John Chamberlain: Material and Meaning

I've been having some fascinating discussions lately about the meaning that can be found in artwork. Do we see abstract art just as a composition of shapes, colors, space, and light, or is there deeper content beyond the formal aspects of the piece? John Chamberlain is an interesting artist to consider in this conversation. I wrote about his incredible retrospective at the Guggenheim in 2012, where I saw the sculptures as being all about color, shape, and surprising juxtapositions and details. But now, seeing a stunning show of his work at Gagosian Gallery has made me think more about what it means that he used industrial scrap metal and car parts in his sculptures.

In the piece above––sorry I don’t have titles or dates, but some galleries have stopped providing checklists or even posting images of the works on their websites, which is really frustrating––a curved red clamshell shape rests on top of crumpled blue forms, almost like an open mouth. Should we think of it as a figure?

This very large sculpture of compressed and varied forms, one side primarily blues, another yellows, made me think of a landscape in its multitudinous parts and its complexity. It also feels like a raucous free jazz composition, form piled upon form, sometimes discordant, in other parts fluid. 

I couldn’t help but see a crowd of people moving, like they were on a busy sidewalk. This piece has so much energy, and it instantly reminded me of Philip Guston’s painting Monument, with its jumble of legs and feet. The sense of movement and chaos in both pieces is striking.

This is a stunningly dramatic piece, with smooth thin forms reaching high, fluid rounded shapes nestled one against the other. But all these observations of mine are about image, what the whole of the sculpture brings to mind. 

As here, with another monumental piece that looks to me like an animated creature, rustling as it moves. Chamberlain's magical expertise with folding, crushing, and welding sometimes lets us forget that this is metal that he's working with, and not malleable clay or cloth.  

Yet there is metal's rigidity and sharp edges, its shiny surfaces, its shapes that are sometimes clearly part of an automobile's body.

In this detail of the other side of the sculpture above, Chamberlain has included parts of a car that clearly resemble elements of a bumper, smoothly protruding—maybe even from a 1951 Ford coupe. Does this direct reference to the origin of his materials suggest that some of the meaning of his work lies in industrial automobile manufacturing? Could there be a critique of America's obsession with cars and the open road? Or maybe it’s a tribute to American ingenuity and design, like the work of the early 20th-century American Precisionists?

Personally, I would say "no" to most of that. While I do acknowledge the source of Chamberlain’s materials, for me, it doesn't define the meaning of the work. I find meaning in how the forms come together. I’m not sure if Chamberlain was drawn to scrap metal because of its origins, or because of how it looked and behaved once transformed into sculpture. In fact, Chamberlain himself once said:

"Even if I knew, I could only know what I thought it meant."

As artists, we can't control what meaning viewers find in our work. What we want people to see isn't always what they actually see. For me, looking at non-objective art is a rich experience, appreciating how form and color interact, the quiet or dynamic nature of a composition. I find meaning in these elements, and a deep emotional satisfaction. In recent years, I’ve had two extraordinary experiences standing in front of paintings that moved me to tears with their beauty and depth. One of these was at the National Gallery in London:

Piero di Cosimo, Satyr Mourning a Nymph, ca. 1495

I wrote about this remarkably tender painting here. Not only is the narrative touching, but the form and structure of the work are in perfect harmony with its story.

The other was a Mondrian in the collection of the Hartford Atheneum:

Piet Mondrian, Composition in Blue and White, 1935

The simplicity and perfection of this painting really struck me. In a photo, it looks much flatter than it does in person. The reason I’m showing these two paintings, so different in subject matter and separated by centuries, is to emphasize that our response to a work of art doesn’t have to be tied to its subject. Meaning can come from narrative, but it can also come from pure form. Honestly, I was surprised by the unexpected wave of emotion I felt in front of the Mondrian. But it shows me that a reductive work of art can be just as meaningful to me as one that’s more representational and narrative-driven. Form, on its own, carries meaning.