Critical Archive of the Visual and Related Arts
Ralph Albert Blakelock
American; 19th-century, 20th-century
Rochester, NY: Memorial Art Gallery
72%
Afternoon Light. c1880-1890. Oil on canvas
This composition is almost actively undynamic, so as (it seems) not to be competing for aesthetic effect with the intensity with which Blakelock's applied his paint. This intensity is famous, and it's what makes Blakelock's name within the history of American art: his gouged, dragged, scumbled surfaces are unique. But the intensity is also limiting — Blakelock is slightly more of a curio than a master because of how superficial (literally) his canvases are. In this painting, there's too much structure the artist seems to have sacrificed in allowing himself to indulge in the heft and feel of his medium. The silhouetted wedge of trees at right, for instance, falls just a bit too softly, too readily, into the pond or grove at left. Some differentiation to the forms within the forested sections might have made this movement appear more substantial, but then again, linework would have quashed the overall atmospheric effect. This is Blakelock's double bind: his painting’s require more brawn, but any more brawn would kill their weird miasmic presence. Occasionally, though, Blakelock manages to approach structure crosswise, through that miasma. This painting is most successful where structure suggests itself despite — because of — the lack of line: in how the colors of the sky have weight but no shapes; in how the branches of the trees are cut against their bright background; in how the horizon pokes through to threaten order, but is quickly suppressed by shadows. (TFS, 2025)