"Pure Painting": pictures following Roberta Smith's eye, from Howard Hodgkin back to J.M.W. Turner

In a short review of Howard Hodgkin's show now at the Gagosian Gallery, Roberta Smith says that the work is "surprising" and "risky" (The New York Times, December 16, 2011, "Art In Review" section).  But there is only a black-and-white photograph of one work -- not the one that interested me as I read the short essay by Smith. She mentions one work by Hodgkins in the show and proceeds to link it back to the "pure painting" of previous generations of painters. So I looked up the chain she mentions. Smith traces a line, first, from Hodgkin's "Breakfast" at the Gagosian:

back to an 1880 work by Manet. Manet had painted a bunch of asparagus for a collector and had expected 800 francs.  The collector sent him 1000 francs, and Manet, delighted, sent him back a small single painted asparagus, saying, "there was one missing from your bunch."  Here is "Asparagus":

Smith calls these examples of "pure painting" and gives us other names, like J.M.W. Turner. My choice for him is this "Snowstorm," from 1842:

I love Turner ... his landscapes, seas and clouds are filled with movement and allow us to perceive the world through abstract methods -- long before there was such a thing as abstract work.  Smith also mentions Vuillard, someone whose work I do not know very well, so it was really fun for me to look through his work and find one that seemed to fit this "pure painting" idea. It is "Album," from 1895:

The figures meld into the wallpaper, creating a figure-ground movement, back and forth between the two.  This makes it possible to gaze at the work for long periods of time -- this would be a likely way to define "pure painting," I would guess.  Last, Roberta Smith mentions the Abstract Expressionists in this category, and of the first-generation painters, I would choose Kline as my "pure"-brushstroke man. Here is his "Untitled," from 1957:

 

This lovely small work is in the Philips Collection.  People often think of Kline's work as only black and white, so I am deliberately picking this one to show you a work you might not have seen before.

That ends my tracing-through of Roberta Smith's examples; I have "illustrated" the article she wrote, just to see what all these paintings would look like together.  Only two of the works, the Hodgkin and the Kline, are by painters considered to be fully abstract; the Turner, Manet and Vuillard are "abstract" only if we look at the brush-work.  What links these five pieces as "pure paintings" is exactly that -- the tracings of movement by the artist's hand.  (I have written about this "hors-catégorie" linking of Jasper Johns back to his "tribe" here on November 28).

"Pure painting" here is demonstrably the brushstroke. It makes us want to "see," to look harder,  to touch the original (which, of course, we can't do!!) or at least trace the line of the brush a few inches away in the air.  Sometimes seeing a painting "live" for the first time is something of a shock.  I had seen Picassos, for example, here and there in museums, but when I first went to the Picasso Museum in Paris, in 1989, seeing room after room of his work, the thing that surprised me was the relative flatness of his work, the absence, in so many cases, of obvious brushstrokes, and the way the painting tended to fade out towards its edges.  I think that surprise was one of the origins for my "Odalisque" works -- imagining a more lively, brushed, colorful background for Picasso's 1907 "Demoiselles d'Avignon."  Here is my "Les Demoiselles d'Avignon Pick Wildflowers" from 2010, where I take them out of Picasso's studio and give them some air:

 

So, as I am working now on the next few paintings in the series, I will be thinking of "pure painting."

2012 Collectors' Choice Juried Show at the Sylvia White Gallery in Ventura, California

The Sylvia White Gallery invited twenty-five of their collectors to select the works for this exhibition, which runs at the gallery from January 4-February 11, 2012.  500 artists submitted work, and I was one of 50 artists whose works were chosen.  "Titian's Venus of Urbino Comes Today to the Port of Oakland" was my painting -- it is part of my Odalisque series -- that was chosen.  I am very excited!!! Here is the painting that will be on show:

Hope you can see the show!

Artist's Statement IX: double vision and the Bowerbird

So, the second paragraph of my working draft (of my artist's statement) reads like this :

"My work may be strongest when it contains contradictions.  Van Gogh spoke about this: “it is as though one dreamed twice, in two registers … the simplest image is doubled: it is itself and something other than itself.”  I paint here and there, foreground and background. The work is still, but it often refers to movement. I have long described myself as an abstract landscape painter, but I am beginning to draw and paint faint odalisques in those shimmering landscapes.  I paint the world I know against the world I imagine."

I run everything I write by my husband, and he read this and said "can you elaborate?"

