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Lowery Stokes Sims,“Judith Godwin:Objectified Gesture,”reprinted from JudithGodwin: Early Abstractions(San Antonio: McNayArt Museum, 2008), 10–14.JUDITH GODWIN:OBJECTIFIED GESTURELowery Stokes SimsPennies, beads, hacksaw blades, sections of woodveneer, ribbons, gold leaf, stretched-out steelwool—all scrounged from around Judith Godwin’sstudio—are as prosaic as they are interventionist. Inone of her most arresting paintings a round brushwith an open white handle dominates the center.Bristles swirl in the thick of orange and silver paint,mimicking a technical movement customarily madeby a painting implement. Gesture frozen in an object.Early in the 1990s Godwin began to commit actsof assemblage on her canvases. When asked whyand how her work took this direction, she replied,“I think it came out of needing to add somethingto the surfaces of my paintings.” 1Godwin integrates collaged elements in such away that they preserve visual unity in the works.Their presence is not immediately noticeable butreveals itself gradually—like a visual puzzle. “I don’twant them to jump out,” Godwin asserts. 2 If thisdevelopment of her work was, as she declares, amatter of impulse, then the immediacy of theaction was in step with the spontaneity of AbstractExpressionism. As writer Paul Ryan declared in1988, “Godwin’s work and style as a painter isgrounded in Abstract Expressionism.” 3 Art historianRobert Hobbs additionally notes that the “castof players” assigned to the Abstract Expressionistdrama has changed to include artists marginalizedin the 1940s, 50s, and 60s because they werewomen, of color, 4 or simply younger than thecanonical group represented by the “Irascibles”in the infamous photograph by Nina Leen forLIFE magazine in 1951.Judith Godwin did not get to New York Cityuntil 1953. Her work at the Art Students League andHans Hofmann’s schools in Manhattan andProvince town put her in contact with figures asvaried as Dadaist Marcel Duchamp—by then a proteanpresence in Manhattan’s Greenwich Village—as wellas figures associated with pre-Abstract Expressionistabstraction, such as Vaclav Vytacil, Harry Sternberg,and Will Barnet. She also met the canonical leadersof the movement: James Brooks, Willem de Kooning,Franz Kline, Jackson Pollock, and Mark Rothko.Godwin’s emergence in the New York art scenecoincided with that of Helen Frankthaler, GraceHartigan, and Joan Mitchell. In their work a varietyof Abstract Expressionist permutations were evidentfrom the art world at that time. Frankenthalergravitated to a thinner surface, staining paint intothe surface of the canvas. Godwin, like Hartigan andMitchell, explored intimations of figure/groundrelationships rendered in textural gestures. Godwin’s1953 paintings such as Yellow Figure and Indianevidence the strong, aggressive approach that shefelt she had to develop to silence the naysayersamong male members of the New York School.“The men simply said, ‘Women can’t paint.’ Therewas just a dismissal of women at that time.” 5 Heranger was a source of strength and helped her topersevere in a time and place when women stilldepended heavily on men or family money toestablish and sustain them in the art world. 6Despite societal expectations of women in the1940s and 50s, Godwin was inspired and encouragedin her vocation and talent by both of her parents,and then by teachers such as Teresa Pollock,Maurice Bonds, and Jewett Campbell at VirginiaCommonwealth University where she got heradvanced degree. When I asked how she becameaware of modern art, she cited Duchamp’s NudeDescending a Staircase, and added that she began topaint abstractly while still in college. Paintings suchas Nucleus and Nucleus II of 1950, painted before shemoved to New York City, show a highly personalinterpretation of free form and cubist gird.A dancer, not a painter, got Godwin to come toNew York. She had become familiar with moderndance and Martha Graham in particular throughphotographs. She was fascinated by the motion andstrong angularity of Graham’s signature poses, thedistinctive costuming, and the particular way thatfabric fell over the dancer’s extreme extensions ofher limbs. Godwin and Graham finally met inVirginia and the dancer encouraged her to cometo New York. Although she invited Godwin tocome to her studio, the artist never pursued dance,but attended as many of Graham’s performances aspossible and became a personal friend. “I was totallyenamored of Martha Graham,” she related. 7 Her1956 painting Martha Graham—Lamentation conveysthe dramatic diagonals and angularity of Graham’stechnique. Strong contrasts of blacks and whites,as well as dark shades of blues and browns, in thiswork and those that follow over the next few1. ECHOES, NO. 2 1954 OIL ON CANVAS 40 3 ⁄4 x 30 IN.45
