On the simplest level, perusing the work of Juan González, one is drawn to the aesthetic refinements, intimate scale, and exquisite draftsmanship that distinguish these intricate constructs. González, like the other artists represented in this book, was in total command of his preferred media in the description of the physical worldÐeven the smallest detaiIs are rendered with great care and skill. But we are far from the beat and amplitude of the photorealists. With the work of González we enter a highly polished microcosm reminiscent of the bejeweled domains of the medieval manuscript painters. Once captive, other more sobering forces begin to be revealedÐthe powers of darkness and the unleashed psyche that flood our lives with diffrcult choices and barriers to transcendence. Much of the imagery, though contemporary in aspect, is informed by the artist's Cuban Catholic spirituality, and evolved into highly personal unique metaphors that have the weight of universals.

González's life was riddled with suffering. At an early age, he was imprisoned by Castro; he worked for a while in a mental hospital; he married, had children and then came to terms with his true sexual nature; he divorced his wife and left the family he loved; he came close to losing his life in the waters off Fire Island (an event reminiscent of the psychoenergy of transformation of countless mythologies); he lost his closest friends to AIDS, the disease to which he succumbed at the age of fifty-one. A devout Spanish Catholic, he surely accepted his fate with the understanding that he was chosen for his strength of character, his intellect, his compassion, and his spirituality; God knows who can transform such experiences into visions of insight and hope. The fundamental message ofhis art, perhaps some modern brand of Platonism, centers on the dilemma of the spirit caught in matter (the body), of perfection marred by the flawed existence of a physical world. With the power of his sensibility and intellect, González produced poignant and thought-provoking images of meditation and instruction, a unique catechism in the broadest sense ofthe term catholic.

With the skills of a mute poet, González developed a specific, highly charged pictorial vocabulary, to communicate this message. (note: Horace, Ars Poetica, line 361 "Ut pictura poesis. " For the theme in art see also Rensselaer W. Lee, Ut Pictuva Poesis: The Humanistic Theory of Painting (New York: Norton, 1967). Glass, prisms, sacramental cloths, cages, candles, birds, matches, flowers, seals, vignettes lifted from well-known masterpieces, water, mirrors, shadows, and grids form the fundamental grammar that gives rise to an imagery ripe with poetic resonance. The crafting of these items in the manner of objets de virtu lends further intonation. Pearls, pearIescent skins, silk threads, gilded ribboning, shimmering surfaces (water, mirrors, crystal, celestial bodies), and diaphanous veils dissolve the tangible, corporeal realm. Fragile space, visionary light, delicate hues, saturated gemlike colors, disparities of scale, and timeless atmosphere lend credibility to the fiction.

González meticulously crafled his frames as well, adding force to the concept of image, and imaging, as separate from the quotidian experience He sought to dimish the power of pictorial illusionism, which is the anticipated counterpart of realism. His desire was to draw the viewer's consciousness away from the visual world into a realm of mystical idea, of sacred inner space. In the fashion of Ezra Pound, founding father of the imagist poets, he was fixed on signaling the importance of image as the coefficient of the "flash"Ð"that which presents an intellectual and emotional complex in an instant of time." (note: Irene McManus, Dreamscapes: The Art of Juan Gonzáles (New York: Hudson Hills, 1994), 10n .3.)

With the versatility of an alchemist, González employed a variety of mediaÐcolored pencil, pastel, watercolor, oil, tempera, acrylic, collaged accessoriesÐappropriate to the depiction of ephemera and concept. In his techniques and his mindset, González was artistic heir to the tradition of Spanish realism, the nineteenth-century Romantic visionaries (especially Paul Otto Runge and Caspar David Friedrich), the symbolists (in particular Odilon Redon), and Joseph Cornell. Fundamental also were the noted twentieth-century author Jean Genet and poet Federico Garcia Lorca. González's formal training came in his maturity. However, his childhood skill and obsession with drawing and his experiences helping to produce stage sets and backdrops were early indicators both of his ultimate choice of profession and of the direction of his art, especially his preoccupation with "contained" imagery.

The interrelated themes of the artist/androgyne, the Narcissus myth, mirroring, and self-reflection figure prominently in González's work as metaphors for the artistic process. (note: McManus, Dreamscapes, 13 and notes 6,7; 48 note I for Narcissus as inventor of painting, and for mirroring, grids and veils, and for the relevant art literature on these themes.) Narcissus, the extraordinarily beautiful youth of Greek mythologyÐin love with his own reflection, and in whom female and male conjoined was González's preferred symbol for his own creative self and the sort of intuitive self-reflection by which his extraordinary Ïuvre was generated. However, as distinguished from the obsessive self-absorption of the mythological character, González's acts of self-reflection represent an introspection through which veils are lifted to reveal true beauty, transcendence, and immortality. Mirrors and other reflective surfaces are further reminders of the ephemeral, conceptual nature ofthe imagery, an imagery that begs contemplation.

In Prism and Prison (1978, one of three works by González in the Seavest Collection), the artist created a summa of sortsÐa cerebral self-portrait expressed through his singular visionary aesthetic. (note: When Prism and Prison was acquired the decision was taken not to travel this object because of its fragility for which reason it was not included in this exhibition.) In a highly imaginative articulation of the central artist/Narcissus theme, a perfected container of glass, almost celestial in aspect, is substituted for a corporeal body. Within this rectangular glass box, fine plumb lines, organized into seven rows across and four deep, establish a dimensional grid. This crystalline network alludes to the numerical proportioning of space used for temples and cathedrals, as symbols of divine harmonics and perfection. The floor is a reflective mirror. The graph papered back wall features a niche housing the famous Angel of Rheims (Annunciation group, west portal, Rheims cathedral) with its provocative smile, a personal symbol for González of himself as artist/androgyne.

