Allentown Art Museum
Allentown, PA
610-432-4333
John Clem Clarke: Comforts, Near Disasters, and Pentimenti
The Allentown Art Museum's Fall Major Exhibition, John Clem Clarke: Comforts, Near Disasters, and Pentimenti, opened October 11, 1998, and runs through January 3, 1999.
Jokn Clem Clarke (b. 1937) continues to
challenge our preconceptions about how pictures are made and can be made.
The subjects of his eminently easy-to-read paintings of the last ten years
are mostly food, modes of transportation, homelife, sports, and industry.
They couldn't be more all-American or seem more straightforward. Yet they
raise many questions, involving viewers in the artist's ongoing dialogue
with visual art. Clark's most recent subject matter is the source of the
title for this exhibition.
Clarke's "Comforts" are the sorts of images found
in pulp publications -- illustrations that use a shorthand of graphic symbols,
including such subjects as buttered corn and cherry pie. His "Near
Disasters" also utilize an illustrator's shorthand vocabulary: notations
for speed, vibrations, or reflections in water appear in a series of paintings
that are at first glance humorous in their nostalgic subjects of automobiles,
roadside motels, and domestic interiors, yet each painting implies an unresolved
narrative. "I like the subject that has implications you can dream
up on your own. I like art to be friendly and playful, something you can
really enjoy," explains Clarke.
Drawn like modern cartoons or advertisement illustrations,
Clark's works speak of the present, the moment he created them, and of the
past through the subject matter. Clarke found his future as an artist in
his past -- themes and styles of the 1940's and 50's. Though the images
are the stuff of his childhood, Clarke strives to keep the personal touch
of the brushstroke out of his pictures. Clarke makes his finished paintings
by enlarging a maquette using an opaque projector to make a set of stencils
through which the finished paintings are brushed. This process of creating
stencils has been relatively the same since he began using it in the mid-sixties.
Speed is vital to the freshness of Clark's works, and animation is the key
to his style. Every line is alive, no edge is ever straight. The large size
of his pictures (typically around 60" X 90") plays an important
role in the transformation of Clark's illustration-based style into high
art.
"Pentimento" is the Italian word for repentance.
The term describes the ghostly image that appears when paint ages and becomes
nansparent, revealing earlier versions of an artist's composition. Clarke's
"Pentimenti" are no accidents of time, however -- they are deliberate
parts of his composition from the start. They remind us of all the changes
artists have made in their paintings over the centuries, and encourage viewers
to examine their own preconceptions about painted surfaces. 
In addition to twenty large scale paintings dating from
1988 through 1998, a series of maquettes are exhibited as well. The curator
for this exhibition is Peter Blume, Director of the Allentown Art Musewn.
An illustrated catalogue with an essay by April Kingsley is being published
by the Museum in conjunction with this exhibition. The exhibition was organized
by the Allentown Art Museun and has been made possible by the Leon and June
Holt Endowment Fund. 
The Allentown Art Museum is located on Fifth Street between Linden and Hamilton Streets in Allentown, Pennsylvania. Exhibition hours are 11:00 AM to 5:00 PM Tuesday through Saturday; noon to 5:00 PM Sundays. Admission: members and children under 12 no charge; adults $4.00; senior citizens $3.00; full-time students $2.00. Admission is free on Sundays. The Museum Shop is open during all regular hours at no additional charge and features unique gifts and art-related items. Public parking is available behind the Museum in the lot at Linden and Penn Streets, and in the lot at Linden and Sixth Streets. On-street parking is also available.
Read more in Resource Library about the Allentown Art Museum.
From top to bottom: Paradise Canyon, 1994, 64 x 105 inches; Automobile Show Room, 1990, 60 x 108 inches; Pier Traffic, 1994, 48 x 96 inches; Coffee and Sandwich, 1992, 42 x 48 inches; Modern Art #1: Two Guys with Sun - Pentimenti, 1998, 47 x 101 inches.
rev. 11/22/10
Search Resource Library for thousands of articles and essays on American art.
Copyright 2010 Traditional Fine Arts Organization, Inc., an Arizona nonprofit corporation. All rights reserved.