years—Into the Depth (1957), Trial (1957–59), Night(1958)—show an evolution away from the colorful,lively, crenulated surfaces of the previous three years.The earlier works marked a synthesis of the cubistic,gestural, and textural surfaces that correlate withthe work of Hofmann, de Kooning, and Hartigan.It is tempting to relate Godwin’s development toher determination to assert her place in the artworld by paring down color; cultivating strong,aggressive brushwork; and eliminating intimationsof lightness or gaiety.Directions Godwin has pursued in some laterwork (e.g. Sea Squall, 1998, and Touch of Passion,2007) are therefore all the more fascinating. It is asif she no longer feels the need to make that pointof strength and seriousness. Forms are more open,the use of color more lyrical in stark contrast withthe [earlier] gestural work. The gestural and bristledbrushiness of her signature work has given way toeffusions of color—some metallic—puddled inbiomorphic, organic shapes on the surface of thecanvas. Where dramatic blacks, blues, whites, andfull throttled hues were dominant then, now theygive way to pinks, pale blues, ethereal grayed valuesof colors, yellows, and oranges. Godwin replacedmore cubistic structure of earlier work, such asthe dramatic horizontal, vertical, diagonal, andoccasionally arc-ed thrusts of the 1950s through the80s that provided a mode of scaffolding for herpainterly dramas, with a sense of erratic and lyricalskipping from episode to episode on the canvas,reaffirming her love of dance and music.What is most surprising is the appearance ofunmistakably feminine elements such as velvetviolets and black sequins set into the pigments.How exactly are we to read these elements in thesepaintings? When I suggested that they seem toexpress some personal or autobiographic nuancesin her work she demurred: “I’m not sure. . . .” 8Others writing on Godwin’s work havementioned her passion for gardening. 9 Violetshint at this as does some perversely stereotypicalsuggestion of her southern upbringing as a genteelyoung woman. Since she has worked so hard tomove beyond her past and find her true self, we canlook to the bits of veneer and chains and files tofind the antipodes of the violets and an allusion toher work and skill in masonry and construction. 10Functioning as visual and textural parts, thesecollaged elements position Godwin’s work withinvarious concepts associated with postmodernism:pastiche, parody. They fill in for what would otherwisebe painted on and interject a nuance of virtualreality (virtu-ality) to the paintings. While this gestureis parodist in nature—that is, characterized byimitation and repetition—it lacks the derisiveaspects that English literature professor SimonDentith identifies as an element of parody. 11 Thecollaged pieces also contradict notions of paintingas a purely two-dimensional phenomenon, indirect defiance of modernist dictates promulgatedby critic Clement Greenberg in the post-WorldWar II era, and effectively deconstruct modernism’sdictates that art reveal itself for what it is materially,eschewing illusion and allusion.The presence of these collaged elements suggeststhe artist’s associations and personal existentialhistory, and thus challenges the definite distinctionthat Greenberg drew between “art” and “kitsch.” 12This aspect of her recent work allows us to bringpostmodern notions of identity and gender andthen decipher their meanings in these works forourselves. While Judith Godwin’s life work to datecould be classified as a summary of twentiethcenturyabstract art, clearly she has challenged us torecognize that the best just might be yet to come.1. Judith Godwin, conversation with author in Godwin’sstudio, New York City, March 26, 2008.2. Ibid.3. Paul Ryan, “Reading the Paintings of Judith Godwin,”in Mary Baldwin College Magazine (Fall 1988), 13.4. Robert Hobbs, “Judith Godwin’s Critique of AbstractExpressionism,” in Judith Godwin, Paintings: 1953–1992, exh. cat.(New York: Marisa del Re Gallery, 1992), unpaginated. For therevisions of Abstract Expressionism see Ann Eden Gibson,Abstract Expressionism: Other Politics (New Haven and London:Yale University Press, 1997); David Craven, “AbstractExpressionism and Third World Art: A Post-Colonial Approachto ‘American’ Art.” Oxford Art Journal 121, no. 1 (1990): 44–65;and Michael Leja, Reframing Abstract Expressionism: Subjectivity andPainting in the 1940s (New Haven and London:Yale UniversityPress, 1993).5. Judith Godwin, conversation with author at Godwin’sstudio, New York City, March 26, 2008.6. Ibid.7. Ibid.8. Ibid.9. See Robert Hobbs, “Judith Godwin’s Critique of AbstractExpressionism,” unpaginated.10. Judith Godwin, conversation with author at Godwin’sstudio, New York City, March 26, 2008.11. Simon Dentith, Parody (London and New York:Routledge, 2000), 2.12. See Margaret Iversen, “Readymade, found object,photograph,” http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m045/is_2_63/ai_n6155497/print. Originally published in Art Journal(Summer 2004).2. PINK SKY POND 1960 ACRYLIC ON CANVAS 24 x 36 IN.67
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