Look, See

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Today in Iraq 1-13

13. Today in Iraq

13. Today in Iraq (May 12, 2005: Two killed and twenty injured in explosion in Umm Qasr), 2005, HTML, 520 x 602 pixels

Free Skull

12. Today in Iraq

12. Today in Iraq (May 12, 2005: Dutch troops involved in firefight in Basra), 2005, HTML, 500 x 580 pixels

Thomas Gainsborough: How Modern?

Written after my visit to the Frick on May 20.

Thomas Gainsborough: How Modern?

Thomas Gainsborough's (1727–1788) The Mall in St James's Park (below) was painted around 1783, and is nearly four by five feet in size. As part of The Frick Collection it hangs in the dining room of the New York mansion built by Henry Clay Frick (1849-1919) among a room of portraits. It is a striking and almost peculiar painting, in part precisely because it is very much a painting with very painterly qualities which are only barely at the service of its subject matter.

By this I mean that there is a tremendous contrast between Gainsborough's paintings and many others in the collection preceding it chronologically. For example, the contrast between Hans Holbein's painting of Thomas Moore (1527), also at The Frick, and The Mall in St James's Park tells one immediately that what might be expected in painting in the 16th century--a highly resolved image in which the paint's qualities are worked into a completely smooth and integrated enamel-like finish-- has opened up two hundred and fifty years later into a situation where the quality of paint is now an overtly active aspect of the painting. The Holbein is worked and built up into a fairly even surface, almost looking like one coat of paint. In Gainsborough, however, one is easily aware of his paint and brushstrokes, the artifice of painting as representation, and the kinds of license or cariacature that an artist may take with representation.

Another example at The Frick for comparison is El Greco's (1541-1614) St. Jerome (1590-1600), painted 180 years before The Mall in St James's Park. El Greco could of course be eccentrically, wickedly painterly, but in St. Jerome the paint is dense, drier, obviously pigmented-- it's material-- and though brushy is still even and present across the canvas, making the image rather seamless, sealed and full, closed in and integrated. There are no holes in St. Jerome; that is, there is no place that the viewer is always immediately and constantly aware of the canvas and materials of the painting.

Gainsborough's contemporary, Sir Joshua Reynolds (1723–1792), isn't nearly as painterly; for example, see Reynolds' General John Burgoyne (ca. 1766), yet another painting at The Frick. And even just a few years before The Mall in St James's Park, in 1777, Gainsborough painted The Hon. Frances Duncombe (yet another from the Frick collection); the dress that the figure is wearing is painted with a much greater degree of resolution and finish than anything in The Mall in St James's Park. Of course, The Hon. Frances Duncombe is a portrait, and so the painter is at the service of those expecting a likeness, patrons and viewers who also likely have expectations for greater finish and conventional beauty. The Mall in St James's Park is a scene which doesn't focus on the individual, and so Gainsborough may have been free to have other goals in mind.

So, it's astonishing to stand in the dining room at The Frick and look at The Mall in St James's Park as slowly and as long as one wishes, and to see a painting of this time in which the paint quality itself-- brushy, thin, fast, showing the painter's hand-- is essential to the atmosphere of the painting. It's tempting to bring Fragonard into the discussion, but even any Fragonard with which I'm familiar isn't as painterly as this Gainsborough. Rather than elaborately using paint to create the illusion of fluttery leaves and the light and air under the trees, it is Gainsborough's application of paint itself, and all the brush work he shows, that contributes so much to the painting's atmosphere. This is expressionism, and it's quite radical painting.

The figures in the painting are odd; like clusters of porcelain mannequins in layers of fluffy clothing perched on tiny feet, they float like spirits, a parade of very young women all dressed up and on display. There is competition among the groups; clearly the three at the center of the painting think they are the main characters, but a figure just to the right with a red drape over her arm looks over her shoulder, her bright red cheek ablaze, and she thinks otherwise. These figures represent women of a certain age and class, young ladies of privilege and leisure. It is theorized that these were probably painted from an assembled scene of costumed dolls that Gainsborough sometimes worked from. This might explain the paint quality of this painting: without the need to worry about representing actual figures (though the faces may be of actual persons) Gainsborough was free to be as expressionist as he liked, quite a contrast with, for example, his Mr and Mrs Andrews (1748), or Queen Charlotte (1781). This painting is a strange drama, almost a diorama, where time is suspended. As a person two hundred years from this painting, someone nowhere close to belonging to the class of leisure depicted here, I am outside of and almost repelled from the subject. But as a viewer I am drawn in by the painting, and can know the air and light here, the sound through the trees, the soft movement of the branches and leaves.

One can look at examples of Gainsborough's oeurve and see how painterly he can be. But the painting in the leaves and trees of The Mall in St James's Park-- brushy, layered, thin, directional, the way the branches seem to sway and hang-- is to my eye a painting where Gainsborough extends himself in expression, paint, and artifice farther than in any other work. And it is because of this painting that I am better able to assess in other Gainsborough paintings areas where he is painterly or where he holds back in an effort towards a more expected realism. As I stood at the Frick looking at this painting not long ago I was quite enchanted by being able to see into Gainsborough's technique, and surprised that this painting, with a subject seemingly a trifle, could engage me in looking so closely, where I could see how even over two hundred years ago painters were painters in ways to which the modern era cannot lay sole claim.

Screenfool

NY seen

20050518- Awesome El Greco at the Met- look at that green:

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20050518- Serendipity on the way to the Met: Doug Ohlson (l) and Ray Parker (r) in the lobby of Hunter College, spotted coming right up out of the subway:

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20050518: Clyfford Still on denim at the Met:

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20050519- MoMA atrium (t), view of Monet in the artium (b)

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20050519- Blinky Palermo's screenprint Flipper at MoMA:

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20050519- Donald Judd at MoMA

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20050519- James Ensor at MoMA

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20050521- Terrific Alan Saret, bad picture, hanging in the back room at James Cohan

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20050521- Margaret Thatcher unpacking Frank Badur drawings:

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20050521- Jenny Walty going through the flat files at Pierogi, Williamsburg- I think this was Vanessa Conte:

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20050520- Charles Browning at Jack the Pelican, Williamsburg:

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20050521- Megan Foster at Black and White, Williamsburg:

11. Today in Iraq

11. Today in Iraq (May 12, 2005: Two Iraqi soldiers killed in attack in Baghdad.), 2005, HTML, 580 x 500 pixels

At the Met and in Chelsea

May 18, 2005

I want to say something about Manet's painting in The Dead Christ and the Angels (1864), particularly the hands, but it's kind of difficult. And these images with my cheap camera aren't so hot. I'm a little bit at a loss about what to say other than he painted so directly. It's just something you go up and you see, and you look at his other paintings, and in some ways, if you read the paint, he's telling you pretty directly that painting is a means to representation and that there are lots of shortcuts to it. The paint is like tempera- you know when pre-schooler's stand at their llittle easels and cover sheets of paper with tempera paint, and it just goes on and covers and colors and has this strong presence, very direct? That's the paint in this painting. It's just such a straight shot from his brush. There isn't a lot of messing around; well, there probably is some fussiness, but it doesn't show. And to get even more direct, look at the dark outlines around the hands- he's really drawing with the brush with such confidence, just like our young pre-schooler would outline an object. The hand on the left (the right hand) is brighter, more open, painted "better." The hand on the right (the left hand) is darker, muddier, more closed. Jesus looks pretty darn mortal, and the angels seem like his contemporaries. This feels like such a modern painting.

Huge Stuart Davis at the Met. I didn't know he'd even painted this large. Stuart Davis is this grand, mid-century, fully modernist pre-pop American painter who borrowed cubist design and made it his own with vernacular subject matter and eye-smacking color. These three paintings were terrific.

May 21, 2005

Jennifer Steinkamp video projection at Lehman Maupin. The flowers and branches sway and loop; quite beautiful.

Neo Rauch at David Zwirner. Ambitious show, big paintings, very popular, an aura of East Germany, the residue of pre-Wall fall, faded film color, indecipherable impulses.

Sara Thustra, Xylor Jane, Amy Rathbone & Kamau Amu Patton at Rare Gallery. I wrote about Amy Rathbone recently. Color, shape, counting- I had no idea where one person's work began and another ended, excpet for Rathbone's. Not a lot of time- I had to catch a plane.

10. Today in Iraq

10. Today in Iraq (May 12, 2005: Large explosions heard near Japanese base in Samara), 2005, HTML, 420 x 700 pixels

Newman and Warhol: Duet at the Met

Left: Andy Warhol, Last Self Portrait, 1986, acrylic and silkscreen on canvas
Right: Barnett Newman, Shimmer Bright, 1968, acrylic on canvas
Each approximately 72" high; photo: May 18, 2005, Metropolitan Museum

Who knows how intentional the placement is of two paintings hung directly across from and facing each other just before going down the stairs into the contemporary gallery at the Metropolitan Museum? Initially, Barnett Newman's Shimmer Bright (1968), and Andy Warhol's Last Self Portrait, (1986), would seem to have little if nothing to do with each other. But the intersection between these two paintings sparks a brilliant moment in which the recognition of a quiet and vulnerable humanity is possible. The juxtapostiion of these two paintings is very surprising and striking.

Both paintings are made with relatively mechanical means. Shimmer Bright is a field of white with two blue vertical stripes (or zips) at the left that Newman has painted using tape as a mask; these zips are quite flat and even with little nuance. To make Last Self Portrait Warhol appears to have exclusively used silkscreen; the camouflage ground is screened first, and then the head is screened on top of that. Neither of these paintings shows much of the artist's hand.

