Anne Sherwood Pundyk

See Yourself Seeing

2012-01-09T20:01:00.000-08:00

(Note: I wrote this essay for Tim Quigley's aesthetics class at The New School in the fall of 2008. )

Nothing is straightforward. Or rather, nothing is as straightforward as it might initially seem, particularly looking at a painting. Specifically, I took in paintings by Elizabeth Peyton[i] Joan Mitchell[ii], and Cecily Brown[iii] in New York, December 2008.[iv] These artists approach painting in different ways, especially with respect to gesture, representation and the figure. I was particularly interested in how their approaches to painting affected my approach to viewing their work. As a way to parse my experience I drew upon selected writings of the philosophers Immanuel Kant, Martin Heidegger, Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Gilles Deleuze[v]. Their writings reveal a rich array of different but overlapping concepts and propositions related to art. Significant ideas from these philosophers correlate and give form to my aesthetic undertaking. In scanning the landscape of thought available through these philosophical works, I posit that painting, as a medium and as an endeavor, is especially appropriate for expressing a complete world appealing equally to our imagination and our understanding.[vi]

In his Critique of Judgment, Kant sets out to describe how we make a judgment of beauty about an object, in this case, a works of art. His initial requirement for “deciding whether something is beautiful or not” is that you refer to your own reaction to the actual object.[vii] In other words, the only way to see a painting is in person. Kant describes a judgment of taste, or beauty, as starting initially as a unique, subjective, individual experience and finds a basis to broaden it to a subjective requirement for everyone. As with his prerequisite of seeing an artwork in person, his concept of the subjective nature of an aesthetic judgment underscores the importance of bringing an open mind to the experience. He states, “Hence a judgment of taste is not a cognitive judgment and so is not a logical judgment, but an aesthetic one by which we mean a judgment whose determining basis cannot be other than subjective.”[viii] Judging beauty or taking in an artwork happens within the individual and is not based on pre-existing concepts or guidelines.

The impression should be our own impression, not a received impression from an “authority,” and the work should be the actual piece, not a facsimile. We have all had an initial impression of a simple image based on a reproduction give way to a complex and layered reality when confronted with the work in person – provided we are open to viewing the piece for ourselves and to forming our own impressions. We must, quite literally, see the work for ourselves.

Kant breaks down the parts of a judgment of taste: that an individual make it, that it be singular, and that it may not be biased or based on a given criteria or concept. Embedded in his Critique of Judgment is a section, titled “The Principle of Taste Is the Subjective Principle of the Power of Judgment as Such”[ix] in which he summarizes the mechanics of how we make a judgment of taste, emphasizing its universal, subjective qualities. He states that a judgment of taste “resembles” a logical judgment because it asserts a quality of necessary universality, although this universality is subjective. When judging an object, (or the “presentation by which an object is given” to the us) we must be able to feel a harmony between our imagination (“in its freedom”) and understanding (“with its lawfulness”). What criteria do we use to make our judgment of taste? We use this feeling of a harmonizing, free play of the cognitive faculties (imagination and understanding) in relation to a quality of “purposiveness” or “undetermined formal unity”.[x] Finally, in a subsequent section, Kant writes “we must be entitled to assume a priori that a presentation’s harmony with these conditions of the power of judgment is valid for everyone.”[xi]

I want to emphasize Kant’s initial requirement for an aesthetic judgment -- that we see the object in person -- because despite the cerebral nature of his writing about aesthetic judgments overall, we can put this point to practical use and be confident that it is an important place to start. Seeing a painting in person is to see the artwork with your body present. The concept of the body as a key for understanding art resonates indirectly in the writings of Kant and Heidegger and directly in the work of Merleau-Ponty and Deleuze. This idea takes us outside of art; or rather, takes art outside of art and connects it to profound ideas of how we are situated as conscious beings in the world.

As I am looking at each of the paintings I am open to the experience of each work. I see my body as present and as part of the experience of looking at the artwork.[xii] I see the work for myself and, in doing so, interact with the piece uniquely. Elizabeth Peyton’s “Blue Liam” is a slightly larger-than-life-size portrait in oil on board. The white ground is slathered on the board and noticeable through the precise yet casually rendered features of a young man with a direct expression: his hair, eyes, lips, neck and dark, mock-turtle neck top. Peyton’s brushwork is minimally worked. Individual features of her backlit subject are efficiently formed. For example, the blue and purple shadows under the eyes are each a dripping pool of color, not actually brushstrokes at all. While, I know I am looking at a young man’s portrait, I find myself dismantling the image and responding only to distinct passages of paint.

In his essay, Eye and Mind, Merleau-Ponty believes a shift in our point of view from an objective, science-driven vantage, to an organic, body-driven framework as more accurately describing reality. He writes:

“Scientific thinking, a thinking which looks on from above, and thinks of the object-in-general, must return to the “there is” which precedes it; to the site, the soil of the sensible and humanly modified world such as it is in our lives and for our bodies – not that possible body which we may legitimately think of as an information machine, but this actual body I call mine, this sentinel standing quietly at the command of my words and my acts.” [xiii]

He envisions a grounded, balanced existence where we understand our place in the world, not by using instruments or machines, but through our own physical experiences. For Merleau-Ponty, painting is a pursuit that is already based on this concept. “It is by lending his body to the world that the artist changes the world into paintings.”[xiv] What we can see happening in paintings is the result of the painter’s body having “intertwined vision and movement.”[xv]

An artist assesses her work as it is created; the audience makes its assessment when the work is done. Yet, there is a connection made through the work. Peyton has painted “Blue Liam” with her body present. As I stand in front of her painting I am seeing the work through the artist’s body. A crossover takes place between us. What am I learning about the artist? “Blue Liam” is a portrait of a specific person. All features are intact, as in a photograph or a mirror. Her representational vision, according to Merleau-Ponty, relies on Cartesian principals, where mind is separate from body and based on perspective techniques from the Renaissance.[xvi] Yet, the paint strokes and her clear colors emanate from the world of the body; the paint has meaning that is separate from the image it forms. I am pulled back, though, to a face whose features are preordained, floating on the surface of the painting’s ground. The scale of the subject is almost the same as my own. The paint drapes the outermost layer of the work closest to my face. I recall the experience of holding still while looking at my reflection in a glass mirror. The portrait mirrors my own face. Is my gaze intertwined, in some form, with the artist’s as she sees some aspect of herself? Have I caught her eye, mid-stare?

