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Lot Essay
The American artist Walton Ford is contemporary art’s great chronicler of animals real and unreal, from the extinct Barbary lion to the fantastical griffin. In CALVAIRE (2012) Ford turns his penetrating gaze to the owl. The deft, large-scale watercolour captures six of the birds with startling liveliness and exquisite detail. Ford masses them together in a bravura concatenation of forms, recalling the dynamic figures in Baroque painting or the clustered bodies in Théodore Géricault’s The Raft of the Medusa (1819). His lush colours and closeness to life recall the watercolours of artist-ornithologist John James Audubon. Each owl exhibits its own personality. Three of them tussle over a rodent, which one swallows headfirst. Another coughs up a pellet. The leftmost owl stares out at the beholder with startling directness. Ford recounts talking to the Buddhist scholar Robert Thurman about his practice: ‘He said that when he looks in the eyes of the animals that I painted, he knows that he’s being communicated to in a way that had nothing to do with an artist’s intention’ (W. Ford in conversation with A. Reséndez, BOMB, 2 March 2021).
As with many of Ford’s works, CALVAIRE tells a historical and literary story. The barn owls pile through the window of a humble dwelling, before a table piled up with the debris of bohemian life: books, an empty wine bottle, shards of glass, feathers, a revolver, a sketch, a crucifix, a glass of luminescent absinthe and its ritual spoon. CALVAIRE is titled after Calvaire du Trucidé (or Dead Man’s Calvary), the French Surrealist dramatist Alfred Jarry’s nickname for his Parisian abode during the 1890s. It stood in a dark alley looking onto the walls of the Val-de-Grâce hospital, which serves as the background for Ford’s scene. A friend of Jarry recalled on visiting the Calvaire: ‘The only inhabitants were 2 or 3 pairs of owls dozing on the furniture, which was liberally covered with their droppings, a fact that seemed not to concern him’ (H. Morin quoted in A. Brotchie, Alfred Jarry: A Pataphysical Life, Cambridge, 2011, p. 52).
As well as their anatomy and psychology, Ford is fascinated by animals’ allegorical power. ‘I search for stories of how animals live,’ he explains, ‘not only how animals live in nature, but also how they live in the human imagination. I try to distil what I’ve learned into images—to paint very large paintings of beasts, beasts carrying these literary burdens’ (W. Ford in A. Budick, ‘Walton Ford, Morgan Library’, Financial Times, 24 April 2024). Owls have a rich, often contrary symbolic history, from their Ancient Greek association with wisdom and the goddess Athena to Pliny the Elder’s testimony that they were bearers of ill omen. They have fascinated numerous artists since, including Pablo Picasso—a great admirer of Jarry, who later acquired the writer’s revolver and purchased many of his manuscripts. In CALVAIRE, Ford offers his own rich contribution to this history.
As with many of Ford’s works, CALVAIRE tells a historical and literary story. The barn owls pile through the window of a humble dwelling, before a table piled up with the debris of bohemian life: books, an empty wine bottle, shards of glass, feathers, a revolver, a sketch, a crucifix, a glass of luminescent absinthe and its ritual spoon. CALVAIRE is titled after Calvaire du Trucidé (or Dead Man’s Calvary), the French Surrealist dramatist Alfred Jarry’s nickname for his Parisian abode during the 1890s. It stood in a dark alley looking onto the walls of the Val-de-Grâce hospital, which serves as the background for Ford’s scene. A friend of Jarry recalled on visiting the Calvaire: ‘The only inhabitants were 2 or 3 pairs of owls dozing on the furniture, which was liberally covered with their droppings, a fact that seemed not to concern him’ (H. Morin quoted in A. Brotchie, Alfred Jarry: A Pataphysical Life, Cambridge, 2011, p. 52).
As well as their anatomy and psychology, Ford is fascinated by animals’ allegorical power. ‘I search for stories of how animals live,’ he explains, ‘not only how animals live in nature, but also how they live in the human imagination. I try to distil what I’ve learned into images—to paint very large paintings of beasts, beasts carrying these literary burdens’ (W. Ford in A. Budick, ‘Walton Ford, Morgan Library’, Financial Times, 24 April 2024). Owls have a rich, often contrary symbolic history, from their Ancient Greek association with wisdom and the goddess Athena to Pliny the Elder’s testimony that they were bearers of ill omen. They have fascinated numerous artists since, including Pablo Picasso—a great admirer of Jarry, who later acquired the writer’s revolver and purchased many of his manuscripts. In CALVAIRE, Ford offers his own rich contribution to this history.