Quality of Consequence
Jules Engel at Tobey C. Moss Gallery
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There is a real compression in Jules
Engel’s early work, whether of precision (Circles I, 1939) or in
jumbled masses of form. It’s a long breathing easy after that, with a
great love of l’Impair, a great desire to see forms and colors
doing things, tempered by innocuous obscurity at CalArts, where he has the
leisure to study foliage as fields, and do (in his ninth decade) the best
work he’s done. |
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His films follow Fischinger (who would
have admired them greatly), borrowing things from Klee and Albers and Kline and
McLaughlin and even late Van Gogh to piece together profound little studies
of two or four minutes’ duration. Many, such as Accident (1973)
and Villa Rospigliosi (1988), have been very badly imitated over the
years, by PBS for American Masters, by Frank O. Gehry and Richard Meier
for Walt Disney Concert Hall and Getty Museum, respectively. |
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“The art of the last 40
years,” says Dave Hickey, “has no
consequences.” Oh, but it has. |
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