DONALD ALTER: STRANGER IN A STRANGE LAND By Vivian Goldstein s landscape paintings are miracles of beauty in composition, color, form, plane and line. They are jewels; some highly saturated and brightly colored, others quite dark and dusky, but all multi-faceted and multi-dimensional. As the viewer enters into them, more and more is revealed until an entire universe, both magical and foreboding, is revealed. All of this, on one level, is simply a manifestation of the imaginative and highly original use of many media including oil, graphite, chalk, wax and crayon, canvas, wood and paper. Storm King Mountain 2008, 36x25in, acrylic on canvas Alter s oeuvre demonstrates a very high level of integration of techniques learned during his many years as an innovative and successful fabric designer, in tandem with his astonishing assimilation of the vocabularies of the major currents of Modernist and pre-modernist western art. As a student at Black Mountain College, he was exposed to some of the greatest talent to emerge in the Post-War era, including his mentors Josef and Anni Albers and fellow students Robert Rauschenberg, Merce Cunningham, John Cage and many others. It was a place and time of great experimentation and cross-disciplinary fertilization, and the precocious and eager Alter was steeped in the status-quo-defying, counter-cultural atmosphere of that time and place. 1
The deeply evocative quality of his works and the depth of emotional resonance they engender are not explainable simply by his extraordinary metabolism of the methods and means of expression of the giants who preceded him, or of his contemporaries in pure art and design, nor by his abundant investigative curiosity and his technical facility used in continually pushing towards a unique vision of the physical world. The power of these works lies in the mysteries they suggest, the uncertainties that are pointed to. These unanswered questions are at the very core of the works ability to captivate the viewer and to hold his/her attention. Airplane Landscape 2008, 27x33in, acrylic on wood At first glance, one is astonished by the bold color choices Alter makes, by the elegance of his formal composition, by the dynamism and musicality in the rendering of seemingly familiar landscape objects: trees, flowers, mountains, grasses, small areas suggesting water, and of course, clouds and sky. One might also note the complexity and variation of filigree, crosshatching and other marks superimposed upon these objects suggesting that our vision of these things is incomplete or veiled. Having absorbed all of this, it is only then that from the painting behind the painting one begins to notice a house or other structure, an automobile with headlights shining, an airplane overhead, a collection of figures, all in ambiguous relationship to both each other and to the landscape in which they have been placed. 2
This inner landscape has a somewhat more ominous tone, and there is more than a hint of anxiety and dread. What meaning do these objects have in relation to the landscape, why are the people there and what are they doing, why is there only a tentative relationship between these objects and the environment and in the case of the figures especially, is there any real relationship between them at all? Suddenly one becomes aware that Alter is giving us much more than a brilliantly colored canvas endowed with all the elements of Surrealism or Abstraction, and rather has skillfully led us from this land of enchantment into a place that is fraught with discomfort, a place where energy may have already been unleashed and gone wild or is about to, a place where danger hangs in the air. Alternatively, in some of Alter s more apparently somber works, he still alludes to the possibility that more is hidden from view, camouflaged perhaps, but ultimately sinister. In the Park 2010, 30x23in, acrylic on canvas 3
In a casual comment, Alter said, (these paintings) are my shtetl. I knew what he meant. His father emigrated from Poland in 1927, arriving as an illegal immigrant to this country by way of Canada. Alter grew up in the Bronx, served in the Army, was one of a very small number of Jews in his unit, and experienced that sense of marginality that is so common to the Jewish experience. Although he was born here, and is thoroughly identified as being American, it is often said that for the first generation of immigrant parents, there is a residual feeling of tenuousness, an inherited sense of being unwelcome. (Perhaps the host/country will no longer want me, and I will be displaced). In another conversation, Alter said, I have never been completely comfortable anywhere, not even in a landscape, he added. It is in this game of hide and seek that the true stamp of s unique vision emerges. I want you to know who I am, but I don t want you to think that everything about me is knowable, he seems to say; the desire to protect his intrinsic vulnerability and otherness is in direct contrast to his desire to have an impact on the viewer, to be provocative, to galvanize the viewer s attention, to be in control, and above all, to be the one asking the questions. Perhaps Alter is also saying that despite his wish to be known and to belong, that he will always remain elusive to some degree, that perhaps we are all living in our own small galaxy, fundamentally unknowable to each other, alienated from our environments both natural and cultural. As all great observers of themselves and the world seem to conclude, this is the peculiarity of our existential condition as humans, an essential part of the human condition. It is not that this message is unique, but that the world that Alter has created in his art is so subtle and so compelling, so daring and full of risk that one is smitten long before the realization of having been drawn into a very disquieting and discomfiting space. is in equal measure the ever youthful and enthusiastic explorer and iconoclast, and also the man who has lived for nearly eighty two years during which he owned a business, married and remarried after the loss of his first wife, raised a family and is now, most probably, in the twilight of his life. For me, he continues to be a worthy illuminator of the post 9/11, early 21 st century zeitgeist characterized by deep uncertainty and instability. The small, precarious world of the shtetl Jew can now be recognized for what it always was: a fractal of the existential experience of all of human beings. On the one hand, we are forever archetypically the Innocent One, radiant in our bravado and naivety, joyfully dancing in the sunlight, while on the other hand, we are suddenly aware that we had better seek refuge lest something perilous occur. The fear of annihilation that was experienced in the shtetl can be seen as a descriptor of the precarious position in which we are all placed. Whether we are cognizant or not, perhaps we are truly, as Robert Heinlein understood many years ago, strangers in a strange land. Donald Alter, through the continuation of his intriguing work, is encouraging us all to see not only how strange this human journey is, but also how exciting, unpredictable and juicy the unfolding. 4
Notes: 1. Robert Heinlein (1907-1988), the renowned American novelist and science fiction writer, is the author of the 1961 classic Stranger in a Strange Land. 2. Shtetl is a small Jewish town or village formerly found throughout Eastern Europe. Vivian Goldstein, LCSW maintains a private practice in NYC. She frequently writes on art, spirituality and culture. Recent articles include Tony Moore: Sculpture, American Ceramics (Fall 2007), Tony Moore: Sculpture, The Embodiment of Spirit in Form, Neue Keramik, Germany (Sept. 2008) and Tony Moore: Sculpture, Paradox in Form, Ceramic Review, England (April 2009). 5 Layout Design Harald Plochberger 2012