Ann Chernow: Noir
Ann Chernow: Noir
Albert Merola Gallery
Provincetown, MA
Albertmerolagallery.com
June 6-24, 2014
From the darkness a beam of light falls on the mane of blond hair, setting it ablaze. Then it glances off a profile, picks up the tip of a cigarette, an aquiline profile. This is Ann Chernow’s latest work and it is all inspired by film noir, the post-WWII Hollywood genre in which the action often takes place in darkness, in shadows, and where the themes of mystery, illicit rendezvous, and subterfuge play out.
Chernow’s painting always has been woman-centered and often tinged with nostalgia, its images taken from old family photographs and magazines. Her latest work evinces a desire to go deeper into women’s psyche to explore the private, darker side, the danger zones of passion, heartbreak, physical beauty and intrigue. She investigates above all the part that fate plays in the lives of both men and women.
Goodbye, My Love, oil on canvas, 16” x 20″
Though there are no images actually referencing any one film, the images in Noir evoke the genre. In Goodbye, My Love we see the blond hair of a woman who is being grabbed furtively by the presumed “love.” We don’t know why the figures must say goodbye nor why they are meeting under cover of darkness. This tease of a narrative adds to the compelling nature of the paintings.
Rendezvous in Black is an accomplished portrayal of passion that must be played out secretly. The entire image is black save for a bright triangular slit, like that of a slice of light made by a projector in which the two lovers are caught. This visual ploy does double duty, evoking a film scene and lovers who may be meeting in a darkened theater.
Rendezvous in Black, lithograph, edition of 20, 11” x 14”
While there are potent narrative aspects to Chernow’s work, they are open-ended rather than literal. Follow Me captures the thrill and danger of romantic adventure. With no firm context provided, the imagination is free to roam within the protagonist’s world, letting us project ourselves there. Since Chernow’s scenes are constructions that may use parts from one or another films, they contain fantasy elements, the whole built to bring to mind the film noir genre, eschewing attachment to any particular film. For this same reason Chernow does not depict actual actresses. Says the artist, who uses models for the women and men in her work, “in blending past and present images I try to create a sense of déjà vu or nostalgia without the sentimentality of an association with a particular film star.”
Chernow says she started “obsessively” engaging the film genre since the 1970’s. But three or four years ago, she says, she got hooked on Double Indemnity, watching it ten times. Then the idea struck her, “This is what I want to do.” When I ask Chernow what draws her to the genre, the word she uses again and again is “subversive, “ as in “These women live their lives outside of the norm. They are subversive in that they do not accept the rules, they are attempting to change the status quo by their behavior.”
Love’s Old Sweet Song, drawing (pencils, ink and White-out), 24” x 30″
The works reveal a strong sense of emotional vulnerability. The paintings, drawings, and prints in Noir raise that quality to the status of courage, even a kind of nobility, as in the loneliness of a blond Mona Lisa, or the brokenhearted woman in Love’s Old Sweet Song. By detaching emotions and shifting them into a film context they are never sentimental. Still, we have license to identify with these women whom we know are both victims of fate and survivors.
You need not be a film noir junky or even fan to appreciate Noir. The works are graphically rich and pared-down, the blacks deep, bright areas aglow. This is achieved in the drawings by unconventional means, by stabilo black pencils and White-out that the artist describes as “the only thing that will let the pencil go on top of white”. Chernow works these drawings in layers, using sandpaper to achieve a nuanced, textured effect. In the case of the oil paintings, the blacks are full of colors—lilac, yellow, pinks, turquoise—which, she states, “allow the blacks to pop.”
Noir is a rare one-person show for Merola Gallery. It will consist of seven paintings, a set of ten etchings, several large drawings, and 15 lithographs with original captions. Smartly timed to coincide with the Provincetown International Film Festival, the show runs from June 6-26, 2014.
—Arlene Distler
Arlene Distler is a freelance Vermont-based writer on the arts for regional and national publications.