Judith Godwin Early Abstractions
September 3, 2008 – January 4, 2009, Tobin Theatre Arts Gallery, Brown Gallery, www.mcnayart.org

The earliest paintings in the show resemble cell structures, with graphic black lines defining the interlocking forms within a matrix of colors that seem to refer to cubism. Another early work, “Nucleus IV,” contains references to the nude figure. “Male Study” and “Woman” are more complex arrangements that resemble early de Kooning. But more neutral space became a key part of her style when she began to experiment with pours and stains, such as “Ode to Kenzo,” which introduces an element of Asian minimalism.

Gradually, her style becomes looser, more painterly and more dramatic. “Purple Mountain” has a peak punching through the top of the picture plane, with the landscape defined by broad, dark brushstrokes. “Night” and “Blue Storm” use dark blues and blacks with accents of gold and brown to suggest the fierce energy of nature. “Black Cross” features a soaring black cross with a broken arm.

A few of the strongest works deal more with psychological states, such as “Longing.” More horizontal paintings with dramatic dark blotches against a white background such as “Into the Depth” and “Maze” seem to be maps of the artist’s subconscious, with dark, violent emotions pushing and pulling against a curtain of light. In these later paintings, Godwin pared down color and emphasized dramatic brush marks.

However, as Sims explains in his essay, while Godwin’s early work seemed to avoid anything that can be described as feminine, her more recent work has more womanly touches — introducing collage elements, such as black sequins and ribbons set into the pigments, and using rounder, more organic shapes. She also uses lighter colors. {Read More…}

A vivid biomorphic style and uniquely tragic personal history define Arshile Gorky as a major figure in twentieth-century modernism. While often classified as late Surrealism or as a precursor of Abstract Expressionism, his emotionally charged abstract style holds a distinct place among the explorations of the avant-garde.

Born in Armenia, Gorky emigrated to the United States as teenager in 1920. He and his family left their native land under duress after the genocide and massive displacement of Armenians during the World War I. Gorky’s mother starved to death as a result of their forced march—later, her memory inspired a series of family portraits. Although the upheaval of his early life profoundly shaped his art, Gorky took pains to obscure his Armenian heritage. Born Vosdanig Manoog Adoian, the artist abandoned his given name for a more Russian-sounding pseudonym after coming to the United States. To perpetuate the deception, he even claimed to be a cousin of the writer Maxim Gorky. As a young man, Gorky studied at the New School of Design in Boston and, later, the Grand Central School of Art in New York, where he taught from 1925 to 1931.

In the 1920s and 1930s Gorky embarked on a self-directed effort to retrace the artistic revolutions of Cézanne and Picasso. He had relatively little interest in Analytic Cubism, but was particularly interested in Picasso’s flat, richly painted, and deeply colored Synthetic Cubist paintings of the 1920s. Gorky’s acquaintance with Synthetic Cubist work–specifically that by Picasso–came primarily through his familiarity with paintings in museums and in publications such as Cahiers d’Art, a leading periodical that featured reproductions of works by both Braque and Picasso.

During his first decade in the United States, Gorky befriended Stuart Davis and John Graham, two artists who were also pursuing Cubist motifs. Gorky, Graham, and Davis came to be known as the “three musketeers.” Graham became a particularly important influence on Gorky in the 1930s, providing Gorky with stylistic and intellectual material that would complement Gorky’s understanding of Cubism. Gorky also developed a close relationship with Willem de Kooning soon after the Dutch-born artist arrived in the United States in 1926, and he helped introduce him other artists working in New York.

In the mid to late 1930s, Gorky moved away from Cubism and toward the looser, more emotional style he would explore for the rest of his career. The Garden in Sochi series, created from 1936 to 1942, marked an important new direction for him, both artistically and personally. The series was inspired by the Gorky family’s garden in Khorkom, the Armenian village where Gorky was born and spent his early childhood. Biomorphic shapes reflect the strong influence of Joan Miró on the artist during this period. The colorful shapes scattered across the solid-colored ground are generally understood to contain symbolic references to Gorky’s life. These forms are rendered so abstract, however, that explicit narrative readings of these works are impossible.

Just as he reached artistic maturity in the mid-1940s, Gorky was beset by series of tragedies: a studio fire that resulted in the loss of much of his work, a diagnosis of throat cancer, a car crash, and the breakup of his second marriage. He committed suicide in 1948, still relatively unknown outside art world circles. By 1951, when the Whitney Museum of American Art mounted “Arshile Gorky: Memorial Exhibition,” Gorky’s stature as an important modernist painter was secure.

References
Herrera, Hayden. Arshile Gorky: His Life and Work. New York: Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 2003).

Rand, Harry. Arshile Gorky: The Implications of Symbols. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991).

© Copyright 2007 Hollis Taggart Galleries

Martin Golland / Blue Room / 2008 / oil on canvas / 43 x 36 in / © Martin Golland Courtesy of the Artist and Birch Libralto

Shapeshift
March 15th – April 19th
Opening reception Saturday March 15th 2–5 PM
Birch Libralato
www.birchlibralato.com

‘Shapeshift’ will be Martin Golland’s debut show with Birch Libralato. Golland’s paintings (drawn upon the traditions of Surrealism and Cubism) attempt to create engulfing architectural spaces that evoke sensation, discovery and disorientation. These slipshod spaces, emptied of figures, suggest the residue of nameless ritual activity.

Golland explains that, “My work is built from a collection of gestures and painting languages that respond to the histories of abstraction and representation. [It] depicts overlooked architectural spaces that trigger experiences of the uncanny. The scenes presented in my work are emptied of figures, leaving only traces of hidden activity. My intent is to mark out the slippage between elements of safety and fear that are revealed in these scenarios.

I use a selection of competing modes of painting that function at various degrees of abstraction and representation. I work with a sourced inventory of leftover modernist styles and my own photography as departure points for my painting. I treat the photograph as a departure point for an improvised fiction. As I translate these elements into painting, the materiality of the paint warps representation and asserts its own pictorial logic through competing ranges of gesture, texture and form.

The discreet transitions between the various zones of the painting act as a metaphor for the fractured phenomenon of perception. Bent perspective and idiosyncratic colour work at cross-purposes to one another but provide temporary cohesion. Despite their disjunctive make-up, the engulfing spaces create an occasion for immersive experience. Each work presents a heightened moment – an upsurge of the visible – where the relationship between what is represented and what is seen becomes problematic and the consistency of the world wavers. As a result, the fugitive shifts of space act as a metaphor for the mind’s sway between reverie and dread.”

Calabash, 2007, oil on linen, 88 x 56 inches. © Courtesy of the Artist and Forum Gallery.

Rutenberg describes the exhibition: “Palmetto is a reference to my native South Carolina, but these paintings are not really about the Carolina landscape. I chose the title because I believe in the power of art that has strong ties to a specific place but also has universal berth…. My imagination was formed along the coast of South Carolina however, my paintings are not about reliving an experience but the total possessing of it.”

Rutenberg also explains that this recent body of work is heavily influenced by Cubism, which he calls the “delicious conflict between naturalism and abstraction or… bending the laws of nature to fit the laws of art.” He describes Cubism as the process that seeks to reconcile the use of color to render form, versus color as form. This process is prominently and constantly at work in Rutenberg’s landscapes. [Read more...]

Forum Gallery, 745 Fifth Avenue at 57^th Street, Fifth Floor. The exhibition continues through Saturday April 19, 2008.
www.forumgallery.com