Joan Mitchell’s painting, “Yves”, towers above me, a large presence. Scrubbed palm-width brushwork fills the large vertical rectangle with vivid colors. The paint strokes describe the reach of the artist’s arm and the speed of her movements. Her presence as the author of the gestures is undeniable. I am reminded of another painter, Louise Fishman (1939), who knew Joan Mitchell, and feels an affinity with her work.[xvii] Painted gestures made with a variety of instruments reflect Fishman’s sense of her own body in relation to the canvas she is working on. Fishman seeks to avoid any representational reference in her work. The resulting work presents itself to the viewer, rather than re-presenting an image using techniques to create an optical illusion.

Heidegger’s essay, The Origin of the Work of Art, uses a spiraling, self-referential language to describe his beliefs about art. For him, language and poetry, determine how we understand reality. “Or could it be that even the structure of the thing as thus envisaged is a projection of the framework of the sentence?”[xviii] Within this poetic framework, the artist, her physical efforts, and her relation to her materials determine what art is and how it is created. There is an echo of Kant’s concept of harmonizing the free play of intuition and understanding – or polar qualities finding balance together -- in Heidegger’s concept of world and earth. Despite their opposing qualities -- world, as self-disclosing, and Earth, as self-secluding -- they support each other in a state of repose within an artwork.[xix]

“But as a world opens itself the earth comes to rise up. It stands forth as that which bears all, as that which is sheltered in its own laws and always wrapped up in itself. World demands its decisiveness and its measure and lets beings attain to the Open of their paths. Earth, bearing and jutting, strives to keep itself closed and to entrust everything to its law. The conflict in not a rift as a mere cleft is ripped open; rather it is the intimacy with which opponents belong to each other. This rift carries the opponents into the source of their unity by virtue of their common ground. It is a basic design, an outline sketch that draws the basic features of the rise of the lightening of beings. This rift does not let the opponents break apart; it brings the opposition of measure and boundary into their common outline.”[xx]

The implied upheaval and resolution in the process Heidegger describes reflects Mitchell’s process of painting. The forms and masses of color are made -- and then are partially or completely covered. Some of those covered are brought forth again to the surface by subsequent, overlaid gestured shapes. Fishman has said that during the process of making a work she is concerned when she paints over an area that she likes, but then she realizes that the gestures and passages that she paints over eventually reappear in the work. She hasn’t lost them at all. The overall composition evolves from the cycle of disclosures and concealments, bringing the work to resolution.

I notice a related, but different transference of opposing qualities by pairing the paintings by Peyton and Mitchell. As I look at each of their works, I am struck by their mutability: Peyton’s representational portrait dissolves, becoming passages of paint. Mitchell’s “pre-sentational,” abstract strokes of color, form facial features that became the image of a large, free-floating skull. (The painting is titled “Yves.” Is it a portrait?) At the level of the brushwork, the categories of representational and abstract mutate. Kant emphasizes that a judgment of beauty must be disinterested. “In order to play the judge in matters of taste, we must not be in the least biased in favor of the thing’s existence but must be wholly indifferent about it.”[xxi] By not bringing any preconceptions to the paintings, my reflections are uniquely my own. Thus, one realizes that the act of viewing a painting is a duet, pairing what the artist brings to the painting with what the viewer brings.

The pathway to understanding “Girl Eating Birds”, by Cecily Brown, is not straightforward. You can feel lost and wonder if you are going the right way; but signposts abound. The triptych stretches laterally, beyond my peripheral vision. Just before my glance is whiplashed into analyzing the painted chaos, I do notice painted effects (of every color and stripe) completely fill the three, merged, vertical rectangular canvases. Mouth open, dumbfounded, my curiosity leads me into the work. Painted forms change by the second from inconsistently scaled human body parts (wrapped, clothed, fleshy, gesturing, prone) to tree limbs (trunks, logs, stumps, sticks, branches) then to objects (tents, posts, structures, tableware and rucksacks.) As a catalyst for unfolding the work, color (families of reds, blues and greens, browns and earth tones) leads my eye from one moment of the painting to another, and then circles back to show me that what I saw before is now something different.

As an alternative to beauty in judgments of taste, Kant associates the sublime with disorienting, overwhelming, perhaps even thrilling physical reactions.[xxii] He writes, “For the one liking ([that for] the beautiful) carries with it directly a feeling of life’s being furthered…But the other liking (the feeling of the sublime) is a pleasure that arises only indirectly; it is produced by the feeling of a momentary inhibition of the vital forces followed immediately by an outpouring of them that is all the stronger.”[xxiii] In Deleuze’s Francis Bacon, The Logic of Sensation , he reconfigures Kant’s aesthetic argument of the sublime.[xxiv]

Taking a contrarian’s view to Kant’s aura of reason and order, Deleuze is drawn to ideas of chaos and catastrophe. He describes a new logic comprised of four elements forming a cycle starting with “aesthetic comprehension,” or measure, leading to “rhythm,” or units of scale, confronting “chaos,” or the sublime, ending with “force,” a means to overcome chaos. “The abandonment of simple figuration is the general fact of modern painting and, still more, of painting altogether, of all time.[xxv] In place of figuration, rhythm becomes the unifying concept of painting based on sensation. With Brown’s painting I feel lost, then find a way into the painting, only to feel lost once again. My experience seems to parallel Deleuze’s cycle where the sense of being overwhelmed, with no footing, alternates with a reorientation determined by recognizing the painting’s internal rhythms.