Okay, so here is a totally different run at the question:

"The 'Odalisque Series' that I am working on now begins with a base abstract work.  For two or three paintings, I began with a work that I had painted months before and re-painted over parts of the piece, or scraped down portions of paint or collage, diminishing but not erasing the original painting.  Other works have begun with a painting that was painted specifically as a base. The nudes --- taken from well-known works by Ingres, Van Gogh or Matisse, for example, or sketched from life -- are then outlined and painted over the base, lightly, usually in a pale white (or peach or blue).  Then the two parts of the work need to be reconciled, and that takes the most concentration, really.  I have found that I like the contradictions in this work: the figure and ground, the color and line, the figure and the abstract, the studio model (here) and a landscape foreign to her (there).  Van Gogh wrote that an interesting challenge for an artist might be: "if, while painting a cottage, he dreams of a nest. It is as though one dreamed twice, in two registers ... the simplest image is doubled: it is itself and something other than itself."  I am following his suggestion and taking it a step further by revealing both images in paint.  I am also taking Francis Bacon's idea of the moving figure, twisted and heavily colored, against a plain ground, and reversing it, so that the image is plain and the ground shimmers and moves.  This is, I think, a true measure of the way we see the world. I paint the world I know against the world I imagine, and this duality has a real power, I believe."

Better?

And, now, for the artist's statement of the Bowerbird. The male Bowerbird of New Guinea and Australia builds a bower to attract a mate; these are not little round nests, but elaborate structures, sometimes two parallel walls, sometimes curved branches that create a roof. The Bowerbird may "paint" the bower with mud, and he distributes shells, flowers, leaves, and any colored found objects around it. Some bowerbirds can also mimic sounds, like the speech of humans or the sounds of a waterfall.

Here is a photograph of a Satin Bowerbird's bower, from Barry Hatton:

And here is another photo, this from Matt Webster, of a Greater Bowerbird bower:

You should also take a look at a video by Josep del Hoyo, from October 2010, filmed in Lamington National Park in Queensland, Australia:

http://ibc.lynxeds.com/video/satin-bowerbird-ptilonorhynchus-violaceus/close-adult-male-painting-bower-using-beak-applying-

From Paris to the Poitou-Charentes to Watch Hill (Rhode Island): A Sense of Place

I just saw the film "My Best Friend" (in France, it is "Mon Meilleur Ami"), made in 2006. It is a well-written, sweet comedy about a successful (but rather cut-throat) art and antiques dealer who is challenged by his colleagues to produce a "real" best friend.  Like Woody Allen's "Midnight in Paris," this film has moments where the city is almost a character. Check out this perfect restaurant:

This still shows the actor Daniel Auteuil, pondering his (character's) friend-less state. And, later, the cinematography gives us a bridge over the Seine with the wonderful view and, here, amazing clouds:

And, at some point, alas, the movie ends.  I think that one of the reasons I paint landscapes, or place my odalisques into new landscapes, is to deal with this remembering, longing, the beginnings and endings of being in a "place."  I have been working on a painting that began as a muddy triptych, moved to an homage to Joan Mitchell, and now is, perhaps, the newest odalisque work. I have added the clouds and winds from a tempete, a huge storm that we lived through in December 1999 in the Poitou-Charentes:

The Brushed Circle and The Nude

We visited friends in Guerneville over the weekend; we had a wonderful time and, on the way home, we visited artists in Graton, Sebastopol and Santa Rosa as part of Sonoma County Arts Council's ARTrails open studios.  Our favorite artist, whose work is really stunning, was Mario Uribe, whose studio is in Santa Rosa.  Uribe works with Japanese characters (kanji) and papers and base layers of painting, and then overlays a circle, the Zen symbol enso, painted with brushes of all sizes, like these:

His circles? Amazing. Here is a photograph of a postcard of "Red Enso with Kanji," from 2010:

The red in the original is deeper ... but you see why we thought the work so striking!

I am thinking that the "Odalisque Series" that I am working on will be, for me, like the Uribe circles, a drawing or painting over a painting. I have just finished "MIMOSA: Matisse's Seated Nude Visits (one of) Schiele's Two Women in the Hills Above St. Tropez" (world's longest title!) and here it is:

We have been thinking about our winter trip a few years ago to St. Tropez. We drove into the hills above the village and walked around, taking in the smells and the breezes (the mistral had not yet arrived!) and then found lunch at a small family-owned restaurant, where we had a wonderful dish of Provencal spaghetti and meatballs. We asked for the recipe, and my husband made it again for us last night. The meatballs (small!) were ground beef, eggs, breadcrumbs, oregano, chopped chives or scallions, Herbes de Provence and salt and pepper. The sauce was tomatoes, red peppers and/or zucchini, olive oil, white wine, onions, garlic, and sugar. Try it!