The
Year That Was:
Marching Toward the Millennium
by
Therese Schwartz
[Part
Two of Four]
Twenty-five years
ago I wrote a series of articles for Art in
America titled "The Politicization of the Avant Garde" which
recorded the art and the activities of artists in the 1960's
and early 70's. Although I am a working artist, not a
critic or historian, I have an obsessive interest in what motivates
us and what kind of art is produced in a particular
time and place. I decided to take one year in these
last 1990's and make a record of what I saw. I
chose the season ending June 1998. I know that the present
is not a time of "break-throughs," and that each of the
last years of this century is very much like the one before
it and the one following. Therefore, my record of any
one of these last three years would be a reliable picture
of the current art world.
Part
One of this article, in the Newsletter of 6 July 1999, described
generally the motives and production of artists working in all media
today. Specifically, it discussed the luxuriously enhanced trend in
Installation Art and its probable source in the booming stock market.
Part Two
follows
here, detailing the overwhelming number of exhibiting
painters and the extraordinary diversity of style.
Painters,
Painters, Painters
Because of their
numbers, I have classified the painters by sound. They range from
those whose work is loud with color, design, and size, to the painters
who work in a softer voice. In the center range would be artists who
fall anywhere in between, and also those whose style has not changed
much over time.
Loud and Clear:
Terry Winters
(Matthew Marks) invoked industrial-derived grids. Abstract images
were used in deep complicated structures. Color was subsidiary to
strength of design. Beatriz Milhazes (Edward Thorpe), a South
American, composed her brilliantly colored intricate work using real
images mixed with abstract symbols. John
Currin
(Andrea Rosen) showed large realist paintings greatly occupied with
balloon- breasted women. They were rough and tough, and while some
might have called this work candid, others would have labeled it differently.
Phil
Bower (Spencer Brownstone) attacked geometry by defacing, piercing,
and mutilating the surface, and it seemed a protest against the usual
limits of formal style.
Ellen Gallagher
(Gagosian) painted large, deceptively simple mono-colored
pieces, in which human cartooned faces were barely
visible. The washed-out color did not diminish the deconstructive
humor.
In contrast,
John Walker's (Knoedler &
Co.) heroic narratives of bloody war were based on what he knew
of his father's experiences. This mural size work was passionate
and openly Expressionist.
Carlos Capelan
(Monique Knowlton) simulated prehistoric cave painting.
An attempt to go in the footsteps of Ice Age artists
is almost impossible to bring off, except perhaps as archeological
illustration. Matthew
Antezzo (Basilico Fine Arts):
described as "appropriation art," this show needed the
viewer's active participation in order to understand the contents,
which included ceramic squares and oil-painted linen.
There were allusions to Robert Ryman, Sherrie Levine and
others.
Ken Grimes
(Ricco Maresca) was concerned with UFO appearances
and his work was sourced in science fiction and motivated
by the belief that there is intervention among us. The
viewer was informed that Grimes was born the day of the first
moon landing.
An overwhelming
display of drawings by Robert Longo (Metro Pictures) is listed
here because the show was so insistent. Hundreds were hung from the
ceiling to eye-level and their subject was "things that influence
his personal environment." Never mind that it was impossible to see
most of it, the effect was total.
Lisa Corinne
Davis's (June Kelly) patterned paintings in deep
earth colors, although abstract, carried a sense of tragedy.
A variety of material was used to achieve an unrefined
surface, which further suggested expressive intent without
stereotypes. An
exhibit titled "Painting by Numbers"
by Candice Breitz (Silverstein) was all on the surface.
She took advertising and used it straight up - not satirically,
not humorously. Logos of big names, Nike,Hilfiger,
jumped out of the paintings, and it was a good example
of how some separations grow dimmer.
