Pierre Bonnard (French, 1867-1947) / White Interior / Oil on canvas / 109.5 x 155.8 cm 

So your editor awoke this morning and was going through that google reader thing, because really what else is there to do on a Saturday morning, and there was this fancy picture by french that degenerate artist with a trembling eyeball and wet dog shaker Pierre Bonnard, and well he’s got those pretty colourses so I stared blankly at the screen for a few minutes and was like, ok what the hell he did put that cadmium yellow on the wall and in the woman’s hair so he must be crazy and that chair on the left really keeps the white wall from flying out of the canvas which means he probably knew what he was doing unlike some painters I know. Plus his composition is like a how to on how to divide up the space to create a firm foundation on which to smear all those pretty colourses. Anyway, that ultra-reactionary institution for rich old people, tourists, and your editor (shhhh….i’m that creepy guy in the corner with sloppy cloths and a sketch book watching everybody while I steal from the picturses), the Metropolitan Museum is putting on a show of these pretty pictures in january because they think it’s better for you to come and pay them to stare at the light of these pretty colourses in your track suit amidst the smell of old people than to sit at home popping the xanax in front of your sun-lamp trying to get over your mid-winter depression because Madoff stole all your precious monies because you didn’t give it to the Met to name a wing after you. Anyway, here’s some stuff from the fancy press release written by a curator in a brooch or bowtie since that’s always what they wear over there otherwise you can’t get in the door, unless of course your in a nylon track suit and speak some fancy language that isn’t ENGLISH…wait how come the let me in???

More modern than is commonly recognized, the late work of Pierre Bonnard is remarkable for the artist’s individualistic approach to color, light, perspective, and composition—particularly as seen in his interiors and still lifes [ie, he didn't know what he was doing, if only he followed the book then we wouldn't have to put on this show for you people who like to smoke the ganga and look at colour, and we could go back to looking a fat naked pasty white people].

Bonnard’s late interiors and still lifes explore a multitude of nuanced color relationships among glowing yellows, violets, reds, oranges, greens, and whites

Although Bonnard’s subjects were close at hand, he rarely painted directly from life, relying instead on pencil drawings sketched rapidly in little diaries. Four of the artist’s diaries from his years at Le Cannet will be loaned by the Bibliothèque national de France, Paris. The diary notations lay out idiosyncratic marks as reminders of color, tone, intensity, and contrast. These shorthand sketches were critical to the genesis of large-scale paintings, which Bonnard developed slowly, through a process of continual editing and revision. He often worked on several paintings at once, tacking the unstretched canvases to his studio wall in order to allow for alteration of the periphery of the painting and its overall proportions. In creating his paintings, the artist deferred to the memory of perception. His interest lay in exploring how diverse objects interrelate within a pictorial field, rather than dwelling on the literalness of any object or figure.

I recently picked up Colours by David Batchelor and this morning I was reading a piece by Charles Blanc written in 1867. He comes from a 19th century background that favours drawing/draughtsman/form over colour/colourists. What’s funny is that while the overall implication of his writting is that pure chiaroscuro drawing is the pinnacle of art, he says some things that are right on about colour, and, in my opinion undermine his assumptions . Here are a few excerpts:

…colour is mobile, vague, intangible element, while form, on the contrary, is precise, limited, palpable and constant…

Thus colourists can charm us by means that science has discovered. But the taste for colour, when it predominates absolutely, costs many sacrifices; often it turns the mind from its course, changes the sentiment, swallows up the thought. The impassioned colourist invents his [her] form for his colour, everything is subordinated to the brilliancy of his [her] tints. Not onlythe drawing bends to it, but the composition is dominated, restrained, forced by the colour.

 The predominance of colour at the expense of drawing is a usurpation of the relative over the absolute, of fleeting appearance over permanent form…

Frank O’Cain who I studied with at the Art Students League talks about this idea of colour as light. As he likes to say,

The palette is chosen to create an effect of light, to be able to develop a spatial reality, and also to penetrate through the surface a painter’s needs and rejections. Some colors will be likeable, and others distasteful. Through this preparation, a painter has chosen to have color reflect light, light to relate to color, and energy to take form in shape. Wat it comes down to is this: every color you choose responds to another color so that it creates light for the eye. We react to both the responses of the colors to each other as well as to the surface, to light as it bounces off color. {Read More…}

Anyway, I’ve been thinking a lot about colour lately and expecially this idea of colour as light. I don’t have any profound insights or revelations to share, but I have been thinking about how we develop our colour sense and how our experiences shapes our responses and uses of colour. In my own case I began to think about the effect of staring at boxes of light (computers and teevee screens) for hours everyday for 3 decades has had an effect on my colour sense. In particular, I have been thinking about the Chuck Jones animations I used to watch as a kid and how flat transparent colour on celluloid illuminated, filmed, projected and then transmitted and projected again through the pixels of a teevee influences my  choices of colour as a painter. I don’t have any conclusions, but it is interesting to think about. Anyway, a quick google search revealed all these great Tom & Jerry and Bugs Bunny stills, which among other things (content & composition), are full of rich colours.

