Banana Improvisation - Robert Lohman, C. 1981

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Banana Improvisation*
Robert Lohman, c. 1981

Robert Lohman’s Banana Improvisation is a lively study in chromatic gesture, abstraction, and visual … Read more Banana Improvisation*
Robert Lohman, c. 1981

Robert Lohman’s Banana Improvisation is a lively study in chromatic gesture, abstraction, and visual rhythm. The repeated yellow crescent forms immediately suggest bananas, but Lohman does not treat the subject as still life or botanical observation. Instead, he converts the banana motif into a flexible formal device like an arc, a flourish, a directional marker, and a rhythmic unit that moves across the sheet like a joyful procession.

The composition is organized through a loose horizontal drive across the page. Forms appear to stride, swing, and bend from left to right, creating the sensation of animated movement rather than fixed arrangement. The yellow arcs serve as the dominant visual refrain, appearing in multiple registers: upright, suspended, curving downward, and sweeping outward. These forms hold the composition together while also destabilizing it, because they refuse to remain merely descriptive. They are bananas, but they are also gestures.

Lohman’s use of line is central to the work’s underpinnings of a study of movement and line. The dark linear marks do not simply outline the forms; they act as a kind of graphic scaffolding. They bend around color, interrupt it, and occasionally extend beyond it, suggesting an artist thinking through movement rather than enclosing objects. The drawing has a calligraphic quality, with lines functioning almost like handwriting or notation. This gives the work an improvisational structure. The image feels composed in the moment, yet it retains a clear internal logic of an artist exploring the intersection between movement and line.

Color operates with striking economy. The palette is dominated by yellow, pink, gray, black, and pale tones, with the yellow providing warmth and visual immediacy. Pink passages soften the composition and introduce a more playful, fleshy, almost theatrical counterpoint. Gray and black marks provide necessary grounding. Without them, the piece might become lost. Instead, the darker tones give the work structure, shadow, and a slightly rigid edge.

The work’s humor is important. Banana Improvisation is not solemn abstraction. It has wit, bounce, and a sense of visual play. Yet the humor does not make the piece minor. Lohman uses a humble, almost absurd subject as a vehicle for formal experimentation. The banana becomes a modernist shape that is curved, portable, instantly recognizable, and capable of repetition. In this sense, the work participates in a broader twentieth-century tendency to transform ordinary objects into abstract signs.

There is also a faint figural quality in the composition. Several forms suggest legs, feet, torsos, or theatrical poses. The image seems to hover between still life, dance, cartoon, and musical notation. That instability is part of its charm. Lohman allows the viewer to recognize fragments without demanding a single fixed reading. The composition remains open, playful, and intentionally unresolved.

-Jonathan Flike

*The title of this work was assigned by Visard Gallery.

About the Artist
Robert Lohman was an American artist associated with Indiana modernism, recognized as both a sculptor and painter. The National Gallery of Art identifies Lohman as an American artist, 1919–2001, and holds examples of his 1966 bronze medallic work created with the Medallic Art Company in its collection.

Lohman worked across a wide range of media, including watercolor, oil, wood, plaster, ceramics, and bronze. Biographical sources identify him as a portrait and figure sculptor as well as a painter, with formal study at the John Herron Art Institute, Cranbrook, and Yale. He assisted the noted sculptor Carl Milles at Cranbrook Academy and later served as Director of Fine Arts at Cranbrook from 1947 to 1949. Lohman also taught at Washington University in St. Louis and the Indianapolis Art League, where he remained connected to art education and regional modernist practice.

His work often moves between figuration and abstraction, reflecting the eye of a sculptor and the freedom of a modernist draftsman.

Underrepresented Artist Information
Robert Lohman may also be understood within the broader history of underrepresented LGBT artists in the American Midwest. Documentary records connect him closely with Jerrol T. Davis of Indianapolis, who served as Secretary-Treasurer of Robert Lohman, Inc.; Davis’s obituary confirms his role in Lohman’s company, and later memorial sources identify him as Lohman’s spouse. While historical records from this period often leave same-sex relationships only partially documented, the available evidence points to a significant personal and professional partnership that adds important context to Lohman’s life and legacy. See less