Marilee Stiles
Stern (Phyllis Kind), formerly a dancer, made a
compelling picture of the harsh demands she has experienced;
the paintings were stiff and labored, with dancing
black figures against ominous deep red spaces. Pop
Art was
brought up to date by John Wesley (Jessica Fredericks)
in bright, relaxed, and funny paintings. Even when
the humor was pointed it bore no malice. Early examples
in this genre carried social comment, but this work seemed
part of the scene, not above or outside. Betty
Goodwin's
retrospective (Jack Shainman) carried echoes of Conceptual
Abstraction dating back to the 70's. Words were vital
to identify and explain the objects, and the presentation,
an interesting piece of history, had little relevance
to the present.
In A Lower
Key:
The following
shows were quieter, but I don' t mean that they
lacked strength or direction; remember the proverbial power
of a soft voice.
Martin Mull
(David Beitzel): these were loosely painted, vague,
and relaxed. Pale figures appeared in pastel backgrounds.
They seemed half real, half myth, somewhat like
personages remembered in a dream. Carl
Fudge (Ronald Feldman),
although dense and mysterious, was not vague. His all-over
patterned canvases were designed to withhold their contents,
which he said "constitute a refusal of narrative...and
an acceptance of grief."
Aris Koutroulis
(O K Harris), an artist of the 70's, worked finely
lined surfaces, on which occasional areas of paint outlined
human figures. In a dark room periodically lighted they
alternately glowed and then went back into darkness. Juan
Genoves (Marlborough) also seen here since the 70's, showed
pale gray canvases, on which small blurred figures ran
and walked in various urban directions. They seemed lost
and confused and begged for our pity.
Joan Nelson
(Robert Miller) works in a miniature size; these were
landscapes in the style of early American artists. Expertly
done, they could be read as mildly satirical or obviously
chic. More
small paintings, by Arpita Singh (Bose Pacia)
in East Indian style: they were exquisitely detailed,
involving native myths, and were a little beyond the
comprehension of those outside the culture.
Sean Scully
(Galerie Lelong) exhibited paintings and photographs
of old walls; they were sad, personal and almost sentimental.
The photos were the most affecting, while the painted
works that repeated the scenes were a little like echoes.
Mood was
also in the dark small "Nocturnes" of Daniel
Lang (Bridgewater Lustig). They were mysterious, done
in deep shades of blackish blue, and could be described as
romantic. More
mystery in the white paintings of Juliao Sarmento
(Sean Kelly). Thickly impastoed, they bore titles such
as "Suffering, Despair and Ascent" and carried the almost
indiscernible face of a woman placed in an undefined and
lonely country.
Native American
artifacts such as bowls, stones, patterns of woodcarvings,
and blocky totems were the subjects of smallpieces
by William Willis (M-13).
Helen Marden
(Thomas Healy) went back to harmonious abstractions,
pale, tasteful and unchallenging. LeighBehnke
(Fischbach) created her own quiet disorder by using pieces
of painted photographic images arranged illogically. What
emerged was unreality although made of real things. And
Sara Sosnowy's (John Weber) show was a scholarly replay of
geometric abstraction, again reflecting other less distracting
times.
With Apologies
to None - Unclassified, Unlabelled
These will be
painters I could not place in any easy category.
My point about the artist as a mirror of the times seems undeniable
as I write
in these crazy days of December 1998. Very few of
us who had been in political causes in the past would follow
any today. Similarly, there are few followers of anyone
in the exhibiting scene. The time when you could see a
dozen de Kooning knock-offs in one afternoon is long past.
Return Engagements:
I start with
those who have appeared regularly over the years
and whose shows of this past year followed a style and philosophy
uniquely their own.
Janet Fish
(D.C. Moore) is an artist who has exhibited regularly over the last
20 years. This show again demonstrates her expert technique in still
lifes of glass objects, shadows, and her unchanging preoccupation
with form and color. A constant interest in unreal landscape was again
demonstrated in Wolfe Kahn's last appearance (Beadleston).
His work, a personal reflection of nature, is somewhat idealized and
even romantic. John Baldessari (Sonnabend) is definitely not
a romantic, and this was not a variation of previous shows. Here was
his brand of Minimalism - almost all blank canvases, each showing
just one object such as a pencil. Mary Heilman (Pat Hearn)
first appeared in the 70's, and her elegant versions of geometry have
not taken many changes since. They are full of lovely color, relaxed
but vigorous, and a pleasure to see again. Stephen Pace (Katharina
Rich Perlow) who first exhibited in the 50's, brought back his earliest
work in a retrospective. Some of the best impulses of early Abstract
Expressionism were there, and their vulnerable innocence was both
strange and touching.