Merleau-Ponty echoes Kant’s thinking about how we bring outside sensations into our mind and what happens to them once there. Stepping further into Merleau-Ponty’s body-derived vision of the world, he highlights the significance of our ability to see ourselves seeing: “…the undividedness of the sensing and the sensed.”[xxvi]. We see our own body as it sees. Not surprisingly, the concept of self-apprehension links to ideas in painting concerning representation,

“The painter’s vision is not a view upon the outside, a mere “physical optical” (Klee) relation with the world. The world no longer stands before him through representation; rather, it is the painter to whom the things of the world give birth by a sort of concentration or coming-to-itself of the visible. Ultimately the painting relates to nothing at all among experienced things unless it is first of all “autofigurative.”[xxvii]

The idea of an objective, disembodied point of view is artificial and doesn’t reflect the actual practice of painting. Brown’s vision moves with her body as she sees, and this movement is inseparable from the process of seeing. The movement is a record or evidence of her self-perception as part of the act of both seeing and painting. Deleuze also focuses on the sensations of the body as central to an understanding of art and a rethinking of representation and the figure. “Whereas “figuration” refers to a form that is related to an object it is supposed to represent, the “Figure” is the form that is connected to a sensation, and that conveys the violence of this sensation directly to the nervous system.”[xxviii] According to Deleuze, Bacon and Paul Cézanne solved the problem of how to extract the Figure from its figurative, narrative, and illustrational link; they thought about how to “paint the sensation” and “record the fact.”[xxix] When experiencing Brown’s work, it feels like her brushwork is creating a complete experience, a record of sensation and movement, a painted world integrating the overwhelmed sensations of imagination and understanding.

These philosophers could be seen as part of the audience viewing the art. Their writings address the importance of the artist’s body in the conception and production of art. “Nature is on the inside,” says Cézanne. Merleau-Ponty elaborates, “Quality, light, color, depth, which are there before us, are there only because they awaken an echo in our bodies and because the body welcomes them.”[xxx] How do these ideas come to bear on my experience with paintings by Peyton, Mitchell and Brown? Any a priori concepts I may bring to these works with respect to representation, gesture and the figure, are a false measure. The sensations produced by the marks of the artist as they become line, shape, color, discernable form, and space are understood through the artist’s body first, incorporating the artist’s vision of herself, and later through the viewer’s body. Using the body as the source and the destination of sensation recorded and perceived opens the possibility of genuine experience. The appetite of the body for meaning is genuine and inescapable.

Anne Sherwood Pundyk is a painter living and working in New York City, January 2009.

While standing in front of each painting, I took notes on what I saw. My reactions to the work in “real time” are recorded below. Descriptive comments in [italics] are added later for clarification.

Image 1:

Elizabeth Peyton (1996) “Blue Liam,” Oil on masonite, 17 x 14 inches

December 10, 2008, New Museum, New York.

Slightly larger than life size (not really staring at me.) White/grey face and background all one – blue drippy shadows for eye. Then the red (too red) lips. Single line of eyebrow, feathery hair (strokes) outline of chin. (I have my doubts about choosing Peyton – the work seems too simple and flat – plus the Orient irony anger/frustration.)

Shirt is purple/shadows are purple blue (artificial – cobalt) like the lips are artificial red

Dark shirt anchors the head. Angled lips.

Three horizontal lines [formed by] hair, brow, and lips. Each at a slightly different angle, but leading to a point on the horizon.

Vague engagement with the viewer. “In your face”

Skull like, death-like, despite the youthful features, sickly.

[Standing now] At 3’ range the face pulls into 3-D – eyes looking in different directions (one at me, one away) sinister smile.

Engagement with viewer at the right distance.

Image 2:

Joan Mitchell (1925 - 1992) ”Yves,” 1991, Oil on canvas, 110 1/4 x 78 3/4 inches

December 10, 2008, Cheim & Read Gallery, New York.

Much taller than me – somewhat wider than me. Blue/black core comes to my attention first. (Distracted by DL asking me a question.) Then a second “eye” just to the left, next to the first blue/black disk appears. Now the large [overall] mass in the white is a skull. Simultaneously a “grainy” mass at the top with the orange that “burns through”. A patch of green at the top is hopeful (a garden). My attention is drawn down to green “teeth”. Back up to the “brain event leading to a “third eye” of sky color in blue. The Cerulean blue at upper left and on the “nose”.

Lavender in “ground” leading [mixed with the white] to “Ochre” in top.

I think this is a portrait with the “orange” intelligence glowing from inside the medium small green island at top. Red Ruby in center top of read.

Then back to the beginning: The blue-black left eye at the center.

Raining down of drips small slices, gentle light rain as well.

Then it turns into a landscape a pond with mountains/hills behind and a Buddha by the water.

Over all gesture: rising up to green island floats away at the very top.

Image 3:

Cecily Brown (1969) “Girl Eating Birds,” 2004, Oil on linen, Triptych: 77 x 165 inches overall

December 11, 2008, Gagosian Gallery, New York.

White, bandaged figure to the upper left (a mummy) turning away. Small figure in the center (sticking out tongue) raising his fist (thumb). Red gloved hand pointing down as a counterpoint to the [little man’s] (rendered, flesh) arm pointing up. The green, sad pin-wheel flower in the center. Blue, broken [man made] post between these three elements.

