Corbett vs. Dempsey

Theodore Halkin at Corbett vs. Dempsey

By Victor Cassidy. Art in America Magazine, November 2007

Over nearly 60 years, Theodore Halkin has produced figurative, semi-abstract and abstract paintings; figurative and semi-abstract reliefs; palm-sized sculptures of his house; and sculpturally altered wooden furniture. Major events in Halkin's life have typically preceded changes in his work. He calls his works "a kind of space that collects metaphor for all my experiences."

After completing his undergraduate degree in 1950 at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, the artist spent three years in France and Majorca, where he was decisively influenced by the prehistoric Lascaux cave paintings and by Romanesque art and Cubism. "Given an empty wall," he says, "people mark on it. The Lascaux paintings were super-empty walls seen in flickering light. My paintings are not so much color fields as walls that I decorate."

Halkin's recent exhibition at Corbett vs. Dempsey comprised 10 paintings and reliefs dated before 1960 and 11 paintings and drawings completed between 2005 and 2007. The show suggests continuity between the artist's youthful Lascaux-like paintings of brownish horsemen in profile and his new cubistic, brightly colored paintings and drawings. Though strikingly different in appearance, these pieces function as "walls" that Halkin has decorated.

The new work falls into two groups: tightly packed compositions and color fields. The former, which look like hyperactive jigsaw puzzles, contain many colorful semi-abstract forms, often outlined. These works offer a riot of painting techniques, all applied with supreme skill and confidence. The artist divides the plane of these paintings into squares and horizontal stripelike units, the latter of which suggest calligraphy, narrative and music. Inspired by Cubism, Halkin presents not the reality of the world around him, but rather multiple realities and perspectives made into a consistent whole.

The color-field paintings and drawings, such as 1-29-07, have outlined glyphlike shapes floating on layered grounds in subdued colors. Vague forms in the background of 1-29-07 suggest architecture. A structure at lower left could be Chicago's monumental Picasso sculpture. Objects in the center suggest tunnels or country mailboxes. Beneath is a curious diagram that an electrician might make. With all its marks and colors, this is a very cheerful piece and we wouldn't be surprised to learn that the artist put some private jests into it.