Look, See

All of the paintings consist of triangles of varying sizes, shape, color and intensity are plac on a painted white field, some abutting and clustering together to form shapes most obviously reminiscent of origami. If what these paintings showed and did stopped right there so would my writing. But there is more.

These shapes do an awful lot of folding and unfolding, but with a kind of continual persistence and movement that makes them not stay as things, but instead as shapes and spaces that are continually becoming and coming apart. This also means that there is a continually active assembly and disassembly of internal and external spaces. In once instance as a viewer I may see and go into a space and then back out of it again to move around the painting. In the next instance I may see and go into a space only to have it fall apart or implode.

One may suddenly notice that three or four unconnected triangles spread out across the painting are positioned in such a way that one or two of their edges suddenly align and define the outline of a rectangle spanning a large portion of the painting in something approximating one point persepective. And just as suddenly the rectangle pulls apart as another set aligns and pulls our vision into seeing another rectangle. Some of this alignment is reinforced by shapes of similar color or value. Sometimes the alignment snaps into some other kind of shape, and then dissovles or fades again as we move on another alignment.

White works with a consistently peculiar palette. There are browns that look like purple, oranges that look like brown, and browns that look like they're made with five other colors. Occasionally there's a green, or one or two shapes with a blue, all a little difficult to place. It's a hard palette to name. Colors like these should be natural, but they instead or very personal and handled, mixed beyond naming. There's a way that the colors feel like those printed on jazz record sleeves from the early sixties: a little faded, separated in blocks, low in saturation but starkly surrounded by white. At one point Takada turned off the gallery lights and the paintings changed dramatically; not only did color change, of course, but the entire surface and density of color went from hard and flat to deep and worked, with the barest hint of brushwork, sanding, and coats of paint suddenly evident.

The color has other qualities. Some are dense and brighter while others are so tinted as to almost dissappear into the white backround in bright low are from certain angles. These different colors influence how triangles sit on the surface or fade in and out of view; this influences how some triangles align and the space they make, resulting in odd rhythms and synocpation. The movement speeds up or slows down, with unexpected emphases. White's title for this show, between the backbeat, seems apt.

This activity happens in rapid sequence, which makes this difficult work for the casual viewer. These paintings are animated, with constant movements in parallel narratives. They are time-based; as one looks parts of the paintings are made and unmade. The experience of looking at these is a constant cycling of past, present, and future. Here there is a beauty in material, in a sustained intelligent and intuitive energy.

If you have never been to the Fabric Workshop it's well worth a visit. This is the first art-making facility I've ever been in that allows visitors to walk freely through the huge studio/workshop. Long tables spanning the loft, perhaps fifty feet long or so, have bolts of fabric with work in progress rolled out. Patterns are spread on a table, studio workers are looking over drawings or working out details, and sewing or dyeing may be going on. The actual working space is enormous, and examples of work are up on the walls. It's a really interesting place, with lots to look at and great access for the visitor.

Besides the studio the main workshop floor has offices and a good-sized room to show work. Teresita Fernández is on this floor. One floor up is another huge, three room exhibit area. This is where I saw Single Screen Selections of Rare Film and Audio from the Pamela and Richard Kramlich Collection, with prime examples by Gilbert & George, Bruce Nauman, and Dara Birnbaum's classic Wonder Woman, among others. Not exactly fabric, but I'm not complaining.

Teresita Fernández, as everyone knows by now, is a genius. That is, she is a 2005 MacArthur Fellow, giving her what is often called a genius grant. I don't think that is what the MacArthur Foundation itself calls these grants, but a quick search using the term genius grant will result in links to places that demonstrate that just about everyone else calls them genius grants. The appellation genius must be a terrible burden to bear, but I'm sure the $500,000 award makes that load a little lighter. I was already curious about the Fabric Workshop, knew of Fernández's recent award, and couldn't pass up the opportunity to see the work of a genius since geniuses in the art world are very difficult to find, or at least very difficult to identify, or more probably very hard to define.

