GALLERY 15
Anxious Visions: The Art of Michael Northuis
by Will South, chief curator
Michael Northuis sees anxiety as a virtue.
The edginess of modern life—the urban
decay, the social disconnect, our hyperstylized culture of “extreme” everything
from sports to scrapbooking—is a
wellspring of inspiration.
The often shadowy and inscrutable
underside of our emotional lives rises in his
paintings like a well-scripted dream. His
are anxious visions, but we own them, too,
living as we do in a world molded as much
by tension as by hope.
Northuis (pronounced, nor’ dice) is,
despite the clearly contemporary feeling of
his art, a traditionalist. He is well read in
art history and counts among his greatest
inspirations Brueghel, Leonardo, and
Picasso. He is a skilled and disciplined
draftsman who has taught life drawing
for many years. The artist enjoys a wellrounded and informed debate on art issues
both technical and theoretical.
When he enters his studio, this panorama
of passions informs him, and the resulting
art is compelling for how at odds it is with
itself: these images verge on beauty and
tradition, but nonetheless pull us headlong
into a relentlessly enigmatic present.
Love in Time of Silence is that strange yet
familiar place. We recognize a factory in
the distance, identified as such by twin
smokestacks over shoebox architecture in
front of which a tiny worker carries a lunch
pail toward his destination, suggesting this
is early morning. A distant pin-hole of a
moon radiates a tri-spoke wheel, one that
rounds out all the way to the foreground,
sweeping under the feet of the picture’s
leading character—one who is clearly not
going to work.
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columbiamuseum.org
The factory background and mechanical
night sky evoke industry, at least obliquely.
The tall, slender male figure—stretching
the length of the painting—does not.
He appears slightly bent and his face is
slackened with fatigue and resignation. His
thick mass of wild hair mimics the smoke
rising in the background, a cigarette is held
listlessly in his hand, and his black and
white lace-up straight-tipped shoes define
a 1950s rebel without a cause. While the
distant figure goes to work, the up-close
man looks to have been out all night.
The woman next to him casts a distinct
shadow; his shadow is a thin link to the
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