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Tony
Calzetta: Getting to Here
©
Liz Wylie 2001
In considering the so-called evolution or development of a given
artist's work from the point of view of hindsight, the path taken
or forged can seem so matter-of-fact and "natural" that
it is hard to imagine the roles played by accident, chance, personal
choice, or trauma. Anything could have happened at any number
of points along the way to mutate things otherwise; a myriad of
entirely different outcomes was possible at all junctures. The
notion of a false move that creates something monstrous has been
explored by many artists. Michael Ondaatje once expressed it:
And
there is there the same stress as with stars,
the one altered move that will make them maniac.
*
So to take a backward look at the various series of paintings
produced to date by Toronto artist Tony Calzetta, the logical,
linear progression that emerges was not, of course, there from
the beginning like a road map for the artist to follow (or like
dots that he had only to link up, or clear outlines to simply
fill with colour). The point may be obvious, yet, a backward look
gives such an orderly picture, so completely opposite from the
artist's forward-thrusting path into what was then blank and unknown,
that its feeling of a foregone conclusion seems almost ridiculous.
Yet, against whatever odds, Calzetta's several series of work
did unfold as they have, and the opportunity presents itself for
a backward analysis and a dispassionate discussion.
Time,
as we do end up experiencing it at middle age, as a surprisingly
dense, packed sediment of years, is not linear, but fluid. It
can be compressed, telescoped, and pierced, even rended. So, thinking
back to 1980 and Tony Calzetta's exuberant and delightful pink,
blue, and cream coloured murals installed in Toronto's ultra-trendy
Bloor Street Diner, it seems impossible that these were painted
so long ago, and that in fact it has been eight years since the
diner and murals were demolished for new development. Can't I
still go in and then upstairs and order that trendy meal of spinach
quiche with a glass of white wine? - sipping and munching amidst
the fanciful city-vista themes of those images that said on canvas
what we were reading in places like Toronto Life magazine:
Toronto was on the verge of becoming a world-class city, and here
was proof.
It was only three years earlier, in 1977, that the energetic and
promising artist had completed his MFA at York University, and
been given a solo exhibition at the Pollock Gallery in Yorkville
immediately upon graduation. Calzetta's distinguishing characteristic
was his drawing, and how he ferociously integrated drawing into
his work with paint on canvas, yet with a light-hearted and lyrical
vocabulary of form. He wasn't exactly precocious at thirty-two
years of age (he had studied business as an undergraduate and
begun a career as an accountant before going back to school in
his late twenties to become an artist) but his work had a youthful
verve and energy that viewers responded to.
The
period of the late seventies in Toronto was the critical and commercial
heyday of the painters so-nicknamed the "shrubs" of
Jack Bush. The year 1977, that of Calzetta's first commercial
solo exhibition, was also the year of Bush's death. But the influence
of the senior abstract painter held on for several years, especially
on a loosely acquainted group of mostly abstract painters working
within a pretty recognizable genre of lyrical abstraction. Calzetta
was a fairly marginal participant in this scene and it was his
quirkiness of form and "image" and emphasis on drawing
in his paintings that set him apart. His main sources or artistic
heroes were artists who had also managed to give drawing a strong
role in their painted works, or artists who mostly drew: Jim Dine,
Jasper Johns, Pierre Alechinsky, Cy Twombly, and then the figurative
work of Philip Guston. But Calzetta was extremely anxious to have
his work be his own, and didn't want to be an imitator. Ultimately
he feels that the greatest challenge he has had as an artist has
been to let his true self out in his works, to be true to his
real self in his art, and to give his inner creativity completely
free rein. In Calzetta's case, this has meant allowing his drawing
to always be at the fore, and allowing his wacky humour to play
an increasing role. He would doodle and draw on paper in an automatic
fashion, then pare down from the many resulting images a set but
evolving repertoire to use (cloud-like forms from 1978-79, waves
and bands in 1981, curtains and a stage-set organization in 1983-85).
Thinking
of his images as "abstract funnies" or "surreal
cartoons", he knew he was running the risk of people not
taking his art seriously. Other artists have faced the same dilemma:
high art has usually been serious and popular culture (comics,
animation) has clutched the risky area of humour to itself. One
thinks of Jim Nutt and the Chicago Imagists who worked and showed
together in the late 1960s as the Hairy Who, for example, or of
the various California Funk artists. High art can mine popular
culture to good effect at times, and Calzetta has won himself
a following of writers and collectors who have responded positively
to his commitment to the "bizarro".
His current series, War Stories for Children and Art
Stories for Adults (which has an offshoot into three dimensions
in the form of seven large-scale sculptures) has its immediate
roots in works begun in the late 1980s, in which the cartoonish
characters in the work began to take on lives of their own, more
or less narrated by Calzetta. The paintings are large in size
and the "characters" in each are big in scale. The drawing
component is not independent anymore, but has been restricted
to defining the contours of the various weird forms and images.
From time to time, Calzetta takes a break from painting and returns
to working on paper; he created a large cycle of four-by-six-foot-sized
drawings from 1991-95, without doing any work on canvas. He has
also worked in series of prints. The explorations in each of these
media tend to enrich and cross-fertilize and lead him to new ideas
in the others.
In getting to where he is now, Calzetta's path does seem logical
and smooth, but of course, this is only in hindsight. Some might
consider his 1980 Bloor Street Diner murals to have been his golden,
Warholian fifteen minutes, the point at which his particular style
and approach were completely in tune with the mood and moment
of their time. Since then, Calzetta has had a tough row to hoe,
exploring themes and a kind of painting that some people would
find too wacky to take seriously. But he has been true to his
inner self, his own nature, and has resisted any temptation he
might have had to jump on fashion's bandwagon. His voice is distinctive,
unique, and very much his own.
*
Michael Ondaatje, The Collected Works of Billy the Kid: Left-Handed
Poems. Toronto: Anansi, 1970, p. 41.
Liz
Wylie is curator of the University of Toronto Art Centre.
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