Now I see the greenery (the forest floor) and some large [human] limbs and maybe on the left an upturned buttocks. On the left, as mass/blob of flesh (oh no! what is it?) The red/orange begins to look like blood, and then I notice the blood [red color] throughout, but mostly concentrated on the lower right, and a little bit on the top.

Next the brown sticks (sticks in the front and logs – [or] larger sticks in the background – so the sense of the landscape opens up -- and the scale of the man in the center seems too small. What is visible next is the blue – (L.N. interrupts to introduce herself). Different blues and turquoise – it doesn’t feel like sky or water, but is feels of the living world.

Now the shape on the right [the mummy] (worried slightly that the jig is up, but no. Calm yourself). Could be a bag or a canvas sack slung over a tree. A cup and saucer below the bag or maybe it’s a birch tree– are these little white rabbit ears (signature?) on the lower right?

Flicks of green grass amidst the flesh/earth.

At the upper left there is a view beyond the forest with sticks that are both pointing the way out and blocking the way, but there is a place beyond. And now there is a possibility that the blues and greens are beyond the woods – especially with the medium-pale forest-green at the top right.

There is a “bloody” [as in British slang adjective] nervous quality to the work. Help! Where do I look? Where can I rest? Look here! Look here!

(I notice office girls in the gallery talking.)

Ok. There is a red star flower (was it blood before?) on the lower right. A Columbine [flower]. Here and there amidst the flesh – faces/orifices. A married couple. An old-fashioned George Washington wig on the upper right. Then the cup looks like a sawed off tree and the mummy/bag are both holes (like Alice’s [in Wonderland] hole) – ways to leave (especially) the bag/mummy. Are the large fleshy limbs bound?

Now, in terms of paint application, I see the long blue drips in the center panel. (P. calls my cell phone.) The little “doodle” of dark grey at the top has caught my eye a couple of times: penis and testicles shapes? – (I’m running out of patience and my mind is wandering to E., whose mind wanders – get him to learn meditation. David Lynch, etc., etc.) (Coincidently E. calls my cell phone.) (M. walks through – C.B.’s “person”.)

Back to the lovely recognizable flora on the forest floor and I “remember through all these interruptions” that I’m finally noticing all the smatters of drips of all colors sort of “spitting” like London rain (Yikes! “Larry’s” on the phone.)

As I conclude, I notice that the triptych format could be three separate paintings – in fact they aren’t really “linked up” – now I wonder if they are like three views of the same scene – like “unstitched” photos. Cool idea. Were they painted together? Does it matter” Voodoo doll/bird at the top in the left panel.

Another possibility is that the left panel is a “close up” still life. There is, back on the left a blue “block” man-made – and maybe the edge of a root or tent. A snaky red stick snake with a shadow at the very lower left. Bright yellow green in the foreground (cheerful?) – more splatters come into focus there.

Now I’ drawn into all the detail like looking at the stitchery in a tapestry. I notice that is really painted from edge to edge. (No air space.) Scratchy dry brush, unfinished forms on the left.

Am I done? – Would I keep going? I see the humor in staying all night. I’m conscious of the chair I’m sitting in – that I’m sitting (that they have given me a chair.) And I realize that the work is longer than it is high – in fact it feels like the height of modern office windows. But, certainly meant to be stepped into. The width is noticeable – you can’t really see the whole painting from 5’ away – and it doesn’t really feel that tall when you get up close.

Close up – the flesh mass on the left is clasped red and white hands. Up close under painting – 2 inches to ¼ inch side little curves and straight marks (L. gave me some water.) Pulled away.

Flesh mass on the left side is “Baconesque” – the faces and eyes are contortions.

Stick as the letter “E”.

Go and go – each passage close up –

Strokes, drips, suites of color.

The little man in the middle has a bandage on his thumb and is holding a spear/ski pole. Is he a king? – is he stabbed? – is there part of a house in front of him? What is he wearing?

Large leg with bent knee center left.

Right side – tents upper left of right panel.

On bag/mummy – below are dry brush strokes in cream – and I notice brown pods growing that could be spots without the leopard at the bottom.

Up close – surprise purple dot. I thought that was the end, but I spot some more purple by the tent. At the top.

Am I done now?

The purple-blues are now calling me from the top.

Endnotes

[i] Elizabeth Peyton (1965) “Blue Liam,” 1996, Oil on masonite, 17 x 14 inches.

[ii] Joan Mitchell (1925 - 1992) ”Yves,” 1991, Oil on canvas, 110 1/4 x 78 3/4 inches.

[iii] Cecily Brown (1969) “Girl Eating Birds,” 2004, Oil on linen, Triptych: 77 x 165 inches overall.

[iv] Notes on my “real time” response to each painting are at the end of this essay, above the Endnotes.

[v] Selections made by Timothy R. Quigley, PhD, Associate Professor at the New School for General Studies, New York, NY. The selected writings are: Immanuel Kant, Critique of Judgment, trans. Werner S. Pluhar (Indianapolis/Cambridge: Hacket Publishing Company, 1987) 43-230; Martin Heidegger, The Origin of the Work of Art, Poetry, Language, Thought, trans. Albert Hofstadter (New York: Harper & Row, 1971) 17-87; Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Eye and Mind, The Primacy of Perception and Other Essays…, ed. James M. Edie, trans. Carleton Dallery (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1964.); Gilles Deleuze, Francis Bacon, The Logic of Sensation, trans. and intro. Daniel W. Smith, author’s intro. trans. Lisa Liebman (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press: 2003)

[vi] Kant, 62. I want to refer here to the components of Kant’s basic building blocks of perception, that nonetheless form a complete experience. “Now if a presentation by which an object is given is, in general, to become cognition, we need imagination to combine the manifold of intuition, and understanding to provide the unity of the concept uniting the [component] presentations.”