Mechanical means of production supposedly lead to precision. There is, however, imperfection in these supposed mechanical processes. One can plainly see that Newman has used tape to draw an area to paint in, but he doesn't bother using the tape to achieve a precise edge. Instead, he allowed the paint to bleed under the edges of the tape in places, making for slightly fuzzy rather than perfectly crips edges.Warhol's screening process is fast and unfussy; different colors that make up the camouflage, each separately screened, don't quite line up or completely fit together. In printmaking, multiple plates or blocks are used for a single image, care must be taken so that each plate's print area is aligned with its intended area on the paper; this is called registration. Newman's and Warhol's paintings both contain types of misregistration; this is where some equivalent of the artist's hand lies, making for a human presence, a tremulousness.

Newman wanted a painting to have rhythm and a sense of time, and he wanted to use color and line to create a kind space before which the viewer experiences a heightened self-awareness. He said, "I hope that my painting has the impact of giving someone, as it did me, the feeling of his own totality, of his own separateness, of his own individuality." When one reads the literature of the late 40's and early 50's about and by the artists eventually known as Abstract Expressionists- and Newman, Rothko, and Still in particular- words like tragic and terror and abyss frequently appear, but this usage does not necessarily refer to a real threat, danger, or fear, although in an era immediately after Hiroshima and Nagasaki there was concern for what modern life might become. The idea of the tragic or terror in painting was more connected to ideas of an awakening primitive individual unencumbered by or wishing to be freed from a modern burden, possible through solitude, confrontation, and heroism. The size of Newman's Vir Heroicus Sublimis at MoMA (7' 11 3/8" x 17' 9 1/4") is a key characteristic in the painting's ability to provoke in the viewer this kind experience as the viewer walks before its expanse, pausing at zips and empty spaces along the way. Serveral photos suggest that Newman wanted the viewer to stand close to his paintings, and to be enveloped by them in a way that makes the viewer alone and self conscious.

In Shimmer Bright, the painting being discussed here, the format is just beyond human size, and at once the painting does two things. At first it seems to have two blue zips on the left hand side and an empty field on the right standing veritical, bright and bold. Take another look, though, and the painting is a blue field with a white field forcefully moving across from right to left, leaving two narrow blue spaced exposed and peeking out from below. This movement back and forth is kind of shimmer, and the fuzzy taped edges is another kind of shimmer.

The two zips are like a pair of erect figures, and being a pair they are twins, two things alike. Their binary status mirrors our own somewhat symmetrical nature, and are slots into which, if we face them directly, each of our eyes enters, left to left, and right to right. And the funny thing is that the two white vertical bars on the left, roughly the same size as the two blue zips, become zips also, and we can encounter them the same way we do the blue zips, flipping back and forth between the blue pair and the white pair. And so while we are off-balance hanging out on the left side of the painting experiencing these two white and blue pairs, off to our right is the empty white field, pulling us back to openness and emptiness. We experience the tension of extreme vertical consciousness on the left with the zips, and on the right we experience the extreme release of tension and enter the horizontal unconsciousness on the right. In going back and forth we experience the primitiveness (terror) of moving between thought and feeling, of being in control and of letting go. This vulnerable exposure of the self, which pulls us out of ourself and into ourself, is the human subject matter of Newman. And this experience of looking at the painting makes us see ourselves in a kind of reflective activity which in some ways isn't that far from looking at ourselves.

Warhol's Last Self Portrait is also about terror and vulnerability, and he does this by presenting us with himself. But his approach is somewhat different from Newman's. Although silkscreen is a mechanical process, it is still often done by hand. Warhol's silkscreens show the mark of the hand in the various pressures on the scraper as it pushes ink through the screen, and in how sections are registered. Despite seeing the dots of the screens, the paintings can still be called hand-painted. They never feel machine-made or mass produced. Warhol talked about being able to make as many of anything as he wanted to make, and how in the age of mass production there was a democratic element in how, for example, the first object produced on the assembly line was as good as the thousandth. But this was not the case with objects produced in Warhol's factory because each work, even when "identical," was unique. This is confirmed by seeing the paintings in person and is obsfucated by seeing the paintings in reproduction. This is an interesting contradiction between what Warhold said and what he actually made.

A little biography may be helpful when looking at Last Self Portrait : a not terribly publicly-open gay man who achieved fame at an early age, Warhol remained relatively shy and closeted all of his life. He wasn't terribly attractive, had bad skin and, later wore silver wigs with hair spouting in all directions. He hid behind the wigs and the dark glasses he constantly wore, a layering which serves as a mask or camouflage. Warhol shows his face, but he can't completely expose himself.

But the camouflage actually works against Warhol's impulse to cover. We know that camouflage is intended to make an object fit into the background, but in a painting on a white wall there is no environment to fit into. The camouflage actually calls attention to Warhol, and in some cases even makes him look exotic. The swirl of cream and green across his nose gives it a kind of rich volume that the black screenprinting only hints at. And the hard-edged bottom of a section of cream across his forehead on the left of the painting may flatten the top of his head, but it makes the rest of his face pop out from beneath it. The swirls of camouflage on his face work like the plumage on a bird: eccentrically shaped, sculptural, fluttery.

Warhol's head is isolated; perhaps it's floating in a black void, but it feels more like gravity is pulling his chin down to rest at the bottom edge of the painting. It's heavy and tired, and Warhol is finally completely exposed and vulnerable: the camouflage can't disguise him, his face is huge and disembodied, he feels the effect of time on earth, and there is no hiding anymore. Despite the image in this painting which superficially suggests the contrary-- camouflage and a flat black, printed face-- perhaps for the first time Warhol is fully present, human, and vulnerable, telling us his version of the story of who he is: older, experienced, alone, fearful, uncertain, yet knowing who he is, what he is capable of, where's he's been and where he might be going. He says, "Here I am, look at me, remember me, I'm just like you." This is something we don't often think we can know about someone who resides at his level of fame. The aura of his fame, and the knowledge of his death not long after the making it, surround this painting; it could be any of us.

As much as Newman's Shimmer Bright is a painting with experiential and metaphoric possibilities, and a kind of portrait, Warhol's Last Self Portrait is a specific portrait that also is experiential and metaphoric. In Shimmer Bright the experience of turning from consciousness to unconsciousness can be one of moving from awake to asleep, from life to death and back again. Warhol's Last Self Portrait moves the viewer from the hidden private self to the public vulnerable self. The turning point between these kinds of opposites in each painting is sharp and precise. To experience in each painting a shifting of consciousness from that of an individual to one of something greater than ourselves, and then back again to our indviduality, and to also experience that in the space between these two paintings as one stands in between them and looks back and forth, is a powerful moment of painting, situation, and life.

9. Today in Iraq

Warhol at Shafrazi

May 17, 2005: Terrific, huge show of Warhol portraits at Tony Shafrazi:

If I could place the face of the guy with his back to the camera I'd add this picture to my post of gallery sightings; ultimately, I'm sure this guy is "somebody" but I can't come up with a name.	Nice Hitchcock
This portrait of Basquiat is fascinating. This is a variation on Warhol's Piss paintings- a metallic paint is on the ground and urine is poured and splashed on it, resulting in oxidation. And on top of this is Basquiat, who died young and troubled. It's quite a moving painting.	The foursome on the right are photobooth shots of the late great pianist and singer Bobby Short.

NY seen

New York, May 17, 2005: the audience gathers at the Rhizome-sponsored Blogging and the Arts panel at the New Museum, May 17, 2005. That's Tom Moody up front in the blue shirt, Jenny Walty in red at his left, and right behind Jenny is former Berkeley colleague and lapsed weblogger Karin Kusuda.

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May 17, 2005: Basquiat in the backroom seen through an ajar door at Anina Nosei. Kind of shabby in there with typical office furniture, but the painting is tops:

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May 21, 2005: Old news, in the sense that this has been going on for some time and I've been aware of it but the first time I've seen the actual thing- Eric Doeringer selling bootlegs (on W. 26th?):

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May 21, 2005: Dan Walsh in a group show at the Paula Cooper annex; even more loosely painted than I expected- they're weird paintings, geometric but handmade, and such thin acrylic:

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May 21, 2005: An artist shows love and caring for the plight of fellow artists (Lazaro Gomez Carriles, I think):

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May 21, 2005: Sean Scully at Galerie Lelong; this one large painting was pretty good, but the rest were, I don't know, more of the same? solid, but... lots of gray.. I want to give Scully his due; I think I was overwhelmed by the Chelsea scene and couldn't still myself enough to go with the work:

Chuck Close at Pace Wildenstein

New York, May 21, 2005: can't go wrong with Chuck Close at Pace Wildenstein.

Gallery sightings

New York, May 17, 2005 afternoon:

I don't know why I know these things.

I go into Marianne Boesky to see Sarah Sze and there's a guy who comes in right after me who looks me right in the eye and I think, "That's Jerry Saltz." Why do I know this? But maybe it's not him. So a younger couple comes in and the guy says, "Hey, Jerry," and the Jerry introduces himself, "Hi, Jerry Saltz." The shorter silhouhette on the left is Mr. Saltz. I should've said something like "Come hear this panel I'm on," and given him my URL. I chicken out. But here's a picture:

A few minutes later I'm in Matthew Marks looking at Jasper Johns with the masses and in walks a guy and I think, that's Mike Kelley. His black T-shirt says in white ink, "Sodomy by the Sea," so I figure, "Yeah, that's him." He's short. Well, shorter than me. The woman he's with is wearing boutique biker chick garb. Worth a picture:

As I go into the following galleries down the street Kelley and the woman follow me, but as they enter the gallery the woman looks at me like I've been following them. So I take their picture again. This is in Brent Sikkema; Hans Bellmer drawings and Pierre Molinier photographs were in the next room:

Just a few minutes later I'm walking on W. 22nd, I think, towards 11th Ave. and I see a guy walking with some people. It looks like painter Joe Marioni to me, so grab another shot:

And then another shot. He has a funny fuzzy ball of hair like a rabbit tail pony tail at the base of his otherwise shorn head.

