Richard Deon Exhibition


			Introduction
			For twenty years, Richard Deon has explored the visual style and skill employed by illustrators of social studies textbooks during the 1950s. These unsung artists sought to introduce school-age children to history and politics through the depiction of easily understood images and situations. Deon draws on their methods, but his compositions puzzle viewers, as he plays with fantastical juxtapositions without a logical outcome. Viewers are invited to create their own stories about the work and look for the figures and shapes that Deon has found the most compelling, returning to them again and again in shifting patterns. The inspiration for Deon’s work is found in a pastime of generations of inattentive students — the altering of textbook illustrations during class time: a moustache there, an eye patch there to make a founding father look ridiculous. Deon takes this idle occupation to the most elaborate, which depends on an association with childhood days, even as he develops sophisticated compositions that contain multiple meanings. Although Deon’s visual language is one half-forgotten or never completely understood, we can recognize individual figures that personify meaning: the Instructor (with pointer), the Scientist (in lab coat), the Native American (in breechcloth) and the Subject (in stiff profile) are manipulated by Deon into an array of meeting halls, landscapes and abstract color fields to convey different ideas. Precise interpretation of any of Deon’s paintings is unlikely — in fact, discouraged by the artist. But Deon’s compositions reward close scrutiny as a kind of postmodern history painting, one that is a dazzling pastiche of ideas. This kind of work is uniquely suited to the era of the internet, in which music, illustrations, and ideas are all sampled with abandon to create new works of art. Richard Deon: Paradox and Conformity is based on an exhibition originally curated by Thomas Piché, Jr., for the Daum Museum of Contemporary Art, Sedalia, MO, which has been re-organized by Bartholomew F. Bland for presentation at the Hudson River Museum.

			Selected Works from the Exhibition
			Explanation with Unused Palette, 2007 Acrylic on canvas, 48 x 44 ½ in. Courtesy of the artist Exploring the methods of the unsung artists whose easily graspable images introduced school children to a pedantic view of public institutions, history, and politics, Richard Deon moves beyond illustration to artistic interpretation. His stunning, colorful works are inspired by the meanings and motifs of the black-and-white textbook illustrations of the 1950s.
			Feed Lot, 2008 Acrylic on canvas, 30 x 40 in. I always return to painting animals. The way we share emotions with domestic animals is interesting. The perspective in the checkered feed trough is incorrect, it bothers the eye, yet the eye locks in this resting area, as a place to settle. This graphic trough-tray appears in some of my paintings, usually incomplete and unexplained.
			Measure of Success, 2006 Acrylic on canvas, 31 ¼ x 48 in. Courtesy of the artist Deon has worked as a graphic artist, and has a nuanced understanding that successful design is based understandable words, symbols and sign systems. In many of his works, Deon knowingly parodies these symbols, rupturing the relationship between concept and representation to create fantastical imaginary meanings.
			Alexandria, 2001 Acrylic on canvas, 34 ½ x 40 ½ in. Deon arranges his figures in situations that mimic those of the old texts but he slyly asks you to examine your assumptions. Viewers find themselves in puzzling territory, where the seemingly familiar becomes "an uneasy pictorial absurdity."
			Burning the Department of Interior, 1998 Acrylic on canvas, 79 ½ x 137 ¾ in. I’ve worked for years in graphic design, and I frequently get distracted, and I’ll compose paintings in my head. There is a difference between composing a page or a painting. With paintings I like to merge unlikely ingredients and themes. Often I take extra care to remove conclusive information to create a balance of tension, confusion, and sometimes silliness. Here, I started with clear title headline, which I decided to paint over. Then I changed my mind and wiped much of the paint off to leave something visible. Active indecision can sometimes lead to some interesting results.
			New Deal 2, 2005-2007 Acrylic on synthetic canvas, 95 x 132 in. I painted over parts of this painting, and I wasn’t sure if it was a good idea for several years. The central headless figure comes from a children’s coloring book about the story of the baby Jesus. I rearranged the hands and legs from different renderings. I find the effect of the burka-like cloth very mysterious, when used with a giant child’s body.
			Stink Eye, 2010 Acrylic on canvas, 62 ½ x 73 ½ in. I sometimes think art can be compromised if it is too overtly political. All historical figures are weaponized, and we all use them as component parts in political arguments. I’ve been using Lincoln in my paintings, literally distorting him as much as anyone else. So I decided to depict Lincoln with an angry “stink eye”—staring down a native observer outside the chain link fences of an abandoned Visualized Civics factory. He seems to be waiting for an answer.
			Transformation of White Women, 2009/10 Acrylic on canvas, 96 x 75 in. This was a challenging piece. I wanted to introduce more figures of women into my work. The main figure was originally a tennis player and I took away her racket. Now she is in some kind of transformation with a flag waving suffragette involving flames. I had a notion about the way the word ‘transformation’ is used in geology – the way lava becomes rock. It may be stupid to connect these ideas, but illustrating stupid ideas doesn’t scare me anymore. The native observers in the foreground appeared in Burning the Department of Interior.
			Madam I’m Adam, 2010 Acrylic on synthetic canvas, 66 x 273 in. Courtesy of the artist As he notes about his work, “Commentary is suggested; visual information is repeated; point of view is obfuscated. The resulting compositions are truly mixed messages―which speak or don't speak for themselves.” In this new site-specific work for the Hudson River Museum, a mysterious pyramid, seems to radiate power, perhaps worshiped with offerings described as “the Object”.
			Weehawken, 2007 Acrylic and enamel on muslin, 34 x 49 in. Deon extracts characters and situations from the pages of knowledge, inserting them into historical scenarios that also seem to illustrate useful nuggets of knowledge and instruction.
			Prints
			Part Unrelated Morse Code Edition, a portfolio of 24 inkjet prints, 22 x 17 each. Richard Deon on his prints: I had some time off between projects and a drawer full of incomplete visual notes collected over many years. Some fragments were not good enough to be individual paintings, some I just didn’t know what to do with, and I set out with the idea to use every single thing in the drawer to make 12 prints. Then I had 16, then 22, and then 24. If a component wasn’t working, I blurred it or changed the scale and reassembled the parts into a kind of compendium of unfinished business. This portfolio in book form is titled Part Unrelated, then I thought, “Oh, no, I’ve got to title all 24.” At the time there was a big buildup and activation of troops towards the invasion of Iraq. The titles were captured from word fragments heard on CNN. This edition was re-titled using Morse Code in 2010.
			President, 2004, From Part Unrelated, a portfolio of 24 inkjet prints, 22 x 17 in. each Courtesy of the artist As Deon says, as a student “I created my personal Manifest Destiny. Within a few weeks, I was disciplined and issued a clean textbook, a bill, and a stern warning.” Not dissuaded, Deon has, since, created a body of work influenced by the defaced illustrations of his formative years. Here, a blurred silhouette of Lincoln, a universally understood symbol of knowledge and wisdom, is combined with an eerie pyramid, perhaps symbolizing the discordant environment in which Lincoln navigated.
			Escort, 2004, From Part Unrelated, a portfolio of 24 inkjet prints, 22 x 17 in. each Courtesy of the artist
			Exhibition of Works
			Deon has been exhibited at the Daum Museum of Contemporary Art, the Katonah Museum of Art, Marist College, the Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art, and the Arts Exchange Building of ArtsWestchester, White Plains. His work is included in a number of private and public permanent collections and he has received commissions from New York City’s Public Art Fun and the Metropolitan Transit Authority