Those familiar with Wojtyla's paintings will certainly recognize some familiar faces brought together into the intimate setting of the museum. Those who aren't, 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 native city Chicago and its tumultuous political and artistic upheaval during the 1950's, notably Senator Joe McCarthy's continued war on Communism and a particular artist's group Monster Roster, 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. As I looked at Wojtyla’s paintings, I couldn't stop wondering if living on the west coast for the last 30 years didn't have more of an influence on his work, certainly in the more formal and painterly aspects, than anything Chicago could muster up.

This can be seen I believe, in his use of a West Coast pallette and by systematically placing the figure in the center of the foreground, 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 also see under the dry stumbling of the artist's brushstrokes, pencil lines drawn in perspective that create a grid and structure for the work. I was still seeing however, 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 - all of them important west coast artists living and exhibiting during the same period.

Comparisons have also been made between Wojtyla's paintings and those of Francis Bacon by Gleason and several other writers. Gleason states, "Their use of color as well as their abstracted forms seem born of the same experience." The 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 I experience these emotions when looking at Bacon, Goya or Bosch. Granted, 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, but they are hardly the Elephant Man. 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. They are precious works of observation and precision, of capturing the very essence of the human form and its surrounding. It feels as if the artist is very much there, curiously investigating every nook and cranny of a bent elbow or knee, expressing the joys of light and ambiance; he is perhaps even sitting in front of the bather recording every movement and gesture as you peer 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. They 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 is the most disappointing work in this series. Constructed out of painted foam-core mounted on a simple white stretcher bar, (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 piece? I believe it is because it lacks the beauty and panache of the earlier works, their subtlness, while the version 2006 feels awfully heavy-handed and just plain lazy in its execution. Considering 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 result; it is in the end, a 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 captive. There are as well, several less intriguing self-portraits by 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 the exhibition and is where some his larger paintings can be seen. A voracious reader of True Crime novels, Wojtyla found a rich source of imagery and inspiration that he infuses these works 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 pinkish figure, forced into a trunk by a long arm and hand entering the picture plane from the right, attached one could only assume, to 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 such 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 the exhibit, 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 my mind when viewing this work. It ranges from the contentment of “oh! I get it” and the shock of realizing you just saw what happened to the poor woman dragged into the cage, frozen in your tracks horrorified and bemused, like so many of the watching bystanders in the painting, watching in eager anticipation as to what will happen next, as you become a not so innocent spectator, voyeur and willing participant in the attack. I'm guessing this painting is not the favourite among museum viewers, but I can honestly tell you, after three days I still can’t get it off of my mind.

Let me describe the scene: we’ve just turned the long curving path up to the lion’s cage only to see a woman pulled into it, her brand new Easter bonnet topples from her head. The powerful beast has reared up on its hind legs, his black mane flowing in the wind. As we begin to watch more intently, we slowly realize that there is something very wrong with this picture. There’s no blood, no flailing limbs, no screams and no body parts flayed about. 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 stares with a stupid grin on his face, lustfully watching, waiting, anticipating his turn. Is it gang rape were witnessing? This painting is absurd in so many ways; the cartoon like handling of the subject matter and paint, softens the blow of this tragic scene. Both the lion and the woman are broken up into intersecting planes of color and criss-crossing lines, they twist and undulate together, flattened by the artist’s drawing, browns and oranges represent the beast, and large blue buttons glued to the surface of the canvas depict the petticoat of the woman. Only the grinning monkey is somewhat realistically painted, for he represents you and I, only the lower half of his body dissolves into the blackness of the painting except for a very prominent and phallic form rearing its head. We can’t see the woman’s face, we would be too embarrassed if our glances crossed, pinned down as she is, shoulders and arms held tightly. What we can see very clearly though, is a very long and very thick protuberance and two very testicle-like shapes hanging down between the lion’s thighs at the same level with the woman’s upper torso. A very feminine looking hand cups the animal and beast in all of us. Incident is dangerously ambiguous, riveting, frightening, nervously funny, frustrating, seductive, and disturbing. Our role as museum viewer, spectator, and voyeur is further complicated by our implicit participation in the "act."

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 animal cages and various other zoo creatures, through simple children book silhouettes painted in bright happy colors. However, it is the sadistic smiling monkey looking back at us so intently, so feverishly, yet complacent and relaxed that is by far, more terrifying than any “Stalker” painting Wojtyla has done. It still haunts me today.


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 major problems and without any expectations of anything new. 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). The lack of information on or about the artist throughout the exhibit is rather sparse, a hindrance I believe for the visitor and a better understanding of the work. What little that does exist however, is dumbed down to the point of being embarrassing simplistic. 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 isn't a problem if you’re there just to look at the work, it is if you’re trying to understand the artist’s vision and intent. I would recommend buying the catalog for a very brief history of Wojtyla’s career, but would not give too much importance to Catherine Gleason’s essay. I have difficulty agreeing with her point of view about the grotesque and the potential influence it has had on Wojtyla’s oeuvre. I find his work to be pleasant in nature, rather formal, and richly inspired by the mysteries and events of the past. It is an exhibit many will enjoy as I have.