Corbett vs. Dempsey

Fascinating visual curiosities unique to Chicago?

By Alan Artner. Chicago Tribune, October 12, 2007

The most beguiling work in the show by Harold Haydon at the Corbett vs. Dempsey Gallery reproduces part of a landscape seen from a train window. By1934, the year the canvas was completed, the viewpoint would not have been unusual. But the pink-red arch that isolates the landscape somewhat like the iris effect in silent movies is singular, for Haydon painted everything he saw- the bridge of his nose, arch of the eye socket, and eyebrow in addition to the train window and landscape. That is, he painted everything before his eye focused and concentration minimized aspects of the scene so effectively that they were edited out. But Haydon's lifelong interest was what the eye sees before too many brain functions prioritize data. So he painted what the human eye would see were it allowed to maintain pure voraciousness, taking in everything with the indiscrimination of a camera. Most important for this exhibition, a pair of eyes would see double images out of register. Forget how the mind adjusts for this. Haydon wanted to reproduce facts of seeing, such as sunspots or afterimages, and binocular vision became for him an obsession. That it was not for any other artist baffled him. Presumably he thought its time would come. But here we are,13 years after his death, and the moment hasn't happened. All those pictures, arresting and original, by a beloved local art critic remain the kind of fascinating curiosities that larger art cities think happen only in Chicago.