Look, See

Band (Joe Strummer)

Band (Joe Strummer), 20060630, HTML & JPEG, 360 x 300 pixels (image used without permission)

Fruit (Navel Orange)

Fruit (Navel Orange), 20060629, HTML & JPEG, 560 x 480 pixels (image used without permission)

Myths about the "developing" world

Hans Rosling is a public health expert, director of Sweden's world-renowned Karolinska Institute, and founder of Gapminder, a non-profit that brings vital global data to life. With the drama and urgency of a sportscaster, he debunks a few myths about the "developing" world. (Recorded February, 2006 in Monterey, CA.)

This video is about twenty minutes long, and demonstrates how to use data in ways to better understand and dispel myths related to wealth and health, for example, that improving a nation's health actually winds up lowering its population. Hans Rosling is a very engaging speaker and uses data to make amazingly illustrative animated graphics.

Via David Pogue, who explains in another post the TED (Technology * Entertainment * Design) conference and that these previously inaccessible talks are now streaming video or downloadable video and audio. Al Gore is quite funny.

Player (Roberto Clemente)

Player (Roberto Clemente), 20060628, HTML & JPEG, 520 x 540 pixels (image used without permission)

Mel Prest: Alignments

View of Mel Prest: Alignments, Gregory Lind Gallery, San Francisco, April 2006. Photo: Alan Bamberger, artbusiness.com, 2006 (used without permission)

Mel Prest's paintings are pictorial and physical, visually rich and optically complex, sensual and emotional, and engage the viewer in evocative experiences of time and place. In the paintings shown in an exhibition called Alignments at Gregory Lind Gallery in San Francisco April 4-29, 2006, there was much work evident in both senses of the word: many pieces of art, and lots of labor and time invested.

Mel Prest: Ladder, 2006. oil on 28 panels, 112 x 13 x 2 in. overall (Photo: Gregory Lind Gallery)

The paintings are oil on wood panels. A work may consist of a single panel measuring up to twenty four by thirty inches, or two or three smaller panels hung side by side either abutted or slightly apart, or multiple arranged panels in the five or six inch range that border on installation.

At a glance each painting's palette may initially appear somewhat narrow, but this is actually not true- a range of color within a painting, and from one painting to another, is extremely important to Prest's work because each work's subject, or intended sense of place or mood, is distinct.

One constant among the paintings are painted lines of mostly uniform width. These lines appear to be the width of the brush used to make the line, meaning that, in a sense, the lines themselves are actually brushstrokes. These lines are hand-painted, and slightly wobbly or tremulous. The surfaces of many of the paintings comprise a field of either vertical or horizontal lines, though a few others combine lines of both directions. Often these lines continue onto a painting's side. These painted lines are drawing, are carriers of color and indicators direction, and when combined in a field they become the painting's image.

As an example, Ladder (2006) is an installation of twenty two panels hung high on the wall in two aligned columns of eleven panels each, making a single work measuring 112 x 13 x 2 inches overall. The panels subtly change color in a gradation from very pale blue at the bottom to a dark blue gray at the top. Thin painted lines span the surface of each panel's front and continue around to the sides, ending at the wall.

Mel Prest: Pale Dusk, 2006, oil on two panels, 16 x 24.5 x 2 inches (Photo: Gregory Lind Gallery)

In relation to Prest's work one might immediately think of painters whose work is highly optical, such as Bridget Riley (1931, Britain), Victor Vasarely (1906, Hungary - 1997, France), or Richard Anuskiewicz (1930, US). But Prest's work isn't intense and busy in the way of these three artists; her work is warmer, softer and slower, more about place, time breathe, and the peripheral. One might think of the systems or processes of Sol Lewitt (1928, US) and Josef Albers (1888, Germany -1976, US), but Prest's intentions are not diagrammatic or schematic. Perhaps in terms of light one might think of Mark Rothko (1903, Russia -1970, US), but Prest's paintings are more crisp and intimate rather than gestural and heroic. I mention Agnes Martin (1912, Canada - 2004, US) not because of any grid-based relationship, but rather because of an attitude about paying attention at a slow rate of speed. Martin said, "Anyone can look at a waterfall all day"; she does this with restraint and dryness, while Prest's paint has more body and is lustrous. It might seem a reach to invoke Caspar David Friedrich (1774-1840, Germany) or Albert Bierstadt (1830, Germany - 1902, US), but I think one can find in Prest's work these two painters' qualities of light and air, luxurious nature, and relaxed wonder. I would call this Romanticism.

