Shirley Jaffe / Criss Cross Center / 1991

Shirley Jaffe / The Chinese Mountain / Tibor de Nagy Gallery

Shirley Jaffe / Champ de Mars / 2004-5 / oil on canvas / Courtesy Tibor de Nagy Gallery, New York

Seeing the Bruce Porter exhibition today got me thinking about Shirley Jaffe’s work. Ben La Rocco wrote a good review in the Brooklyn Rail back in November 2005 for the show of her work at Tibor De Nagy Gallery making this great statement about abstraction.

The process of abstracting from reality is a process of making things one’s own, of acknowledging that to paint anything at all is to represent it in one’s own terms. Jaffe’s painting grows from one of the early tributaries of this relatively new trend in western painting. It illustrates the way the hand and mind transform what the eye sees. Her sensibilities are contemporary while the esteem in which she holds her forbearers strengthens her painting and her tradition. [Read More…]