Eleanor Davis Asks a Radical Question, Modestly

By Etelka Lehoczky

JUNE 2, 2018

IF YOU’RE GOING to write about art, you should probably start with a
gesture of modesty. A ritual demurral doesn’t just pacify those expert readers
who wait, daggers quivering, to eviscerate hubris. It also serves as an implicit
pledge of your ethics. It tells your audience you want only to guide and
enhance their taste, not trample all over it with your giant opinionated paws.

Modesty comes naturally to Eleanor Davis. In 2014’s How To Be Happy, the

comic artist interspersed long, painstakingly drawn narratives with silly little
black-and-white doodles. In one, a group of people zipped themselves into a
giant bag for no clear reason, explaining only that “it was specially made in
the Netherlands.” In another, a man with the outline of Mickey Mouse’s head
on his shirt cut off a sleeping woman’s fingers (bloodlessly, with scissors).
The doodles had no purpose except to belie profundity and keep the reader
off-balance. Last year’s You & a Bike & a Road was similarly unassuming,
taking that most prosaic of forms: a journal. Chronicling Davis’s cycling trip
from Arizona to Georgia, it could have been a bombastic, sweeping road epic.
Instead, Davis eschewed an overarching narrative, concentrating on small
moments and quirky stories.

So, it’s not surprising that she asks the highly provocative question Why Art?
with an evident blush at her own presumption. A modest 5 1/2 inches by 7
inches, Why Art? begins with a handful of goofy jokes and ends with a fable.
This story of nine artists working in diverse media neither exalts nor ridicules
their various creations (even though it does destroy them twice over). Davis’s
whole attitude seems to humbly bespeak your indulgence, and her central
message is that, when it comes to art, everybody needs to lighten up.

Davis doesn’t spell out this idea in words, but expresses it through her
predominant mode. She clearly believes artists — herself included — should
steer away from all self-certainty, especially the certainty of reaching an
audience. Her drawings lure the eye irresistibly no matter what they happen to
depict. She’s a maestro of line — her ink swirls and swoops as fluidly as if it
were really airborne — and her knack for composition makes even her one-off
jokes impactful. The minimalism of most of Davis’s compositions keeps the
reader turning pages, seeking more. The small size of the book is seductive,
too. Why Art? is physically delightful: it just feels good to hold in your hands
and flip through. (Somehow, small books always seem like special
indulgences, just like small boxes and small food.)

It’s easy to win almost anyone over with a package like this, whatever your
message might be. Even if Davis did want to make a bunch of drastic
pronouncements about art and society — pooh-poohing street art, attacking
collectors by name, vilifying the board of directors at the Met — virtually any
reader would be somewhat inclined to entertain them. But Davis doesn’t abuse
her power. If anything, she goes too far in the other direction, allowing her
modesty to put unfair limits on her scope. Why Art? could have been bigger,
longer, with more color.

Especially more color. Davis uses color only once, dropping in pink, blue, and
green to illustrate the dramatic impact of artworks by a fictional artist named
Sophia. She’s one of the nine artists at the center of the book, and her
specialty is talismans. Each of Sophia’s artworks, Davis explains,

… comes with instructions that read: ‘Wear your talisman at all times in case
of emergency.’
When a crisis arises, gently shake.

A little musical note will come out, tinkling.

Hearing the note makes you turn different colors.

(Thus the pink, blue, and green.) The fact that the only colors in the book are
used to illustrate an as-yet-impossible artistic effect perfectly expresses the
antipretension that’s as close as Davis comes to a credo. Where better to use
carefully rationed color, she seems to ask, than in the service of the purely
imaginary?

This vignette exemplifies the light, teasing tone Davis takes toward
contemporary art. It’s here that she runs her biggest risk: that she’ll either
alienate her audience or bore them. Mocking contemporary art has become so
commonplace, it’s usually unfunny even if it doesn’t happen to be offensively
ill-informed. Davis certainly flirts with the standard caricatures, but she curbs
them. She has scrutinized her motives carefully, and when she does poke fun
at some particular artistic excess, she often can’t help but turn around and
undercut her own criticism. “Mirror artworks can be extremely compelling,”
she notes. “[There are] mirrors that show what you think you’re like” — here
she draws, for no particular reason, a long mirror with a wavy edge — or
“mirrors that show us when we’re very, very old.” What fun it would be if
such mirrors existed! But until they do, “the regular ‘Ordinary Mirror’
continues to fascinate both artist and audience alike.”

Such demure jabs reveal the deep love Davis feels for art and artists. Most of
her nine characters are a bit ridiculous, it’s true. TwiceTwo, who makes
“massive multi-media,” has a billowing patterned cloak and swollen bun,
while Mike (“sculpture and optics”) wears leopard-print shorts with boots. But
however silly they seem at first, their work usually redeems them in some
way. Take Richard, who sculpts in papier-mâché and always wears a huge
head and hands that he’s made. When a rainstorm hits in the middle of a group
show, water leaks onto him and he starts coming apart — a harsh metaphor.
Without his giant hands, Davis notes, “the smaller Richard can hold a pencil
much more easily.” But his creaking self-creation still has a reason to exist:
the giant head is big enough to shelter all the artists when the rain turns into a
flood. Likewise, José’s edible artworks (he works in concrete and fondant)
prove nourishing when the artists are transported to a foreign shore.
The closest character to a protagonist is stocky, sensible Dolores, a specialist
in “performance art incorporating hypo-solidity.” Davis obviously feels deep
affection for her. Dolores’s first artwork consists of simply standing in a
gallery and saying to everyone who approaches, “I love you.” “If she were a
bad artist, her art would be a lie, and people would hate it,” Davis points out.
“Instead, somehow she has made the statement into her truth.” Unfortunately,
those who view Dolores’s work tend to have extreme reactions. “Feeling
loved, they can’t help but love Dolores in return.” They propose marriage and
follow her around the grocery store. It’s easy to imagine Dolores existing in
real life, suitors and all. Because Davis — in another of her subtle, hinted
arguments — doesn’t like artists who repeat themselves over and over, she has
Dolores give up on “I love you.” Dolores travels for 10 years, is attacked by a
shark, loses her arm, grows a new arm (and a set of shark teeth of her own),
and winds up, with the other eight artists, sheltering from the above-
mentioned storm inside Richard’s papier-mâché head. Ultimately, she leads
the artists to figure out what their art is for and why it should, or shouldn’t,
continue to exist.

Not too surprisingly, the answer they arrive at is a sentimental one. Davis has
always had a strong vein of earnest idealism running alongside her surrealist
tendencies. It’s not surprising that she should feel compelled to leaven her
criticisms of the art world, however mild, with heartfelt thoughts about the
ways in which art benefits us all. She struggles with this urge throughout the
book, often defeating it. But finally, feeling compelled to articulate a big
theme at the close, Davis abandons subtlety in favor of a few fervent lines
expressing her sense of art’s power. Her lingering ambivalence about making
such a declaration is evident in the form it takes. She couches it in a series of
pleas from Dolores. As the rain comes down, destroying artworks and
shattering intentions, the purity of Dolores’s heart shines from amid the chaos.

Such purity, sadly, can only be fiction. Amazingly, though, Davis herself
manages to approximate real purity of heart throughout the book. Her
carefully leavened critiques of the art world aren’t going to shake anyone’s
beliefs, true. But along with her surprising, off-kilter appreciations — and
thanks to the virtuosic draftsmanship with which they’re executed — they add
up to a memorable work of, and about, art.
https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/eleanor-davis-asks-a-radical-question-
modestly