David Ligare’s exhibit runs now through Sept. 1 at the Monterey Museum of Art. (Courtesy photo)
In studying a painting by Carmel-based yet internationally renowned Post-Modern, Neo-Classic artist David Ligare, we learn how the painter feels. If we pay attention to the allegory in his paintings, we also learn what he knows. Not only his meticulous skill and precision in creating fine art, but also about ancient Greek and Roman history, mythology, and the meaning we can carry with us into the context of today’s society.
Looking at a Ligare painting, we sense the ability to reach into it, that we might feel the texture of the leaf between our fingers, the warmth of the light against our hand, the cool of a rock outcropping cast in shade. Yet that indicates a response to what we see. What we feel is the familiarity of an emotion, even if we’ve never been there.
The Monterey Peninsula community can experience Ligare’s work at the Monterey Museum of Art on Pacific Street, which quietly opened “David Ligare: Spheres of Influence,” on May 16. The museum will host a public opening on June 7 and will retire the exhibition on Sept. 1. When the world-renowned fine-art painter presents an art exhibition, it typically takes place in Italy, Greece or New York. That he has installed his collection in Monterey is an epic opportunity for his home community.
“Spheres of Influence” is a double entendre that refers, not only to the range of impact his work has, but also the symbolism of unity, harmony and perfection, creating a sense of balance and tranquility. It also refers to the shape and form of a setting sun, a round window, the keyhole arch in a rock outcropping, or quite literally, a solid, round object.
“I was searching for the right composition and form,” he said, “and came up with the idea of the sphere, which is considered ‘the perfect design,’ owing to its perfectly symmetrical form from its center. The foundation of some kind of ideology behind my work is important to me. I am a great believer in the study of the origin and nature of ideas.”
Cultural context
In 1963, Ligare, who trained at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, made his first trip to Greece, where he recognized an affinity between the landscapes of Greece and California. Five years later, he moved to Big Sur, where he lived and painted, for six years, in a little house on Newell Ranch.
“I had read Robinson Jeffers and his descriptions of the Monterey Peninsula and of Big Sur were seductive to me,” said Ligare, “particularly having grown up in Manhattan Beach, where so much is paved. I wanted to get to a place that was wild, untamed.”
Another local legend interesting to Ligare was John Steinbeck, who considered himself a classicist, the essence of which seeks a balance between two opposing forces.
“Jeffers and Steinbeck were polar opposites,” Ligare said. “Jeffers described himself as an inhumanist, whereas if anyone was a humanist, it was Steinbeck, who was so focused on true humanity. To Jeffers, who seemed more disconnected, humans were not more important than nature. Steinbeck was so supportive of them.”
Ligare started showing his paintings in New York in 1966. He began as a plein air painter, preferring to work, not from photographs but outdoors, in the setting which presented the image that engaged his perspective and inspired his message.
“I understand the rules of painting,” he said, “and I recognize the breadth of how they are interpreted. In art, it is possible to do anything, and I mean anything, so artists are doing all manner of things. I realized it would be more interesting to set up rules for myself.”
Ligare bases his three rules on Plato’s design criteria for a work of art: Realism or “mimetic correctness,” the usefulness of a work of art and attractiveness, a kind of beauty in all its interpretations and forms.
“Most of art history has been about the illustration of ideas, of telling stories of gods and goddesses, myths or Christian themes,” he said. “I do think of one of the most interesting aspects of art is to be able to tell a certain truth through our work.”
Ligare also focuses on structure, the underlying forms he makes underneath the painting. Perhaps the structure is a triangle, a rectangle, a sphere. Then he turns his attention to the surface of the painting, the realization of all the natural elements in the composition. Ultimately, he concentrates on the content, what the painting means.
Ancient and contemporary influence
The idea for “Spheres of Influence” evolved during a trip to Tuscany, while at a beach with friends, where Ligare drew four studies, each a different take on a rock formation, as he sought the right composition, thinking of those who have influenced his perspective. One influence is Italian Renaissance humanist author, artist, and architect Leon Battista Alberti (1404 – 1472), who excelled in so many areas of inquiry and expression, he was considered the prototype of the “Renaissance universal man.”
Another influence is Swiss symbolist artist Arnold Böcklin (1827 – 1901), whose painting, “Isle of the Dead,” a dark and brooding islet, whose rocky structure surrounded an up-cropping of trees, also dark, portrays a sense of grief or resolution. Yet a subtle light, its source unseen, illuminates the face of the building carved into the stone and the shrouded figure being rowed to shore in a small boat ferrying a shrouded coffin.
Ligare also enjoys thinking of and bringing in the ideas of other great painters and thinkers, such as Archimedes of Syracuse, one of the leading scientists of classical antiquity (287 BCE – 211 BCE).
“In addition to beauty, my work is an attempt to highlight the idea of extraordinary thinking,” he said. “In our society, we are in need of a renewed desire for knowledge. My paintings are about knowledge and the need for it. Paintings should be about the ideas of thinking and knowledge, offering inspiring windows into other ways of expression.”
Whereas Ligare’s own deep knowledge and capacity for thought lay the foundation for his work, his sense of beauty and his ability to convey that in his work elevate our experience to a truly inspired place.
If you go:
What: “David Ligare: Spheres of Influence”
Where: Monterey Museum of Art, 559 Pacific Street, Monterey
When: The exhibit runs now through Sept. 1
For more information, visit montereyart.org or call (831) 372-5477