[vii] Kant, 44. Kant describes our reaction to an object under consideration as our use of imagination to refer the presentation (or object of our direct awareness) to us and our resulting feeling of pleasure or displeasure. Later, on page 59, Kant’s statement that “all judgments of taste are singular judgments,” reinforces the requirement that the object or artwork be seen in person. Before seeing something, we cannot have the idea that it is beautiful, otherwise we will be using logic in our judgment. We must judge on a case-by-case basis.

[viii] Kant, 44.

[ix] Kant, 150-152.

[x] Timothy R. Quigley, “Kant: Notes on the Critique of Judgment,” October 12, 2008, 4.

[xi] Kant, 155.

[xii] The experiences I had looking at the paintings in person were later impossible to replicate by looking at smaller reproductions of the works. The colors were different, the texture of the paint wasn’t visible and the size had no reference to the actual work. More importantly the reproduction had no reference to my body or my perspective.

[xiii] Merleau-Ponty, 2.

[xiv] Merleau-Ponty, 2.

[xv] Merleau-Ponty, 2.

[xvi] Merleau-Ponty, 10.

[xvii] I visited Louise Fishman in her studio on November 2, 2008 where she discussed her work.

[xviii] Heidegger, 24.

[xix] Heidegger, 48.

[xx] Heidegger, 63.

[xxi] Kant, 46.

[xxii] Kant, 98.

[xxiii] Kant, 98.

[xxiv] Deleuze, xix.

[xxv] Deleuze, xxxii.

[xxvi] Merleau-Ponty, 3.

[xxvii] Merleau-Ponty, 14.

[xxviii] Deleuze, xiii.

[xxix] Deleuze, xiv.

[xxx] Merleau-Ponty, 4.

Two Personal Heroes: Edwin Parker “Cy” Twombly (1928-2011) and Dirck Winser Brown (1928-2002)

2011-09-07T07:18:00.000-07:00

On the Occasion of “Cy Twombly: Sculpture” Exhibition

The Museum of Modern Art

May 20 - October 3, 2011

To accompany my review of the exhibition in The Brooklyn Rail: "Cy Twombly: Sculpture."

Late in December, 1998, I visited with Cy Twombly in Lexington, VA. He gave me a tour of his house and studio, where I remember seeing several sculptures. He was gracious, engaging and as I recall, slightly bemused. This summer, I was compelled to write about MoMA’s small, but comprehensive exhibition of Twombly’s sculpture (including one he made in Lexington); sadly he died just after the show opened. As part of reconciling with Twombly’s passing and to prepare for writing the review I wanted to revisit his life’s work. Also, I wanted to graft my own personal associations onto my reassessment; my familiarity with Lexington, I realized, gave me insight into some key aspects of the artist’s background. What resonated even more, were the circumstances of my encounter with the artist, which had been a personal milestone.

Lexington has a beauty that seems to enchant through its disarming physical attributes, but it is the ghosts from Revolutionary and Civil War times who are doing the heavy lifting. As proof, ruminations about past great generals and bloody battles are still part of everyday conversation at the local coffee shops. The white column studded architecture, resting on hedge-lined green lawns, all of which are floating amidst the low blue-grey Blue Ridge Mountains, have a pull my parents couldn’t resist. In 1993 they moved there, as an exercise in nostalgia; they were looking for a town that resembled their hometown in southern Ohio, also a history-steeped, college town, (but wasn’t actually their hometown – too many familiar ghosts.) Correctly, they felt they could pursue their interests unimpeded in Lexington. They are pioneers, my father in adoption counseling and my mother in ecology education. (I, however, wasn’t for the move. I prefer ghosts of people I’ve actually known. Their prior home in Orient Point, NY where my grandparents and their parents has lived, had all the charm I needed and it was seven hours closer to my parent’s grandchildren we were raising in New York City.)

In his interview with David Sylvester, in 2001, Twombly refers to Lexington’s subtle charms “… where I'm from, the central valley of Virginia, is not one of the most exciting landscapes in the world, but it's one of the most beautiful. It's very beautiful because it has everything. It has mountains, there are streams, there are fields, beautiful trees. And architecture sits very well in it.” He had first left Lexington, his birthplace and hometown, when he was in his 20’s gravitating to Rome and establishing a life-long pattern of relocating to different parts of the world for each season of the year. He had been pulled back to Lexington regularly because the area reminded him of his adopted Mediterranean home across the Atlantic. Based on the epic myths and ancient tales of war he used in his artwork, I can’t help thinking that it was also Generals Washington and Lee or fallen heroes from the Battle of New Market who were calling Twombly back when he acquired his house and studio in Lexington. Coincidently this was the same year as my parent’s move there.

I was personally familiar with regular relocation. Growing up, as a family we had moved many times throughout the United States. My father’s first career had taken us to several different cities, but I knew our moves were fueled in part by my father’s personal restlessness. He lived with a taboo. He had been adopted. The impact of this fact on his psyche was complete and total. I trace almost every move he made as reverberating from the circumstances of his birth and his adoption. He came to understand after a lifetime of soul searching and hard work, the impact that secrets and denial related to adoption have on families. Watching this process as his daughter, I came to appreciate its difficulty and all the considerable insight and bravery my father had facing it down. This isn’t to say I didn’t feel the bumps and don’t have the scars of someone who was there. In reviewing Twombly’s biography, I couldn’t help feeling a sense of alarm, as I read of his constant travels reportedly for inspiration and work. The parallels between Twombly’s life and my father’s were coming to the surface.

