Simply Red
July 2007
"It just dawned on me that it would be a terrific subject,” says Red Grooms, discussing his latest |
“The Unicorn Strikes Back,” 2006, |
Grooms’ medieval-motif canvases are executed in his quintessential robust, cartoon-like style, replete with bold primary colors and antic figures. Here, instead of the rollicking New York scenarios for which he is world-renowned, Grooms presents a gallimaufry of plumed lords, wimpled ladies and fierce-visaged archers firing their crossbows, along with prancing horses, barking dogs and flotillas of gliding swans. “My work is awfully busy—to a fault,” he concedes. “I try to get the right number of figures without going too far.”
There is a striking auditory as well as visual quality to Grooms’ work. If his New York paintings
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“Side Pocket,” 2006, oil on canvas, 56" x 69 7/8". |
In his New York paintings, the city’s emblematic landmarks function essentially as a backdrop for its people, from delicatessen waitresses and street vendors to marathon runners and subway musicians. The personae in these paintings often evoke the raffish guys and dolls of Damon Runyon’s stories. Grooms himself, however, feels a kinship with tabloid photographer Weegee, “a huge hero of mine,” whose roving lens in the 1930s, ’40s and ’50s caught streetwise tenement kids and opera-going socialites with equal agility. He also cites contemporary novelist Kevin Baker as “a real ally.” Baker’s historical novels, such as Dreamland and Paradise Alley, hark back to the New York of exploited garment- district workers and manipulative Tammany Hall politicians.Grooms, however, is not a covert social commentator. It is simply that the giddy, multi-ringed
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“Sargent in 1925,” 2004, |
Born Charles Rogers Grooms in Nashville, Tennessee, the artist admits to an early fascination with the circus. “My grandmother lived close to the grounds where the tents would be set up,” he says. “I’d watch the circus trucks coming from Union Station. It seemed so liberating to see all these roguish outsiders invading us.”
Grooms’ father was fired from his job and forced into self-employment for two years, making copper bowls and ashtrays in the family’s basement. The exposure to resident artisanship had a stimulating effect on the future artist. “I realized you could create your own world in whatever quarters you had,” he says, noting that both his mother and father encouraged him to be an artist. “My family was like an audience. They always asked to see what I’d done.”
Soft-spoken and unassuming, Grooms’ only out-of-the-ordinary visible characteristic is his namesake red hair. His Tennessee heritage manifests itself in his warm Southern accent. When talking about one of his favorite restaurants, Nha Trang, a Vietnamese place, the words somehow come out sounding like “neu-tron.” His New York studio is on the ground floor of a desolate-looking building at the edge of Chinatown, just south of Canal Street, a perpetually bustling thoroughfare where one often has to walk in the gutter because the sidewalks are so jammed with avid shoppers and faux-designer merchandise. The location, Grooms says, “has been a tremendous influence on me. Canal Street attracts droves of people.
“I’ve done so many aspects of this neighborhood in my work,” he continues. “I get my hair cut in a Chinese barbershop.” One might surmise that fact from “Shave and a Haircut, Six ollars” (2003), depicting a light-haired Caucasian male in a crowded barbershop being shorn by a female Asian barber. Grooms’ delightfully hyperbolic pieces often do have an ironic edge. “I’ve been called a ‘benign satirist,’” he says. “That sounds like being a ‘kind boxer.’ Yet, it’s not impossible. I don’t try to take a point of view, I just accept what’s there.”Occasionally Grooms has fixed his sights on art-world personalities, sports figures and even the eastern Tennessee hills where he has a country house. His New York subject matter, however, has brought him the widest critical and popular acclaim, beginning with the series of 10 huge freestanding sculptures collectively called “Ruckus Manhattan” (1975–76). “Ever since I was a child I liked the idea of big things,” he explains. “Biblical film epics like ‘Samson and Delilah’ excited me; I was a big fan of Cecil B. DeMille.”
The artist did have a brief flirtation with film-making in the early 1960s. Among other endeavors, he collaborated with Rudy Burckhardt, the experimental filmmaker and photographer, on “Shoot the Moon.” “It was like an early silent film,” muses Grooms. “I was so naïve, I thought I could make popular films. It didn’t occur to me to actually go to work in the film business. I just liked working on my own.” There is, to be sure, a cinematic quality apparent in much of Grooms work, as if a whole comedy-drama were about to unfold on a giant screen.
At times, Grooms has referred to the colorful three-dimensional wall pieces that have been one of his fortes as “sculptural pictoramas,” which are mainly of acrylic or enamel on wood. “I’ve used every kind of paint,” he avers, including DuPont Imron, an industrial coating suitable for outdoor pieces. The painted-wood constructions are physically demanding to produce, he says. “There also are problems with these oversized pieces ‘breaking down.’ Working with oil keeps it simple. The one thing that’s important for artists is to make art.”
►Marlborough Gallery
New York
212.541.4900
www.marlboroughgallery.com
A solo exhibition of Grooms’ latest work will take place this fall.
New York correspondent Dick Kagan is a freelance visual arts writer who most recently reported on how contemporary painters represent food in their art (May 2007).