Do I sound a little cynical, or something? I don't really mean to sound that way. It can't be jealousy, you see, since I, not being a genius, was hardly in the competition for a genius grant. No, I'm just curious: what makes for a genius artist? What is genius-level artmaking? Perhaps my visit to the Fabric Workshop would enlighten me. Perhaps a little geniousness would rub off on me. Perhaps I'd simply like the art. Perhaps walking alone in this big city for the first time, taking in history, seeing art, just having time to soak stuff in, breathing and looking, is a kind of genious way to exist. Maybe instead I was feeling relaxed and receptive.

Fernández exhibit is in one large room. One sculpture lays on the floor, a flat, mishapen plank about the size of a body encrusted with glass particles that shift light and color as one walks around it. On two of the four walls are fifteen to twenty works on paper hung in one line, all in burning reds and yellows with and black sections and center sections torn out or collaged to make an image of fire. Near the middle of the room hung the big work, the main event, Fire.

To save some effort, why not let the press release describe Fire:

As an Artist-in-Residence, Fernández worked with FWM staff to create Fire. This monumental, delicate sculpture is composed of two concentric circles of thousands of silk threads that hover, suspended in the gallery. The silk threads, hand-dyed shades of lush reds, oranges and yellows, come to life as one circles the piece. The two concentric layers of threads flicker under the gallery lights, losing their materiality and becoming animated as pure color and light.

A truly collaborative effort and feat of technical innovation, Fernández worked with FWM Project Coordinator Mary Anne Friel, professional spray master Michael Wommack, weaver Pam Pawl, and sculptor Georghe Adam. Starting with the initial concept of a "ring of fire," the project went through many material incarnations. Crucial to the piece's development was a trip to the renowned textile manufacturer Scalamandré, until recently located in Queens, NY. The facility's long rows of stretched warp threads inspired Friel and Fernández to leave behind the weightiness of materials like resins and plastics. Finally, partially woven threads were stretched taut and suspended between two custom-made steel rings and hand-dyed using an innovative technique of airbrush color dyeing.

Immediately upon entering the gallery, and before reading anything about the work, I of course thought, "ring of fire." And as I walked around Fire, seeing and experiencing a continously animated fire image, I thought, "zoetrope." Here's more of what I thought, easily expressed by simply pasting a few quotes found with a little search engine research:

1. The Ring of Fire is a zone of frequent earthquakes and volcanic eruptions that encircles the basin of the Pacific Ocean. It is associated with a nearly continuous series of oceanic trenches, island arcs, and volcanic mountain ranges and / or plate movements. It is sometimes called the circum-Pacific seismic belt.

   About 71% of the world's largest earthquakes occur within the Ring of Fire. [1] The Alpide belt, which extends from Java to Sumatra through the Himalayas, the Mediterranean, and out into the Atlantic, accounts for another 17%, and the Mid-Atlantic Ridge is a third prominent earthquake belt.

   The Ring of Fire is a direct consequence of plate tectonics and the movement and collisions of crustal plates (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacific_Ring_of_Fire).

2. Love Is A Burning Thing
   And It Makes A Fiery Ring
   Bound By Wild Desire
   I Fell Into A Ring Of Fire

   I Fell Into A Burning Ring Of Fire
   I Went Down, Down, Down
   And The Flames Went Higher

   And It Burns, Burns, Burns
   The Ring Of Fire
   The Ring Of Fire
   (http://www.toptown.com/hp/66/ringoffire.htm)

3. The zoetrope is the third major optical toy, after the thaumatrope and phenakistoscope, that uses the persistence of motion principle to create an illusion of motion. It consists of a simple drum with an open top, supported on a central axis. A sequence of hand-drawn pictures on strips of paper are placed around the inner bottom of the drum. Slots are cut at equal distances around the outer surface of the drum, just above where the picture strips were to be positioned.

   To create an illusion of motion, the drum is spun; the faster the rate of spin, the smoother the progression of images. A viewer can look through the wall of the zoetrope from any point around it, and see a rapid progression of images. Because of its design, more than one person could use the zoetrope at the same time (http://courses.ncssm.edu/gallery/collections/toys/html/exhibit10.htm).