I don’t really know why Twombly was always on the move. He was a very discreet and private person, keeping a circle of family, friends and associates closed around him. What I do see, however, is the fruits of fighting the same sort of struggle my father faced down: the single-minded dedication to and defense of subjectivity. Twombly’s inclination and ability to separate himself from the provincial pull of both his hometown and strong conservative currents in American art led to his accomplishments in the art world. I have a sense of the depth of his intellectual pursuits – his embrace early in life of the founding premises of modern art -- “progressive art” it was called – and creative milestones in the companion fields of philosophy, literature, and psychology. This, Twombly’s warm humor, skeptical attitude toward authority, independent thinking, and dedication to his work are all qualities he shared with my father.

I can’t separate my association of Twombly with my father for one other simple reason: he introduced me to the artist. Since my father had not always embraced my artwork, this was a gift and show of support. My father made Twombly’s acquaintance at Lexington’s Virginia Military Institute where popular weekly cadet parades occur. They would meet occasionally and my father asked if he could introduce me when I came for a visit from Manhattan. Most thrilling for me, during my visit to Twombly’s home that day, was the time he spent looking at a group of my small collages and images of larger works on paper I had just finished. From my journal notes of the meeting I recount that Twombly said my work was “intelligent and sensitive,” and he “loved” the collages – which I’m sure prompted me to ask if he would like one. He picked one out, which included a chair cut out from a 1984 House & Garden magazine photo-spread of The Villa Medici in Rome, home to the French Academy, which had been lovingly renovated by the painter Balthus.* I’m slightly chagrined to note in my journal that the next day I called Twombly to ask if I could borrow the collage back to photograph it. He said he had already sent it to his framer and from there it was going to Rome.

Twombly was born at the Stonewall Jackson Hospital in Lexington in 1928; the same year as my father. Symbolic of the nature of personal exchanges and intersections my father died in Lexington in December 2002 and is buried in the Stonewall Jackson Cemetery. Twombly died this summer in Rome, his adopted city and from all accounts a place he associated with all he held dear. I like to think that now, instead of on the VMI parade grounds, my father and Cy will meet again on the Elysian Fields.

___________________________________
* I found the issue in my studio this week; the article accompanying the photographs reports, "In 1961 Andre Malraux, [French] Minister of Culture, had named as director his friend the painter Balthus, who fulfilled his mission [to restore the Villa] over the course of sixteen years with singular prestige and with results that cannot be too much appreciated. " I recall in my conversation with Twombly during our visit, that he said he knew the building. Twombly, himself restored several Italian villas and perhaps had referred to Balthus' sensitive and well-researched efforts.

House & Garden, January 1984, p. 64 (ghost of chair image cut out and used in my collage)

Epilogue: Mourning Tower, Mourning Train

2011-06-06T21:12:00.000-07:00

The spontaneously formed crowds of people who gathered beside the tracks to witness the passing of the funeral train that carried Robert F. Kennedy’s body from New York City to Washington D.C. on June 8, 1968 are testament to our capacity for shared grief. The immediacy and magnitude of the expression of public mourning over the loss of such an inspiring public figure revealed in the photographs by Paul Fusco has a fascinating psychological impact. It is a record of the emotional facts. It shows that as a country we have the capacity to mourn together, out in the open. Or that we had it once. It also underscores the multitudes of nearly anonymous, officially obscured military-related deaths that currently go un-recognized. Have we forgotten how to grieve together?

The idea of “public morning” resonates with me as I’ve recently completed the installation, “Mourning Tower” at Queens College Art Center, which calls for a remembrance of those who have been killed or wounded at this time of war. A visual link between Fusco’s photographs of the Kennedy train ride and the installation is the iconic image of the American flag. The difference is that the outpouring of grief after Kennedy’s assassination was immediate, unrestrained, and shared throughout the republic, but the casualties from our current wars are not publicized - there is a public “un-mourning” that surrounds them. Fusco has addressed this in another beautiful photographic series of photographs of grieving families called "Bitter Fruit."

Fusco and art dealer James Danziger talked about that historic day at a panel discussion at Aperture Gallery, the resulting photographs, and what the photographs have come to mean. The panel was held to publicize the debut of Jennifer Stoddart’s film, “A Thousand Pictures,” tomorrow night on HBO and Aperature’s publication of the book, Paul Fusco: RFK both examining Fusco’s accomplishment. In concert with the book publication and the film release, 20x200, the on-line art editions gallery, will be offering a limited edition of a pair of Fusco’s funeral train images this Wednesday to support the Magnum Foundation.

“Mourning Tower” Rosenthal Library Rotunda Installation: Inside a Library We Can Enter the Realm of Ideas

2011-05-06T07:34:00.000-07:00

“Mourning Tower”

Rosenthal Library Rotunda Installation

By Anne Sherwood Pundyk

Inside a library we can enter the realm of ideas by opening one of the books we find there and turning its pages.

“Mourning Tower” installation begins with unfurled pages -- printed with the sequential history of a painting – that wrap the glass walls of the Rosenthal Library’s Rotunda, simultaneously encircling the large American flag displayed in the space’s open heart. Printed in color images starting at the top of the tower’s interior (adjacent to the painting Change My Mind/Martian Easter Tree from which the story is derived) the visual narrative repeats, fading to a black and white version as its string of pages descend from floor to floor. A mesh-like hem of empty black paper forms at the base of the rotunda. Collectively the spiraling rows appear to embrace and safeguard the space of ideas while, as the American flag is glimpsed amidst the lower rows of black “missing” pages, we are reminded of those who have been wounded or killed especially most recently in this time of war.

“Mourning Tower” is an extension of the group exhibition, “Express + Local: NYC Aesthetics,” curated by Tara Mathison, located in the Queens College Art Center.

Express + Local: NYC Aesthetics Group Exhibition, May 5 - June 30, 2011

2011-04-30T21:23:00.000-07:00

I’ve translated my experiences and interactions as a participant in the 15-artist residence program Express + Local: NYC Aesthetics at Queens College Art Center this spring into paintings and a large scale installation. These works are included in a group exhibition of all artists' work resulting from the residence program, which opens Thursday, May 5th.

