Field Trip

Alex Kanevsky is a figurative painter who belongs to no school, follows no tendency, and has neither a signature style nor a recurring topic. Other than working on rectangular supports, his resistance to being pigeon-holed offers us a way to reflect upon his treatment of traditional subjects, such as the model, landscape, and still life. By rejecting familiar stylistic devices, such as surrealist dreamscapes, expressionist distortions, and impressionist views, Kanevsky has developed a unique approach to figuration. The result of this approach is a diverse group of paintings, which have been known to baffle even his most loyal viewers. The most common way these viewers have responded to their bafflement is by concocting narratives about the meaning of Kanevsky's paintings, and the motivations behind them. This has led to many misunderstandings which I will attempt to clear up in this essay.

All Possessions Twice (2024) depicts a prison cell bunk bed -two shelves extending from a wall. On both of the spare, neatly made-up bunks, we see all of the anonymous prisoners' worldly possessions carefully arranged for inspection. Almost as if we are prison guards, we begin visually sorting through each person’s things, mentally noting what they have, and how each set of items is different. What we make of the fact that a similarly colored carton of toothpaste is found in each collection depends on who we are. Context is all.

Formally, the two shelves, one stacked above the other, function as planes on which we see a still life. The pairing seems to have little to do with traditional still life, or with well-known modernist views of tabletops by Paul Cézanne, Pierre Bonnard, or Henri Matisse, none of whom depicted still lifes within the confines of a prison cell. Kanevsky’s unconventional choice should clue us into the subversive nature of his choices. By picking prisoners' things as his focus, we lead to ask: is the artist commenting on the history of still life painting?

Once we begin focusing on the banal objects neatly arranged on each bunk bed, we will likely notice that there is a pillow on the top bunk but none on the bottom, and that the surface of one bunk is blue while the other is green. By now, we have accepted Kanevsky’s invitation to look deeper into the painting, to begin to closely examine similarities and differences, and to pay heightened attention to the distinguishing features of banal things, such as the color and size of each individual’s slippers. As we go further to the painting, we might start to ask ourselves, what are we looking for, and where will this looking take us.

If "God is in the details," as the architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe was known to have said, what might we get from itemizing the things neatly arranged in All Possessions Twice? One anomaly that stands out is the reproduction on the wall above the lower bunk. It shows a woman in a white gown, set against a black ground. Her head and lower body have been cropped. Turning away from us, and posed in three-quarter profile, we see her bare right arm extending from the top of the reproduction to the bottom edge. The image feels both extraneous and necessary to the painting, which infuses it with an irresolvable tension, a visual provocation.

What is the relationship of this faceless, anonymous figure to the two absent prisoners and their possessions? Doesn't her presence in the painting open it up to speculation about the role she plays? Is she a surrogate for the viewer or for the absent prisoners? What does it mean that she is facing away from the painting and looking into the darkness surrounding her? While these questions help us to look more closely, the answer eludes us. Might not that elusiveness be an ethical one? Might not Kanevsky be probing the limits of seeing rather than settling for what he sees?

One of the hardest things for a figurative painter to depict without resorting to familiar tropes is a scene where nothing significant is going on. In three identically-sized paintings from 2024, all of which are given the same title, Hay Bale with Snow, and consecutively numbered, Kanevsky pivots away from a prison cell to focus on a rotted hay bale lying in a snow-covered field. Thematically speaking, this view shares little with Kanevsky's still life. The difference between them conveys something of the artist's astonishing ability to find fresh subjects within well-known genres. Kanevsky understands, as the poet Robert Kelly wrote, "Style is death." With this understanding, he defines a territory, where seeing the world as specific instances, no two alike, is paramount. Even when he returns to a subject, each view is different, as exemplified by his three distinct views of the rotted hay bale.

As with the prison bunk bed, Kanevsky has found a subject that challenges our assumptions. He doesn't regard the hay bale as part of a thematic group, as did Claude Monet. Again, we are tempted to construct a narrative, one in which we see the rotted hay bale as a commentary, perhaps on waste and excess. From there, we can connect the hay bale paintings to what the artist focuses on in All Possessions Twice, which on a simple level is incarceration. There is something satisfying about connecting the paintings this way, particularly in light of climate change and the misuse of the prison system. While I grant this socially relevant, over-arching narrative is more than plausible, I don't think it contains Kanevsky’s work. Instead, I think the work’s inability to contain something so direct and transparent is its real strength.

Kanevsky, who doesn't believe in either narrative or parody, has little interest in aligning himself with topical correctness or being entertaining or amusing. Although his paintings belong to the genres of still life and landscape, they are not stylistically connected, and the inseparable conditions they make plain is that of isolation and time passing. A prisoner's daily life is regimented during the time he is isolated from society. The rotted hay bale is left in the field, imprisoned in its uselessness. Of no value, it is isolated from the world because its time of usefulness has passed.

This perception of Kanevsky's paintings has little to do with social relevance, unless we buy into the idea it is important to be productive and useful at all times. Just as we might think we have found a key to Kanevsky's paintings, his Las Meninas (2024) refutes this view. Kanevsky depicts white chickens strutting around a hen house with a brown rooster located near the painting's upper center, presiding over the flock. The floor has been sectioned with low partitions that can easily be stepped over. Though the reason for this is unknown, it does suggest the chickens are separated from each other, perhaps by their own volition.

