Dick Watkins
The Ishmael works
7 March - 4 April 2020

The Ishmael works

Ishmael is a fictional character in Herman Melville's Moby-Dick (1851). He is the only surviving crew member of the Pequod and the narrator of the book. Ishmael is only a minor participant in the action as the main protagonist is Captain Ahab. But unlike the monomaniacal Ahab, Ishmael uses the sea as a way of soothing his soul. He is at home on the sea, and enjoys the travels.

As the novel begins:

“Call me Ishmael. Some years ago--never mind how long precisely--having little or no money in my purse, and nothing particular to interest me on shore, I thought I would sail about a little and see the watery part of the world...Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul...and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people's hats off--then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can.”

Moby Dick was a much favoured book of the American Abstract Expressionists, the novel was revered for its embrace of the sublime. Grand Romantic themes of tragic violence, paranoia and a mutual penchant uncertain and indefinite imagery which is seemingly equivalent to the work produced by the abstract expressionists. In 1948, Barnett Newman wrote an essay titled “The Sublime is Now,” in which he asserts that America is where artists are finally achieving the sublime:

“Instead of making cathedrals out of Christ, man, or ‘life,’ we are making it out of ourselves, out of our own feelings.”

For them it was duty of the artist was to evoke strong authentic emotional reactions. Dick Watkins would agree.