“Mourning,” my architectural-based installation in The Queens College Art Center’s zoetrope-like library atrium, refits the ivory tower with a broadcast tower; tune in - we are in a time of war. The installation sends and receives, reflects and collects evidence through which to consider the relationship between the cultural framework of the art world and our current state of war.

Express + Local: NYC Aesthetics Group Exhibition, May 5 - June 30, 2011

RECEPTION: Thursday, May 5, 2010, 5 - 8PM. Artists' Talks with Curator Tara Mathison from 6 - 7 PM

Queens College Art Center (part of the Selma and Max Kupferberg Center for the Arts)
Benjamin S. Rosenthal Library, Level Six
Queens College, 65-30 Kissena Blvd., Flushing, NY 11367-1597
Gallery Hours: Monday–Thursday, 9 am–8 pm; Friday and April 18–22, 25-26, May 31–June 30, 9 am–5 pm; closed May 30, weekends and holidays
Free and open to the public
For more information: (718) 997-3770

For directions to Queens College, click here.
For a campus map, click here.

Above image: Anne Sherwood Pundyk, "Change My Mind/Martian Easter Tree," 2011, 63" x 60,"Oil and Acrylic on Linen

Artists' Work, War and Museums

2011-04-19T07:28:00.000-07:00

Through their work and attitudes, artists ultimately respond to the larger framework of museum culture since it is the platform for those giving them support and credence: patrons, curators and critics. Noted cultural theorist, Viola Kolarov expands upon this and the dependence Freud described between museums and war in her essay “Marlene McCarty: Report to a Museum.” We are now in a time of war. Armed with Kolarov’s insights, I propose a call to artists, patrons, curators, critics and museum leaders to question the moral underpinnings of their work as it relates to the cultural cycle that perpetuates violence, torture, and cruelty.

"Evan" by Anne Sherwood Pundyk, 2010, 24" x 24," Oil and Acrylic on Panel

Kolarov notes that in 1915 -- another time of war -- Freud wrote about a theoretical positioning of the function of the museum and museum culture with respect to war. Freud’s observations on the state of war (which he considered an exception) and its impact on the norm of peacetime suggest the psychic parameters of contemporary artists’ current work. He focuses on the crumbling of the ethical norms that structure the space of the museum at times of war. During peacetime, members of western civilization enjoy the foreign “cultures” hosted within the walls of the museum. In wartime what has allowed this pleasure reveals itself in its pure form: the reduction of the world and its history into a manageable size for consumption. This is possible because the museum’s audience is stuck in an unenlightened, self-focused state of mind.

The premise for Freud’s speculation, Kolarov suggests, is that the museum contains products of war. War opens the doors of culture to looting (a close relative to creative transgressing) and also reignites the hungry aggression that powered the construction of the museum in the first place. In a sense, museums honor the aggressive acts with forms of celebration that mimic mourning by using funeral procession-like arrangements of objects in cases and in rows. Psychologically those aggressors must put a distance between themselves and their violent acts by framing the contents of the museum as being from the past, from faraway, or to be kept and considered for the future (and forever.) The museum maintains a distance between the housed artwork and its audience – preventing the process of mourning and allowing for the denial of the violence and transgressions of war.

How do contemporary artists, creating new art, grapple with this distance required by the museum: the source of their support and credibility? Kolarov formulates two possibilities: one, that artists can choose between denying that the original works they create are connected to or refer to western civilization and its violent practices – in other words – their creations come out of nothing. But in so doing, they eventually have to admit that the work then means and is worth nothing. A second choice is to embrace the museum’s culture of war, even to enhance the attractiveness of violence by connecting it to sex. This option promotes the image of the artist as having a destructive, transgressive character – a distancing devise familiar to those versed in museum culture.

We are now in a time of war. Are there other possible responses besides completely denying our state of war or worse, participating in the insidious hidden-in-plain-sight consequences of war culture? Is it possible for all involved to acknowledge the wrongs and transgressions of our participation in war, to fully mourn the losses of war together as a “civilization,” and to rebuild our collective conscience?

Look at my other blog: Express + Local: NYC Aesthetics

2011-04-16T13:39:00.000-07:00

For the month of April, I've been working at The Queens College Art Center as part of the Express + Local: NYC Aesthetics artist residency program. Take a look

Lindsay Captured Red-Handed and Seven Other Outlaw Stories

2011-03-01T20:28:00.000-08:00

Anne Sherwood Pundyk, My Atlas: Lindsay/A Report to an Academy video stills 2010

PRESS RELEASE

Artillery Magazine’s Open Call Video Contest Screening: April 5, 2011

Lindsay Captured Red-Handed and Seven Other Outlaw Stories

Artillery Magazine presents a selection of 8 Video shorts empathically framing behavior outside the norm: celebrity martyrs, social outliers, sexual taboo detonation experts, and obsessed rocketeers. The 30-minute program culled from a nation-wide open call will be screened at the Standard’s Purple Lounge in West Hollywood on April 5^th. The line-up includes artists and filmmakers from Los Angeles and New York City many of whom will attend the screening:

Zig Gron: ApocoLips, LA filmaker

McLean Fahnestock: Grand Finale, LA artist

Readymade 777: It's My Desire, LA filmmaker

Jules Marquis: Just You and Me, NYC art collaborative

Anne Sherwood Pundyk: My Atlas: Lindsay/A Report to an Academy, NYC artist

Lindsey Schulz: Rabbit Hole, LA artist

Sister: The Cutter, LA film Collaborative

Meghan Weinstein: Keepin' it Real With Keisha, LA artist

The judges, Tulsa Kinney (editor of Artillery), Steve Cioffi (videographer), and Paige Wery (publisher of Artillery) selected this outstanding video footage to be screened at the event, after which the audience will vote on the winners.