OK, enough of that. Moral: you never know who is lurking with a camera and will post pictures of you to a weblog when you're doing... who knows what.

8. Today in Iraq

7. Today in Iraq

7. Today in Iraq (May 12, 2005: Two Iraqi civilians injured in car bomb attack on US convoy in Baghdad), 2005, HTML, 580 x 660 pixels

Studio visits

More NY studio visits:

Above: Popel Caumou from Amsterdam, showing her portfolio. She was staying at my B&B (or I was staying at her B&B). She makes tiny, flat maquettes with paper and clay of, typically, indoor scenes like a bed in an empty room, and lights and photographs them. Color, light, space, and a space evocative of an unknown narrative are important aspects of her work. (Arthouse, W. 28th St., New York, May 20, 2005, morning)

Above: Jenny Walty, Greenpoint, Brooklyn, with her mobile sculptures. Her partner is Patrick May, who was on the New Museum panel last Tuesday evening. Jenny showed me around the Williamsburg area and we went to a few galleries. (Greenpoint, Brooklyn, New York, May 20, 2005, afternoon)

The mobiles are fascinating and evocative: highly composed in terms of line, balance, and color, the found materials are used in ways that suggest themes and topics of political, social, sexual, and spiritual origin. The medium of a mobile for a serious art is surprising. The intersection of sculpture as collage and drawing is effective. The subject matter found in what at first appears to be crafty and, because of the use of found objects, arbitrary, instead holds meaning that is sharpened and deepened by a twist of misplaced and upended expectations.

Steve Karlik wrapping a painting in his Williamsburg, Brooklyn studio; there's a lot more work here than the camera can take in, which wouldn't do justice to any single work anyway. The paintings are reductive yet expressive, tactile, quiet, yet can suggest feelings of movement, soaring, placement, relationship, and deep space. (Williamsburg, Brooklyn, New York, May 20, 2005, evening)

6. Today in Iraq

Studio visits

There is absolutely no substitute for seeing art in the flesh, and it's even better, and a tremendous treat, when you get to see the work in the artist's studio. Sitting around, taking your time, talking, looking long and slow and looking at things that don't normally make their way out of the studio, getting the backstory- it's no better than that. In the past two days I've been treated to lengthy studio visits with George Rodart, Tom Moody, and Sharon Brant. Here are three quick shots; more to say later when it's not 2:45 a.m.

George Rodart (East Village, New York, May 18, 2005, late afternoon)

Tom Moody (Jersey City, May 19, 2005, late afternoon)

Sharon Brant (Jersey City, May 19, 2005, evening)

Weblog panel at New Museum

The Blogging and the Arts panel at the New Museum last Tuesday, May 17th, was a good event, interesting, great people, etc.

The enormous outline of my too-much-to-say talk is now available.

I've been running NY and have too many things in my head and too many things to say, so instead I'm going to take a breather and quote Joy Garnett's excellent capsule post from her weblog Newsgrist:

Last night's Blogging and the Arts Part 2 at the New Museum was fun. Nice to finally meet some veteran bloggers whom I admire, and good to see old bloggy/art pals. I offered an abbreviated version of the talk I gave in Sept '04 at Columbia (and later elsewhere) about that ol' frivolous copyright dispute hurled at me last year. Since I usually present this story in the context of open source culture, art and appropriation, fair use and copyright, survival skills for artists etc., it felt good to do so in light of the blog phenomenon--without which I would have had nothing much to tell in the first place. I put some nice screen shots together.

Liza followed with a condensed recap of her recent forays into the realm of activist blogging, and invited us to check out her new sister blogs and other new developments over at culturekitchen. She mentioned a relatively new  nonprofit org called CivicSpaceLabs.org that proffers an interesting model for building open source community software. She dashed in straight from their all-day Users Conference at The Tank in mid-town. That Liza's a busy one.

Next came Patrick May, who described the logic behind his experimental portfolio-cum-blog, hexane.org. He has written a program that publishes one's portfolio--just as it is organized on one's hard drive--as a blog while preserving things like categories. A clever publishing tool specifically conceived for visual artists, that allows them to avoid redundant tasks (like creating duplicate subdirectories and folders to upload images...yuck). And one ends up with not yet another static site, but a portfolio-blog that has feeds and can be aggregated. Very cool. Patrick is part of the artists' community OpenGround.

Last was Chris Ashley who took more time (it's nice being last), waxed philosophical about weblogs and their potential, and commented on how he (we) rely on weblogs as opposed to Art Mags for up-to-date information. Frankly, he could have gone longer and I would have been happy to keep listening. He also showed us some of his html work and its precursors, and talked about the contrary notion of art as an "open source" phenomenon. And yes, about how blogs function as test beds for artists and are part of a process-oriented mindset.

 

 

 

 

Posted by chrisashley at 12:20 AM

5. Today in Iraq

ART)@*!WORK

New York, May 18, 2005:

Shots from ART!@*<>WORK May 2005, New York City -- Ignivomous, an arts organization dedicated to nurturing and developing new genres, art forms and mediums, together with 34 present ART!@*<>WORK, an art exhibition that explores the tension between the art of work and the work of art. The cubicles of a midtown Manhattan office space provide the backdrop for fifteen New York artists' pieces. Each artist has been allocated a cubicle to transform and exhibit projects inspired by work and work environments. Visitors will be invited to explore and interact with the space during "office hours." Cubicles will also be designated throughout the space for visitors to come and do their own work or eat their lunches.
Tom Moody, hard at work in his cubicle at "ART)@*!WORK." See Tom's weblog.
L: One of the curators, Elana Langer, hopes on the neighboring cube's work surface to rescue on of Irene Moon's pictures hanging by duct tape from... a duct. R: Cat Mazza's knitting machine for recreating "corporate logos with knitting, machines, and needlepoint."
L: Brian Alfred shows "a collage with a replication of all the tools used to make the work out of paper." R: I believe this is LoVid and Douglas Repetto, who "wired their cubicle with fans, motors, AV cables."
Elana Lange daydreams of a wood shingled bungalow, and realizes it à la Richard Dreyfus in Close Encounters by hanging Post-its all over the cube. Correction: "Michelle Rosenbergâs reinvented her cubicle as a space for daydreaming."

See Lauren Cornell review at Rhizome

I saw this show on Tuesday late morning, the 17th, my first full day here. It's not far from where I'm staying, a small office suite on the 16th floor with maybe a dozen cubes. Each artist has a cube.

Most of the installations respond to the cube and the notion, situation, environment, drudgery, nightmarish idea of the office space, especially cubicles, where people hunker down in their spaces and try to maintain their little domain as a personal space, and also how the hours we spend at work are a drain that an attempt to compensate for with non-work work-- whether busy-work (organizing crap), outside work interests (like knitting, or art), or goofing off-- are a fight to survive the day that can be just plain boring or drive one positively mad.

Maybe half the installations are directly about work. Tom's performance-- being there on Tuesdays from 9-5 and from 12-6, is certainly about how an artist by spend time at work, although the pictures up on his cube wall would probably be kept away from the eyes of a supervisor.

I didn't take a picture of Tony Luib's installation, who, "transformed his cubicle into an abstract environment using office supplies." I knew that, for example, stacks of rubber thumbs, or latex fingertips, or whatever you call those things for fingers to make handling cash and other objects easier, just would't reproduce that well. Brian Alfred's table top of tools, books, and CDs all made of paper fooled my eye for half a minute, but then I saw they're roughly enough made that I shouldn't have been fooled.

Cat Mazza's installation actually seemed to me like a kind of more domestically located work brought to a place where it doesn't belong, and that actually her knitter belonged in a small spare bedroom with macrame on the wall, perhaps in a show called AT)@*!HOME in a house that's on the market. In that show Mazza's work would share a room with Jenny Walty, who I met Tuesday night, who makes mobiles, but not quite what you think that means.

A few art pics

New York, May 18, 2005:

This docent with a group of high school students at the Met looking at a Hopper was one of the best docents I've ever eavesdropped on. She was phenomenal- really good at asking open-ended questions which engaged the students in figuring out the : place and space of this painting; important structural and color elements; piecing together some history about fashion; and the viewer's position relative to the scene. It was a joy to listen in on someone who was this good, who spoke so directly to the students, had real enthusiasm and good energy, and to see these students all so totally engaged- they were eating from her hand.

Van Gogh's self portrait- truly an awesome little painting in an awesome room at the Met. I mean, it's an awesome little painting. In the sense that I was awed by it. I mean, it's just this little thing painted so directly, you can see Vincent's every move. This painting was a lesson in getting on with life, or something awesome like that. Screw N*ke, just do it.

New York, May 17, 2005:

Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, and so here is mine: this is the best painting at Damien Hirst's Gagosian show. Someone who can really paint worked on it: the surface is rich and telling, the color zings, the effects are wonderful.

As rough gemstones there's something in here more interesting than Hirst's stuff about death, dying, deterioration, abuse, whatever- something less cynical, less predictable, more beautiful. As gemstones, too, there is the idea of a commodity and all of that. And I'm probably overlooking something, there's probably some backtext: "these gemstones are all carcinogenic," or
these gemstones were all minded by a team of workers who were then immediately killed in a tunnel cave-in."

It's not a signature image, and so Hirst-free. If Richter painted one of his fuzzy realist paintings with the squeegees he uses for the "abstract" work then he might make this little, ahem, gem. Otherwise, this show is a moment in history, I can say I was there, and, uh, nice space there at the Gagosian Contemporary Museum in Chelsea.