Chen Shen Ping / Green River Flowing Through the Mountains / 15″ x 19″  [21" x 25" with silk brocade mat] 39 cm x 48 cm  [55 cm x 64 cm with silk brocade mat] / chinesepaintings.com

I’m intrigued by his use of colour and how the drawing sets up the structure that holds the loose colour in the composition. I definitely see the influence of Zhang Daqian At this point, I think the tightness of the drawn elements competes for attention with the loose colour elements. It sets up a strong contrast, which may be the point, a sort of restrained exuberance. Personally I’d like to see it pushed further, with the tight elements much more deconstructed as well as on a much larger scale. I think the danger is that it can become formulaic very quickly, I want to know what happens next.

Zhang Daqian / Peach Blossom Spring / 1983 / hanging scroll, ink and color on paper / 209.1 x 92.4 cm / Cemac Ltd.

Chang Dai-chien continued to develop his remarkable range of techniques after he left China in 1949. One particularly important breakthrough was his development, in the 1960s, of a bold technique of splashing ink and color on his paper. Although the results might seem to resemble action painting, Chang maintained throughout his life that his technique was Chinese, having been described in Tang dynasty texts on painting. He did not, thus, use the splashed ink technique in a purely abstract manner, but only to suggest real or imaginary landscapes. In this superb painting of his final years, his blue-and-green pigment is used to suggest a mythical paradise, the Peach Blossom Spring, where human discord was unknown. Although he never returned to mainland China, his work was admired and emulated by younger artists who came to know it after the Cultural Revolution. {Read More…}

Khaled Al-Saai / The Sea: Poem by Mahmoud Darwish / watercolour, aquarell on paper / 2006 / Kashya Hildebrand

Al Saai works in an astonishing range of styles, from decorous classical modes, which he often uses for quotations from poetry, to radically inventive compositions, in which lettering is fragmented into fantastical, almost pictorial compositions. The breathtaking beauty of his work makes it immediately accessible to all.

The Thulth style of calligraphy is the strongest of the Arabic calligraphy styes, created during the Abbasid period in the 9th century in Baghdad.  Most of the letters in this style are the shape of a triangle at the top and the vowels are added as decoration.

The Diwany Jalii and the Thulth styles are the most decorative. They are influenced by three Islamic schools of calligraphy (Arabic, Persian and Ottoman).  Diwany evolved during the Ottoman Era (1670 to 1700). {Read More…}

 Annabel Emson / After Dark / oil on canvas / 2008 / 214 x 244 cm / Wyer Gallery

 Teetering on the edge of abstraction and representation, Emson’s paintings reflect the patterns that arise naturally in the structure of the world around us. However, despite drawing inspiration from both the natural and manmade environment, she does not depict recognizable landscapes in existence somewhere but, working intuitively and spontaneously from memory, alludes to some less tangible or fleeting place or space, rooted in memory perhaps but which has become something other, independent, self-determining and lawless.

Her paintings seem to reflect a joy taken in the physicality of painting as well as paint’s material possibilities. She plays with juxtaposition of colour, its temperature, intensity and emotional pitch; the manner and form of the application of paint and the part played by rhythm and sound, both in the process of painting itself and the form and structure of visual composition. This experimentation with the language and application of paint has lead to an ostensibly disparate note in a collection of canvases that differ in scale and style and where abstract works containing broad, energetic or gestural brushwork sit alongside others in which more considered figurative ideas have worked their way in alongside layers of abstraction to suggest a narrative or something more descriptive.

However diverse at times, the works are linked to each other by an index of recurring motifs and images, referencing and building upon each other as part of an extended conversation. Reduced to their core, these are paintings about their process and each work a consequence of a new question that is understood most fully in its relation to its counterparts.{Read More…}

I know Kentaro from the Art Students League, definitely check out his upcoming exhibit at Local Project in Long Island City opening on Dec. 6th.

Kentaro Fujioka / Untitled / Kentaro Fujioka / Acrylic, paper and burlap on canvas / 56 by 50 inches / 2007  / kentarofujioka.com

In this series Colors in Destruction, I’m most interested in the tension between ‘Destruction’ and ‘Construction.’ Everything is impermanent. There is the effort I make in constructing something; there is also beauty in destroying it.

Beauty appears where there is a lot of energy, no matter whether it is from something negative or positive. I have discarded the idea that destruction is negative. In fact, the act of destruction is the main method of my working on this series. Destruction simply cuts through dimensions and time. It reveals the relationship between colors which have been applied in different times and contexts. It does destroy the relationship in the present composition, but it discovers other possibilities of existence.