There are four key characteristics of these paintings on which I'd like to focus.

1. Time & Place: Prest's drawing and rigorous use of color and gradation creates effects that convey a sense of time, movement, place, and atmosphere.
2. Order: sequence, progression, and disruption are primary structural components in the physical, drawn, and pictorial aspects of the paintings.
3. The Wall: the painted sides of the panels relate to and use the wall to:
   1. Infer the image's continuation beyond the painting; or
   2. Exert movement or energy towards, or transfer pressure onto, the wall; or
   3. Demarcate more specifically where a painting begins and ends and its separateness from the wall, which reinforces the painting's containment by the wall
4. Recovery: Prest's paintings revive and recuperate the use of modularity and a certain expressive geometric imagery in abstract painting which was debased by populist misunderstandings during the late 1960's and early 1970's of modern or minimalist art as public art or decoration. This last characteristic is probably not something intended by the artist, but it is something I find interesting.

Time & Place: Prest creates mood and space through a deft and confident control of color. The hand-painted, evenly spaced colored lines are precisely placed, but contain the presence of human movement. Colored fields and lines shift subtly across a panel, or from panel to panel. Occasionally, color may suddenly make a huge transitional leap from one hue or value to another that pulls the eye along, making the painting a time-based experience- a moment- in a specific but unnamable location.

Some paintings depict and feel like the space and light of landscape, while others look and feel more urban or structured, perhaps architectural. One might say that Pale Dusk is the fading light along the Pacific coast, that Black Rainbow is urban nighttime, or that the colored lines building a vibrant concentration of luminous blue with a hint of rose in Twin Rainbow represent several moments during a brilliant spring day. The range and control is impressive, and the results are varied and surprising.

Mel Prest: Black Rainbow, 2005, 16 x 16 x 2 inches (Photo: Gregory Lind Gallery)

Order: Prest's paintings are structured in parts and wholes. Physically, multiple panels are smaller parts of a single larger piece, although Prest's work could not be called modular, because each piece has its specific place; parts are not interchangeable. Drawing and composition are sequential progressions- lines accumulate and build progressive transitions across surfaces that create movement and changes in light. Symmetry is hinted at or implied, but also disrupted because not strictly adhered to, making the seeing experience non-static. In paintubgs where panels are immediately side-by-side there is both continuity and the briefest recognition of parts and wholes; in paintings where panels are slightly separated we have a gap to work across and reconcile. Color makes light, and structured, orchestrated, gradated color makes a pictorial kind of light. Together line and color create a visual sense of place and atmosphere.

Each painting's making is at least superficially evident: there is a background color on top of which colored lines are painted. These are paintings made in steps, but while one might assume there is a plan, they actually feel intuitive. Regarding paintings that are composed of either vertical or horizontal lines, the label stripes might be used, but the range of color and the hand-painted qualities prevents this somewhat restrictive reading. The paintings are more complex than can be conveyed by a description of how they are made.

The Wall: The painted lines continue onto the painting's edge. Looked at straight-on, as a flat plane while ignoring the sides, there is the implication that a painting is a detail of a larger continuous image. But paintings on which the lines continue onto the side call our attention to the fact that the painting is an object, a shallow rectangular box. Given this, the viewer must consider whether these lines wrap around to the back of the painting and are constrained to this painted object (either actual or inferred), or if what is being suggested, or pictorially hinted at, is that the lines continue onto or into the wall.

In the latter case, a painting like Ladder hints at the possibility that the lines continue off the edge of the painting; the lines in Ladder seem to transfer a kind of energy into or pressure onto the wall on which it hangs, not only making the wall an essential part to the painting, but also imaginatively implying that the wall itself has pictorial possibilities as an extension of the painting. These imagined continuous lines simultaneously anchor the painting to the wall and exert a kind of force that seems to lift the painting off the wall. In contrast, the horizontal and vertical patterning on the nine-panel The Things that are Missing contains the lines within each panel, so that the role of the wall is as a container of or buffer to the painting's energy.

