Steven LaRose, Relativity, 2009Oil on wood, 7.5 x 7 inches
Sunday, May 31, 2009
Friday, May 29, 2009
Thursday, May 28, 2009
Tuesday, May 26, 2009
Sunday, May 24, 2009
Finding
Steven LaRose, Prototypical Memory, 2009Oil on wood, 7 x 7.5 inches
(Abstract Art) In Steven LaRose's newest small scale paintings, form, color and line create compositions which exist with a degree of independence from visual references in the world. And yet, these same paintings simultaneously conjure a profusion of optical allusions. These allusions are not the same as Western art's (from the Renaissance up to the middle of the 19th century) logic of perspective and its attempt to reproduce an illusion of visible reality. These paintings are not the total abstaction of geometric abstaction which bear no trace of any reference to anything recognizable (aside from being a painted surface). This is not what Steven LaRose believes when he paints. In fact, quite the opposite. His most succesfull paintings evoke multiple and layered references to things recognizable. Could they be Lyrical Abstractons? Or, are they a form of Surrealism?
Wednesday, May 20, 2009
An undirected movement between poles of disintegration and imaginative flight
Martin Barre, 60-T-18, 1960Oil on canvas, 47.5"H x 44"W
Mary Addison Hackett, Valdosta 41, 2008oil, spraypaint on canvas
28” x 22”
(One corner Ma) Ma Yuan, Egrets on a Snowy BankSung dynasty
hanging scroll/ink and light color on silk
60.0 x 38.0cm
Larva of a water beetle.(Post title from page 156 of February 2009 Artforum article A Hidden Reserve by Achim Hochdörfer)
Tuesday, May 19, 2009
Phantasms
I am almost 46 years old and I am making the first abstract paintings of my life.
SOUND EFFECT: (aaaaannk)
As I glance at the two dozen small paintings on my studio wall I think, "Well. . . they are almost abstract." That is to say, I still see stuff in them. In fact, the paintings are positively percolating with stuff. Which makes me wonder, "If I see stuff congealing, is it still abstract?"
Hmm. What is it that I'm doing? Why am I doing it? And why haven't I stopped?
My previous post, which was simply a cut'n'paste of a Sharon Butler blog entry, has got me thinking. Sharon's words come serendipitously connected to a time that I have two dozen small paintings hanging on my studio wall. Two dozen intimate moments of alienation and authenticity. And it is not just me. Mary Addison Hackett recently posted her own set of questions in response to Madame Butler's posting as follows:
-What defines a conceptual practice?
-What does it mean to be accessible?
-How do you define current discourse without being exclusive?
-What do you think the status of painting is today?
All this trauma over oil on jute:
Louise FishmanGORGEOUS GREEN 2008
Oil on jute
24 1/4 x 32 inches
And then CAP's questions in the comments regarding " feminine artistic expression" got me sidetracked further as I began looking at Joan Snyder's work:
More info about Joan can be found at a sweet post at a blog called diana:muse, as well as at an interview over at the Brooklyn Rail blog.I can't speak for feminists. duh. I don't even think about gender when I look at paintings. Shit, I don't look at country, era, or social economic class when I look at paintings. I still believe in something that lasts beyond me. Something that isn't a brand. Something (unfortunately) that doesn't pay the bills, isn't hip, trendy, and, get this, still not reproducible on a mass scale. Music may have loads of virtues, but paintings are one of a kind.
I like paintings that ping pong between literalism and transcendence. Achim Hochdorfer describes it well when talking about Joan Mitchell's paintings (like the one above), "each brushstroke is individualised, an element to be observed or enjoyed for its own sake. Nevertheless, each stroke joins into relation with others; syntactic connections and mental images emerge, which eventually dissolve again in the chaos of lines, impelling the eye to begin searching anew" (Artforum, February 2009 page 154).No easy essay answers tonight. The questions outweigh the answers at this point. The whole blog post is simply to reinforce my own practice anyway.
Monday, May 18, 2009
Sunday, May 17, 2009
I was wondering about this
Louise Fishman
by Sharon L. ButlerCheim & Read March 26 – May 2, 2009
In stark counterpoint to the New Museum’s wryly titled Younger Than Jesus show featuring artists under 33 years old, Cheim & Read is exhibiting the Abstract Expressionist paintings of seventy-year-old Louise Fishman, an artist who has been dedicated exclusively to painting for over fifty years. Critics usually address the materiality, the densely layered paint, and the overall toughness of her canvases, noting how Fishman’s non-mimetic imagery emerges through the physical act of painting. Her tenacious approach to art practice (paint, scrape down, paint, scrape down, paint…) is certainly labor-intensive in an old-fashioned way that evokes admiration for her determined endeavor. She has ignored aesthetic wanderlust, postmodern doubt, and post-postmodern theory in favor of a singularly rigorous studio practice. Unlike the work of many younger artists, Fishman’s paintings don’t hinge on clever ideas or strategic theoretical constructs. Rather, she finds meaning in the physical process of making the art itself—a disposition that lends itself to exhaustive depth rather than expansive breadth.
