In "Double Image,” 1984, Erbe employs both pictorial transcription and compositional skills; oil on canvas, 34 by 38 inches. Collection of Salmagundi Club, New York City.
:In 1969, around the time Andy Warhol removed a soup can from its shelf and elevated it to an icon of Pop culture, a young artist named Gary T. Erbe was also beginning to see everyday objects as disembodied from their environment.
In Erbe's hand, common items, such as the sponge that became the money-sucking sponge on a silver platter in "Staff of Life," 1970, were freed from gravitational restraint and levitated in midair on canvas. In evolving his technique, the self-trained artist added layers of interest far beyond anything Pop could allow. Erbe juxtaposed realistically rendered objects with no obvious relationship to one another to tell a story.
In a 1974 work titled "Northern Landscape," he paired an industrial fan with a stained glass window and a seemingly random selection of mechanical parts and New York City street signs. While the items clearly unite to trigger a storyline, the artist created a higher level of viewer engagement through the use of trompe l'oeil.
Although the phrase trompe l'oeil is a baroque period coinage, the technique of using heightened perspective is at least as old as the murals of Pompeii. Erbe, in a dramatic departure from classical references or the trompe l'oeil rack paintings of the mid-Nineteenth Century, defined his form and style as "Levitational Realism."
Forty years on, Erbe's paintings hang in private and museum collections across the nation. Most of his work is sold before it is painted. Currently, Erbe's work is being featured in two concurrently running New York City exhibits. The most comprehensive of these is a career-spanning retrospective at the venerable Salmagundi Club on lower Fifth Avenue. Meanwhile, uptown, Erbe shares exhibit space with Norman Rockwell, Palmer Hayden and priceless baseball mementos at Steuben Gallery's tribute to the great American pastime.
In this early (1983) painting, "Fantasy in Pursuit,” the artist captured the movement of the carousel with just a few images. Only the lead steed is decked out in color; oil on canvas, 64 by 75 inches. Courtesy of Centerline, N.C.
"Gary Erbe: 40-Year Retrospective" is on view at Salmagundi through August 7. Steuben's "Baseball At Steuben," presented by Going Going Gone Sports, runs through August 8.
It is no secret that Erbe's paintings are meant to entertain. Likewise, entertainment in its many forms is among the themes he consistently mines. Reflecting his love of jazz, the Golden Age of TV, comics, American history and the American dream, his works resound with universal references. In "Take Five," 1981–1982, a tribute to an accordion-playing friend, a trio of gloved figures, just one of which is defined by a recognizable profile, align against a vertical grid of blue and orange. Meanwhile, levitated instruments appear to be waiting to play their solos. Sheet music and debris typical of an all-night jam session litter the lower foreground.
The image, which appeared in the National Academy of Design's 163rd Annual Exhibition, pulsates with unheard rhythm. It is what Bob Mueller, curator of the Salmagundi Club, calls "syncopated art."
Other recurring themes are the diversions we seek, the careers we pursue, the politics we engage in and the allegorical impact of time and pressure.
