![]() ![]() Now that lyric abstraction is several generations old in America, as a genre it is easier to bring into play, not so much on a comprehensive level as in a smaller way, and this is what happens in some of the effects in Packer’s paintings. Despite the abstract passages, Packer needs to be considered a figurative artist. The paintings illustrate both social and personal history, in ways that pay attention to lives regularly lived under pressure. The atmosphere is one of veiled portrayal and strong emotion. Memorably, she has commented, “We belong here.” In her portraits of friends, her unusual technical skills, in drawing and painting both, stand out. But in her remarks, she is very much a political artist. By foregoing the representation of direct violence, Packer is able to concentrate on ambience and form. This is not to say that the work is excessively complicated, either in theme or handling, but rather that drips and inchoate expanses of paint, along with partial rather than complete approximations of the figure, create an ambience in which nothing seems settled.īecause Packer does not depict violence directly, we can only tell from the wall texts what certain paintings may politically portray. The intricacies of Packer’s art thus involve a rumpled realism in which the general impression of the composition is as important as the specifics, which tend to be expressively painted. What could be more traditional than a painting of flowers? The brushy attributes of her floral designs do in fact link up with the American major movement of abstract expressionism, now best considered a historical event, just as the works are devoted to a realism that refers to contemporary life. At the same time, it brilliantly restates themes that are traditional in nature. Thus, Packer’s memory is directed toward former and ongoing vicissitudes of African-American culture. ![]() In Packer’s case, we have a past fraught with racial assault, a past that extends into the present and more than likely will continue into the future. Seeing this show in New York, where lyric expressionism still maintains a major role, is to become aware again of figurative art’s ability to render the person and other recognizable themes in ways that do justice to the past. These paintings are elegies meant to recall the troubling events of black American history, as well as being excellent examples of art, based on the complexity and brilliance of her hand. But the ongoing prejudice and violence imposed on people of color throughout America occurs not as an actual depiction on the paintings, but rather as a background permeating the lyricism of the artist’s sensibility. ![]() Packer sees herself not only working within figuration but also as a political artist, and this is true. At the same time, her floral paintings, expansively expressionist, can be both marvelous studies of the beauty of flowers, their color especially, as well as a memorial to black women murdered by the police. Her art, often of friends, combines brushy, freely given but accurate responses to those she knows and the surroundings she finds them in. Educated as an undergraduate at the Tyler School of Art outside Philadelphia, and at Yale University, where she received her MFA degree, Packer now lives in New York. The American painter Jennifer Packer’s show, “The Eye Is Not Satisfied with Seeing,” at the Whitney Museum was a wonderful exhibition that makes advances in figurative art. ![]()
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