DAVID LEVINE: MUCH IS TAKEN, MUCH ABIDES

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David Levine, whose caricatures adorned the New York Review of Books for more than 40 years, recently stepped down due to failing eyesight. “If I look at somebody’s face.... I can’t tell until the person gets within five feet of me who it is.”

After nearly 4,000 caricatures-- a solid body of work to make any artist proud-- Levine has not contributed a new drawing since he was diagnosed with macular degeneration.

But the 80 year old artist will not give up making pictures. He is trying to reinvent his style so he can carry on with poor eyesight. “It didn’t stop Degas [who had the same disease].... He went on to change his way of seeing. He just moved into a rhythm of color and bigger generalities in the way he saw things like hands or faces. … I’m open to that. I’m searching.”

Now that is an artist talking.

The ironic thing is, I was always less impressed with Levine's trademark caricatures than I was with the paintings he did on the side. I think these paintings from the 1970s are marvelous:

This work shows an entirely different set of strengths than Levine's drawing-- an excellent sense of color and composition, an understanding of value, an appreciation for subtle shading. This is not an artist who is limited to petite pen and ink sketches.

Finally, I admire Levine's response to misfortune.

Tennyson's famous poem, Ulysses, describes the ancient Greek hero's decision, at the end of a long life of epic battles with gods and men, to leave home and set out once more for adventure. He rousts his aging comrades to accompany him to see if

Some work of noble note may yet be done
Not unbecoming men that strove with gods

Ulysses admits that old age has robbed them of much, yet he glories in what still "abides":

Tho' much is taken, much abides; and tho'
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

I salute David Levine for his resolution not to yield.

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" NEW "

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The artist Marcel Duchamp claimed it is easier to be original in the US because Americans are so ignorant about history:

In Europe, the young men of any generation always act as the grandsons of some great man. Of Victor Hugo in France, and I suppose of Shakespeare in England. They can't help it. Even if they don't believe it, it goes into their system and so, when they come to produce something of their own, there is a sort of traditionalism that is indestructible. This does not exist [in the US]. You don't give a damn about Shakespeare, do you? You're not his grandsons at all. So it is perfect terrain for new developments.

Of course, Duchamp's insight wasn't original either. Previous generations had already complained loudly about the paralyzing effect of history. Nietzsche wrote, "the large and ever-increasing burden of the past" makes us envy the beasts grazing in the field, who are able to live for the moment.

It ain't easy to create meaningful art after a thousand generations of artists have already taken their turn. How can you justify picking up a pencil to draw after Rembrandt or Degas or Ingres or Carracci?



Similarly, anyone who wants to draw a slick, soap opera comic strip today must find elbow room between Alex Raymond and Leonard Starr.



And what would be the point of starting out to paint a nude more realistically than Bouguereau?



This may explain why so many modern artists are obsessed with finding a new direction. Rather than compete with history they simply move on, redefining art and establishing new rules and standards.  Originality seems to have eclipsed many traditional criteria for artistic merit. This can lead to wonderful results, but often artists whose goal is "originality" end up settling for "novelty" or "strangeness."

And sometimes we learn that a new approach hasn't been tried because earlier generations of artists figured out that it wasn't worth trying...



So as we begin a shiny new year, it might be appropriate to pause for a moment on what it means to be "new."

The author Alan Gurganus recalled returning to his hometown and visiting the house "where I experienced what I believed to be the first French kiss ever invented by humankind." Nietzsche might argue Gurganus was ignorant about the historical facts of kissing, but I'd guess nothing he learned-- from that kiss forward-- could diminish his shiver of new wisdom. His kiss was not the first but it was undeniably new.  

As usual, many of the principles that apply to art apply to kisses as well.  Ask yourself what kind of person would abandon kissing in search of something "original" because previous generations have already kissed.  Originality means more than mere novelty.

The poet Peter Viereck, who was older and more experienced than Gurganus, understood there is a long line of kissers who preceded us stretching back to the dawn of time:

That sofa where reclining comes so easy
Is far more haunted than you'll ever guess.

This lifetime is our turn on the sofa.  Generations of artistic geniuses are dead and gone, but as Emerson said, the gift of our instant life is "the omnipotency with which nature decomposes her harvest for recomposition."  Great artists tend to be the ones who don't waste energy fleeing ghosts and instead embrace history to enrich the present.

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