4. Today in Iraq

3. Today in Iraq

2. Today in Iraq

Posted 9:17 EST

1. Today in Iraq

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Manik: They Are What They Are & Layers

Perhaps you can imagine my surprise when I scanned my email on Tueday morning, May 10th, and found a message containing a text about my HTML drawings by Serbian artists Marija Vauda & Nikola Pilipovc, also known as MANIK. They had sent me the English translation, and at my request they sent me the original Serbian text, too. Some parts of the English translation are a little rough and are dense reading; I have only minimally touched a few misspellings or punctuation. Both the original Serbian text and English translation are presented below.

See MANIK's weblog, and Google their names to find other works, for example, MARIJA VAUDA I NIKOLA PILIPOVIC, 02.06-15.06.2004 and FREE MANIFESTA: PROJECTS: LUXURIOUS.

• Art pieces from Rhizome_Raw & etc.
• A few articles from Rhizome_Raw
• A few more articles from Rhizome_Raw
• Part of their last exhibition in Belgrade ('MANIK,THE MISSING PEOPLE'), July 2004
• A published article in 'Intelligent Agent'
• The art piece from a group exhibition in Belgrade, 2003
• A work in freeManifesta
• Their participation in the FreeBienial
• Exhibition in Slovenia,2001
• A work by MANIK on the site of Brasilian artist Regina Celia Pinto

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They Are What They Are & Layers
Marija Vauda & Nikola Pilipovc, Belgrade, 2005

Svakodnevni performans - Chris Ashley weblog-puni se kroz sukcesivne promene u konstrukciji koju mozemo videti kao dvosmerni prostorni tekst u razvijajucem, aktuelnom vremenu toka svesti. Konstituisu ga HTML table,uradene u Dreamwiever softveru i dodaci-neestetske informacije.Bas njih,uvodimo pod pojmom (simbolicka artikulacija) leyeri zato sto su oni, kao jedna od nepreglednih mogucnosti softverske retoricnosti,odlucno izbegnuti u realizaciji (gradenju) samih tabli-HTML-estetske informacije.Lejer se,tako, odnosi na datum, naziv, tekst ili pesmu-objasnjenje dodato svakom HTML-u.

Upravo dodaci-komentari prevode,izmestaju prisustvo u performativnost (dogadjaj): Vreme kao Istoriju.To je bilo!

HTML Propozicije i uputstva su precizno data u leyerima i odnose se na objekt-HTML (“All drawings start with a small table, say 18 x 16, with each cell 20 x 20 pixels, everything is on the grid, right angles only, no diagonals; everything is hard edged; there are a limited number of colors -216 web safe colors; although one can make more than 216 colors, the number of colors actually viewable varies a lot from monitor to monitor). Cin konstruisanja HTML tabli i pripada procesu uzivanja.U odabranom okviru se svakodnevno i komforno-ritualno potvrduje navika vitalnosti-serijalnosti:moduli-jedinice-celije su geometrijski oblici medusobno povezani u linijske i povrsinske structure (Sol Lewitt,Eva Hese, Robert Moris) i ubaceni u proces odvijanja toka vremena-weblog.Zamisao serijalne umetnosti pojavljuje se na prelazu modernisticke autonomije discipline slikarstva (skulpture) u post slikarske strategije.Kroz ponavljanje se potvrduje "vrhovno nacelo malih razlika"- paradigma koja se sastoji od ogranicenih zaliha jedinica-obojenih polja pri cemu jedinice iste paradigme,medusobno toliko nalikuju kako bi razlika koja ih deli bila trenutno uocljiva. Npr. "potrebno je da Mondrijanovo kvadrati istovremeno budu i srodne kvadratne forme, a razlicitih razmera i boja".Ogranicene zalihe jedinica-celija (".... I enjoy the limitations and boundaries because I am presented with a set of solutions that I can't do anything about, that I accept") brojem zadatih boja-boje u zaustavljenoj alternativi,velicinom-u zaustavljenoj alternativi, odnosima-u zaustavljenoj alternativi,izborom softvera-u zaustavljenoj alternativi, retoricki uspostavljaju konkretan prostor: nacin na koji je organizovan prostor je presudan za subjektivitet.Identiteti se delimicno i konstituisu vrstom prostora, koji je ovde falocentrican, linearan, uzlazan i potvrdan u tradiciji modernisticke paradigme.

LEYERI razotkrivaju kopce i nacine povezivanja i medu jedinicama-modulima vizuelnih tabli i otvaraju pristup bocnim (ako smo,na trenutak zauzeli poziciju unutar HTML-a) beleskama-upadima. Sam Ashleyev tekst-leyer preuzima na sebe jednu od metoda kritike kada bira cas ovo,cas ono mesto za cin-delovanje-prostor :fragmenti, glagoli nemackog jezika, pojmove zen budizma, imena mesta u Meksiku, ”mesta gde sam spavao”, bodhi, untitled i najzad: in memoriam Susan Zontag koja se zalaze (tu Ashley locira i svoj stav) za akriticnu kritiku zasnovanu na dokumentarnosti i cinu,impersonalnom i organizacionom pristupu i postupki,u kome je sam umetnik ili kriticar saucesnik u artikulaciji.

Tekstualni dodaci-lejeri ne lome i ne dekonstruisu poetske i metafizicke ideale modernizma. Sve je vec bilo i izazov je-dug prema “zvanicnoj istoriji” uvek se ponovo vracati, potvrdivati i dodavati, dodavati, dodavati jer prekinuti govor znaci uci-iskoraciti u nepovratan process.

Opravdano nepoverenje u dijalog sa svetom-eksterijerom se time raskida iz potrebe za sublimnim koje se postize u dijalogu sa Drugim.Otuda «upad» ili uvoz najcesce dalekog Drugog-potonulog u istoriju,mit ili smrt.U susedstvima/blizinama,u domenu govora,lezi zametak sukoba.Mesto/vreme-spoljasnjost iz koje govori pesnik TU FU od pre 1000 godina uvodi i postaje aktuelno mesto brige o svakom delu procesa stvaranja..Refleksija o tehnici smesta se na mesto dalekog Drugog,u polje izuzetne briznosti ,upravo zato sto je tehnika samo bice sveg stvaralastva. Datiranje, svakodnevni upis u vremenu i za vreme, je u tradiciji On Kawara's "I'm still alive" .Mesta preloma-uputstava za gledanje su naslovi-napadno asocijativne forme.

SIMPTOM Kada bi evocirali hard edge i sistemsko slikarstvo nedvosmisleni upadi-leyeri (naslovi, datumi, poezija, antropoloska i meditativna putovanja, objasnjenja, samorefleksija, narativnost, dnevnicki zapisi) bi svakako omeksavali njihove formalne rezultate-fetisizam autonomije. Kod Ashleya dva dramaturska toka-texta, telo(HTML) i jezik (komentari-leyeri) nikada i ne napustaju mesto medusobne afirmacije. Prostor izmedu njih je samo prisustvo-realno slepe mrlje-simptom (izmedu imaginarnog-slikovne predstave i simbolickog- kojim nastaje smisao i znacenje): mogucnost za katarzu-razresenje-smisao: zaustavljanje smisla predstavlja, po Bartu, neuporedivo slozeniji poduhvat, pa zato i nemoguc. Situiranje u tom rascepu-rupi izmedu slike i teksta, izmedu tela i jezika, izmedu pasivnosti i aktivnosti, dakle i(ni) tu i (ni) tamo je mesto za (hipoteticku) subjektivnost. Postmoderni subjekt, umetnik i nije pripadnik celovitog,jedinstvenog pogleda na svet, on je hipoteticni subjekt koji nastaje u suocenju eklekticnih i raznorodnih interpretativnih mogucnosti u okviru dela.

INTERTEKSTUALNOST Jezicki zaplet izmedu uzivanja proisteklog iz mantricke discipline upotrebom ogranicenja i sumova spolja-ostatka sveta, razresava se kolonizacijom-uvozom-prisvajanjem Spoljasnjeg-Drugog (civilizacije koje su svoju drevnost i dugovecnost gradile kroz intuitivno, meditativno, htonsko) cime se kontinuitet ( i lica i nalicja) uspostavlja. Iako su imanentno odvojeni, obelodanjuju nesto ili nekoga, sto je u samom objektu (HTML) sasvim nerasaznatljivo sa stanovista spoljnjeg, promicuceg-oznacujuceg.

Rezultat estetske kontemplacije i nije novo znanje vec celokupnost dozivljaja.

Dramaturgija weblog performansa/prostora nabrajanjem i punjenjem autonomnim-formalnim sadrzajima/radnjama-HTML postaje staticna i ispunjava principe sinhronije a zadnji plan-leyer preuzima radnju-pogled u drami belezenja-dijahronija. Mesto za paradoks-zaplet-znacenje-ogranicenje nikada i nije u spajanju dva teksta,vizuelno organizovanih kompozicija tabli i jezickih komentara (slike i reci). Jedan tok svesti-vizuelne informacije slede i ispunjavaju-pristaju na sudbinu-inerciju formalnih sistema koji su analiticki i ne zavise od prikazivanja spoljnjeg sveta. Likovna autonomija apstrakcije linearno organizuje interijer dok iz eksterijera stizu dojave, radnja, dogadaji. Uzivanje je uvek na strani Drugog i zato ga Ashley ne prepusta ni Junaku (HTML) ni Glasniku (leyeri) dakle nigde i nikome izvan onoga sto je vec odabrano-uvezeno-prisvojeno da bude Drugi.

