New Art Examiner, June, 1991
John Pitman Weber
Parish of the Holy Covenant
by Claire Wolf Krantz
Using familiar contemporary images to reexamine age-old themes of grief and loss, and their complements of consolation and affirmation. John Weber's paintings and banners hung in this sanctuary during Easter as powerful expressions of human concerns. The exhibit was hung in two groups: the "Laments" appeared first during Lent and Good Friday, to be replaced by the "Anthems" on Easter morning.
Images of hands and bodies, wine and unleavened bread were placed in contexts of liturgical symbols and juxtaposed to, but disjunctive with, suggestions of nature. Other images of stripped, blindfolded, and bound men, of women grieving and comforting each other, and of people engaged in ritual or everyday activities, are continuations of earlier themes relating to war and protest, begun in 1967. Here, photographic sources are reconstituted to evoke events in Vietnam, Central America, Africa, Asia, and the U.S.
Placed within this liturgical context, the works transcended the specifics of their historically based imagery to enter into dialogues which the ritual of Easter renews and reenacts each year. These images also are intellectual and ethical statements by a man who has spent the last 20 years actively exploring ways that artists can contribute to bettering society. As a part of the street muralist movement during the '60s and '70s, Weber was instrumental in developing resistant themes and practices. In both murals and easel paintings, Weber has emphasized his development in terms of content and context of imagery rather than inventiveness or facility of approach. Loosely painted and figurative, these works show the influences of the Mexican muralists and Cubists who were crucial to the development of the genre in this country. One of Weber's early collaborative murals can still be seen on the outside of the church in which this exhibit took place.
A particularly effective trio of paintings hangs in the apse of the church, framing the service. The central section, Rainbow Path, first reveals a rather simple image in which black, yellow, and white arms and hands above a green, grassy ground join two by two to stretch from the periphery toward the center of the painting. Yet a closer look reveals that the joinings are only in doubles that reach but don't touch each other. Moreover, the ground beneath serves to separate as much as to join them, to imply existential emptiness at least as strongly as the fullness of the earth.
In the left-hand panel, a central section frames two hands joined in a reference to an Asian symbol of harmony; this framing, however, floats in an ambiguous relationship with a bare elm tree starkly silhouetted against a cold, wintry light. Even in the process of affirming life and unity-in the context of Easter morning, Weber grounds his meanings in the reality of the world as he knows it.
The remaining right-hand panel, Share, contains a curious central image of a brownish-red liquid being poured from a round enamel bowl into a cup, surrounded by the semitropical foliage and beans of a coffee tree. Again the images are simple, but their meanings are unstable. Why is the container a bowl and what is the liquid? The religious Christian setting would suggest a scenario in which wine is being poured from a bowl where, historically, it would have been mixed with water. But other contexts could designate the liquid to be coffee or blood, implying far different meanings.
In his multiplied, fragmented, combined and recombined images of people surviving in the face of horror, and placed in contextually loaded settings such as this worship space, Weber searches for meaning, for means of survival, and for a connectedness among people. He constructs linguistically and historically sophisticated, multilayered paintings to challenge his peers in the arts. However, to expand the diversity of his audience, he strives toward accessibility in stylistic choices, selections of exhibition spaces, and ongoing collaborative activities as a muralist. His work is most interesting in the totality of its presentation, such as this one. Like traditional religious art, these works' multiple references meet the liturgical demands of their inception and can be read on a number of levels by those entering the church. But they also meet the challenge of deeper readings and prolonged exposure, to reveal Weber's own ambivalences and anxieties in his concern for and his exposure of a contemporary world gone mad.
Claire Wolf Krantz is an artist, freelance critic, and guest curator.
As an artist she works in a combination of painting and photography as well as digitally created images.