In the process of my work, the act of ‘Destruction’ entails the act of ‘Construction’. I start my painting with stretching raw canvas on the stretcher, then I stain the canvas and prime it. After the base structure is made, I repeat the process of layering on the surface with paint, strips of wood, paper and fabric. The choice of the color and the order is carefully made, not so much by planning, but rather by intuitive selection after a long observation on the recorded images of the previous state. The stronger the wood or paper or fabric is applied on the canvas, the higher the tension between layers becomes, it makes the effect of the torn surface more interesting. After days or sometimes weeks of layering, I intuitively stop layering. (the number of layers depends on the process of each painting, usually 20 to 30.) Then I start tearing off. This is also an intuitive process. Some part of the layers is left, while most is removed. This act of tearing off is an essential part in the process. It reveals the layers underneath, exposing colors which have been applied previously in another composition. It makes the process far more complicated so the result would never be anything I expect. Occasionally I find that I have to get rid of the canvas entirely by completely destroying it. {Read More…}

Simone Lanzenstiel / O.T. / 2007 / Acrylic and spray paint on cotton / 200 cm x 230 cm  / Barbara Gross Galerie

From Art Knowledge News

The artist begins with imaginary and immediate elements, such as pavement, construction scaffolding, graffiti, or blotches of paint on the floor of her studio. This recourse to found markings is a breakaway move from the conventional means of painting.

Simone Lanzenstiel develops her painting as a series of actions on the canvas. She shakes, splashes, sprays, brushes, scrawls, and wipes – in an apparently accidental, fleeting manner. This creates free, open zones, light and soaring. In contrast, colors are varied and re-worked until they are finally condensed into painterly figures and powerful accents of color; this finely attuned balance lends rhythm to the work.

The artist prefers to work with acrylics and enamel sprays in predominantly cool, brilliant tones, such as blue, green, purple, and magenta. Each painting is specified by a precise color composition, dominated by white. White is used as ground and mask – it is a color and a non-color, passive and active. White simultaneously limits and intensifies the space in which all of the other colors are expressed. Strong and gentle color gradients cover the entire surface of the picture, only coming to an abrupt stop at the edges of the painting. Hence, the paintings seem to have been removed from a larger context, and yet they expand far into the space. {Read More…}

Simone Lanzenstiel’s work featured at Barbara Gross Galerie

Cecily Brown / Untitled (#38) / 2007 / Oil on linen / 12-1/2 x 17 inches (31.8 x 43.2 cm) / www.gagosian.com

A number of people have been asking lately why I haven’t posted anything recently. The answer is that I have been meaning to, but I’ve just been super busy and the blog has gotten the short end. Anyway….

I’ve been down to Gagosian a few times over the last couple of weeks to see the Cecily Brown show. The first time I went I was impressed with the work but something bothered me and I couldn’t figure out what it was. After going back and spending a good amount of time looking at the work and being in the space I realized the problem, the lighting in the gallery kills the drama of the paintings. It is just too bright in the gallery to really enter into the paintings. The drama of her paintings is in the swelling volumes and the internal character of the light she creates. The bright lighting of the gallery illuminates the dark areas, renders visible all the brush strokes, and the reflected light off the white walls of the gallery overwhelms the light areas of the canvas. The overall effect is to flatten the canvas into a collage of energetic brushstrokes with color.

This actually struck me when I was looking at some of the smaller canvases in the show. Looking at these works I could really see the connection to Rubens, Tintoretto, El Greco, both in the compositional structure and the swelling weightless forms hovering and suspended in space. I also began thinking about how those paintings were painted for candlelit cathedrals and castles. How the dim lighting of the space really elevated the drama of the darks and lights, allowing the swelling figures to really explode out of the canvas. When I turned around to look at the larger works in the show, especially the Sam Mere series, I really felt like I was missing something.

I’ve often read Cecily Brown’s work compared to De Kooning’s, and while they both engage in figurative abstraction, I think it will be interesting to examine their approaches over the next few days to see how differently they put paintings together. In the meantime, definitely check out the show.

Cecily Brown @ Gagosian, September 20 – October 25, 2008, 555 West 24th Street

Sharon Booma / Hindsight / 2007 / Mixed Media / 48 X 48 X 3 inches / Gallery Camino Real

Sharon Booma is an independent artist who works with several different media to create rich abstract compositions on paper and board. Her painting involves overlapping fields of lush color and dramatic surface texture, pencil incising and collage elements of mixed media add visual interest to the work.

Artist Statement

These paintings bring my impulses, intuition and deep emotional feelings to a more conscious level. Throughout there is a constant theme– an attempt to control and balance chaotic forces in our lives. With the rhythm of color and texture and repetition of forms, I seek to turn each piece into a visual symphony.

Sharon Booma, 2007