Through the eyes of an Old New Master

David Ligare's works on Display at MMA's 50th anniversary exhibitions

By LILY DAYTON
Herald Correspondent

"My association with the museum goes way back," said Ligare. "I had a solo exhibition there in 1970 because I won their art competition in 1969. They have done a great service to our community for a long time."

The fact that Ligare will be featured in both anniversary exhibitions is testimony to his significance in the peninsula's local artistic heritage, as well as to his contribution to the wider world of art on a global scale. He has had more than 35 solo exhibitions in artistic hubs from Los Angeles and San Francisco to New York, London and Rome. His paintings have been included in many group exhibitions in museums and galleries around the world and his work is featured in dozens of books and magazines.

In fact, Michael Whittington, executive director of the MMA, first heard of him in New York. "Before I interviewed for this job, I met Donald Kuspit (distinguished contemporary art critic) for coffee and told him about this job in Monterey. He said 'There's a wonderful artist in Monterey named David Ligare.' He put him in the category of 'Old New Masters' because of his subject matter, monumentality and the nature of his work."

By this, Whittington meant the mythological subjects of Ligare's paintings, transporting ancient narratives from works such as Homer's "IIiad" and Ovid's "Metamorphosis" to the landscapes of Central California. He was also referring to his attention to the classical elements of balance, proportion and the holistic view of all elements in a work of art as relating to one another.

Ligare's painting that will be displayed in the "Made in Monterey Exhibition" is an oil on canvas titled "Idhra (Thrown Drapery)," 1979. It depicts a white piece of drapery billowing in the air over the ocean. The horizon is tilted in relation to the frame, giving a sense of compositional balance. Looking at this painting, one is reminded of the flowing folds of fabric carved in ancient Greek statues. And this was exactly what prompted Ligare to begin looking into the past for inspiration.

"I had an exhibit in New York in 1978 of my 'Thrown Drapery' paintings," said Ligare. "These alluded to classical Greece to me; they were all named after Greek Islands. They reminded me of pieces of sculpture I'd seen in Greece, where the head and the arms had been knocked off and all you saw was the draped torso. After this, I decided I wanted to learn more about classical art. I thought it would be an interesting problem to develop narrative in my work. No one else was doing this. It was very much against the rules."

So Ligare began to study. With the same passion he has for painting, he started reading everything he could get his hands on about classicism, philosophy, history and Greek and Roman mythology, searching for pivotal points and the underlying structure of classicism itself.

"It was narrative I began to look for when I began to understand what constituted a 'whole painting.' It consisted of three basic elements: structure, surface and content," explained Ligare. "By structure, I mean an underlying mathematical structure. This goes back to ancient Greek theories about proportion, especially of the body. By surface, I mean the 'look' of nature in the painting. Rather than self-expression or abstracting nature, I was trying to paint nature as it really appears — to honor nature. The third element, content, is the meaning. Everything has meaning for me."

Even the rectangular canvas he's working with, where the proportions produce a particular ratio, has meaning. "This underlying mathematical structure that I use before painting implies that there is order to the universe. It also recognizes disparate levels of the painting and relates one element to another — tree to rock, rock to hill. It's all a metaphor for ecology: the inter-relationship of disparate elements of nature."

Beginning with mathematical calculations of ratio and perspective as a poet may begin within the structure of meter, Ligare began to re-create the ancient myths of humanity against the backdrop of Central California landscapes.

"The landscape is extremely important to me," said Ligare. "I live in Corral de Tierra, half way between Monterey and Salinas — John Steinbeck called it 'the pastures of heaven.' I look out on a hill over the bay; it has lots of levels. I've done a particular study about the pastoral mode — this comes down to us from Theocritus and Virgil. It's a symbol for the threshold world between wilderness and civilization. It represents balance, which is central to classicism and central to me. Balance between two opposing forces, order and chaos, life and death."

Ligare's painting displayed in the "50/fifty" exhibition is an untitled seascape painted in 2003. It depicts a tousled sea hurling itself against a rocky point, amidst a backlight of sky. Ligare said that this painting is in homage to Robinson Jeffers.

"It's a very simple seascape painting that has an underlying structure about it. And it's about the light, the way the atmosphere holds light. It's held by color and value. That painting is in a certain sense a vessel of light."

"Light is absolutely central to what I do. It's always been extremely important to me. The light in California is so beautiful, so strong, so rich. In my own work, the light I use is late afternoon sunlight. Again, this has meaning: In literature it's been called 'the golden hour,' that threshold space between day and night, between light and dark."

Whittington said he was thrilled to acquire this painting for the museum's collection. "It's a monumental painting. He has captured the look and feel of the California landscape in a bold and realistic way."

"David is an artist who — more so than any I've ever known — has an amazing knowledge of the history of art. He's also a very giving and caring individual. He does volunteer work with young artists in Salinas. He feels tied to this land and community."

As far as the artistic legacy he would like to leave, Ligare said, "That I looked at this landscape with the eyes of someone who made a special effort to understand both microcosmically and macrocosmically, applying this timeless historical reference to the local landscape and tying it in with intellectual ideas of so many other artists of so many other time periods."