Mara Hoberman on Jacqueline de Jong

Within the late Nineteen Seventies, nonetheless in her thirties however having made a reputation for herself as editor of the Situationist Instances (1962–67) and as a Cobra-adjacent painter of suicides and automobile crashes, Jacqueline de Jong turned her consideration to a quite Pop topic: billiards. Created in Amsterdam, the eight work on view right here—a part of a sequence comprising greater than twenty “Billiards” work, 1976–79—featured completely different permutations of felted tables, shiny balls, wood cues, cubed chalk, and male gamers depicted from odd angles and intimate proximities.

The actual recreation featured in these work is carom billiards (or French billiards), performed with three balls on a pocketless desk. The artist’s curiosity on this sport was at the least partly semantic: Cheeky titles in a mixture of French, English, and Dutch underscored the auto- and homoerotic undertones of males taking part in with sticks and balls. The puns work greatest in French, as within the 1978 portray Tirer le diable par le queue, which interprets actually as “Pull the satan by the tail,” however whose that means is just like the English expression “Dwell hand to mouth.” There’s additionally a double entendre in French, as queue, the phrase for each “cue” and “tail,” is slang for “penis.” Utilizing distorting views and exaggerated foreshortening, de Jong made an already phallic piece of sports activities gear much more convincingly an extension of, or proxy for, male anatomy.

In Op de Queue nemen (Taking It on Its Queue), 1977, a participant seen from behind at shut vary bends on the waist to intention his extremely lengthy stick (seemingly longer than the desk) at considered one of three oversize balls. The portray focuses on the sport, however compared to different works on view, its mise-en-scène appeared comparatively wealthy. Right here, de Jong introduced in particulars of the room, together with a brass pendant mild, multicolored ground tiles, a tv set, a beer advert, and a small desk topped with an ashtray and a vase of flowers. Much less narrative (however arguably extra attention-grabbing) work hanging close by zoomed in on contorted palms and punctiliously positioned cues and balls (each nonetheless and in movement). The predominantly white-and-gray composition Gitane, coup de drive (Gitane, Take Over), 1978, is split horizontally by a cue supported by a pair of disembodied palms. Hovering above the cue, in opposition to the mysterious white background, an open cigarette pack (the model of the work’s title) proffers itself to the viewer. Maybe the portray is supposed to evoke the pool corridor’s smoky ambiance, however extra probably it’s a form of distillation. Right here and in different works on view, de Jong trimmed her topic to its naked necessities: balls, cue, desk, palms, cigarettes.

Equally abridged, Black Billiards, 1978, is a fowl’s-eye view of a black-felted desk with a cue and three balls. The composition is taken up by roughly half the billiard desk, whose wood rails—as seen on the left, prime, and proper sides of the composition—are sufficiently trompe l’oeil to be initially confused with the portray’s precise wood body. Whereas reveling in mimesis (the wooden grain in addition to shadows and reflections that make the desk and balls look three-dimensional), de Jong additionally courts flatness and abstraction. In opposition to the darkish background, the pink and white balls recall Wassily Kandinsky’s cosmic orbs and sure geometric abstractions by Kurt Schwitters. Describing a possible shot, de Jong painted faint white traces connecting all three balls. Just like the connection between stars and constellations, the realism of this portray is difficult by an overlaid Conceptual illustration. Along with offering de Jong with an erotic subtext, billiards—a recreation the place colourful types are pushed round on a flat floor with a wood implement—impressed a complete new painterly strategy. Not like most of de Jong’s different work, that are characterised by thick paint and expressionistic strokes, the “Billiards” sequence options clean surfaces and refined brushwork—a stylistic alternative that underscores the slickness and finesse described in these canvases.

— Mara Hoberman