80’s and were lauded by critics as looking like the work of a much younger man. But George said: “Painting is an old man’s art!” I think, with his great and deft painting skills developed over decades of experience, his spontaneity, playfulness and experimentation and his use of a bold colour palette, George McNeil definitely had the last laugh.
END