However, in contradiction to the prison cell, the sole purpose of caged chickens is to be producers, either as egg layers or as meat. Beyond the looser handling of the paint, what distinguishes this painting from the others I have discussed is the addition of three abstract blue lines running horizontally across the painting, two near the bottom edge and one a short distance from the top edge. The lines contract the space inhabited by the chickens. Were they added to break up the vertical posts we see, as well as to further hold the chickens in? The addition of the lines may have been impulsive and inexplicable, an obvious extra, but they feel right, as if they belong exactly where they are.

Thinking about Kanevsky’s paintings, as I have for the past month, spending an afternoon with him in his studio in New Hampshire, and talking with him over Zoom, I realize I have neglected to mention the one thing they have all given me: pleasure. I am reminded of the ending of Wallace Stevens’s poem, "It Must Give Pleasure":

These are not things transformed.

Yet we are shaken by them as if they were.

We reason about them with a later reason.

For me, one of the undeniable pleasures is both seeing and reflecting upon Kanevsky’s paintings, their buttery surfaces and resistance to narrative. Perhaps Kanevsky's elusiveness is most strongly felt in his paintings of nude models, an academic subject if there ever was one.

Despite this long and honored history, Kanevsky once again breaks new ground. In The Battle of Shahbarghan I (2024), the largest of his recent paintings, he juxtaposes a nude model against his version of a Persian miniature, which he saw at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Done in ink, opaque watercolor, and gold, the miniature measures 13 ⅝ inches by 9⅛ inches, and is part of a folio. It is hardly a famous battle, and there are no heroes to be seen in the original painting.

While one can make out the turbaned horsemen in the bottom right quadrant of Kanevsky's painting, he has stretched some of the figures out, as if they were painted on a thin sheet of brown. Their upward thrust directs our attention to the nude model, who is seated and facing toward the left side of the canvas. We see her long black hair cascading over her breasts, but her head has been unevenly cropped by the trees growing behind the white wall in the miniature. Below her left knee, we see parts of four legs, all of which are hers. Her left leg, which is closest to us, appears to be crossed over her right leg. The four legs suggest that the model changed her position during the days the artist was painting her, while he was trying to figure out how to merge both her and the background battle scene together.He seems to have had no plan about this. Her missing head suggests that neither the viewer nor the artist can see her, and, in that sense, know her. This preoccupation with the limitations of seeing is the theme running through the three paintings I have discussed so far.

We are invited to pay attention to the plethora of details in The Battle of Shahbarghan I without losing sight of the painting, to continually refocus while reflecting upon their dialogue with each other. As we give thought to the inexplicable juxtaposition, we must contemplate what role the limits of our seeing plays in our comprehension, but that's not all. What about the original miniature caught and held Kanevsky’s attention? Why did he make it part of two large paintings? I think these questions are crucial to understanding what motivates the artist, who moves nimbly from one painting to another without settling down into a mode of dependable production.

By picking his subjects from a wide range of sources, including working with a model to using a photograph, Kanevsky keeps himself as open as he can to the world, and his everyday life. Working and living in this way, while never knowing in advance what he might feel compelled to devote his attention to, Kanevsky embodies that longed for state, artistic freedom. Instead of surrendering to the prison of style or becoming a member of a school or movement, he recognizes the restraints his freedom imposes on him by pushing through them. One of the restraints is the viewer’s need for everything to be decipherable. This is where I see Kanevsky's elusiveness as being ethical. Artistic freedom does not mean the artist agrees to make work from which palpable meaning can be extracted. The artist who enters into this agreement embraces the security and the comfort of conformity. Kanevsky rejects this option in favor of entering the unknown.

What do we see when we look at Kanevsky’s More Self Portrait Than Not (2024), done on a square panel? In the center of what feels like a small, pale blue room with a low, dark blue ceil-ing, we find two identical figures wearing full-length mink coats; one is in profile and the other, connected to the former, is seen from behind. The figure's gender is ambiguous. The coat is open and the chest is bare. A dark brown band with a horizontal slit covers the figure’s face, something between a blindfold and dark visor with a misplaced opening. A bed with a red blanket is to the right of the figures while to the left, and behind them, we see the base of an easel rising into patches of indecipherable paint. Above the bed, we see a row of tilting books, but by now we are unsure of what is front of us. This precarity suffuses through the painting on multiple levels, from the blindfold to the enigmatic figures. The position of their hands suggests they are uncertain of what is in front them, adding a note of tentativeness to the situation. Are we meant to read this painting allegorically? Why is it more of a self-portrait than not?

The uncertainty we encounter in this painting mirrors the artist’s recognition that he does not know what awaits him, and that his paintings mark the journey of his unfolding life. And yet, I would not claim his paintings are strictly autobiographical, unless we include the places his imagination has gone and memories that have come to him. The paintings transcend their inspiration, and become a way for the artist to ask how he knows what he knows. He wants to discover the limitations of sight. We do not see the faces of the women in his two The Battle of Shahbarghan paintings. If we cannot see them, can we know them? Can we feel empathy for them? In a media saturated world these questions gain further resonance. Kanevsky possesses a remarkable ability to transform his inescapable precariousness into works of unrivaled visual eloquence, at once direct and enigmatic.

This essay was originally published in 2024 on the occasion of Alex Kanevsky: Everything Twice.