Fire is a life-size animated fire image made with dyed string hung just off the ground between metal hoops. It's quite beautiful, very physical, somewhat simple, elegant and imaginative. As you walk around it vision goes alternately focused and unfocused- we see the material and fabrication on one round, and on the next we unfocus so that material stops being itself and becomes magical image.

There is no evidence that Fernández is thinking of earthquakes and volcanoes, unless her glass-encrusted flat sculpture is supposed to convey the shifting of tectonic plates. And there is no evidence that Fernández has in mind June Carter Cash's lyrics of tormenting love memorably sung by her husband, the late, great Johnny Cash. The idea of a zoetrope is so obvious that, even despite the absence of any declarative statement, it's hard not to image it being an intentional association. What I ultimately feel is that I am looking at a raging fire burning in a cylinder, and I am able to walk around and against this wall of fire without harm- there's is no risk, no danger.

In the end, I think of Fire as a trick. It's a trick I like, but how many times do I want to walk around it? How much do I want to stand back and take it in? Why can't I walk into the center of it and look out? Why do I end up feeling that this work is a simple gesture?

Here's my final association: the Wall of Death is a carnival stunt. A motorcyclist rides around the inside of a huge, wide ring laid on it's side, faster and faster until the rider is parallel to the ground defying gravity with centrifugal force, at which points gas jets around the ring turn on, a flame is lit, and the rider continues circling at a high speed encircled by a ring of fire. Impressive, and kind of cool to look at, but it doesn't really take a genius to do it. You knew I was going to say that, right?

I know Laurie Reid's work very well, having had many opportunities to see it in the Bay Area. Her most recent exhibit at StephenWirtz Gallery in San Francisco just closed earlier this month, and I saw her work recently in Water Color: Current Views at GalleryJoe in Philadelphia. Her past work is all watercolor on paper. Often the watercolor is heavily diluted and applied to paper so that it buckles and the pigment collects along the edges of the liquid and in the furrows of the buckled paper. Other work is made of drops of much more intense color.

Her work doesn't allow for much correction, and requires concentration and a strong physical presence, action, balance, and decisiveness. Recent work seems to begin by re-using older work on top of which more painting is taking place. This introduces a few things: multiple kinds of structures, greater variety of line, much greater varying of density of color used within one painting, and layering of kinds of structures over other kinds.

I think the newer work looks more relaxed. Part of that I think comes from the re-use of old work, the second-generation of new marks covering over a first generation of older marks, of different kinds of structure layering up. In a way it is destroying old work to make new work, or adding to something that one decides much later is unfinished. I think to do that one does have to be relaxed, to have accepted something as incomplete or perhaps a failure. That requires a letting go, and approaching an old work with a new attitude.

I see in the older work an interesting contradiction or duality— these very liquid lines carry a lot of tension and a sense of relaxed flow at the same time. First, there's a lot of tension in the lines and drops— that comes from the precision, calculation, measuring, and consistency needed to make the work, the need not to screw up, and the difficulty imposed by not being able to do anything over. As a viewer, one feels all of that.

Tension in many of the larger works, some up to six feet or more high or long, is found, for example, in the long strokes that need to cover a very large area. And then there is tension in the relationship of one line or shape to another, how they may be placed alongside each and not touch, each retaining a unique quality. This all requires strength, endurance, a steady hand and eye, care and patience. And part of the tension is also built into the medium of water on paper— you've pretty much got to hit it in one go without correction when you're working with large sheets of nice white paper and each large wet stroke is the image. Reid handles that really well, with strength and consistency.

But then all that tension in these lines as shape is contradicted by the liquid quality of the lines— the somewhat controlled elastic flow of pigment within puddled sections- and by the physical puckering of the paper. This liquidity and puckering creates a feeling of relaxation, of breathing, and expansiveness.

I find that duality between tension and flow really interesting; it is very human, almost figurative- something with a nervous system opened up and laid bare. There is a tremulousness to the images, and if one is quiet and listens there is a hum, either off the work or in the viewer's response to the work.

