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Chester
Rockwell
While
archiving the papers of art critic Douglas Biedermayer, recently and
tragically killed on a Harley Davidson tour of southern whiskey factories,
Bertram Wolfram discovered the following article. It is a previously
unpublished assessment of the work of hard-hitting artist Chester Rockwell.
Wolfram has taken the decision to publish this piece, feeling that work of this calibre deserves the widest
possible audience. What follows is unabridged.
“I first met Chester Rockwell in a pulque-joint on Monterey Bay; his first
words to me were, ‘Get out of my way’. I knew then that he was a man among
men, a man’s painter, a painter and a lover of women. He was covered in oil
paint and Bourbon: the stains of his great struggle. Without pausing to reply, I grabbed the front of his shirt, where his chest
hair thrust out manfully, and we fought. Like men.
Afterwards, while I bathed my wounds in Scotch, he talked of his mistress,
the whore of painting. His words were strong and fiery, of the domination of
the canvas and the wrestling with his medium, man’s words, and they flowed
like sour mash into my ears. Here was a poet and a painter together.
But nothing could have prepared me for the sight of his work, not even the
great harsh speech of the night before. I stood stock still in his shed,
amazed, awe-struck, stricken to my guts with the immensity of it. His
painting killed me. I gulped at my drink, hoping the fire-water would put
out the blaze in my eyes.
Such colours! Such figures! Such handling! The brazenness of the smears and
ropes of thick encrustation! Was it paint? Was it flesh? At that moment I
could not tell. Rockwell’s painting opened up a new universe for me, a world
of colossuses striding the horizon, uncaring of mortal works and proud in
their uncaring! It rained down liquid fire and burned all other painters to
ashes!
I woke in that shed, covered in bruises and sweat. It smelled of the smell
of men. Rockwell was gone. I knew that now all other painting was dead to
me. What could compare with Rockwell’s genius, with his mighty art, his
tough man’s painting? I never saw him again.”
Tampa Bay, 1974.
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