Agnes Martin
(Pace Wildenstein), probably the best example of
a Minimalist painter, presented her latest work, which varied
from her style only with its less defined lines and paler
color. Seeing these paintings, I was more than ever impressed
with their cool independence and absolute conviction.
Altoon Sultan
(Marlborough): A departure from his well-known paintings
of simple objects, this show was a piece of Americana.
It was about agriculture, and it showed fields of
soybeans, fertilizer tanks, irrigation equipment, grain bins
and cows. A sort of celebration of virtue and a return to
basics?
A 60's painter
who fled to the safety of Vermont, Marjorie Kramer
made a return to Soho (55 Mercer) with a show of homely
local scenes - backyards, clotheslines, old automobiles.
It all seemed sad, but perhaps only to a committed
urban dweller.
Machines,
Process, Formula:
How else to group
artists who use recognizable process, or simulate
machines or convert previous style and still can't be
described as "in the style of"?
Melissa Meyer
(Devon Golden Fine Art): A show about a process
used in the Garner Tullis Project, which involved encaustic
done on specially produced paper. What actually appeared
in these small pieces were swirled free-hand abstractions
in rather murky colors. There is some therapeutic
element suggested, but not easy to discern. In
Ingo
Meller's show (Cheim & Reid) there was also a simulation
of machinery. Broad strokes of paint roughly applied
were the same for each canvas, so that the look was both
spontaneous and factory-made. Takeshi
Kawashima (Walter
Wickiser) presented work based on commercial logos minus
printed words, which were precise, harmonious, and absolutely
correct. Dan
Walsh (Paula Cooper) did not derive from
machines, but from process. Abstract, and based on the grid
and geometry, it still appeared conventionally decorative,
suitable for corporate spaces, pleasant and unchallenging.
Marjorie Welish
(E.M. Donahue): based on geometry, the work turned
in different directions, and its theme, explained in words,
soared above that which was visible. Helmut
Federle (Peter
Blum) also presented geometrically designed large canvases,
to which were attached many kinds of metaphysical meanings.
These were described in a long scholarly article to
be read with the show; now obviously, geometry for itself is
not considered enough by some practitioners.
And showing an
attachment to commercial surface was Eric Wolfe
(Jessica Frederick), whose large black and white scenes
were impeccably rendered. They suggested abstraction but
also represented real locations.
[The Year
That Was: Marching Toward the Millennium will continue
in Issues #3 and #4, discussing Sculpture, Video, Photography
and Performance.]
Therese Schwartz,
an esteemed artist known for her geometrically based panoramic collages,
has had numerous solo exhibitions, both domestically and internationally,
including: Humphrey Fine Art in New York City; Bucknell University;
The Salt Lake City Art Center; Barbara Friedler Gallery and Howard
University in Washington, D.C.; Galerie Fabian Walter, Basel, Switzerland;
Galeria Casa Negret, Bogota, Colombia; Rutgers University; and at
the ARCO International Art Fair in Madrid. Her highly regarded works
can be found in museums, corporations, and private art collections,
among them: The Brooklyn Museum of Art; The Corcoran Gallery of Art;
Syracuse University Art Collection; Herbert F. Johnson Museum; Edwin
A. Ulrich Museum; Ciba-Geigy Corporation; Barnet Arden Collection;
Phillips Memorial Gallery; Women's Interart Center Museum; Advanced
Elastomer Systems; Pepsico Corporation; Monroe Geller Foundation;
and the Huntington Museum. An accomplished essayist, Ms. Schwartz
has written feature articles in such publications as: Art News,
Arts Magazine, Women Artists' News, and Art In America,
where she contributed a four-part series entitled "The Politicization
of the Avante-Garde," which continues to be widely used as a research
tool for art historians.
