the color of my accent
I finally got up to Moma to see the Color Charts exhibition. The first thought I had when I walked in was how much our experience of color has been influenced by technology. Pixels. It’s as if artists have been reduced to pixels pushers in our use of color. Then it dawned on me that the rectangle (pixel) has become the primary gestalt in the last 60 years. The subtext of the show is definitely about rectangles, grids, and squares, or in the terms of the curator, charts.
What’s interesting is that the title of the show Color Charts: Reinventing Color 1950 to Today seems to imply that artists have been engaged in a radical project of color exploration or that our knowledge of color and the use of color has been greatly expanded. Actually I found the opposite to be the case. With a few exceptions, the artists in the show use color in a rather homogeneous and limited manner. But, I guess that’s the point standardization, mechanization, commercialization. For the most part color is the stuff for conceptual and perceptual games. The stuff of entertainment or decoration. The spice of consumption. An accent.
As a painter, the show reminded me of the importance of color exercises the need to develop and nurture color sensitivity, but that there is a limit to the exercises and that exercises are just that exercises and not works of art. The methods of Johannes Itten and Joseph Albers for the Bauhaus and that have now become standard fare at art schools are helpful in developing color sensitivity, but they are limited. Color cannot be studied in isolation. It is interdependent with our materials. The color of paper and its use in collage is different than the color of pigment and its use in paint. Or the color of pixels and their use in video. Color is a language, a language that great painters master. The use of color is a craft skill developed simultaneously with the other craft skills of painting. The pieces in the show helped stimulate my awareness of color, and when I left and wandered through the other galleries of Moma I felt blown away by the use of color by painters up until 1950. Matisse, Gorky, Mitchell, Diebenkorn, just to name a few. Much more diverse and much more sophisticated and much more sensitive. In their hands color is not just a concept, a game, or a decorative element, but the stuff painterly expression. They give color life and the color gives life to their paintings. Finally, and more importantly, we see that color comes in many shapes and forms, not just rectangles, squares, and grids. It is the language they speak, not just an accent.
Tags: minimalism, andy warhol, review, richard serra, entertainment art, conceptual artRelated posts
March 25, 2008 3 Comments
Why Paint Now? An Exhibition
Not abstract but it’s around the corner in my hood and its painting.
JERSEY CITY, NJ – Jersey City Museum asked Publisher and editor, Billy Miller to invite one of his favorite artists, painter Pia Dehne for INTRODUCING: Why Paint Now? The program will focus on the painting in the 21st-century and feature a discussion with the artists about her commitment to painting in the modern age of the Internet, multimedia and instant image-making. Pia Dehne studied with Markus Lüpertz at the Düsseldorf Art Academy.
About Pia Dehne: Influenced both by Classic German Modernism and the style of the Italian artist Tanino Liberatore’s comics, Dehne incorporates both famous and infamous ‘masterworks’ into her paintings, from Ingres’ Oriental Bathers to Queen’s Fat Bottomed Girls and Jimi Hendrix’s Electric Ladyland album art. Ms. Dehne’s painting process is as indebted to photography as it is to performance.
In her work, Dehne assembles live models into a tableaux vivant that are centered on pop imagery. Next, she photographs the tableaux. Finally, back in the studio, she makes a series paintings and drawings based on the photograph of the tableaux. Dehne says, “In the end I don’t really need the photograph anymore. It’s more like a crutch, a place to start. This combines with memory and I completely lose myself to the drawing. I see myself more like an abstract artist. I transform form and content, and try not to think. Otherwise, I would just show the photograph instead of the drawing.”
About Billy Miller: Billy Miller is an artist and writer. He has exhibited his work both nationally and abroad. Some of his exhibitions include P.S.1, John Connelly Presents, Visionaire, Kunstverein München, and Dietch Projects. He is also the editor and publisher of a number of independent publications, including the cult series Straight To Hell, a/k/a The Manhattan Review of Unnatural Acts. Pia and Billy at 58 Gallery: Why Paint Now? coincides with “THE OTHER SIDE,” a group exhibition at Jersey City’s 58 Gallery. The opening reception is Friday, April 11, 2008 at 7 pm. The show, curated by Billy Miller, features small works by Pia Dehne, as well as artists from New York, Brooklyn and New Jersey.
