Jerry Moriarty: Curated by Art Spiegelman

CUE Art Foundation September 9 - October 16, 2004

J E R RY M OR I AR T Y

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T H I S E X H I B I T I O N WA S M A D E P O S S I B L E B Y XXXXXX

c u r at o r’s s t at e m e n t

a r t i s t ’ s s t at e m e n t

I first saw Jerry Moriarty’s paintings twenty four years ago when my wife,

There was this kid in a small town in the 1940’s who drew Superman and got

Françoise, and I were beginning to plan RAW , our “avant garde” magazine of

attention for it. By 1950 Superman fantasy gave way to war and horror comics

comix. A six foot square painting walked past us on its way to the wall of

realism. Not much art in this kids town so he took the Famous Artist Course

Jerry’s cluttered loft, the artist’s sneakers and neon orange pants cuffs visible

advertised in comic books. The 12 famous artists were illustrators. In 1956 this

below, as his voice emanated from behind the picture, narrating the upstate

kid went to art school in NYC to become an illustrator. There he found it was

New York childhood memory depicted on the canvas. There’s always a story

cooler to like DeKooning than Jack Davis or Norman Rockwell—so he did. This

behind Jerry’s paintings. In one memorable image he even portrays himself

kid painted abstractions and was cool—he thought. Illustration classes kept his

having ripped through from behind the canvas, a “time traveler,” smiling

figurative skills alive. After graduation his figurative art became illustrations for

protectively down from the ceiling into a vision of his father reclining with a

“girlie magazines.” At night in the small room he rented this kid painted large

newspaper in front of a blank TV screen the night before he died in 1953. The

abstract canvases. One night he decided to put 4 paintings together making a

child as father of the man. As Jerry puts it, he’s a “Pop” Artist— making images

square of 4 walls. He sat in the middle and awaited revelation. It didn’t come.

that continue a dialogue with the world of his father.

Jerry is certainly not a Pop Artist of the Lichtenstein school who

Instead the abstract canvas walls spoke to each other and left this kid out.

Saddened at his uncoolness he returned to “co n te n t” and tried to find it’s

condescendingly borrows from mass media to comment on it ironically; he’s a

meaning in him. This kid swore he would never be seduced by Art or cool

storyteller sharing intimate memories, whose sincere love and understanding

again—but of course he has…

of comics narrative led him to make some comix pages that became central to

I am a “content freak.” Form serves content in my pictures. The girl

RAW magazine, and led to many cycles of sequential paintings. Self-aware, but never self-conscious, his multi-panel images are distillations of his remembered past and his fantasies. They have the elliptical sensitivity of a Raymond Carver story told with the blunt simplicity of an Ernie Bushmiller Nancy comic strip.

They are all composed with the elegant precision of an Edward Hopper painting—each composition realized through a slow, painstaking process of painting it over and over to find its essence. Jerry shrugs and explains that “I don’t work well in real time.” He does, however, succeed in making past times real and present.

His recent Balthus-inflected Sally pictures, which make up much of this exhibition, use a pastel palette of comic book colors to create an eroticized Norman Rockwell fifties pastorale that acknowledges body functions. There’s something ingratiating and innocent about the paintings, undercut by a current of ornery and discomfiting honesty. In an even larger space I’d love to have shown a full retrospective of the artist’s battles with times past (his disinterest in the fashions and commerce of the art world makes his body of work difficult to experience unless he walks them past you in his loft) but since all his work is retrospective, this will have to do… for a time. art spiegelman

paintings I call Sally’s Surprise. She is me at age 12 in 1950. During those pre

Playboy days puberty came as a huge surprise. Doing me at age 12 from memory felt phony, so I invented Sally. She forced me to think less as a male which is a relief at my age. By dividing some pictures into 3 panels, form allows the content to show time and motion—a beginning, a middle and an end. This is what I love in movies, comics and music, especially in their reproduced state… their flat te st, least theatrical state. I prefer movies on DVD, music on CD, paintings in books. I live in Flatland, my reality is flat. For me art is private and intimate, entering through the eyes alone. While I work I usually listen to jazz, always a saxophonist.I want to hear the sax improviser playing his own music and making on the spot choices. There are leaps of faith. There are good moves and bad moves and he reminds me how much it means to “reach.” In a sense Jazz is all that remains of my original encounter with abstraction and cool.

