Tom Duncan:
A Retrospective - The Art of War and Peace
October 9- November 30, 2002.
by : Jenifer Borum
 

Tom Duncan's autobiographical, diorama-like assemblages have
long inhabited the borderland of the mainstream New York art
world where he has been patiently exhibiting since the early
1970's.  The context for his reception changed dramatically, with 
his strong presence in AVAM's 'The Art of War and Peace' (2000-
2001).  Although he attended art classes at Art Student's League
and The National Academy of Design School of Fine Arts, his work
is decidedly nonacademic, and resonates with autodidactic
ingenuity.

Born in Shotts, Scotland, in 1939, Duncan grew up in a world
marked by the unpredictability of war, and the bulk of his oeuvre
consists of his unique brand of sculptural memoir wherein violent
childhood memories are not so much revisited but literally
reenacted and exorcised in a visual language that blends
childrens' toys, popular culture, Catholic altars, and installation art. 
With The Brandy Strafing  (1991) Duncan reenacts an event in
which he and his mother were nearly killed by a Nazi pilot, literally
freezing this moment in time and enshrining it with symbols  - such
as an idealized Scottish country house and family-inspired shrines
- that serve less to tell a story then to evoke protective forces. 
TheV-2 Rocket that Didn't Explode (1989) is another mixed media
work that depicts an imagined brush with death in which the young
Duncan and his brother watch a rocket crash through their roof but
remain miraculously unharmed.  The most impressive of his war-
related works is 1939-War Toy for a German Child-1945, a
minutely detailed diorama that employs black humor to imagine a
replica of a concentration camp as child's play.  What makes
Duncan so unique is his ability to inhabit the world of the child as
the adult through his enterprise of art-as-serious-play.

Other works recount Duncan's move to America in 1947, and his
love and fascination with things American, especially evidenced in
his tour-de-force Dedicated to Coney Island  (1984-2002), a
massive, fantastical, celebratory replica of Coney Island, complete
with moving rides, as well as few rather dark, incongruous
elements, including a memorial for the World Trade Center.
 
Perhaps the most provocative components of this retrospective
were several wonderfully witty works in which the artist has
allowed himself to explore and express a subtly skewed brand of
sexual curiosity.  Here Duncan plays the Catholic school truant,
cheekily dressing and undressing nuns, nurses, and Nazi guards. 
The simplest yet most revealing of these is The Blushing Nun 
(1994), a mixed media altarpiece depicting himself as a
schoolboy, possessed of x-ray vision, viewing a nun in lingerie. 
Here the artist has cleverly employed the resonance of the
Catholic altar to condone and expiate a forgivable sin.

Duncan's dalliance in the halls of the mainstream Academy does
not compromise the self- taught brilliance that makes his work.  In
this sense, his homage to D.I.Y. artmaking in Aunt Meg's Gift for
Tommy  (1996) - in which Aunt Meg shows Tommy how to fashion
miniature chalices out of chocolate wrappers - is as apt an art
education resume as his official, printed cirriculum vitae.  Duncan
belongs in both insider and outsider contexts, and his work, like
that of so many emerging middle ground artists, renders this
distinction superfluous.