Charlie Arnold's "The Love of the Visual"

They may be copies, but he’s an original

Art

The ubiquity of Xerox stretches far
beyond our humble hamlet along the Genesee.
Each year, the local company’s machines crank out billions of pages all around
the globe — who hasn’t recently created or been handed a photocopy? For all
the uses of that whirring, clacking box next to the water cooler, art seems an
unlikely candidate. But for Charlie Arnold, it became an instrument with which
to fulfill a unique vision, one highlighted in University of Rochester’s
new exhibition The Love of the Visual.

Prior to the push-button photocopying
we know today, xerography — the process of making images using electrostatic
energy — was a much more complicated affair. Arnold’s prints are created using the
“Standard Xerographic Master Making” system introduced in the 1950s. Creating
an image with this machine starts with electrostatically
charging an aluminum plate and ends with a print seven steps later — not at
all like the busy work we often push off on to the new intern.

Arnold’s
prints show an incredible range of possibilities for this curious process. Most
possess a graininess not unlike that found in photocopied images, but one that
is much more refined and recalls the delicate pointillism of high-speed
photographic film. Lush blacks work with the texture and color of the paper
beneath to create chiaroscuro effects and pronounced depth. Overall, the
process lends itself to images both moody and mysterious, two areas in which Arnold’s subjects excel.

The
bulk of Arnold’s
works features elemental objects, signaling an interest not only
in form but also in the texture and material of the natural world. Wood, stone,
and bone appear repeatedly and are delicately but deliberately composed within
often misty, grainy voids. Arnold
chooses not to title his prints, so the mind is left to both project and
collect meaning. Thoughts of temporality, decay, and an earthy spirituality
filled me as I looked upon the work.

Arnold’s
love of drawing is evident, a point he makes in the exhibition text. “I have
been drawing all my life,” says Arnold,
“and my drawings are often in direct relationship to my Xerox images.” He
illustrates the point with machine-made prints that could easily pass as the
work of hand and pencil. Of Arnold’s
Xerox images that are more man than machine, one print shocks in its similarity
to Asian sumi-e painting. A thick line of black fades
and fattens as it works its way down the paper; you could almost swear it was
the work of diluted ink on a brush and not the creation of Arnold’s mastery of vision and equipment.

While the exhibition presents a wide
variety of work from a long a fruitful career, there are aspects to the display
that detract from a full appreciation. Arnold
chooses not to title his prints, but there is no other information posted with
the images, and the lack of any immediately discernable organization (by
chronology, subject, or process) is troubling. Instead of understanding the
development of this work, the viewer is overwhelmed with unlabelled prints from
all eras. Overall, the selection is well presented, but some guidance would
help visitors get a sense of the span of Arnold’s
career, his technical explorations, and the shifts in the themes in his prints.

Also
odd is the inclusion of more than 20 examples
of artwork created by Arnold’s
students over the years. Beneath each example is a testimonial to Arnold’s strength as an instructor, including a piece from
renowned photographer Jerry Uelsmann who lauds Arnold as “a wonderful
teacher.” But speaking with Richard Peek, Director of the Rare Books and
Special Collections and a co-curator of the exhibition, it becomes clear that Arnold considers himself a teacher first. Upon hearing that an exhibition was
being planned Peek says “the phone started ringing off the hook” with former
students who wanted to contribute in some way, so many that Peek had to turn
some away. “He has to be the most beloved professor,” said Peek.

While you won’t find this sort of
cheerleading in most galleries, this is not a distant, critical retrospective.
Instead, The Love of the Visual is a
celebration of not only Arnold’s
artwork, but of Arnold himself.

This article appears in Oct 11-17, 2006.