Jerry Moriarty

AVON LADY, 2000 Oil on linen, 46" x 60"

L AU N D RY, 2000 Oil on linen, 46" x 60"

SA L LY’S SUPRISE-TREE PEE, 2001 Oil on linen, 46" x 60"

SA L LY’S SUPRISE-MARIE, 2001 Oil on linen, 46" x 60"

BUS, 2001 Oil on linen, 46" x 60"

PUBLIC TO I L E T, 2003 Oil on linen, 46" x 60"

SA L LY’S NEW DOLL, 2003 Oil on linen, 46" x 60"

I VISIT DA D, 1995 Oil on linen, 45" x 60"

MOM DIES, 1992 Oil on linen, 45" x 60"

P I N B OY-ME, 1994 Oil on linen, 45" x 60"

ME + FELLA SLEEP, 2003 Oil on linen, 46" x 60"

FELLA + ME + GARBAGE MEN, 2001 Oil on linen, 46" x 60"

a rt ist ’s bi o graphy

c u r at o r ’ s b i o g r a p h y

Jerry Moriarty was born in Binghamton, NY on Jan. 15, 1938. He had a Roy

Art Spiegelman was born in Stockholm in 1948. He won a Pulitzer Prize in 1992

Rogers and Superman childhood until his father, Jack, died in Jan. 1953.

for his two volume Holocaust narrative in comix form, Maus , which has since

Although Jack was from a working class background he encouraged and sup-

been published in over 18 languages. His work has been exhibited in many

ported his son’s art. Binghamton was an industrial town with little art available

museums and galleries here and abroad, including a show at the Museum of

during the 1940s and early 50s. To become more involved in art Jerry sent

Modern Art in 1991. He will be included in L.A. MOCA/Hammer Museum’s

away for The Famous Artists Course seen in the backs of comics. It worked and

planned 2005 joint exhibition, SHOW & TELL, 15 Masters of 20th Century

by 1956 he was enrolled in Pratt Institute. By 1960 he had a BFA. After gradu-

Comics. He taught the history and aesthetics of comics at New York’s School

ation Jerry worked as a free lance magazine illustrator to support his Abstract

for Visual Arts (where he first met Jerry Moriarty) from 1979-1986 and

Expressionist painting. By 1963 he gave up abstraction and started teaching at

continues to lecture on the subject inte r n at i o n a l l y. His comics, writing and

the School of Visual Art—forty years later he’s still there. In 1974 Jerry had his

drawings have been published in many periodicals, including The New Yorker,

first one man show in SOHO, in 1984 another in Chelsea and the last was in 1999

where he was a staff artist and writer from 1993-2003. A collection and memoir

at the SVA Museum. He received an NEA grant in 1977. Reaffirmed, Jerry

about his New Yorker work will be published by Pantheon Books in 2005,

renewed his art by doing a personal comic called Jack Survives connecting him

which is currently releasing his latest book, In the Shadow of No Towers , a

with his dead father. Art Spiegelman and Françoise Mouly’s RAW published a

gathering of his broadsheet comics pages about 9/11 and its aftermath.

one-shot book of Jack Survives in 1984. The next time Jack appeared was in a SVA subway poster in 1986…the first of five sub way posters for SVA.

c u e a r t f o u n d a t i o n m i s s i o n s tat e m e n t

CUE Art Foundation, a non-profit organization, provides educational programs

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for young artists and aspiring art professionals in New York and from around

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the country. These programs draw on the unique community of artists, critics, and educators brought together by the Foundation’s season of exhibitions, public lectures, and its in-gallery studio program. Gallery internships and stipends afford the next generation of art pro fe ssionals intimate, working knowledge of the art-making and exhibition processes. CUE’s 2000 sq. ft.

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base for the various educational programs conducted by CUE.

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The Foundation’s exhibition season gives unknown or under-recog-

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nized artists professional exposure comparable to that offered by neighboring

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commercial galleries, without the usual financial restraints. CUE does not

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promote a particular school of artistic practice or regional bias; we only require

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that exhibiting artists must either not have had a solo exhibition in a commer-

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cial venue, or have received minimal recent public exposure.

CUE’s Advisory Council, an honorary group of artists and leading figures from the arts education, applied arts, art history, and literary communi-

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ties, has the responsibility of selecting exhibition curators. The curators, in turn, nominate artists to exhibit at CUE, and continue to play a role throughout the

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the Advisory Council and the exhibition curators actively participate in the public lectures and educational programs.

A L L A R T WO RK © JE R R Y M O R I A RT Y C ATA LO G D E S I G N : E L I Z A B E T H E L L I S P R I N T E D I N C A N A DA