Look, See

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.