In the newer work Reid is building webs with new lines on top of old, or filling in shapes that were previously only defined by line with new areas color. This changes the whole dynamic in Reid's work. This new work is more layered, with one approach on top of another approach. Because of this the work feels less process-oriented — less conceptual—and more like someone building a picture. In a sense, the correction she couldn't do on the earlier work is now taking place in the newer work, and old is transformed into new. The tensions have changed a bit, their is a newer density and heaviness.

All of the work I saw at Gallery Joe is in this new same vein as the work in the Wirtz show. I think this direction adds another dimension to Reid's work, and certainly give here something new to wrestle with. I hope she can hold onto the qualities I admire in the older work while adding new approaches. This recent work is a good start.

Here's a bit from a conversation with Sprurling recently in the LA Times:

Upending the notion of a bourgeois Matisse

Call them brothers separated at birth.

One, raised in a secure part of Europe, was a fair-haired boy praised as a genius from the moment he drew his first picture. Success followed success, the world's horrors rarely touched him, and he was celebrated in death, as in life, as a visionary.

The other, weaned in his nation's armpit, was dismissed from childhood as a fool or a madman — even by his friends. When he began to paint, he was charged by critics and peers with being obscene, and later by the avant-garde with being reactionary. He was tangled in scandal in which he played no part; wars ravaged his hometown and his family. Yet he innovated almost continuously until his death, smashing barriers at each step and summoning courage even as tragedy struck those around him.

And here's the shocking part: This second brother would come to be viewed as a complacent burgher who crafted pretty pictures for country houses.

"It always amazes me that Picasso is the one with the reputation for being the revolutionary," says Hilary Spurling, author of the new, much-hailed "Matisse the Master," the second volume of her life of the Spanish artist's aesthetic sibling, French artist Henri Matisse. "When you think of Picasso, what problems did he have? They were all of his own making, and mostly had to do with women.

"Whereas Matisse was born on the front lines and was always up to his neck in it. He was the first man into his town after [World War I]. Try to imagine it: the dead bodies everywhere, every tree burnt, every town razed to the ground. Matisse, then, had a tremendous, insatiable need for stability and peace. But to say that Matisse was the comfortable one, or the one who lived like a bourgeois!"

• A large unfinished, unstretched canvas hangs askew on the wall; it's either been tacked up in a hurry, or it's a picture knocked off-center by a jolt, wind, or violence.
• The shape of a hand has been cut from a multi-layered sheet of black plastic revealing the white of the wall.
• The multiple black plastic cutout hands are scattered on the floor and around a woman's profile on a black ground on plywood- has this slipped off the wall and onto the floor, or was it thrown down and walked over?
• More black paint hands are smeared on a piece of paper on the floor.
• A black hand print is pressed on the wall above a vase of flowers on the floor.
• Next to the hand print is a CD jacket for Something To Believe In, a collection of songs by Black artists: Change Is Gonna Come by Otis Redding, Think, by Aretha Franklin, Higher And Higher by Jackie Wilson, and so on. The painting on the CD cover is by Jacob Lawrence.
• Not far away near the floor a postcard of a Romare Bearden collage of a group of people is taped to the wall.
• A tall wide column made of large sheets of printed paper fixed to the wall rises above the Romare Bearden, flanked on each side by carved wood African masks- the genuine article.
• Near the top of the paper column are printout sheets of Prince Valiant comics and consumer goods, probably from the late 20's or 30's, emblematic of an American industrial and middle class ideal.
• Further down the column are prints of a wordless Mickey Mouse comic, also probably from the 30's, complete with a dark, big-lipped monkey king and a barrel of smaller monkeys drawn in the same cariacaturish way that African Americans were drawn in that period.
• At the lower right is a New York Times page dated October 1 with the headeline, "Another Casualty of Our War." Thunk! It's about the after affects of Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans, racism in America, the politics of disaster, and haves and have nots.

