Painting: The Eyes Have It

“Painted with normal eyes, a figure can wander off the canvas,” John D. Graham once observed. To understand that remark, it is necessary to know something about Graham. Born Ivan Dabrowsky in Russia, he was a little-known painter who became a colorful figure in the Greenwich Village art scene and died still unrecognized at the age of 80-odd in 1961. He is currently being honored with an exhibit of 27 paintings and drawings at Manhattan’s Museum of Modern Art — and they show what he meant about eyes. Graham evidently felt that the viewer’s attention could not be held for long by a figure that had nothing more remarkable than eyes like his own. To make sure this would not happen with his portraits, he endowed his enigmatic paintings of doll-like figures with eyes that are anything but normal.

Eccentric Loner. Some have eyes that are crossed. Some are walleyed. Some figures have one eye socket empty, and not a few come with a third eye in the middle of their foreheads, or still other eyes in shoulders or thighs. Nor are the eyes all that is awry in Graham’s portraits. Often as not, they are littered with cabalistic signs and symbols from alchemy or numerology. In one self-portrait titled Apotheosis, Graham bears on his shoulders the sun and the moon, alchemists’ symbols for the soul and the spirit. In addition, he has added horns to his head, possibly to indicate the union of devil and God in man.

What does it all add up to? Even were Graham alive, he would most probably not tell. He delighted in shrouding his life and art in mystery. Nor is the rediscovery of John Graham based on any reassessment of his artistic ability. He remains, at best, only a fair draftsman and a thoroughly pedestrian stylist. Nonetheless, his wild-eyed subjects possess considerable appeal for the public that has recently developed an interest in astrology, numerology and other forms of mysticism. Graham, who thought of himself as an eccentric loner, often said that his work was not intended to be beautiful, but to convey information about the occult that would be recognizable only to a few. By the quirks of history, that pronouncement adds up to a surefire formula for popular success in 1968.