PASIVNI PROSTOR Postupak preuzimanja mantricke forme" (“A sacred verbal formula repeated in prayer, meditation...«) ilustrovan je redovnoscu oglasavanja-prisustva-datiranja,strukturom HTML-a i rasporedom,organizacijom i izborom leyera. U tom smislu je to i pasivni prostor jer je vec dovrsen time sto je preveden u kontemplaciju - They are what they are. Pomiren. Po Hajdegeru i uloga umetnika u stvaranju dela postaje pasivna i beznacajna, bitno je da je delo stvoreno. Iako cine da umetnost bude “jos i nesto drugo”uvezeni dodaci je smestaju u sred sintagme «umetnost kao umetnost » (Ad Reinhart još 50-tih,60-tih razmatra smisao te sintagme) ne pokazujuci nista drugo (izdajnicko-raskidajuce) do propozicija u i o samom radu.

Prostorni text-weblog je predlozen za recepciju i otvoren je za pitanja i odgovore koji se situiraju u etablirana znanja i iskustva sto su formalne posledice umetnosti.

Performans-weblog, bez obzira koliko bio sklonjen i zatvoren u vizualnu strukturalnu autonomiju, uvek ostavlja mogucnost iznenadenja, i zato,za razliku od uhodane pozorisne predstave, ne zna se kuda ce tekst da iscuri, da se savije,da se smesti.

Performans-arhiva-weblog je disciplina ponavljanja i skladistenja.Ponavljanje je uobicajni oblik redundance koja je imanentan otpor entropiji u procesu komunikacije.

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They Are What They Are & Layers
Marija Vauda & Nikola Pilipovc , Belgrade, 2005
Translated from the Serbian by Vanda Perovic

The daily performance – Chris Ashley’s weblog – is loaded by successive changes in construction that can be seen as a two-way text in space set in the unfolding, current time of a stream of consciousness. It is constituted by a HTMLtable, made by Dreamwiever software and supplements of non-esthetic information. It is them that we introduce under the concept (symbolic articulation) of layers because they are the ones, being one possibility out of the infinite possibilities of software rhetoric, which have resolutely been evaded in the realization (construction) of the very HTML tables – esthetic information. Layers thus refer to the date, name, text or poem-explanation which is added to all HTMLs.

It is the additions-the comments which translate, shift the presence into performativity (event): Time as History. It happened!

HTML Propositions and directions are precisely given in layers and refer to the object-HTML (“All drawings start with a small table, say 18 x 16, with each cell 20 x 20 pixels, everything is on the grid, right angles only, no diagonals; everything is hard edged; there are a limited number of colors -216 web safe colors; although one can make more than 216 colors, the number of colors actually viewable varies a lot from monitor to monitor)The act of constructing HTML tables belongs to the process of pleasure. Within the chosen framework there is a daily and done in comfort-ritual confirmation of a habit of vitality-serializing: modules-units-cells are geometric forms mutually linked into line and surface structures (Sol Le Vit, Eva Hese, Robert Morris) and inserted into the process of a time unfolding-weblog. The idea of serial art appears on the intersection where modernistic autonomy of the discipline of painting (sculpture) turns into the post painting strategies. The repetition confirms –‘the supreme principle of small differences’- a paradigm which is made up of limited supplies of units-colored squares while the units of the same paradigm, are similar as much as it is needed for the difference which separate them to be instantly be visible. For example ‘It is necessary for the squares on Mondrian’s paintings to be simultaneously corresponding square forms, but of different sizes and colors-. The supply units-cells is limited by (".... I enjoy the limitations and boundaries because I am presented with a set of solutions that I can't do anything about, that I accept") the number of colors - colors frozen in an alternative by their size- in a frozen alternative of relations – in a frozen alternative by the choice of software- in a chosen alternative that rhetorically establishes a specific space – the way space is organized is decisive for subjectivity. Identities are partially constructed by the kind of space, which is here phallocentric, linear, ascending and affirmative in the tradition of the modernist paradigm.

LAYERS reveal the links and ways of bonding between the units-modules of visual tables and they open the access to the lateral (if for a second we have taken the position inside HTML) notes-intrusions. Ashley’s own text-layer takes on one method of criticism when it chooses one or the other place for the act-the activity-the space: fragments, German language verbs, Zen Buddhist concepts, names of places in Mexico, ‘places where I have slept’, bodhi, untitled and finally: in memoriam to Susan Sonatg who advocates (this where Ashley locates his stand) an noncritical critique based on the documental and the act, impersonal and organizational approach and procedure, in which the artist or the critique him/herself is the collaborator in the articulation.

Textual additions-layers do not break down nor deconstruct the poetic and metaphysical ideals of modernisms. Everything has already taken place and is a challenge, a debt to ‘official history’. To go back always, to confirm and add, add, add, because to stop speech means to enter-step out into an irretrievable process.

A justifiable distrust of a dialogue with the world- exteriors is thus severed due to the need for the sublime that is achieved by a dialogue with the Other. Thus, the ‘intrusion’ or the import, most often, of a distant Other – that is sunk into history, myth or death. The beginning of conflict is located in the neighborhood/in the vicinity, in the domain of the language. The place/the time-the outer world about which the poet TU FU who lived 1000 years ago spoke, leads us and becomes the current place of concern about each part of the creativity process. The reflection on the technique is put in the place of the distant Other, into the field of exceptional concern, for the very reason that the technique is the very essence of all creativity. Dating, the daily inscription into time and for time, is in the tradition of On Kawara’s ‘I’m still alive’. The edge place-the directions for looking are the titles- aggressively associative forms.

SYMPTOM If we were to evoke hard edge and system painting the clear intrusions-layers (titles, dates, poetry, anthropological and meditative journeys, explanations, self-reflection, story telling and diary entries) would certainly soften their formal results – the fetishism of autonomy. In Ashley’s work two dramatistic flows of the text, the body (HTML) and the language (comments-layers) never leave the place of mutual affirmation. The space between is just the presence–authentic blind spot-symptom (between the imaginary-the pictorial representation and symbolic- through which meaning and sense are created): the possibility for a catharsis- resolution-meaning: to stop meaning represents according to Roland Barthes a much more complex undertaking, and thus an impossible one. Thus the place of the (hypothetical) subjectivity is to be situated in that rift-hole between the picture and the text, between the body and the language, between passivity and activity, here and there, neither here nor there. The postmodern subject, the artist does not have a complete, consistent view of the world, he is the hypothetical subject created in the confrontation of the eclectic and heterogeneous interpretative possibilities within the framework of his work.

INTERTEXTUALITY The language conflict between the pleasure originating from the mantric discipline which uses limitations and the noises coming from the outside- the rest of the world, is solved by colonization-importation-appropriation of the Outer-Other (civilizations that built their longlivety and anciency through the intuitive, meditative, cshtonic by which the continuation of both sides is established. Although they are imminently separated, they reveal something or somebody, which is quite illegible in the very object (HTML) from the point of view of the outer, the transient-significant. The result of the esthetic contemplation is not new knowledge but the totality of the experience.

The dramaturgy of the weblog performance/space achieved by enumerating and loading of the autonomous-formal contents/activity- HTML becomes static and fulfills the principles of synchrony and the rear plane-layers takes on the plot-the gaze in the drama of recording-diachrony. The place of the paradoxes-plot-meaning-limitation has never been in the merging of the texts, visually organized compositions of tables and language commentaries (images and words). One stream of consciousness-visual information flows and fill-comply to the destiny-inertia of formal systems that are analytic and do not depend on representing the outer world. The pictorial autonomy of abstraction organizes the interior in a linear way while the plot; events and information come from the exterior. Pleasure is always with the Other and thus Ashley does not give it to the Hero (HTML) nor to the Herald (layers), thus not to anyone or anyplace apart from that which has already been chosen-imported-appropriated to be the Other.

THE PASSIVE SPACE The procedure for taking the mantric form (“A sacred verbal formula repeated in prayer, meditation...«) is illustrated by the regularity of appearance-presence-dating, structure of the HTML and in the allocation, organization and choice of layers. In that sense it is also a passive space because it has been completed by being made into a contemplation.- They are what they are. Reconciled. According to Heidegger the role of the artist in the creation of a work of art also becomes passive and unimportant, the important part is that the work of art has been created. Although they contribute to art becoming ‘something more’ the imported additions situate it into the middle of the syntagm ‘art as art’ (Ad Reinhart discussed the meaning of that syntagm in the 50s and 60s) not showing anything else (in a treacherous-breaking up way) but propositions in and about the work itself. The spatial text-weblog is proposed for reception and is open to questions and answers that are situated into established knowledge and experience that are the formal consequences of art. The performance-weblog, regardless how much it has been hidden and is closed into a visual structural autonomy, always allows for the possibility of surprise, and thus contrary to the established theatre performance, we do not known where, at what point, the text will flow out, bend, situate itself.

Performance-arhives-weblog is a discipline of repetition and storing. Repetition is the usual form of redundancy that is an immanent resistance to entropy in the process of communication.

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Alan Ebnother Interview @ Minus Space

I recently finished an interview with painter Alan Ebnother conducted via email that is now posted at Minus Space. Here's a quote:

I moved to New Mexico for the light and land inexpensive enough that I could afford to build a studio here. My studio is about 4000 square feet and twenty three feet high. I could actually construct an airplane in here. I designed it for the light, with all my attention going in this direction rather than for comfort. The light in here is the best that I have ever experienced! I was painting in Germany and then bringing works over to New Mexico for shows and seeing the actual color for the first time when hanging the painting up in New Mexico. German light is very grey and silvery but almost never bright and clear. In my first visits I could not even walk around outside in New Mexico without sunglasses. This is truly a case of light affecting or becoming the painting.

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The following conversation between Alan Ebnother and Chris Ashley was conducted via email during April 17 - May 4, 2005.

