Placed within the context of commercial art, the work’s abstract design and layered appearance recalls the illustrations of Borgman’s contemporaries Bernie Fuchs and Mark English. Like Borgman, Fuchs’ first job was illustrating car advertisements for a studio in Detroit. English and Borgman share a similar career trajectory; both have transitioned to fine art and now create paintings for galleries with the same native talent and innovative thinking that informed their commercial work.
Though stylized, Ghana still connects to the natural appearance of things. Multiple Figures, however, is further removed from that world. It privileges an abstract application of color and line that deconstructs pictorial illusionism. Expressive drawing traces a wire-like armature around and through the five-figure grouping — such that each diaphanous figure appears to weave in and out with its neighbor. The figures’ dissolution demonstrates an important shift in Borgman’s artistic intent; he’s no longer focused on objective representation but rather employs his figurative subjects as a means to explore a variety of abstract expressions.
Playful Strokes
Playful strokes of Maxfield Parrish blue evince Borgman’s newfound expressive powers in Multiple Figures. Vibrating against the ochre-toned ground, they quote a popular technique used to indicate light and shadow masses in quick-pose model sketches. The former exercise, drawing the life model in 2-minute poses, is often assigned to beginning art students in an effort to get them thinking and working in a more abstract manner.
The ever-shifting poses short circuit attempts to focus on details or render the models realistically. At first, the novices’ hasty sketches yield clumsy, half-drawn figures. As they become more practiced, the students’ focus shifts to drawing tonal, gestural and spatial rhythms. Subsequently, this study of space, color, form and movement leads to an appreciation for and application of aesthetic design principles.
Abstract Figures
The paintings Jubilant Muse, The Tenth Muse, and Almost Relaxed Nude demonstrate Borgman’s continuing interest in figurative abstraction. Each work further suppresses naturalism; the human figure and the space it inhabits, is rendered in a limited palette using geometric forms. The approach recalls Kazimir Malevich’s Suprematist paintings — an abstract art style based upon what Malevich called “the supremacy of pure artistic feeling rather than the visual depiction of objects.”
Jubilant Muse most certainly aims to portray emotive content — perhaps the joyous bond that joins the artist to his favored model. By retaining some reference to the figure, albeit vague, Borgman’s work stops short of the austere view offered by Malevich’s purely geometric arrangements. The exaggerated voluptuousness of the forms that compose the figure in The Tenth Muse, along with abbreviated anatomical shorthand, strikes us as being both modern and archaic at the same time. In fact the work suggests that most primitive of female icons, the Venus of Willendorf.
A New Medium
Borgman reports that he first explored painting nudes in an abstract manner around 1965 — but soon abandoned the project. He adds, “My wife was a professional model and she would always pose for me. Up until about the year 2000 I was drawing and painting her in a realistic manner. Around that time I purchased a computer. I did this mainly to appease a commercial art client who wanted completed assignments sent via email after one went missing in the post.
“One day I had some free time and started experimenting with computer-generated imagery. I was amazed at the possibilities this new medium offered. Ultimately, this design flexibility inspired me to try making abstract nudes again. Most of my idea sketches are now created on the computer; it enables me to do a number of quick versions of the same design using different colors for evaluation purposes.
“Because I had spent so many years painting and drawing my wife from life, I can invent poses in my head. I sketch these designs on the computer and then transfer them to the canvas using marker pens. The designs evolve and change once I start painting — and I allow that to happen. The computer is only a tool; it does not create.”
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