Slam
Artist
James Chatelain
(American, born 1947)
Date1974
MediumMotor oil, pencil on paper
Dimensions35 1/4 × 45 1/2 in. (89.5 × 115.6 cm)
ClassificationsDrawing
Credit LineGift of James Pearson Duffy, 2008
Object numberUAC3578
DescriptionWithin Chatelain’s diverse oeuvre, he oscillated between complete abstraction and formal figuration. “Slam” is a complex example of a work that hovers at an exact intersection between his two stylistic interests. This work was made during a brief period when Chatelain created a series of paintings that showed violent relationships between two abstracted figures. The quality is similar between that series and this work: the figure exists in a blank void and a sense of motion is created by “imperfect” boundaries repeating the shape of the figure. However, “Slam #108” contains a different attitude towards an abstraction of realism. Chatelain utilizes the messy, viscous, and industrial qualities of motor oil to suggest a flat, heavy object’s physical trajectory through space, which, we glean from the title, ends with a startlingly loud slam. It is tempting to make connections to industrial Detroit, since Chatelain’s studio was in Cass Corridor and his poignant choice to use motor oil in America’s “Motor City.” Perhaps, the object’s trajectory could be understood as a metaphor for Detroit’s industrial decline ending in trauma (especially considering a 1970s viewpoint of the city before any come-back “resurgence”). The work is rather large, unlike the figure series which encouraged intimacy with a viewer by their smaller size. The wide sweeps of frantic brushstrokes can be analyzed closely, allowing the viewer to imagine each moment of the object’s decline as a freeze-frame, and effectively making its imagined audible ending all the more intense. James Chatelain received a BFA from Wayne State University in 1971. He was an important member of the Cass Corridor movement in Detroit and was a co-founder of the Willis Gallery. His work is closely aligned with the urban expressionism style and experimentation that defined the Cass Corridor movement but he also gained notoriety as a practicing artist outside of Detroit by having studios in New York and Ohio.
Fiorucci
3/22/18
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