González shows the angel only to the waist and damaged; the missing pieces suggest decomposing matter. (It is important to note here that González has not reproduced the actual condition of the angel, which is missing its proper right wing but which is otherwise intact; González added the missing wing brit has drawn both wings and the body of the angel as fragmented.) González has accentuated the actual gesture of the angel's left hand, with its index finger elegantly pointing down, to draw attention to its own reflection in the mirrored floor. The mirrored reflection of course points back, summoning an energy akin to Michelangelo's animating spark that charges the gap between the fingers of God and Adam (Creation of Adam, Sistine Chapel ceiling). The poignancy of the deeply spiritual nature of this self-reflection is simply and brilliantly underscored. On the ledge in front of the angel stands a prism, frosted at the tip with only a hint of color. Prisms refract light into the seven separate colors of the spectrum by which we perceive the natural world. Color is notably absent in this metaphysical box only the most delicate grey blue hues are allowed, not to disturb the suggestion of ethereal realms. But the mystical number seven is insisted upon in the symmetrical rows of threads.

Both the prism, brimming with its own self-reflections, and the angel are reflected in the mirrored, pool-like floor of the case. When properly lit, the weights, in the form of tops, that keep the reticulating threads taut, cast shadows on the back wall forming patterns of ascent and descent. With this device the artist summons a myriad associationsÐof despair and transcendence, of the mundane and celestial, of shadows and light, of tear drops and replenishing rain, of the flight of the soul and enlightenment. These little weights, patiently crafted by the artist in ceramic and coated with pearlescent glaze, carry associations with childhood games and a time of innocence, but also with the formulation of the persona. Careful scrutiny reveals that the tips of the of the weights are tinged with red. They reference the "red" thorn, hinted at in the angel's niche, a recurring image in González's oeuvre of suffering and sacrifice. The threads, held in place by golden hooks attached to the glass lid, function also as plumb lines, meant to mark time and space. (note: González uses this device in a mixed media painting, P.M. Times, the meaning of which is explained as a reference to the plumb line in the Smithsonian in Washington which marks time and place, McManus, Dreamscapes, 62.) Prism and Prison is an emblem of the artist's fate. He can be a resplendent creature, radiant with idea and creative energy. Yet, the necessary coefficient of the artistic persona is a hypersensibility trapped in melancholy (both for its perceptive capabilities and for the frustrating travail of shaping matter into idea).

New York, Year 1986 (1986) is intended as a monument and memorial. This is made clear by its dedication to Patrick McDonough (the dear friend of González who had died that year), and by the fact that its format refers to the picture Roma (of the previous year), a celebration of the City of Monuments. Instead of a view of Rome, we are presented with a vast panorama of New York City, which the artistÐrepresented in diminutive scale and with his back to usÐperuses from a parapet of sorts, and which is framed at the sides by copper-sheathed pylons surmounted by a pair of seated, bare-chested young men. Lifted to the sky, they are the counterpart of the "stone angels" that frame Roma. They mark the point at which there is a break in the clouds. At this point the stormy, rain-filled sky above the city metamorphoses into a great sheer, silken cloth that has been unfolded as a sacramentaI backdrop for a monumental, but ever-so-lovingly rendered, wreath of twelve intertwined roses.

González, with his back to us, looks out over the expanse of the city, evoking a sense of nostalgia and of hopelessness. The great metropolis, with all its power and its millions of inhabitants, is helpless and crying for the gentle souls dying of AIDS. Yet the drenching rain also cleanses. The cityscape is dotted with windows illuminated from within. Radiant birds in flight hover near the figure of González. They are the symbol of the spirit released and reborn. They echo the message of the pure white celestial roses with their thornsÐreminding one of the face of Christ on Veronica’s veil, and of Dante’s Paradise discovered as a vast white rose (Paradiso, canto 30)—of pain transformed into perfection. The reference to suffering and salvation is reinforced in the aerial view of the Latin-cross plan of the church to González's right. And it is surely no accident that directly in front and below him, seen through a cleresrory of windows, is an indoor sports court of some kind, an emblem of the many facets life holds and of how we play the game.

In Still Life in Red for Manuel (1987), also in the col lection, González alludes to Pompeian wall-painting schemes in a terse arrangement of white, yellow, and black units. He sparingly details the composirion, introducing only two grisaille tulips bordered in gold, a single light bulb (unlit), hung by a long thin wire and intersecting the zone of black but not illuminating it, and a cartillio with the dedication to his friend. The geometric formality, sobriety, and restraint of the picture—a clever gesture to color-field painting, Mondrian, Albers, and other modernists—is challenged by a diminutive but effervescent figure of a sun-bathed and smiling young man in a red bathing suit, whose compositional weight is a signal of the artist's infinite optimism.

©by Virginia Anne Bonito, "Get Real" González essay, 1998.

For a more detailed printed view of the collection order the book:
	Get Real: Contemporary American Realism from the Seavest Collection Virginia Anne Bonito. Foreword by Michael Philip Mezzatesta, pp. 138, 68 colorplates, 2 b/w photographs Exhibition at DUMA April 4-July 6, 1997. Hard cover $40.00 Soft cover $25.00 To order contact: Duke University Museum of Art Click on Publications