Yesterday I wrote, humorously, I hope, or perhaps light-heartedly, or maybe even just inoffensively, about how "a West Coast artist can't even get mentioned in an art review" on the East Coast. I wrote:

Exhibit A: Water Color: Current Views at Gallery Joe in Philadelphia consists of twelve artists. Eight of these artists live in the East, and four in the West. That's a 2:1 ratio, right? Pretty good western representation for an East Coast gallery.

Exhibit B: Roberta Fallon's review of the show mentions six of the twelve artists. Five are from the East, and one is from the West. That's, uh, a 5:1 ration. Are you telling me that artists from the Eastern US are that much better than those from Western US? That can't be.

The single West Coast artist Roberta mentions is Brian Murphy (Seattle). All six of the artists she mentions use what what I would call representation- recognizable imagery, from life or using life-derived forms, some more conventional than others.

Regarding the remaining six unmentioned artists- I can't recall the number of "representational" artists vs. "abstract" artists (and I use quotes because I think in some way not only are these labels often applied in inaccurate ways that have become convention, but also because I think putting visual art into one or the other camp isn't ultimately very meaningful, just merely and temporarily useful), but I do know that the three Bay Area artists not even named in the review use abstract imagery, sometimes referred to as reductive imagery. I don't know what the emphasis on representational art is supposed to mean, if anything; I'm just stating the facts.

Below: on the left, four small watercolors by Nicole Phungrasamee Fein of SF, and on the right, two watercolors by Amy Rathbone, also of SF (photo 20051007).

I don't know Fein's work other than having seen it before on Gallery Joe's site. Her bio on the gallery site says she's shown locally at Hosfelt and Soker, and she earned an MFA at Mills in 2002. These watercolors are delicate, minimal, pale, linear, grid-based. They're sweet. See better photos on her page at Gallery Joe.

I've seen Rathbone's work. She has shown in SF at Hanley and Lind. I wrote a fairly lengthy essay about her solo show at UC Davis earlier this year. In May I saw a group show she was in at RARE in NY; the show was opening that Saturday afternoon (20050521) and Amy was in town (I asked), but this show was literally at the last gallery I visited on my way to get my bag— I had a plane to catch— so I didn't meet her. The watercolors in this show reminded me of some of her installations using steel wool— stacked, tucked, piled, gravity- and also had a degree of finish I'd never seen in her installation work; I'm only familiar with past works on paper from images on the web.

Below: four watercolors by Laurie Reid, Berkeley, all push pinned to the wall. See better photos on her page at Gallery Joe.

I know Reid's work very well, having had many opportunities to see it in the Bay Area. Her most recent exhibit at Wirtz just closed earlier this month. Her past work is all watercolor on paper. Often the watercolor is heavily diluted and applied to paper so that it buckles and the pigment collects along the edges of the liquid and in the furrows of the buckled paper. Other work is made of drops of much more intense color.

Her work doesn't allow for much correction, and requires concentration and a strong physical presence, action, balance, and decisiveness. Recent work seems to be using older work on top of which more painting is taking place. This introduces a few things: multiple kinds of structures, greater variety of line, much greater varying of density of color used within one painting, and layering of kinds of structures over other kinds.

I think the newer work looks more relaxed. Part of that I think comes from the re-use of old work, the second-generation of new marks covering over a first generation of older marks, of different kinds of structure layering up. In a way it is destroying old work to make new work, or adding to something that one decides much later is unfinished. I think to do that one does have to be relaxed, to have accepted something as incomplete or perhaps a failure. That requires a letting go, and approaching an old work with a new attitude.

I see in the older work an interesting contradiction or duality— these very liquid lines carry a lot of tension and a sense of relaxed flow at the same time. First, there's a lot of tension in the lines and drops— that comes from the precision, calculation, measuring, and consistency needed to make the work, the need not to screw up, and the difficulty imposed by not being able to do anything over. As a viewer, one feels all of that.

Tension in many of the larger works, some up to six feet or more high or long, is found, for example, in the long strokes that need to cover a very large area. And then there is tension in the relationship of one line or shape to another, how they may be placed alongside each and not touch, each retaining a unique quality. This all requires strength, endurance, a steady hand and eye, care and patience. And part of the tension is also built into the medium of water on paper— you've pretty much got to hit it in one go without correction when you're working with large sheets of nice white paper and each large wet stroke is the image. Reid handles that really well, with strength and consistency.

