Those familiar with Wojtyla's paintings will certainly recognize some familiar friends brought together in the intimate setting of the museum. Those unfamiliar to his work might find it difficult to enter into his universe, as the exhibit lightly touches on three bodies of related works or series that make up the main thrust of his long career. These are: Nudes in the Shower, Crime Scenes, and Stalkers. Catherine Gleason, the show's curator and the catalog's writer, argues that Wojtyla's artistic foundation was shaped by his city of birth's tumultuous political and artistic upheaval during the 1950's.(Senator McCarthy, Monster Roster - Chicago based art group of which Leon Golub was part) She also argues that Wojtyla's paintings can be squarely placed into a certain type of genre painting known as the grotesque. Gleason cites Hieronymus Bosch (The Garden of Earthly Delights) and Francisco de Goya (Saturn Devouring One of His Children) as examples of this and tries to draw comparisons to Wojtyla's painting influences and style. While looking at Wojtyla’s paintings, I couldn't stop wondering if living on the west coast for the past 30 years hadn’t been more of an influence, certainly in the more formal and plastic aspects of the work than anything out Midwest had instilled.

This can be seen most notably in a west coast palette of colors used and a strict formality of centrally placing the figure in the foreground, and letting the rest of the canvas bleed out into large washes of blues, pinks, yellows and greens or larger patches/squares of black that anchor and foreshorten the central image causing it to spill out of the painting toward the viewer. One can often see through the dry stumbling of the artist's brush, underlying drawing and lines of perspective that create a grid and structure for the work. I still couldn't help thinking I was seeing a greater influence of a whole generation of painters the likes of Richard Diebenkorn, David Parks, Elmer Bischoff, Roy DeForest, Wilem T. Wiley, and Wayne Thibaud - a majority of them important west coast artists living and exhibiting.

Comparisons have also been made between Wojtyla's paintings and those of Francis Bacon by several writers. Gleason states, "Their use of color as well as their abstracted forms seem born of the same experience." That experience she is referring to is that of the grotesque. There is one problem though to this viewer's eye, there is hardly anything grotesque, horrific, fearful or brutal in Wojtyla's paintings at least not in how we experience these emotions when looking at Bacon, Goya or Bosch. Wojtyla's contorted objects and abstract figures are at times bizarre and comical, a curious morphing of the human form into pinkish tubes and flattened planes of intersecting globules. A good example of this can be found within the "Nudes in the Shower" series, making up a large part of the exhibit at the museum with works dating from 1975 to 2006 - a majority of them painted in the 80's.

Nude in the Shower, 1975 - Courtesy of the Artist

Two extraordinary drawings from 1975 - "Nude in the Shower" (prismacolor on paper) and "Black Stocking Nude in the Shower with Yellow Towel" (acrylic and ink on paper) - are beautiful sensual works constructed and enticingly layered with vivid color, rich shadows and a pulse. These drawings breathe life. These are precious works of observation and precision, of capturing the very essence of the human form and its surrounding. The artist is very much present, curious, investigating every nook of a bent elbow or knee, expressing the joys of light, of ambiance; he is perhaps even sitting in front of the bather recording every movement and gesture, you’re looking over his shoulder. The simplicity and range of depth and beauty in these drawings are in sharp contrast to the more stylized paintings of the 1980's and later. The later nudes have become much flatter, simple abstract cut-outs without the rich build up of color and light; instead Wojtyla has only slightly varied the tonality and surface of them. “Standing Nude in the Shower” 1987 (oil on canvas) is the only painting that stands out in this series; it is edgy and dark. The central figure dissolves into an array of cylinders growing out of arms turning black toward the ends, swirling down into the drain as huge drops of white shower water erupt from the shower head, spraying every which way like tracer bullets in the night. An ochre shower curtain, hanging like a Francis Bacon side of beef, frames the nude and threatens to envelop her.

