Mystic at Work

By R.H.

"The psyche is not of today. It reaches back to prehistoric ages. Has man really changed in the last 10,000 years?" Thus Carl Jung introduced his theory of archetypes: of the instinctive symbols which, he argued, describe the primary, immortal structures of the human mind. Generally speaking, it has been Freud, not Jung, who presided over modern art--chiefly through Surrealism. But the hope of discovering forms that are numinous and sacred in Jung's sense has never quite left painting. To be sure, a lot of its manifestations have been head-shop trash--Peter Max mandalas and the like. But some have not, and these have mostly been ignored. A possibly key figure in this undertaking --the restoration of spirituality to painting, no less--is an almost unknown painter from Topeka, Kans., named Floyd Johnson, 39, whose recent work is on view simultaneously at Manhattan's Bykert and Rankow galleries.

Johnson uses the conventional technique of stained acrylic on raw canvas, but his work stands in complete contrast both to the programmed geometries of Stella or Noland and to their opposites, the so-called "lyrical abstractionists." It is, to begin with, about specific images. A high-strung man, Johnson years ago and without drugs experienced what he refers to as a "spiritual crisis," accompanied by visions and hallucinations: vast primal shapes, cloudy or brilliantly lit, floating in deep space. "After that, I didn't paint for years.

But my present work is about that central event. I believe I was watching the whole evolution of life, from its fundamental shapes--the building blocks of consciousness."

Visual Parallel. Typically, each of Johnson's works focuses on one central emblem, stained into an unstretched canvas that hangs, like a banner, on the wall: an orange-gold cone hovering in a void of purplish red; an exhilarating surge of scrolling ocherous waves, speckled with jade and malachite green. Johnson is an exceptional colorist, both astringent and opulent, and his work--like many a Tibetan tanka or Indonesian temple door--makes no bones about its decorative aspect. Yet behind this seduction of the eye is a strange impersonality, as though Johnson's role in painting them had at a certain point become mediumistic--notes transmitted from outside. "The choice of a particular image," Johnson remarked to Critic Emily Wasserman, "can actually dictate the behavior of the paint"--a fact which explains the apparent jumps of style in his work. But Johnson's images are not about style. Their concern is, rather, contemplation; and Johnson's ancient forms, slowly experienced, form a kind of visual parallel to Lao-tzu's description of the Tao, the principle behind the universe:

As a thing the Tao is shadowy,

indistinct.

Indistinct and shadowy, yet within

it is an image; Shadowy and indistinct, yet within

it is a substance.

Dim and dark, yet within it is an

essence.

This essence is quite genuine, And within it is something that can

be tested.

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