Founded in 1901, the Jersey City Museum is the major presenter of contemporary art serving the people of Jersey City, Hudson County and the region. The museum organizes many group and solo exhibitions every year, featuring works by culturally diverse, contemporary artists and from its 10,000-piece collection of regional significant art and historical objects. Through exhibitions, educational initiatives and programs, the museum welcomes over 25,000 visitors each year, including 11,000 school-aged children and youth. Jersey City Museum is located at 350 Montgomery Street at Monmouth in the Historic Downtown District of Jersey City, within walking distance of the Grove Street PATH and Jersey Avenue Light Rail stations. For more information, visit www.jerseycitymuseum.org or call 201-413-0303.
Tags: german art, museum exhibition, painting (general), Jersey City Museum, Pia DehneRelated posts
March 25, 2008 No Comments
fadhel al dabbagh
WILMINGTON, DE – The Delaware Art Museum presents Bridge of Hope: Iraqi/U.S. Art Initiative, an exhibition featuring approximately two-dozen works, mostly abstract, by nine Iraqi and nine American artists, on view March 29 – May 4, 2008. This exhibition is part of the Museum’s new Outlooks Exhibition Series and is guest curated by Rosemary Lane of Delaware , Coordinator of the International Cultural Arts Network (ICAN).
Lane chose the American artwork, and the Iraqi works were chosen by Lamia Talebani of Baghdad, a founding member of ICAN and an Iraqi artist. Most of the Iraqi works were brought to US through Jordan by Claudia Lefko of Massachusetts , an ICAN founding member.
ICAN grew out of the 2006 Global Peace Initiative of Women Iraq-US Summit : Creating a Common Dialogue in New York City . This organization has initiated working relationships and collaborations between Iraqi and American artists. The purpose of ICAN is to engender hope, transcend barriers, and foster goodwill between our countries.
Exhibitions in this series are created by residents and organizations of our surrounding area, contributing to the Museum’s mission of providing an inclusive and essential community resource.
Visit The Delaware Art Museum at : www.delart.org/
Tags: museum exhibition, painting (general)Related posts
March 25, 2008 No Comments
But where’s the bicycle?
Willem de Kooning (1904-1997), Woman and Bicycle, 1952-53, Oil on canvas, 76 1/2 x 49 in. (194.3 x 124.5 cm)
© 2000 Willem de Kooning Revocable Trust/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.
www.whitney.org
I’ve been thinking about Woman and Bicycle by Willem De Kooning for the past couple of days know, specifically about abstract painting prodding us as viewers to move beyond literal visual experience. I first saw this painting about a year ago at the Whitney Museum during the exhibition Picasso and American Art. I was standing in front of the painting, which is quite big about six feet high, alternating between getting up close and examining the surface with its layers and layers of oil paint, and stepping back to view the canvas as a whole. As I’m moving in to examine a particularly interesting passage slapped on and scrapped with a spackle knife, this older gentleman shoulders me out of the way and asks, “Where is the bicycle? Do you see the bicycle? I can’t see the bicycle! Can you show me the bicycle?” Annoyed I point to areas of the canvas and say here’s the seat, here are the handle bars, there’s one wheel and there’s the other. Frustrated, he said, “I still don’t see it!” and frumped away leaving me in peace to enjoy the painting, to picture in my mind a woman cruising on a bicycle out in East Hampton of Montauk on the east end of Long Island, warm summer breeze blowing through the fields, to forget the Whitney Museum on a dreary winter day in New York City crowded with people fawning over Picasso, Jasper Johns and Jackson Pollock.
Now looking at the painting we could do a formal analysis and talk about the overlapping planes of color and about how De Kooning compresses the space of the painting and attaches everything to the surface or about how the woman appears to be hanging from the top of the canvas, interesting issues for painters. Or we could psychoanalyze De Kooning and talk about sexual desire, anger and the fierce power of his women paintings. Either way they all seem to miss the point.
The truth is when you look at Woman and Bicycle, you don’t see a woman and a bicycle and you’re not supposed to. This isn’t a photograph or a silent film of a woman riding a bicycle. It’s a painting. The title is only a clue to the inspiration for the painting, a woman riding a bicycle, which was probably something De Kooning say fairly often out in East Hampton. But it captured his imagination, for whatever reason, and the painting is trying to capture ours as well. She beckons us to imagine a woman riding a bicycle on a sunny summer day. To picture it in our minds. To be the woman riding the bicycle. To feel the breeze. The warm sun. To smell the salty air or the cow shit, or the car exhaust, where ever we happen to be riding our bike. When the painting has inspired our imaginations to be the woman on the bicycle the we can see the woman on the bicycle, we see the painting. That is the beauty of abstract painting.
Tags: museum exhibition, gordon fraser, abstraction, abstract painting, whitney museumRelated posts
March 21, 2008 1 Comment