Louise Fishman “All Night and All Day” (2009). Oil on canvas, 66 × 57 inches. Courtesy of Cheim & Read.The Fishman exhibition comprises three big rooms full of large-scale paintings. They feature dark, clotty passages of dull, textured paint pulled across the expanses, some with a final topcoat of twisty, truncated strokes combed and swept across the pocky surfaces. In Fishman’s work, Gerhard Richter’s 1980s squeegeed abstractions meet Willem de Kooning’s 1950s action paintings. Fishman’s show at Cheim & Read three years ago also featured broad horizontal and vertical brush strokes, but they were more clearly aligned with a loose, grid-like structure; the colors were lighter and less abrasive. In the new work, the lattice-like openings of the notional grid seem to have been filled in like potholes on a badly worn, weather-beaten highway. The contrast is obvious and jarring. The denser, more caustic, and ostensibly unlikable nature of her new paintings suggests that Fishman, like most sentient beings, may have developed a darker view of the world over the past few years.
Yet it is only the emotional and vaguely political aspects of her work that have varied appreciably over the course of a career. Except for a brief exploration of different approaches in the 60s and early 70s, when Fishman and her feminist cohort brazenly undertook to define a new grammar of feminine artistic expression, she has mined the same Abstract Expressionist vein for upwards of forty years. Fishman’s narrow-gauged though prodigious output demonstrates that she, like many other artists of her generation (Brice Marden, Robert Mangold, Bill Jensen, Pat Steir, Robert Ryman), is uninterested in extravagant experimentation with concept, approach, or materiality. Indeed, when Fishman started painting, lifelong concentration on a single medium and prolificacy were hallmarks of the great artist. Her commitment to, and mastery of, one medium is still undeniably admirable, her replete exploration of technique fascinating in its resolute intensity.
Nevertheless, Fishman’s paintings are out of sync with current discourse. Gallery-goers and museum visitors are accustomed to seeing a variety of objects rather than so many similar canvases—unless the artist is making, say, a cynical statement about repetition, like Josh Smith’s recent show at Luhring Augustine. Instead, audiences are more familiar with and engaged by multi-tasking artists who move fluidly between media, and for whom “pluralistic” describes not just contemporary art discourse but also their own individual practices. Such aesthetic preferences seem not so much normatively better or worse than those of Fishman’s generation, but simply the inevitable product of a changed world. Now, as information of all kinds has rapidly proliferated, artists employ a wider range of media to quickly process practically unlimited aesthetic and conceptual triggers. Inexorably, then, the circumstances of post-modern life have driven the contemporary artist to a decentralized practice that surveys rather than dissects or plumbs. That reality makes Louise Fishman’s art more diffident and less accessible. At the same time, her work harks wistfully and faithfully back to a time when a painter’s canvas could embody her world.
About the Author
Sharon L. Butler is a painter and associate professor of Visual Arts at Eastern Connecticut State University. She maintains an art blog, Two Coats of Paint, at www.twocoatsofpaint.com.
Saturday, May 16, 2009
Tuesday, May 12, 2009
Selectively silences that which keeps us silent. Finding the courage to create something new, the brain surprises us with an expression of ourselves.
Chris (who I can't seem to link to at the moment) made a recent comment: "It's like, when you're listening to jazz and one of the guys goes into this extended solo that shows his complete mastery of his instrument and it's so transcendentally great all you can do is say damn. Damn damn damn!"
And finally Mary Addison pointed me towards a little essay at Seed Magazine titled Creation on Command What We Know / by Jonah Lehrer / May 6, 2009 From Jackson Pollock to John Coltrane — how creativity springs from a choreographed set of mental events.
Saturday, May 09, 2009
Experimentally manipulating with optical tweezers
Steven LaRose, Maximum Tinkering, 2009Oil on wood, 7.5 x 7 inches
Emblems of their character and spirit.
Background from the Jungle Book via the blog Animation Backgrounds.
Scholar by a Waterfall, Southern Song dynasty (1127–1279), late 12th–early 13th centuryMa Yuan (Chinese, active ca. 1190–1225)
Album leaf: ink and color on silk
Thursday, May 07, 2009
Tuesday, May 05, 2009
Monday, May 04, 2009
Nothing Rises Higher Than Its Source
Steven LaRose, Production Plant, 2009Oil on wood, 7.5 x 7 inches
Sunday, May 03, 2009
Friday, May 01, 2009
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