One Work: Manny Farber
From the Mid-Eighties, 1985, oil and acrylic on board, 96 x 192 in.
[Images description: The background is divided into four vertical sections, each one a flat field of green, yellow, gray, and magenta. Densely scattered across the surface are renderings of domestic objects, such as books, scraps of paper, food, and flowers in vases. The viewer’s vantage point is as if looking down from above.]
Manny Farber’s From the Mid-Eighties is a superb work of quarantine art. This is not because it was crafted during the current pandemic— Farber, who died in 2008, made the painting thirty five years ago. It is not art from quarantine, but rather for it.
The work epitomizes the images for which Farber is best known: table-top still lifes scattered with everyday objects. One of the artist’s primary interests was space. The way in which Farber used it— the painting’s enveloping scale, the tipped-up picture plane, the density of objects and how their composition keeps the eye looping— creates a slightly vertiginous effect. It shakes up the content’s familiarity so we feel destabilized, and more attentive because of it. This reminds me of how our relationship to space has changed during the pandemic. For those of us with the privilege to stay at home, or who must do so because we are immunocompromised, confined spaces have become our primary experience of the world. They envelop us with safety while also inciting claustrophobia. And going out into the public sphere now carries an invisible danger as we check that we are six feet away from others at all times. A tense restlessness arises as we are constantly aware of our position in space.
In From the Mid-Eighties, bric-a-brac densely clutters the table’s surface. After nearly a year of being largely confined at home, I see the scene as a kind of visual diary of the small things that have kept us mentally afloat during the pandemic. Bunches of flowers bring a punch of botanical life indoors. Music—we see references to Tina Turner, James Brown, and David Bowie—effectively supplies energy and distraction. Books and art magazines occupy the mind, while candy and cigarettes deliver a loop of pleasure and need. Art-making materials provide the tools to sustain a creative life amidst the kind of uncertainty that scrambles the brain. Dashed-off notes litter the table and suggest moments of reflection, connection, and care. Some of the messages seem especially relevant to the current moment: “go buy something” (all those Amazon packages, or the abounding entreaties to shop local), “Don’t be too fragile” (a mantra of self-preservation), and “Take care faithful friend” (an encouraging articulation of love).
Is this an anachronistic reading? Certainly, but I believe it represents how art can speak to radically different contexts across time, its meaning shape-shifting to resonate with the particularities framing life now. While I do not think art can solve the problems of the present, it can provide the comfort that comes with moments of recognition as we see our lives reflected in the work in front of us.
—Elizabeth Rooklidge, Editor, HereIn
From the Mid-Eighties (detail), 1985, oil and acrylic on board
[Image description: On a Kelly green background, yellow flowers burst forth from a white vase, while scraps of yellow, blue, and red paper litter the surface. One reads “Tina Turner,” and another reads “Byrne.” Beneath the objects, two white lines extend horizontally into the image from the top right corner.]
From the Mid-Eighties (detail), 1985, oil and acrylic on board
[Image description: The right third of the painting’s background is gray, while the left two-thirds are yellow. At the top of the image, a microphone rests on an orange towel. Below it are potted succulents, an eggplant resting on a notebook, red candy spilling from its open box, and a copy of Art in America with a small toy elephant walking across it. In the lower left corner, we see the top of a white vase, from which three green plant stems stretch across the image.]
From the Mid-Eighties (detail), 1985, oil and acrylic on board
[Image description: A white vase with yellow flowers sits at the top of the image. Scraps of paper, notepads, lengths of masking tape, matchbooks, a green apple, green squash, and small toys of a person and a house are strewn across the magenta background. In the lower right corner is a blue vase, from which three green plant stems protrude.]