CA: Your biography states that in 1975 you “began to recognize painting.” You were then in your early twenties and involved in the dance world. What does this mean, to “recognize painting,” and when and how did you actually begin painting?

AE: In 1975 I was 23 years old. I had just moved to Europe to be in the John Cranko Ballet School. I was friends at this time with San Francisco painters George Lawson and John Meyer, so the realization that people were involved in painting was not a new concept.

In Stuttgart where I was in dance school my roommate was married to Spanish painter Vicente Peris, an art professor from Valencia: He came to live with us and was painting everyday in the house. So, looking at painting and talking about it became a part of my daily life. I guess that to me the term to “recognize painting" means an attempt to understand it and accept it into my everyday life and thinking.

CA: And so when did you yourself actually begin to paint? Why did you begin, and how did you get started? Had you ever painted before?

AE: In 1979 I actually left my job as a dancer with the Hamburg State Opera, and painted for one year. I painted every day, without a solid direction. I was like a ship lost at sea. Embarrassingly enough, I actually had an exhibition in the lobby of the Opera house at the end of this year, selling almost all of these works. But they were horrible, expressive little religious icons- Christ’s bleeding on the cross. After realizing how bad the works actually were I quit painting until 1985, when I had the courage to start again.

CA: When you started painting again in 1985 where did you begin, and how did this lead to the green paintings?

AE: When starting again I chose to work with as few elements as possible, thinking that my energy would then be directed to the actual paint problems and issues. I was working not so much on producing a finished product, but rather experimenting with materials and the task of attempting to present color in a viable and stimulating manor. It seemed to me that if a painting was not successful or boring then adding more elements would just convolute the problem and make it less apparent. I actually wanted to deal with the problem or issue and not to hide it. I painted white squares for almost one year. I was living in Zurich, and in the basement of my building there was the storage facility for a house painting company. So every night I went down and took their plastic and covered my floor. I also took their paint and these square pieces of cardboard that they used for masking or something, and I painted all night. In the morning I returned all of their equipment except the painted squares. This continued for almost nine months until I finally found and rented a studio in Ulm, Germany.

In Ulm I began work in my studio and was painting monochrome squares until I realized that I could not paint into the corners. The paintings seemed to have a natural movement and rhythm until I came into the corners. I actually did not yet have the technical ability to paint freely in the corners, and the marking seemed stiff and contrived, so I simply tried cutting them off. The resulting circle had a freedom that I could handle. So for the next ten years I painted tondos. After about seven months I painted a Veronese green tondo which was extremely beautiful and really interested me. So, I simply tried another green painting with the same pigment but pushing it into another green tone, with yet another brush mark, and this work also interested me. So here I am twenty years later, still interested and still experimenting. Perhaps one day I will feel I have pushed green as far as I can and move on. But, presently, I work painting to painting, just following my progression of experiences. So, who knows? This is actually not a planned strategy, but just something that has happened.

CA: I believe for a long time you painted tondos; what meaning does that shape have for you?

AE: After ten years of painting tondos the shape has many meanings to me. How could I begin to put into words ten years of painting? Let’s say that I understand the circle, and by painting this form I had a little bit of time to develop my skills outside of the critic’s eye! You see, at this time nobody else was really working the tondo, so the other painters and critics had nobody and nothing else to compare me with. This gave me the necessary time that I needed to actually develop my painting skills. Interestingly enough, it was simply an experience with another painter which made me paint another square. One day I had a studio visit with Ulrich Wellmann, a German painter. He commented that he liked my paintings, but not the fact that they were round. His argument was that there was no top or bottom. I argued that a square had only four possibilities for a top and bottom and that a tondo had endless possibilities. After he left, I was so mad and frustrated that I stretched up four small squares and painted them. The amazing thing was that they looked liked paintings even before I painted them. Everybody is so used to seeing the rectangular form in everyday life. This is an architectural form common to our eye. The circle was always something alien or new. A rectangle resembles the form that humans have become conditioned to expect a painting to resemble; it seemed so easy after the circle. I must actually say that now in painting my corners this is the area where I enjoy experimenting the most, and where I tend to mimic the linear borders imposed by this shape. Some day I shall go back and paint the circle again.

CA: Can you talk specifically about the various characteristics of your paintings? Maybe you could discuss your different stretcher sizes and shapes. What about different brushes, sizes, and brush strokes? And do you grind your own paint? How do you approach each work so individually?

AE: All right let’s speak about December 17th 2004[1]. This was a very complex stretcher, 38 1/2 X 38 inches, so there is just a one half inch more height giving the viewer a vertical work and not a landscape format. Not visible in the photo is the thickness or depth of the stretcher which is 1 3/4 inches thick at the top and 3 inches thick at the bottom. So the back of the painting plane runs parallel with the wall and the front painting plane is thicker at the bottom and thinner at the top (like a wedge of cheese). The bottom of the paint surface is pushed out into the light. I paint with skylights, so the light is coming from above. I ordered two stretchers in these proportions as an experiment and then attempted to paint my way out of the problem caused by the sculptural, 3D effect of the wedge. I painted against the form using marks that drew the attention to the top and upper middle portions of the painting and then gradually faded out the surface leaving just enough information to present the bottom of the work in a few areas, but not in its entirety. I was simply drawing attention away from the form. The non-critical viewer does not realize that the canvas is so dramatically wedge shaped. I have completed two of these wedge painted and am OK with the finished results, but as I am not working as a sculptor and have other painting problems to deal with they will also be the last.

I have mixed and ground my own pigments from the first year of my career. George Lawson, who I mentioned earlier, and Phil Sims were both so generous in sharing all of their knowledge and experience at the time with me, and basically taught me how to do this. In the meantime my experimental nature has led me to explore many areas of pigment and different oil-based mediums, and after twenty-odd years I seem to have a fairly good grasp of oil paint.

You also asked about brushes. Well, each different mark has a different brush that seems to lend itself to it. I usually shape the hairs myself with scissors and then grind down the ends of the bristles to keep them from splitting. I customize the brush for many different reasons- for shape, drag, stiffness thickness etc. I also often cut down the wooden shaft to make it an extension of my hand and wrist, or sometimes change the shaft to make it longer and an extension of my arm or body. This depends on the sort of mark that I decide would be an interesting or correct mark to present a particular color with. While mixing the color I am able to watch the different changes that occur with the addition of different pigments, clay, balsams, or wax to this mass. Sometimes there are close to a hundred different hues that I happen to see and work thru before I decide to stop. One of the reasons that I used this Veronese green for so long was that it is a very transparent pigment with very weak personal strengths that lends itself to be pushed in many different directions, while keeping its drying and textural proprieties.

CA: What is the connection- physically, emotionally, aesthetically, philosophically- between your painting and your past work in the dance world?

AE: Learning to dance means many things, and the connections between dance and painting could be talked about for hundreds of pages. I don't really have enough words for all the connections, but let me try. The feeling of doing a tendu, a basic ballet movement where the leg is extended straight out from the supporting leg with the foot fully pointed, is much the same feeling as creating a brush stroke. With a tendu I would gently and forcefully rub the sole of my foot along the floor. At the same time, my foot and leg would fight to become extended. I felt as though I was making love to the floor. I feel this same way when dragging a brush laden with paint across a surface! Painting is a very sensual and tactile experience, as is dance. Both rely on instinctual decisions, with the critical eye entering and judging after the act.

CA: The way you compare painting and dance makes me think of course of the often-quoted description of the Abstract Expressionists by Harold Rosenberg, “At a certain moment the canvas began to appear to one American painter after another as an arena in which to act – rather than a space in which to reproduce, redesign, analyze or 'express' an object, actual or imagined. What was to go on the canvas was not a picture but an event.” But I suspect that this description doesn’t match your intentions because your work is more than an arena for an event. You are also concerned with constructing space and light, and with making an expressive image and an integrated object. Do you have any thoughts about your work in relation to Abstract Expressionism, and what you’re trying to make that is beyond an event?

AE: The act of painting is perhaps dramatic and perhaps a performance, but it is a performance just for me! My paintings are not about drama or theater, but about color and defining space with this color. Exploring the prairie, perhaps, but not about the theater. Painting is not a performing art form. I am attempting to present a color with what I believe to be a rhythm, mark and time that best suits it. This drama takes place in a studio with only one spectator (me), and when the drama is over the traces left on my linen are a painting.

CA: I remember that in the first or second email you sent to me almost two years ago you boldly exclaimed the beauty of the light in New Mexico. For years you lived and painted in Germany. The light and space of these two places is quite different. What brought you to New Mexico, and how did these two locations affect your painting? What does green mean in each place? It looks to me like your paint is getting thicker and more lush. I think your current studio is much larger than your German studio- if so, how is this affecting the paintings?

AE: I moved to New Mexico for the light and land inexpensive enough that I could afford to build a studio here. My studio is about 4000 square feet and twenty three feet high. I could actually construct an airplane in here. I designed it for the light, with all my attention going in this direction rather than for comfort. The light in here is the best that I have ever experienced! I was painting in Germany and then bringing works over to New Mexico for shows and seeing the actual color for the first time when hanging the painting up in New Mexico. German light is very grey and silvery but almost never bright and clear. In my first visits I could not even walk around outside in New Mexico without sunglasses. This is truly a case of light affecting or becoming the painting.
Well, back to marking- I have been trying to open up the painting for some time now. This task is not new, and is something that has been on my mind for several years and has had a lot to do with my move here. I am in the middle of nowhere. This is empty space. I want to bring this space onto the canvas. It seems to be a slow process, but it is finally working and is completely my goal. To define this empty space with a reduced amount of color, that is painting for me. Clyfford Still was on to something, and I would really like to go back and pick up his sensibility and morals and continue, but with simply one color.

