A look at Ingres to expand Jack McConville’s “heroic frenzies” currently in Los Angeles

Placed somewhere between drawing and painting, this image recently presented by Jack McConville in a solo exhibition at Ibid. Los Angeles, appears to be the exact consequence of the answers the artist has recently given to our Proustian questionnaire. The classical culture he is addressing to is apparently rooted in Greece, with Eros being at the focal point of his interests. Nevertheless, it seems that some lateral steps have been made.

The references to Giordano Bruno which the exhibition introductory text announces are centered around the symbolic value of water, stressed by the use of the only colour in the painting and represented from a strictly and effective frontal point of view – the same one adopted, for instance, by Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres to paint “The Spring”, now in the collection of the Musée d’Orsay. Of the three human passions the philosopher conjectures about in his “The Heroic Frenzies”, the one pictured here is evidently the passion for the speculative life that brings to knowledge –. It is also to be said that there is something in the posture of the two naked female characters that recalls the perfectly dynamic body painted by Ingres.

Nevertheless, the title of the painting, “Pagoda eight”, suggests other possible meanings and fields of knowledge. In effect, Burma’s legendary Shwedagon Pagoda preserves, according to the tradition, eight strands of Buddha’s hairs, while the Noble Eightfold Path is at the core of the Buddhist doctrine. Once again, McConville’ art practice proves to be a stimulating starting point, more than a synthesis of information, thus leading the viewer to exploration, more than to stand passively in front of a mere object of contemplation.

January 31, 2019