David Becker Empty Every Night

David Becker painted a piece in 1998 titled Empty Every Night which depicts life and mortality of the human body. The elements of this image work together to provide a explanation of this piece to the audience. Becker uses specific techniques to show the chaos in human life. The meaning behind this image is not visible at first glance but requires some extra background knowledge. In this essay, I will frame a visual analysis for this piece and discuss how research effected my perception of David Becker and this work.
Empty Every Night is an oil on canvas paint that is 62 by 109 inches in size. The piece resides on the wall near John Wilde’s work in the Chazen Museum. The John Wilde paintings are surreal which give the audience an idea that

David Becker’s piece is supposed to be dreamlike as well. The idea brings curious thoughts to the viewer about what is occurring in Becker’s mind to paint such a gruesome work.
There are not a lot of horizontal or vertical lines in this piece but there are many diagonal lines. The piece takes place outdoors but there is a small building or house with an open window taking up the top, right quarter. Inside the window, there are a few figures and the lines making the frame of the window are diagonal as well. The top of the building is cut off but the bottom of the building creates the right half of the horizontal line, separating the ground with the top half of the image. The horizontal line is also diagonal to show depth and perspective. There is a total of eighteen human figures spread out throughout the image. In the center, a male figure stands with his eyes wide and mouth open holding a chain saw. Another figure to the left of the center is standing in a horse trough filled with fluid that covers the bottom half of his body. Behind this figure, there is a white sheeted table with a nude male figure laying on it. Another figure leans over him from behind the table with their arms and hands hovering above his head and torso. The edge of this long white table creates the left half of the diagonal, horizontal line of the entire piece. The left top corner of the image has figures that are smaller because they are further away from the viewer. At the bottom, right corner there is an oil waste can with a big round, triangular top. The top of this can is more visible than the sides of the can because it proves the viewer is looking down and out into the image.
Becker floods this image with many spread out figures and objects. This causes the viewers eyes to flow around the entire image to notice details. There is not a lot of empty space, but where there is, textures of the ground and walls are defined. Again, the image is outdoors and the perspective is deep. The figures are smaller on the top compared to the ones on the bottom to present that the top of the image is further away and the bottom of the image is closer to the audience.
David Becker paints this image very gloomy with colors. He mainly uses natural, earth tones in this image. All the figures have whiter skin tones and the ground consists of greens, browns, and greys. The male figure laying on the white sheet has a greyish tone to show bad health or death. The image feels cool and damp but orange and red tones jump in spots across the image. The oil waste can at the bottom right and the chainsaw in the center are the brightest of the orange and red colors. The figure standing in the horse trough wears a white apron with a contrasting red splatter on it. These colors remind the audience of what is inside the human body.
The direction that the light is coming from is not obvious. It is daytime in the image, but it’s difficult to estimate what time of day it is. The image isn’t very sunny, but it is brightest on the left and gets slightly darker to the right. There are faint shadows in front of a couple objects that tell the viewer the light is coming from straight above them.
David Becker painted many imperfections in this piece. He used lines that are not straight which showed the lack of stability. Moreover, the figures’ faces and postures are not very normal. They appear to have a bit of chaos going on. The darkness and dull colors are dreary. This image is difficult to interpret without seeing it in person nor knowing background information about the piece.
When I first saw this piece at the Chazen, I thought it looked like as though it was animated meaning I thought the figures were moving across the image. I was intrigued by how much it changed my mood within seconds. The gloomy colors add a forceful, dark emotion. The flow of the image is disturbing to me in a way that is very interesting. The discomfort kept me looking closer as the unfamiliar feeling the image gave me was new and exciting. After going through the whole spread of the image I began to feel as though I could hear creepy giggles from the male figure in the horse trough and revs of the chainsaw near the center of the image. I started to wonder who the figures were in the image before I noticed that none of them are having normal interactions with each other. Each interaction consists of only two people and these figures are on the very left of the image. All the contact between the four pairs of people look painful or uncomfortable. This makes the piece feel very chaotic and disorderly. In my opinion, the faces of the figures in this image didn’t look like a normal face I’d find in any crowd. They brought me back memories of watching a few characters from American Horror Story, the Freak Show season. Pepper and Meep from this show look similar to these characters which also added a nostalgic Halloween feeling for me. The bodies in the image look unhealthy or morbid and the nudeness is discomforting but hard to miss. Observing these things showed me how animal like people are. A lot of these figures are nude as though they are an animal in nature. Also, they are showing violent contacts among one another or they are portraying violence independently. It made me feel like it is normal for humans to have self-conflicts in life.
I did research and found recordings of an interview of David Becker done in 1996 by Warrington Colescott, Arthur Hove, and Barry Teicher.

It was for a University of Wisconsin-Madison Archives Oral History Project because David Becker was a Professor in the art Department at UW Madison. After listening to the interview, I learned information about Becker’s life that changed my perceptions of his Empty Every Night Piece. I discovered that he was originally very good at prints. Also, He mentions his students and activities in the interview. He discusses that some of his students he had in his past died of AIDS after being successful in the art world after college. This may have had an impact on Becker’s life and feelings towards death. Furthermore, he often made sexual art and had spoken with someone in psychiatry for five years to try to make sense of his sexual content. Then Becker and the interviewers discuss comparisons to John Wilde’s work and Becker’s work. They both went to Washington High School and they both add a new dimension feel to their works. I understand that Becker’s piece was placed near to John Wilde’s art work for a reason. The two had similar dream like realities for their art and had a similar education.

background.
Now that I had some background knowledge on the Becker’s character, I did further research on the Empty Every Night piece. I found a remix video of Russel Panczenko, the Empty Every Night piece. Panczenko points out the difference between Becker among other artists. In Empty Every Night, he is painting ugly parts in bodies unlike most artists painting beauty and perfection in bodies. He points out how the arthritis in the woman’s hands on the left of the image is noticeable. No violence is occurring as it is expected in the image. Also, the chainsaw in the center is not being pointed at anyone. This presents the human brain’s ideas about violent wishes but not following through with them. Or, this image is the very beginning or the aftermath of violent acts. Becker took a class to view cadavers for drawing art and this suggested his strong interest in death and mortality. David Becker told Panczenko that he looks to real models for a lot of his objects in art. For example, he used a gas can, a wrench, a horse trough but did not have an opportunity to go find people to models for his art. So, Becker placed two self-portraits in this piece, both in the building on the top right half of the image, and all the other people are made up from his mind.
I thought about Becker doing print work in his past, and it caused be to notice the vintage oil waste can has “EMPTY EVERY NIGHT” printed on it, like any vintage oil waste can. I found more of his talents within this piece. This made me think a lot about why he wanted to title this piece with that name. He may be thinking of this phrase in different ways that apply to his personal life. I thought of multiple explanations. Maybe he was thinking every night we dumped a little time away from our mortal life and we keep getting older. Or, we empty our minds every night in our sleep and let unhappy thoughts disappear before tomorrow. In contrast to my initial thoughts, these reasons for this title are what separate us as human beings from other animals. In my opinion, Becker presents this idea well by showing nude humans and imperfections dealing with conflicts and the actions we are capable of.
David Becker is very aware of the human body and what it holds. This image is very large and makes the viewer feel more intimately related to it as a human. It uses a lot of diagonal lines including the horizontal line and it demonstrates the chaos of human life. Also, the space feels cluttered and wild in the earthy colors which helps us remember that we are part of nature but we are different because we are very emotional and express conflicts in strange ways. Humans are also separated from other animals because we are very aware of mortality which can make us feel a little crazy sometimes.