Thinking about what we have spoken of so far I feel the need to also say something about this phenomenon happening with many monochrome painters of simply painting the same painting time and time again. It is simply not enough to change the color and paint the next work with the same concept and markings as the last work. Every different hue has a new way of application that exposes more or less the individual characteristics existing within it. The exploration of these characteristics is an important part of my work (perhaps is my work) and I feel something needs to be said about it. This exploration is one of the key elements in the work of many very established painters, such as Robert Ryman, where for him not just the paint application comes into play but his choice of methods for attaching the painting to the wall or the actual date and signature on the work become a pivotal piece of the composition. Each painting has its own paint structure, signature, date concept, and wall attachment. The color hue remains fairly constant with the actual paint mass radically changing. Ryman has explored a small avenue of painting without reaching boredom.

Look at Joseph Marioni and his subtle changing of the supports which corresponds to the individual choice of colors, opening or closing the top surface veils of color presenting differently sized and shaped windows into the work. This subtle yet earth-shattering attention to detail presents a path for the young painters of today. Perhaps thirty years ago, when this genre of painting was new, one could simply change color and create the department store effect of a “red one or a blue one or a green one.” But today we have progressed way beyond this point, and to continue to just produce work that resembles a product with your name on it, with little or no change or growth within it, is simply parasitic. The general practitioner (house doctor) of the past is gone. We have entered an era of specialists, in painting and in technology.

Abstract art is still a new concept, and it is in the hands of today’s artists to push and develop this concept further along. The changes do not have to be large and the directions don’t have to be specific, but an exploration of the genre itself must transpire in order to keep it alive. The public cannot be relied on to support this exploration, as they are basically still content with watching Swan Lake, listening to Mozart, and viewing Rembrandt, all of which are wonderful but transpired long ago. Historically speaking, progress in the fine art fields has not always been immediately accepted by the audience, so it is literally in the hands of today’s painters to support and push this exploration forward, regardless of the response from the viewing public.

CA: It can sometimes be helpful- and sometimes not- to talk about an artist’s work in relation to other art work. We’ve already talked about dance, and you mentioned Ryman and Marioni. What other painters are important to you, and why?

AE: Joseph Marioni is very important to me for completely different reasons than Ryman. Joe’s progress can be extremely difficult to perceive as the changes, improvements, and differences are all quite subtle to the uninformed eye. But once you begin to be aware of the vast amount of “improvements” or refinements that are taking place, canvas to canvas, the hunger to see more becomes insatiable. Watching Marioni’s or Ryman’s painting reminds me of people that first come to the desert and say that there is no vegetation or wildlife. On closer observation the desert opens itself to their vision and a complete world of plant and animal life becomes apparent. Everything is there waiting for the viewer to educate him or herself.

CA: Talk about the kind of space that you are after in your paintings. In some of the recent work the paint seems very thick; the brush strokes are extremely visible and present. One can almost see your strokes as a kind of allover calligraphy, and there is something about the space in some of your paintings that seems to build into a space like, for example de Kooning’s ribbons of color that are layered and overlapping, and working with and against gravity.

AE: Well, each painting is different. There is no master plan that I can refer to for additional information! I have never studied calligraphy but comparing my internal space to de Kooning would be the work of an art critic, not a painter. Why not compare Ryman and Monet, or Ter Borch and Umberg? From my viewpoint there is often nothing similar about any of these artists’s work except the materials. Perhaps an art critic could find something similar and compare them with each other, but for me each and every painter has his own dialogue and nuances that wait to be discovered by the viewer. To attempt a comparison would be an attempt at defining or categorizing a particular artist, which would only make the public stop looking. If you go into one of the larger, more popular exhibitions in a museum today you are faced with masses of humans reading wall texts or listening to tape recorded comments about the individual paintings. At that moment these people actually stop viewing and stop experiencing the work in exchange for some art critic’s explanation. THERE IS NO EXPLANATION FOR ART. IT MUST BE EXPERIENCED!

[1] December 17th 2004, 2004, Oil on linen, 38.5 x 38 inches
http://www.minusspace.com/ebnother/images/ebnother8_jpg.jpg
http://minusspace.com/ebnother/images/ebnother8a_jpg.jpg

Alan Ebnother lives and works in Stanley, New Mexico

Chris Ashley is an artist, writer, and educator living and working in Oakland, California

Updated 20060106

Richard Schur @ Artothek, München

Richard Schur sends some intallation shots of his huge painting at Staedtische Artothek, München (April 28 thru July 2, 2005). Some of the text I wrote for Richard has been translated into German and is posted on the exhibition page.

"Richard Schurs neueste Bilder sind intensive Abstraktionen, schräg, voller Spannung, die Geschichte bejahend. Wie hätte Mondrian nach einem trunkenen Nachmittag mit Shitao gemalt? Wie hätte Richard Lohse Formen verschoben nach einer Woche Kritzelei in der Scrovegni-Kapelle in Padua, umgeben von Giottos Frescos. So zum Spaß: man stelle sich Sol Lewitt vor, Farbe und Raum von indischen Miniaturen klauend und, nur ums noch weiter zu treiben: Barnett Newmans und Andy Warhols Love Child auf der Montessori Schule, Paul Klee-Reproduktionen in der Cafeteria. Blöd, aber vielleicht vermitteln die Farben, Formen und Räume, die sich in diesen Szenarien erschließen ein Gefühl von den wundersamen Dingen, die Richard Schurs Gemälde erwirken können." (Chris Ashley)

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Untitled, 2005, HTML, 464 X 464 pixels

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The Infinite Line 1-10

1. Picture
2. Series
3. Infinity
4. Diagram
5. Tableau
6. Encounter
7. Studio
8. List
9. Mobility
10. Utopia

From the Yale Press site:

A fresh perspective on some important twentieth-century art

This landmark book offers a radical reinterpretation of the innovative art of the late 1950s and 1960s. Examining the work of major artists of the period--including Mark Rothko, Piero Manzoni, Agnes Martin, Dan Flavin, Eva Hesse, Blinky Palermo, and Louise Bourgeois--Briony Fer focuses on the overriding tendency toward repetition and seriality that occurred at the moment of modernism’s decline, gained ground in its aftermath, and continues to shape much of the art seen today.

Although seriality is mainly associated with American artists and with Minimalism, Fer broadens our understanding of it, looking at Minimalist seriality as one crucially important strategy among several. She argues that repetition becomes generative of new modes and habits of making and looking; at stake is how we think about the artwork in relation to both temporality and subjectivity. Paying close attention to specific artworks, this timely critical reassessment offers a fresh perspective on a wide range of familiar and less familiar art.

Notes on Kathryn Van Dyke's Maps of Possibilities

Notes on Kathryn Van Dyke's Maps of Possibilities

Kathryn Van Dyke: Recent Paintings at Stephen Wirtz Gallery, San Francisco, April 20 - May 28, 2005
All images Kathryn Van Dyke and Stephen Wirtz Gallery, used without permission.

1. Selection
Kathryn Van Dyke's exhibit at Stephen Wirtz includes ten paintings in the main gallery and six works on paper in a side hall. In a sense there are really three bodies of works represented.

• The works on paper and two of the ten paintings are much smaller than the others. The works on paper are incidental. The two small paintings are out of place in the gallery because of their size, imagery, and awkward stretchers. They are uninteresting little paintings that in the context of this exhibit seem disconnected from the larger work. They are filler.
• Three of the larger paintings are made with flat, thin, pale oil. Two of these contain out-of-square or round-cornered rectangles, and the third is a pale field with an elongated diamond in the middle. These paintings don't interest me, either.
• The five remaining paintings are all graphite and oil on canvas. The surfaces of all but one of these contain a hand drawn, spider-like web of pencil lines spanning edge to edge. Small areas of these webs are painted in bright colors like multi-colored gems spun out of random lines, except for:
  • One which is all web with small dots of color where some lines intersect...
  • And a final painting isn't completely covered in a web, but does have a painted section of shapes made by a smaller interior web.

These notes are about the web paintings, specifically the three that are completely covered in a web of pencil lines that contain painted smaller sections: Thought Pattern Revisited- Feeling Forms (2005, 30 x 42"); Earthbound/Airborne (2005, 66 x 72"); and Map of Possibilities (2005, 30 x 50").

2. Wander
Van Dyke's paintings are covered in a penciled web that doesn't necessarily have the logic of a spider's web. It's more dot-to-dot. It's like doodling. Begin at one point and connect it by line to another point, and so on. Vary the length of lines, make them closer and further from each other, and build little networks of lines projecting from or circling around a particular point. Slowly a structure starts to build. Make it up as you go along. It's the search for a structure, and a way to cover the entire surface. Balance it, spread it out, counterweight heavier areas with lighter areas.

3. Fingerprint
The web of drawn lines can be taken as post-modern device following the modernist grid. The web is a self-consciously personal accumulation of wavy and skewed multi-directional lines. It refers to other things in the world, the result of a procedure of ambivalence and uncertainty. A web isn't measured. It is unevenly weighted but equitably distributed across the surface. Van Dyke's hand-drawn web begins as a tentative commitment to a process that requires heightened attention in order to result in a found and acceptable conclusion. "I went from A to B to C to A and D. Where I have arrived is fine." An artist's anxiety about and need to cover a surface is the need to compose, to find, to claim, declare and own, to reckon with emptiness. And then there is the worrry of going too far. A lightly penciled web is easier to keep from going too far than heavier kinds of imagery.