Black Stocking Nude in the Shower with Yellow Towel, 1975 - Courtesy of the Artist

Standing Nude in the Shower, 1987 - Collection of Thomas Shadle

“Nude in the Shower with Shower Curtain” 2006 qualifies for the most disappointing work. Constructed out of painted foam-core mounted on a simple white stretcher bar, obligatory (real) shower curtain stapled to the back, it has all the elements of Wojtyla’s earlier shower pieces – figure, shower head, tub, and jets of stylized water – but what is it that is so unsatisfying about this assemblage? First, I believe we’ve all witnessed many many artists who have treated the same subject matter with a whole lot more finesse – Hockney, Wesselman, Dine, Oldenburg among others – and have executed them so much better, that it’s difficult and frustrating to see a re-hash of ideas, certainly in 2006, that have been sufficiently investigated and answered. Secondly, with all that is available to artists these days in terms of materials, fabrication and technology, better care and thought could have been given to the look of this very old school approach.

The “Stalker Series” is represented by just two paintings in the Oceanside exhibit – “Night Stalker” 1985 and “Stalker with Calipers” 1986. Gleason explains in the catalog, “Each painting from this series a dog, appearing as though part coyote and part wolf, is shown in profile filling the entire space within the canvas. Jowls exposing sharp teeth dripping with blood and saliva suggest an event that has either just occurred or is about to occur within the nocturnal setting.” Night Stalker has been divided in half horizontally with the lower half containing a man on all fours advancing in unison with his bestial counterpart above him, blood frothing from his mouth. Stalker with Calipers is strange painting of a large dog engulfing the entire surface of two canvases side by side, with a set of callipers clamped down on the muzzle of the animal, silhouetting the skull and pointed teeth of their prisoner.

There are as well, several less intriguing self-portraits of Wojtyla that bring us to the mid-point of the show.

Night Stalker, 1985 - Collection of Dan Agajeenian

“Crime Scenes” make up the third and last part of this exhibition and is where some of the larger paintings can be seen. A voracious reader of “True Crime” novels, Wojtyla has found a rich source of imagery and inspiration that he infuses these paintings with. Most notably are the Tony Mancini inspired paintings and the infamous Brighton Trunk Murders.

In the 1930’s Brighton became notorious for a series of Trunk Murders when dismembered female bodies were found crammed into separate trunks at Charing Cross Station in 1927 and two more bodies at King’s Cross and Brighton Stations in 1934. Tony Mancini of The Glass House movie fame was the lover of Violet Kaye (real name Violet Saunders), a prostitute, who was found dead stuffed into a trunk. Mancini had claimed he found her dead in their flat and assumed she had been killed by one of her clients. Since Mancini already had a criminal record, he hid her body in a trunk fearing the door to door searches going on by police for other victims –so he said – and later fled on the lamb. Mancini was later caught, tried for the murder, but was found not guilty by the jury, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary.*Crime & Investigation Network.

Wojtyla executed several pieces based on this true crime mystery such as “Tony Mancini in a Terrible Funk Put Violet Saunders into a Trunk” 1981, an oil on canvas of a twisted flattened squished pink rests of a figure, being forced into a trunk by a long arm and hand entering the picture plane from the right, attached to one could only assume, part and parcel of Tony Mancini himself.

Tony Mancini in a Terrible Funk Put Violet Saunders into a Trunk, 1981 - Collection of Robert S. Bell, Jr.

There are other Crime Scene paintings with equally sensational titles on view as “Cardiac Transplant” 1989, “Winnie Ruth Judd” 1983, “Trunk with Lion’s Head” 1995, “John Wayne G.” 1991, but only one I particularly like and believe is the strongest work in this show, which combines all the elements of the previous series into one wonderful and hell-bent of a perverse painting. The title: “The Incident at the Whip Snade Zoo” 1987. Incident is a large painting 84” x 60” depicting a scene at the Snade Zoo and in particular, what’s going on near the lion’s cage. It is difficult to explain the range of thoughts and feelings that run through your mind when viewing this work. It ranges from the contentment of “oh! I get it”, realizing the it is that you just saw what happened to the woman dragged into the cage and the shock of watching the bystanders watch what is going on in eager and pleasurable anticipation, as you too become a not so innocent spectator, voyeur and willing participant. I would guess that this painting is not the favourite among museum viewers, but I can honestly tell you that after three days I still can’t get it off of my mind.

