Bruce Robbins Artist

I was asked why I titled paintings the way I did. I also thought I’d explain why my recent paintings are named after entities in Greek mythology. However, I have always used combinations of text and image, and the title is as good a place for text as any. Sometimes, however, the titles may get very long.

A painting I began in 1976 and finally completed a couple of years later was entitled “The Portrait – a wing covering the corpse of Mary Rogers placed where it was so as to avoid the bad taste involved in painting a dead sitter”. Some drawings that I made prior to this ‘Gates’ had a title that ran across five panels

Some later paintings evolved from the series started in 1976 were named from entities recorded in Greek Myths: 

“Iphomedeia (she who strengthens the genitals)”,

“Capys (snatcher)”, 

“Charyibidis (sucker down)” and 

“Epeius (assaulter)”. 

The last three paintings from the period (up to 1984) were named after the etymological roots of the three great mountain ranges, i.e., the Himalayas, the Andes, and the Alps.

“Himavat” – Sansktit, 

“Alpes” – Latin, 

“Asinîwaciy” – Plains Cree.

The names of these large (9ft x 12ft) canvases were not intended to represent monumental concepts. Rather, they reflected sections within the canvases derived from shapes found in satellite images of each mountain range. These shapes were incorporated into elements within the paintings or morphed into other elements.

However, monumental concepts were present in the paintings, which in turn informed some of the ideas within these works. These were elements found in paintings dating from around 40,000 years ago to around 40 years ago, depicting everything from animals to human figures to abstract symbols. Once such elements are brought together, they make implicit a space, or a relationship between objects. It is not strange to consider that the complete history of art influences the creation of art. Even if the history is never fully known, it is still present.

Radical Figuration

Figuration has long tended to place objects in a spatial format that conforms to hierarchical relationships. This was the norm from the 14th Century up to the late 19th century/early 20th century. From Cezanne through Picasso, artists broke down three-dimensional representations of space. The abstract expressionists abandoned them entirely and In many ways the baby was thrown out with the bath water. Jo and I looked to pick up where Picasso and Mattise left off, not by going back but by bringing their discovery forward.

It was a valid progression to question hierarchical space and its implicit symbolic meaning within painting, but the problem with abstraction was that it left space as an element totally in the hands of sculpture. Space exists; there is no doubt, and space and relationships between concepts/objects are very much a proper subject within painting. 

An article in ART Review January 2025 mentions that Jo Baer moved away from abstraction to Radical Figuration. In a 1995 Article in Bomb magazine, Linda Boersma’s interview with Jo Baer discusses radical figuration and includes the following image.

Radical figuration has been described as ‘instead of simply mirroring physical reality, artists use distorted, fragmented, or symbolic forms to express complex psychological, political, and social ideas‘. Jo and I worked collaboratively between 1978 and 1984; the collaboration was not about jointly authored paintings, although we did make several drawings jointly (some of which were painted on canvas). The above (Perch – Perca within the family Percidae) is one of a set of 5, all named after a species of fish.

We described the works (and the way of working) as radical, using figuration in a new and radical way. Perhaps one radical element was using the title as part of a hermeneutic process. One of Jo’s last paintings has a fairly long title …

… and in the Museum of Modern Art collection …

… thanks for the mention.

Hermes: By Phidias (?) Link

But back to my recent use of works named after entities in Greek mythology, the group Seirenes includes the paintings named: Peisinoe, Aglaopheme, Aglaophonos and Thelxiepeia. These are names of individual sirens. Sirens are female humanlike beings with alluring voices, handmaidens of the goddess Persephone. Demeter gave the sirens the bodies of birds to assist in the search for her daughter (Persephone, also known as Kore), who had been abducted by Hades. A deal was struck where Kore/Persephone would spend part of the year with Hades in the underworld and the rest of the year above with Demeter. Her return brings spring and summer, while her departure back to Hades brings autumn and winter.

Now I have no intention of illustrating this (or any other) mythical story, but I do appreciate the resonance of a part woman and part bird in regard to the underworld and the seasons. In particular, in the way that Claude Lévi-Strauss mentions in ‘La Pensée Sauvage’ that birds are “bons à penser” (good to think with). He mentions myths involving birds and humans having sexual intercourse; Leda and the Swan comes to mind. It was also thought that birds of paradise had no legs or feet and were beautiful visitors from paradise, kept aloft by their plumes and never touching the earth until death.

So, in conclusion, the titles I choose are connected to the images I paint and invite the viewer to see them as something good to think about as well as something to look at.