4. Elastic
The web is an elastic, distorted, rotated cousin to the grid. The grid is a modernist strategy for covering, mapping, and containing the entire surface of the painting's surface: the "picture plane." Covering the entire surface in some kind of structure is a compositional strategy. Like an armature, an allover support structure composes the painting, and makes the plane whole and held in place like a hair net. By snapping down, covering, and containing a field, the field becomes more visible, a singular field standing apart from other surfaces. A grid maps an area, and lets you see this larger area via inter-related sections. The grid as a map is an ideal of the thing that is mapped, and helps us understand the real thing. The grid is an idea to hold in memory, through which we better see the thing the grid lays over. A web is irregular because it isn't measured according to a standard. Because of its irregularity, the web as a distorted and rotated grid is a personal, intimate structure. Using the web (grid) Van Dyke lightly covers (composes) the painting's entire surface. In one light application a field is mapped and contained by a web of lines. The surface is composed.

5. Tender
Webs are fragile, swayed by breath, weighted by dew, dried and lit by the sun, constantly interrupted by mobile humans who wipe them out of their hair. Webs are temporary. They have a job to do. They catch things. Webs are places to hang out. Flying things get caught in them and stand out as foreign objects. Webs catch light and have color that isn't always seen. Van Dyke's webs quaver. They hum quietly.

7. Precedent
The web is a fishing net. The web is veil. The web is screen. The web is a model. It's a telecom diagram, with central points as nodes from which lines emanate as paths on a network. Our eyes trace the protocol of the web. Webs are organizational charts, workflows, captured brainstorms of ideas and flat lists of low-lying hierarchies. A web is peer-to-peer, an outline of relationships. It's a thin or shallow space. Some webs have volume, but the archetypal web is flat and radiates out from a center, like a wheel with spokes. Webs are easy to draw and are perfect for doodling. Large empty spaces between the thin lines of a web are empty spaces into which our eyes are drawn and our consciousness slips. Webs are as much about not making as they are about making, as much about borders as they are about holes, as much about not drawing as much as they are about drawing

8. Realism
Sub-areas of Van Dyke's webs are filled-in by even smaller webs-within-webs. These smaller webs coalesce as pockets of mass within the greater web, as aggregations of individual clusters. Sections of each cluster, triangles and rhomboids, are painted in forming multi-planed, faceted, diamond-like, multi-colored shapes. Adjacent sections in these shapes are colored in tints and shades that achieve the effect of "realism" when each cluster appears as a faceted surface of logical folding and unfolding planes like a crystal, origami, or a crumpled ball of paper. The space is Cubist, it is de Kooning's Excavation. These multi-colored crystals are brightly colored, hardened sections of the web, solids suspended in a web of lines and voids. The solid spaces of these shapes are depictions that turn the paintings from the conventions of abstractions to figuration, still life, and illustration. This isn't abstraction, it's realism.

" The termite/white elephant essay cashiered "masterpiece art, reminiscent of the enameled tobacco humidors and wooden lawn ponies bought at white elephant auctions decades ago." White elephant directors "blow up every situation and character like an affable inner tube with recognizable details and smarmy compassion" or "pin the viewer to the wall and slug him with wet towels of artiness and significance." Farber instead tracked the termite artist: "ornery, wasteful, stubbornly self-involved, doing go-for-broke art and not caring what comes of it." Termite art (or "termite-fungus-centipede art," as he also tagged it) is an "act both of observing and being in the world, a journeying in which the artist seems to be ingesting both the material of his art and the outside world through a horizontal coverage." Against the white elephant "pursuit of the continuity, harmony, involved in constructing a masterpiece," termite art mainly inheres in moments: "a few spots of tingling, jarring excitement" in a Cezanne painting "where he nibbles away at what he calls his 'small sensation'"; or John Wayne's "hipster sense of how to sit in a chair leaned against the wall" in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance.

Van Dyke's webs and colored clusters are made by nibbling step by step towards an end that isn't predetermined. (As an aside, this is part of my definition of Abstract Expressionism.) The webs are "ornery, wasteful, stubbornly self-involved, doing go-for-broke art and not caring what comes of it." They are acts "both of observing and being in the world, a journeying in which the artist seems to be ingesting both the material of his art and the outside world through a horizontal coverage."

10. Emerge
Each cluster is like a Scholar's Rock, mined from the tangled mass, identified and selected, cleaned and polished, spot lit and isolated.

11. Traffic
Think of a painting as a broadcast into personal space, a projection that I engage to meet halfway. A painting isn't static. As I view it I receive or select details and assemble them into a narrative, or several narratives, sometimes simultaneously, sometimes successively. Unlike the stream of radio or film, when I look at a painting I choose (and I may be guided in my choices by the painting's composition, color, brush strokes, etc.) the order in which I receive the details, and the speed at which I assemble my own narratives. I can pause and restart, take detours and tangents, and do extract and assemble over and over. The web in Van Dyke's paintings is a weave of lines I can trace, a space into which I can enter and follow different paths, rest at points, ricochet in another direction. In a dense web of lines the larger and small aggregations of line will ebb and flow and permit a variety of readings. It is hard to see the painting as a whole, but the web lets me feel it as a whole.

12. Obit
Is painting dead or isn't it? Nah, of course not. But if modernist painting is dead in any sense it may be dead in that painting seems to have returned to installation. A painting doesn't stand alone. Once upon a time painting was part of installation; think of fresco, of altar pieces- these are installations. No painting is just its surface. And like it or not, for a painting to be seen it must exist in a place. A gallery exhibit is an event in a specific place. And that specific existence is an installation. Gone is the painting as a disembodied plane hovering before a wall. The gallery frames everything it contains as a single entity and heightens all elements.

13. Event
I take into account everything: How many works are on the walls? How deep are the stretchers? What is the support, canvas or linen? How low or high are the paintings hung? Do I see the gallery as a support, a frame, an intervention, or a distraction? The meaning of work in an exhibit is about more than any single work. Inconsistencies in the body of work draw my attention. Are inconsistencies a problem or are they unique aspects of individual works? A painting is an object with a body. The relationship between painted bodies is sensitive. In that moment, how paintings are related is important. Different sizes of stretchers, or different grades of canvas or linen used for paintings side by side interrupt the reading of the paintings, and disrupt my trust in the artist. Van Dyke's smaller paintings are awkward in this body of work. They are weak on their own and don't add to understanding the larger work. Their presence isn't needed. Likewise with the small works on paper. And material inconsistencies between the larger paintings make me feel like this body of work isn't cohesive. It creates an unnecessary barrier to my engagement.

14. History
What I see as three bodies of work is a distraction. The web paintings are the strong works. Van Dyke's 2002 show at Wirtz[2] had a similar problem. In that show a variety of approaches confused meaning and the smaller works were filler. A exhibition as an installed event must avoid the chunky and random feeling in order to have integrity. This is not advocating for standardized conformity, for a product line, but for a standard of quality, a sign that coherence is a conscious concern of the artist. Evidence of conscious concern for coherence tells us something about the work, how the artist thinks about her art, how in control she is, her intentions.

15. Names
What is the significance of the titles? The titles of the three paintings I am discussing align with my description and analysis. Thought Pattern Revisited- Feeling Forms alludes to a process of thinking to arrive at expressive forms. Earthbound/Airborne refers to something held and something free. The title of this essay uses the title Map of Possibilities because it perfectly captures what I think is Van Dyke's exploratory approach, openness, and the idea of a grid as a map quirkily loosened and rotated into a web.

16. Paths
Think of a scribbled Twombly with hand-scrawled loopy lines and bursts of smeared atmospheric color masses. Imagine opening this image in Photoshop and applying a filter that instantly straightens out lines and and brings the smeared color into crystalline focus as faceted shapes. Think of Twombly's paintings from the early 60's, Untitled[3] or The Italians[4]. Van Dyke's paintings process, compositions, and motifs are slower, embroidered members of the Twombly family. She shares a casual, doodly, full-arm, hand-drawn, moving from the shoulder, almost arbitrary approach. Twombly line is from a revolving shoulder, an outburst. Van Dyke's line is from more tense shoulder, moving with the breath. Both Twombly and Van Dyke repeat and iterate. But her line leads to a different end. Twombly's work is the impulsive expression of an idea that already exists. This is literary, like writing out a thought. Van Dyke's work, while poetic, isn't literary. It results from a series of decisions that is a slowed-down expressive process building into an idea, a psychological space. The visual result is one of dispersion, distribution, empty space, linking, interrupted by areas of density. Engaging in a repetition of the mental process as a viewer takes one through these spaces. It is through the empty spaces and the hard, colored facets that the poetic and emotional emerges.

17. Reason
Van Dyke's 2005 Wirtz exhbit is uneven, but I found that the three web paintings had a strength and interest worth exploring through writing. The web as a variant on the modernist grid is a provocative idea. I don't think that the idea is nearly tapped out in these three paintings.

18. End
End.

Chris Ashley
Oakland, CA
April-May 2005

[1] Polito, Robert. Painter of pictures: The Farber equation is never simple. ArtForum. April, 2002
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0268/is_8_40/ai_85459257.
[2] Katharine Van Dyke: New Paintings, Stephen Wirtz Gallery, San Francisco, CA, November 13 - January 18, 2003,
http://wirtzgallery.com/exhibitions/2002/exhibitions_2002_11/vandyke/vandyke_2002_frame.html
[3] Cy Twombly, Untitled, 1961, Oil, house paint, crayon, and pencil on canvas, 8' 4 3/4" x 10' 7/8" (256 x 307 cm), Private collection
http://www.artchive.com/artchive/T/twombly/twombly_1961.jpg.html
[4] Cy Twombly, The Italians, 1961, Oil, pencil, and crayon on canvas, 6'6 5/8" x 8'6 1/4" (199.5 x 259.6 cm), The Museum of Modern Art, New York
http://www.artchive.com/artchive/T/twombly/twombly_the_italians.jpg.html