We’ve just turned the long curving path up to the lion’s cage only to see a woman pulled into it; her new Easter bonnet topples from her head. The powerful beast has reared up on its hind legs, his black mane flowing in the wind. The closer we look frozen in our movements, shocked out of our senses; we slowly realize that there is something very wrong with this picture. There’s no blood, no flailing limbs, no screams and no ejected remains. The woman appears to be very much alive. She is however, being forced to perform fellatio on the lion – or is she? A monkey on the far right of the painting looks on with a stupid-ass grin on his face, eagerly watching, waiting, anticipating his turn. Gang rape in all its shocking glory – or is it? This painting by Wojtyla is so absurd in so many ways that it is almost comical. The way he handles the subject matter and the paint, softens the blow of the tragic scene. Both the lion and the woman are broken up into intersecting planes of color and criss-crossing lines, they twist and undulate flattened by the artist’s contour drawing, browns and oranges represent the beast, and large blue buttons glued to the surface of the canvas represent the petticoat of the woman. Only the grinning monkey is somewhat realistically painted, for he represents you and I, and only the lower half of his body dissolves into the blackness of the painting except for a very prominent and phallic serpent rearing its head. We can’t see the woman’s face or head – we would be too embarrassed if our glances crossed; she’s being pinned down and held by her shoulders and arms between the lion’s hind quarters. We can see very clearly though, a very long and very thick protuberance with two very obvious testicles hanging down between the lion’s thighs level with the woman’s upper torso. At the very same time we also see a very feminine looking hand cupping this intruder. Incident is so ridiculously absurd and ambiguous, that it’s riveting, frightening, funny, frustrating, seductive, and disturbing. Wojtyla plays on this tension and adds even more by letting the background break off into color planes of Diebenkorn-ish squares, trapezoids and rectangles, that define vaguely the surrounding zoo animal cages and represents these various other creatures, by a simple children book silhouette painted in bright happy colors. However, it is the sadistic smiling monkey watching us and the scene so intently, so feverishly, so complacent and relaxed at the same time, that is by far more terrifying than any “Stalker” painting Wojtyla has come up with – and the one that still haunts me now.

W. Haase Wojtyla: A Coincidence of Paintings is an interesting exhibit of one of San Diego’s most respected artists. It has been more than a decade since the last roundup of his work has been shown. For those of you acquainted with his work, you’ll likely ease into the show with no problems and without any major expectations of nouveauté. Others who are not familiar might find it difficult to understand the thrust of the exhibit let alone the thread, due in part to the physical size of the museum space and the amount of paintings exhibited (the Oceanside Museum is relatively small, however plans are being made to increase is surface area). Lack of information on or about the artist throughout the exhibit is rather sparse and “dumb downed” for the average viewer. The problem of space obviously compromises the choice in what to exhibit, which results in a somewhat jumbled and piece meal selection of paintings spanning 30 years. This is not a problem if you’re just there to look at the work; it is however a problem if you’re trying to understand the artist’s vision at the same time. I would recommend buying the catalog for the historical and exhibition history of Wojtyla’s career, but would not give too much weight – respectfully – to Catherine Gleason’s essay. I have difficulty agreeing with the points made about the grotesque and the potential influence it has had on Wojtyla’s oeuvre and while this may be true, I find his work to be pleasant in nature, rather formal, and richly inspired by mysteries and events of the past. It is an exhibition many will enjoy as I have.

Kevin Freitas

W. Haase Wojtyla: A Coincidence of Paintings
Oceanside Museum of Art
August 27 through October 15, 2006

704 Pier View Way
Oceanside, CA 92054
Tuesday – Saturday 10 to 4 pm, Sunday 1 to 4 pm
760.721.2787
www.oma-online.org