But then all that tension in these lines as shape is contradicted by the liquid quality of the lines— the somewhat controlled elastic flow of pigment within puddled sections- and by the physical puckering of the paper. This liquidity and puckering creates a feeling of relaxation, of breathing, and expansiveness.

I find that duality between tension and flow really interesting; it is very human, almost figurative- something with a nervous system opened up and laid bare. There is a tremulousness to the images, and if one is quiet and listens there is a hum, either off the work or in the viewer's response to the work.

In the newer work Reid is building webs with new lines on top of old, or filling in shapes that were previously only defined by line with new areas color. This changes the whole dynamic in Reid's work. This new work is more layered, with one approach on top of another approach. Because of this the work feels less process-oriented — less conceptual— and more like someone building a picture. In a sense, the correction she couldn't do on the earlier work is now taking place in the newer work, and old is transformed into new. The tensions have changed a bit, their is a newer density and heaviness.

All of the work I saw at Gallery Joe is in this new same vein as the work in the Wirtz show. I think this direction adds another dimension to Reid's work, and certainly give here something new to wrestle with. I hope she can hold onto the qualities I admire in the older work while adding new approaches. This recent work is a good start.

Maybe I'm being overly sensitive, but during my stay in Philadelphia there were several occasions when I felt a little prickly when folks referred to California as a single place with a single kind of person, presumably living the good life. Should it really that big a deal? I mean, I don't know off the top of my head exactly where St. Louis is located in Missouri. I know it's along the Mississippi, and that's about it. Do folks from the north and south ends of Missouri feel different from each other? Perhaps.

I know all my fifty states, and I can identify them on a map, but when I hear "Iowa" my mind just kind of glazes over and conjures this vague fuzzy picture of an area in the middle of the country where all the corn is grown. And I'm sure it's annoying when someone says, "I'm from New York," and the listener assumes Manhattan, when the person is really from Buffalo.

But when I was in Philadelphia- and this also happened when I was in Ithaca in June, and also in Atlanta a couple of years back- I just felt the need to correct people when they say things that I think refer to California as if it's just this single state, a single entity, where the weather is great all the time. You know, it's like there's the Golden Gate Bridge and a little fog in quaint, picturesque San Francisco, and then there is LA.

And the reason I get a little prickly is that there are several distinct regions in California, with different political leanings and life styles and costs of living- there is LA and San Diego down south, and then there's San Francisco up north, and then there is the three hundred miles of coastline between LA and SF, and then the whole Central Valley where prime agricultural land is turning into suburbs, and then the vast desert in the southwest, and the whole inland mountainous region running up south to north along the Sierras, and then there's rugged Northern California, which is everything above, say Marin, that splits into either coastal or inland. And then you can split all of those into numerous other regions. Etc., etc., etc. And you can do that in every state, of course.

But let me just put it simply: the north and south are two entirely different places. SF is not LA, and LA is not SF. My region is San Francisco. And when someone says, "So-and-so is from California," or "She is a California artist," or "How do you like it in California?," I'm going to make it very clear that we're not all from Sunny Southern California, and that the region of Northern California, where the water is cold, the fog is heavy, the food is good, the mountains are near, and the politics are left left left, is very important to me as a person, an artist, and a worker. Where in California is So-and-so from? How about that California artist- where is she from? Yeah, I live in California, but really, I live in the San Francisco Bay Area, in the East Bay, in Oakland, directly across from San Francisco, where the ocean wind blows in through the Golden Gate across the San Francisco Bay.

So why do I mention all of this? Because the thing next to my prickliness is suspicion of conspiracies against the West Coast. Think it doesn't happen? Why won't (not my) President Bush spend any time or give any lip service to California? It'll take a massive earthquake for a little Republican compassion to be spread here. We pay a huge amount of taxes and get nowhere near back proportionally in federal funds. And to top it all off, a West Coast artist can't even get mentioned in an art review.

