In his 11-piece show at the Taft Museum of Art, Cedric Michael Cox has given new life to a 17th-century Dutch still life, as well as to his own abstract oeuvre.
“Dutch and Chinese Impressions” is the last painting Cox created for Color+Rhythm, and it’s the one that most wondrously brings the past into the present. He doesn’t merely appropriate images found in the Taft’s permanent collection — he takes ownership. Cox has plucked irises and tulips painted by Balthasar van der Ast in the mid-1600s, added lotus blossoms from a Qing dynasty vase and arranged them in a fresh bouquet with his signature curvilinear designs that dance across the canvas.
There’s little “still” about this new still life. All of Cox’s acrylic works in the intimate Sinton Gallery shimmer with vibrant jewel tones, but this piece with a golden backdrop glows. It’s a treasure that Cox knew was within his artistic reach ever since the early fall, when he began hunting through the Taft for inspiration.
Assistant curator Tamera Muente, who tapped Cox for Color+Rhythm, acknowledges that the Taft is often perceived as “a static old house with art by dead artists.” However, Cox — known for blending cityscapes, nature’s forms and a sense of melodic movement in a Cubist style that he calls “architectonic” — believes he’s found the muse for future paintings. “This was a joy,” he says.
Since 2009, the museum has invited a local artist to create an exhibit that responds to the Taft’s collection of European Old Masters, 19th-century American paintings, Chinese porcelains, French enamels, sculpture, watches and furniture, plus the museum grounds and décor. Past artists include Emil Robinson, Kristine Donnelly, Katie Parker and Guy Michael Davis, Matthew Albritton, Celene Hawkins and Jonathan Queen. The series is a nod to former residents Charles and Anna Taft and Nicholas Longworth, who invited Cincinnati artists such as Robert S. Duncanson and Hiram Powers into the 1820 mansion.
Cox made multiple visits, first examining bowls, wall colors and diamond patterns in the carpeting and drapes. “I was frightened,” he says. “I didn’t want to make (the exhibit) just a playground of color based around forms that are already pre-drawn in my plethora of architectonic Cubist imagery.”
He chose to take his art to another level by stepping outside his genres and looking closely at other artists’ compositional structures.
Muente was surprised that a painter took an interest in the museum’s enamels and ceramics. Cox used the florals on another Qing vase as inspiration for trees in “Duncanson Delight,” one of two semi-abstract landscapes in which he cranks up the oranges and purples found in the original 1850s Duncanson murals.
“Duncanson Delight” was Muente’s favorite painting until Cox challenged himself further by taking on the aforementioned van der Ast’s still life. “He’s looking at the painting in our collection that is probably the most hyper-realistic painting that we have,” she says. “Being able to take that and combine it with the abstract forms and make it flow seamlessly — it’s just so skillfully done, and so beautiful.”
Cox pushed himself to bring more figurative elements into his paintings. In “Frolic in the Forest No. 2,” his take on a sophisticated 19th-century garden party, modern women twist and glide among abstract trees as if in Cirque du Soleil. “That’s the one where I really felt confident in what I was doing,” Cox says. Muente says that when she saw stacks of realistic line drawings during visits to Cox’s studio, she knew he was preparing something different and unexpected.
Muente, who had followed Cox since he attended the University of Cincinnati in the late 1990s, approached him at a time when he was open to studying other artists in greater depth in order to refresh his work. He was already dissecting the Cubist paintings of Juan Gris.
“Works of art have always inspired me to appropriate them in my own way. But there have only been a few times where I actually used the compositional elements of an artist,” Cox says. “So this was a perfect time for me to step out of the box of the lyrical Cubism, architectonic kind of stuff — still do it, but put a twist on it.”
This isn’t the first time that the Taft triggered a change in Cox’s style. In 2011, he spoke at the museum during the George Inness in Italy show. Inness’ landscapes had inspired Cox to do a body of work based on the artist’s atmospheres.
“It was a period in my career where I was very tongue-in-cheek about, ‘What I am doing? Am I becoming a parody of myself?’ ” Cox says.
His dense urban cityscapes in the manner of Paul Klee had led to solo shows at the Contemporary Arts Center, The Carnegie and Weston Art Gallery in 2009 and 2010. “I knew I had to make a shift. I was fighting, fighting for that creative spirit,” he says.
Seeing Cox connect with one 19th-century painter led Muente to think he’d be up for exploring all of the Taft’s collection.
Cox identifies four stages in his career: large abstract drawings, architectonic imagery, the Inness-influenced work and his current phase, which he describes as revitalizing his Cubist format and creating a better sense of depth between organic and linear forms.
“Now I can look at so much other stuff and look at my drawings and say, ‘No, my drawing is now the background. Let’s see how this other new world I haven’t tried before flows through,’ ” he says. Finding these options is liberating, he adds.
Cox is one of Cincinnati’s busiest arts ambassadors, teaching at Saint Francis Seraph School, serving as artist-in-residence at Woodford Paideia Academy and Chase Elementary School and creating murals throughout the city. This exhibit keeps his creative juices flowing.
“The next tree, landscape, figurative piece I do, I’ll definitely look at these pieces and how I did them as a way of taking it to the next level,” he says. “I think this show marks a beginning in my career to embrace any and all possibilities.”
COLOR+RHYTHM runs through June 25 at the Taft Museum of Art. More info: taftmuseum.org.
This article appears in Mar 29 – Apr 5, 2017.