Josef Albers, Mural, 1968, Brick mural, 8' x 50', Study Center, Gosnell Building, Rochester Institute of Technology

Recovery: An initial encounter with Prest's work might create an immediate reaction to, or feed assumptions about, her work as decoration, but with even a bit of close looking it quickly becomes clear that her work goes far beyond this. Her paintings can work on both of these levels without compromise- and isn't all painting in some way decoration?- which is a genuine achievement. It is interesting that her work might flirt with a way of making paintings that has descended to the level of cliche and kitsch, but that she makes this approach extremely viable. I don't mean that Prest's work is quotation or re-use, or that she uses this approach with irony; instead, I think she has circumvented the cliches and made this way of working- modular and optical- relevant and meaningful again.

In the late sixties and seventies, perhaps lasting into the early eighties, many popular forms of "abstract" art for mass consumption as installation, or murals, came into use. At the same time, one found much "modern, abstract" art made by amateurs or artists less-schooled in history and theory that often used geometric form and line, and the use of multiple canvases or panels. Much of this work is made in response to a misunderstanding of the work of, for example, Piet Mondrian (1872, The Netherlands – 1944, US) and Josef Albers (1888, Germany - 1976, US). For this viewer, Prest's paintings revive, work against, and overcome a form of decorative public art that rapidly became cliche in the late 20th century.

Jan van der Ploeg, Wall Painting No.116 'Wave', Acrylic on wall, 336 x 300 cm, 2004; Michael Lett, Auckland (photo Minus Space)

For example, during this period it was quite common to find that the lobbies, hallways, and parking lots of government and medical buildings, airports and banks in North America and elsewhere contained enormous wall-sized, patterned abstract images, typically in earth colors, often consisting of parallel, straight, and arcing lines in gradated colors. I think Jan van der Ploeg's (1959, The Netherlands) wall installations, intentionally or not, refer to this period.

Another example from this period is the use of printed, patterned fabric stapled to a stretcher and hung on the wall like a painting. It was quite common to see these in offices and furniture stores, and one still sees them for sale in thrift stores.

Other common techniques and materials employed by the amateur painter of the period was the use of wood panels, flat color, modular units that could be hung in various configurations, and painted sides of the canvas. Common issues with this art include a failure to go beyond design to compositionally address the rectangle; a lack of understanding of color dynamics; a crude handling of paint; a failure to understand

Example of a decorative modular painting from michaels.com.

paintings as a highly visual and physical medium; and an attitude that defaulted to thinking of paintings as merely personal expression and/or decoration without a responsibility to the medium and to history. Prest easily succeeds in addressing all of these areas, which is why I state, to repeat from above, that her "paintings revive and recuperate the use of modularity in abstract painting which was debased by populist misunderstandings during the late 1960's and early 1970's of modern or minimalist art as public art or decoration."

Conclusion: What we call Abstract Painting is a difficult area to work within. The viewer might think the painter is making something out of nothing, but often the painter is inventing an image in response to something real, whether an object or place, some quality of light or color, an idea or concept, or perhaps a person or a memory. The painted image may not look like anything we ordinarily recognize, and it may not look like anything at all; instead, it might be something completely new. The meaning of what the painter makes- this new thing- hangs on or is found in something that the painter wants to trust that the viewer will engage in: looking, observing, noticing, reacting, thinking, reflecting.

A good painter gives the viewer something worth looking at. The painter must present the viewer with something intelligent and thoughtful which the viewer can recognize and experience. And while meeting certain expectations the painter also wants and needs to surprise the viewer. Prest does all of this. The conceptual basis of her work is sound and consistent and resolved. She fully considers every aspect of making a painting, from size, surface, and edge to color, paint quality, and effect. The paintings are beautiful, and they reward the viewer's investment of time and looking. The paintings are surprising, not only because of her use of what might have been an outmoded way of making a painting, but because the image and mood of each is so unique and specific.

Mel Prest: Beacon, 2005, oil on panels (diptych) 24 x 30 x 2 in. overall (Photo: Gregory Lind Gallery)

All images of Mel Prest's paintings from Gregory Lind Gallery, San Francisco

Band (Neil Young & Crazy Horse)

Band (Neil Young & Crazy Horse), 20060627, HTML & JPEG, 220 x 760 pixels (image used without permission)

Fruit (Avocado)

Player (Wang Nan)

Player (Wang Nan), 20060625, HTML & JPEG, 280 x 350 pixels (image used without permission)

Band (Charlie Parker)