Exhibit A: Water Color: Current Views at Gallery Joe in Philadelphia consists of twelve artists. Eight of these artists live in the East, and four in the West. That's a 2:1 ratio, right? Pretty good western representation for an East Coast gallery.

Exhibit B: Roberta Fallon's review of the show mentions six of the twelve artists. Five are from the East, and one is from the West. That's, uh, a 5:1 ration. Are you telling me that artists from the Eastern US are that much better than those from Western US? That can't be.

I think the answer is obvious: it's the continuing conspiracy of the East Coast Art Establishment against all things West Coast. That 2:1 exhibition ration can't merely be the art world version of Affirmative Action. Galleries can't take those kinds of chances- they're a business. The work has to viable. So I know what it's all about- the East Coast art press is keeping us down, man. It's plain prejudice and oppression, an attempt to keep collectors' eyes east of the Mississippi and the money where it belongs. That's what is is. I can't be fooled. The want us to ship them our wine and TV and movies and iPods and stand outside the door of the gallery and museum as tokens of diversity!

So, I'm here to call it like it is. And to do my part I've got a couple of pictures and a few words about some Bay Area Homies, Laurie Reid, Amy Rathbone, and Nicole Fein. See a post tomorrow for the pictures and text.

Now, just in case, do I have to type some Smilies here to signal a (mostly)tongue in cheek?

Trust me on this: if you're ever in Philadelphia, and you like paint and painting, make sure you walk into the Second Bank (founded 1816). Look around a bit, then head for the large back gallery that spans the width of the building.

Prepare yourself. Sure, you'll go in there and see what looks like this endless display of portraits of dead white guys by No. 1 American portrait painter Charles Willson Peale. But just before your eyes shut and your head rolls back and you nod off from the inevitable boredom that results from looking at portrait after portrait of men of privilege, go up and look at the paint.

Not only are these beautifully realized, lively likenesses, all unique, but look closer: Peale really loved paint and knew how to use it. There are marvellous passages in faces and clothing, and some of the most telling parts are in the hair. The paint is fresh, the marks are unique, and you can tell by looking that here was a guy whose painting was not formulaic; he really liked to paint. He looked closely, and his brushwork, color, and paint application are fully alive and new.

I'm not kidding. His painting is really wonderful, with terrific craft. Further proof: when you're looking at the Peale's compare them to the paintings by his brother, James Peale. James' painting are flat, lifeless, rote, practically primitive without the charm. The contrast is remarkable.

What is good painting? Well, you have to see it, and there are a several kinds of things to look for. For example, at the turn of the 18th century there were a number of conventions regarding portrait painting, in particular, that the artist was expected to meet- specifically, likeness and finish that conveyed a sense of robustness, importance, and honor. Most of the Peale portraits I saw at the Second Bank resolved to a beautiful finish, and the surface of the paintings were full, lustrous, and descriptive. He really made his subjects look important and heroic, but they never lose their individual, human characteristics. The quality of the paint is buttery and fleshy when needed, but changes thickness and texture to describe other areas. The brush strokes are active and descriptive- he had a way of using direction, width, and density to make images with the strokes themselves, instead of merely by making lots of smaller, single strokes that either aggregate into descriptive areas or attempt to hide themselves into polished, smooth surfaces. In this brushwork there is a masterful physical logic and a commanding touch: strokes pull and turn, thicken and thin descriptively; and this brushwork, which is in some ways essentially drawing, was confident, knowing, alive.

Peale positioned his sitters in ways typical to portraits- straight, three quarters to the left or right, the slightest variety- but the backgrounds always make the entire painting feel fully finished, as if he considered the complete surface painted around the main subject to do more than fill up space and make sure the face is prominent. I'm talking about composition: there is a sense in these paintings not always found in portraits that the complete painting needs to be resolved, not just the sitter's face. That's no easy feat to maintain in portrait after portrait.

I'm pretty sure I learned a couple of things there from Peale's painting, which I didn't at all expect.