Harvey Dinnerstein
At the Millennium
by
Jennifer Hebblethwaite
As morning light seeps in to Harvey Dinnerstein's Brooklyn studio, he, like so many of us these days, is contemplating the end of the century. In front of him is his latest work, entitled Sundown, The Crossing. It is a painting of a ferry crossing New York harbor, its deck lined with images of people that Dinnerstein has painted over the last 30 or 40 years. They range from portraits of the turbulent decades of the '60s and early '70s on the left side of the deck, to a group of West Indian carnival revelers on the right. In between and across the deck is a complex range of people the artist has painted over the years—multi-colored, young and old, of various trades and occupations. Off to the left, in the distance is an early 19th century schooner; to the right, a tugboat and a jet plane in the sky. One quickly grasps a sense of past and present, and the implication of a journey beyond.
Now, if you look closely, about halfway up the ferry's stairway is a portrait of Walt Whitman. Dinnerstein finds that it often takes time for viewers to find this figure, and he enjoys that moment of recognition. "I did not intend the painting as an illustration of Whitman's poem. . .the image expresses my experience, my vision. But I find the spirit of his work most compelling." In the context of Whitman's poem, Crossing Brooklyn Ferry, Dinnerstein has become the "Other" that Whitman foresaw looking over the harbor, both artists reflecting on "The similitudes of the past and those of the future."
Dinnerstein grew up in Brooklyn, N.Y. In the introduction to the catalog of his retrospective exhibition at the Butler Institute of American Art, Youngstown, Ohio, in 1994, he is very specific about the time and the place. There is an emphasis on provincial beginnings, which are relevant to his art, that encompass specific and universal aspects of contemporary life. "I was born in the Jewish section of Brownsville, Brooklyn,
in 1928. The streets of the old neighborhood resonate in my memory; shouts of pushcart peddlers and political debates, secular philosophers and mad poets. . .a strange passion and intensity that enveloped intimate and public concerns," Dinnerstein said recently. "Above all, a questioning of authority that profoundly affected my consciousness as I began to explore the outer world, and eventually affected the artistic direction I was later to pursue."
In response to a question about his studies in the 1940s, Dinnerstein refers to ". . .a fashionable modernist sensibility [that] dominated the art world. There were exceptions to this aesthetic on the part of some artists who maintained an interest in the figurative tradition, but the predominant focus of the cultural establishment was on the decorative formal qualities, fragmented images, and a cult of innovation for its own sake. None of these qualities interested me. The great traditions of Antiquity, the Renaissance, and on to the 19th century that I was just beginning to discover seemed to me to offer so much more depth and humanity compared to alienated and esoteric modernist images, that I simply turned my back on most 20th century innovations to study that heritage of the past with which I identified."
Dinnerstein describes a lifetime of work that encompasses five decades, "A range of images, from the spontaneity of the sketch to complex studied compositions that involve a process of distillation and sustained effort over a period of time. These images combine aspects of naturalism, or incidental observation, with classical elements of form and structure. Though these qualities may seem contradictory, I believe they comple ment and reinforce each other. There is a naturalistic view, simply concerned with appearance and transitory effects of nature that I find unfulfilling. And equally troublesome to me are arid qualities of classical form that lack the vigor of life. It is the difficult subtle balance, or tension, between these two elements that I hope to arrive at."
When asked about his predictions for art of the 21st century, Dinnerstein refers back to painting at the beginning of the 20th century. "Consider what artists were concerned with at the dawn of this century. There were high keyed, colorful impressionist paintings, and at the same time those somber portraits of Thomas Eakins. I have in mind especially the portrait titled The Thinker: Portrait of Louis N. Kenton—a standing solitary figure, with his feet planted solidly on the ground, and painted exactly in 1900. I often visit the American wing at the Metropolitan Museum, simply to study this canvas. The painting is concerned with a specific individual, but there is a weight and power to the forms that convey other levels of perception. The title, which encompasses the universal and the specific, is certainly appropriate. The color range is limited and subdued, and I would guess that American Impressionist painters of the time considered Eakins old-fashioned in the midst of so-called advanced color theories of the modern era. But here we are a century later, and I respond to the painting as one of the significant images of the time, and the decorative images of the period seem to me like so much ephemera."
And art of the future? "There are times when the nihilism and dehumanization of many aspects of contemporary culture seem overwhelming, but there is also an alternative spirit that persists. When Whitman spealcs of 'the certainty of others' it resonates in my imagination as an affirmation of possibilities. . of a vigorous figurative tradition that continues into the next century
and beyond. And just as I am so affected by the Eakins painting 100 years after the fact, there will be another soul in a future generation who will respond in kind to those profound human qualities that survive."
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Jennifer Hebblethwaite is the literary manager for the Horizon Theatre Company in Atlanta, Georgia, and a freelance writer and dramaturg.
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