--James Breslin, Mark Rothko: A Biography, p.305
Mark Rothko and his contemporaries wanted their audience to
see that abstract paintings were not haphazard daubs of paint; they were about something. Rothko, William
Baziotes, David Hare and Robert Motherwell founded a school of art called “The
Subjects of the Artist” in 1948.
The school stressed the centrality of the subject, a difficult thing for a mid-twentieth century audience to understand.
Many viewers, at the time,
rejected abstract work as merely decorative. (Even now, pricey furniture catalogues offer abstract prints
for sale, together with rugs and sofas). But interior design was not the intent
of the New York School
Robert Motherwell, the most articulate of the group that
would come to be called the Abstract Expressionists, wrote that
An
artist’s ‘art’ is just his consciousness, developed slowly and painstakingly
with many
mistakes
en route .... Consciousness is not something that the painter’s audience can be
given;
it must be gained, as it is by the painter, from experience ....
Without
ethical consciousness, a painter is only a decorator.
Without
ethical consciousness, the audience is only sensual, one of aesthetes.
(from
“The Painter and the Audience,” The Collected Writings of
Robert Motherwell, p. 108)
Reception: Ethical or Aesthete?
With this in mind, we arrive at the work of Bobbie Burgers.
Her exhibition, “Suspended Between Sweetness and Sorrow,” has been at the Caldwell-Snyder
Gallery in St. Helena over the month of April (there was some discussion of
continuing the show for two more weeks) and Burgers will be showing in
Stockholm, Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver this year.
One audience for her work fits the description of
Motherwell’s rejected aesthete. The paintings are lush, luscious, all over
Pinterest and on designers’ and diarists’ blogs where delighted people repeat ...
how pretty it is. And it is
so beautiful. Here is “Dismantling #3,” a diptych in acrylic on canvas, for a
total size of 60” x 96,” from my iPhone (better resolution photographs may be
coming from the gallery):
And here is a closer view of the joined canvases:
Full bloom and big enough (both in actual size and in
conception) to surround the viewer with flowers at their peak. Burgers’ best
work is like this, I think: big enough to, as she says, feel “intimate,” and in
one range of colors so that the mind stays firmly in, say, whites, blues and
purples and can really take them in. (“Fewer elements,” Picasso told Francois
Gilot, ‘create s feeling of strength in reserve” – Life with Picasso). Derek Stefan, the very kind and knowledgeable gallery
attendant, says he always feels as if the flowers “move.” There is background action here... but
more on that in a minute. Stay in aesthete mode.
Consider an artist whose work is also beautiful: Mark
Rothko. When we look at his oversized paintings, particularly when we are in a
room filled with them, we may feel the softly delineating colors calm us, as
here in “Untitled, 1950-2 (from the Tate Modern):
I have noticed that people tend to tiptoe quietly around his
work. The rooms are dimly lit and very quiet. And yet we would, if we had been
trying to guess the artist’s intention, be wrong. Mark Rothko said his paintings
were “skins that are shed and hung on a wall” (Breslin’s biography, p. 306) and
spoke of the “tension” in his work (p. 281) and its exposure of his “despair”
(p. 286). Breslin’s biography delves sensitively and affectionately into
Rothko’s depression and its relevance to his art. Skin in the form of paint.
The painter Robert Motherwell mentioned something that
dovetails rather well here: “a remark of John Dewey’s ... sticks in my mind: We
tend to think that we end with our skins, but actually we are always
interpenetrating with reality .... That is where so many biographers fail. They
think that if the ... [painter] is miserable that accounts for their miserable
expression. It can be the exact opposite. In a depressed state an artist may
produce the most radiant things...” (interview with David Hayman, July 1988, The Collected Writings of Robert Motherwell,
ed. Stephanie Terenzio, pp. 286-7). And Rothko did just that. But we don’t see those shimmering
colors as skin that has been shed – at least not until we hear that’s what the
painter thought. (And then – is that too much information?)
Writers are not immune, either. In a 1988 interview, John
Cleese said “If I pick up a book by Bertrand Russell, I find that he is dealing
with insights and ideas that have got enormous
comic potential, far more than if I start flipping through S. J. Perelman.
Because, in a sense, I suppose as you get older you get more interested in the
‘Big Jokes.’ “ Probably not Russell’s plan. But humans tend to find comedy and beauty where we can, the painter
or writer’s intentions be damned.
Now to the second kind of art, the kind that attracts the
second, more serious kind of audience. When an artist’s work is considered too
beautiful, art critics begin to call the work unworthy. And sometimes art can simply be
greeting-card pretty. But the art that I love, that stays with me, offers a
deeper layer of emotion or meaning. It’s something more than just a pretty
face. It is what that New York
School wanted us to see: there is a subject, something for the audience to feel.
And whether or not a viewer stops in front of a painting and responds to that
subject? That is something that no artist can control. Either the depth is
there or it’s not, and the difference... well, it’s pretty subjective. I have
written about artist’s statements at length here, where artists try to help the
viewer see that “something is created there all by itself,” beyond what is, at
first, visible. (Here is one such entry:
http://artistinanaframe.blogspot.com/2011/11/artists-statement-viii-something-is.html
and there are others in the series. What can we say about our work that will
resonate with everyone?
This artist, Bobbie Burgers, states that “my florals have
moved from being portraits of flowers, to being portraits of time” (Foster
White Gallery site, Seattle, 2013 show). I am not quite sure that I agree. There have been many works of art about
time, and my favorite is a four-minute video, “Still Life,” by Sam Taylor-Wood.
She filmed a basket of fresh fruit
and then, using time-lapse photography, films its decays. Here are two stills
from the process:
So let’s look at Burgers’ work more closely. Here is “Dismantling 1” (again, iPhone):
Motherwell has said that, to meet his standards (and I
realize we don’t have to do that, but it is a good set of standards, so let’s
go with it for the moment), a painting must reveal what he calls the painter’s
“consciousness,” Part of the truth of a painting is not just the artist’s own expressed consciousness, but what she
has absorbed, knowingly or not, over a lifetime.
The principle influence that I see is Joan Mitchell. Here is
“Sunflower III, 1969,” (112 ½” x 78 ½”):
In an interview, Mitchell becomes positively inarticulate when
asked about her public reception:
In France, I’m an ‘American
gestural painter’ which is, the lyric on top of it, very pejorative ... and
here [in the States] I’m a ‘Frenchie’ ‘cause I have color and the decorative ... ‘ooh, ooh.’ (You can’t win). And on top of it all I’m a girl, a
woman, a female.... (from Joan Mitchell, a film
by Marion Cajori)
Joan Mitchell comes into Burgers’ work in many forms: in that "decorative" first impression, the sheer size and reach
of the paintings, in the lines etched here and there in the background, in the
long, clear drips. That same clustering
of blossoms into an upper corner of the canvas, this top-heavy lush world, immerses
the viewer... something about the weight of those colors as they spill off the
top of the painting surfaces seems to bring the viewer into the world more
fully than, say, a canvas completely filled with color. The spaces leave room
for us to come in.
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