April 5, 2011

The Purple Lounge

Standard, Hollywood, located at:

8300 Sunset Blvd.

West Hollywood, CA 90069

The evening will begin with a wine reception at 7pm, followed by the screening at 8pm and is free of charge. The Standard offers $8 valet parking with validation for screening attendees.

Contact: Paige Wery, Publisher

Phone: (323) 243-0658

Email: publisher@artillerymag.com

Link: Video Screening

Performance in Art

2011-02-05T08:43:00.000-08:00

Tom Thayer, Paper Puppet and Scenery from The New World Pig, 2009-2010, paper, tape collage, graphite, 12 × 17.75 inches. Image courtesy of Derek Eller Gallery

I write about Adam Marnie, Tom Thayer, and Ruby Sky Stiler at Derek Eller Gallery and Tom Thayer's performance, "Scenographic Play," at Tracy Williams, Ltd. in the January 2011 Issue of The Brooklyn Rail.

"The beating heart of the three-person exhibit at Derek Eller is Adam Marnie’s larger-than-life, floral bouquet collaged and carved directly into the entrance foyer’s sheetrock. Color Xerox enlargements cut, torn, and glued; flower shapes, negative space, and shadow edges traced and carved out of the wall; and drips of adhesive all form elements of the rhythmic composition. They also underscore the undeniability of the artist’s actions as they are tied to his thought process. It is the only piece in the gallery that pumps its own life-blood into the space; his red gerbera daisies hypnotically pulse in a perpetually blooming elliptical zoetrope..."

Click here to read the entire article.

Art Play House

2010-12-07T19:16:00.000-08:00

I write about "179 Canal Canal/Anyways" at White Columns for The Brooklyn Rail's December 2010 issue. Click here to read the full review.

Above image: Artworks from left to right: "Oitana Divan," by Graham Anderson and Caitlin Keogh; "Moving Shapes and Colors (curated by Brian Droitcour)," and "TV Show (Antoine Catala)," photographs by Margaret Lee; "Silodka," by Aliza Baremboym; "Volume I: Gout," book by K. Mustermann on top of "Oitana Plaster Stand," by Graham Anderson and Caitlin Keogh; "Its Deja vu All Over Again (Devon Dikeou)," photograph by Margaret Lee; video monitors. Courtesy of White Columns.

Freedom in Mind

2010-10-06T20:13:00.000-07:00

Above image: "The Art of Captivity, Part One," Fordham University Center Gallery, Lincoln Center

This essay is from the catalogue for "The Art of Captivity, Part One."

The premise of “The Art of Captivity” is that the breadth and depth of its theme should be accessed through both the visual and literary arts—and more important, that both our emotions and our intellects will be strengthened by thinking across these disciplines.

An artwork or novel addressing captivity is as much about its opposite: freedom. If a captive can recognize and identify her captor’s ways and means of constraint, then her awareness can give form to the possibility of assertion and choice. These are the powers of a free person. Frederick Douglass, for example, after he gains awareness of his captivity in slavery, states, “the white man who expected to succeed in whipping, must also succeed in killing me." Not all captives can assert themselves in this way, but freedom must begin in the imagination, in the awareness of captivity. Ideas of interrelatedness—between experiencing written and visual expressions, between the agencies of mind and body, and between freedom and constraint—resonate for me personally. As a painter, I found ways to slip from the constraints of self-limiting conventions through the study of philosophy. Entering into this text-based discipline profoundly affected my approach to the visual. I question more freely now, and more directly connect with the choices that I make in my work.

My artworks, in both Part One and Part Two of “The Art of Captivity” exhibitions, explore the theme of captivity. They also bridge the span before and after my “emancipation.” My reading over the past few years, particularly of Immanuel Kant’s Critique of Judgment, has sparked a formal evolution in my painting. Kant sets out to describe how we judge beauty in a work of art. His initial requirement for this qualitative decision is that we refer to our own reactions to the actual object, which we must see in person. Furthermore, a judgment of beauty is not based on preexisting concepts. Deciding if an artwork is meaningful is a uniquely personal experience that engages both the mind and the body.

I find a reassuring thread in Kant’s thinking that I often return to, both inside and outside my studio. I can feel my way back along this thread to the idea that I am free to think and act for myself, to strive in my work to express a complete world appealing to both imagination and understanding. Following the steady logic behind Kant’s examination of subjectivity, I believe that I’ve found a way to trust seemingly illogical, even irrational impulses and reactions. This knowledge has alerted me to the possibility of choosing to be free. In her foreword, Casey Ruble notes that adhering to a discipline often enriches and expands our capabilities—thus enabling us to venture beyond it. That has been my experience.

Susan Eley selected for her exhibition my monotype, Persephone, which depicts the moment of Persephone’s abduction by Hades, the god of the underworld. I printed this in 2007 before reading Kant, but during my first exposure to Leonard Cassuto’s generous and rigorous interdisciplinary academic thinking. He invited me to talk about my several of my earlier works, also based on the Persephone myth, with his class on captivity literature at Fordham three years ago. Delving deeper into the different versions and interpretations of the original Greek myth as I prepared for Cassuto’s class primed my thinking about the possibilities for useful links between written and visual concepts.

I painted Moon Water, included in the show at Fordham, as part of a new body of work first shown in the spring of 2010. On top of the formal changes I was making, the work relates to my experience of being treated last year for both breast and lung cancer. (I have learned that I should say at this point that I have never smoked.) Illness illuminates the limitations of our physical existence and highlights the patient’s social and emotional isolation. Like Persephone, I feel that I have made a round-trip to the underworld.

The cycle of the seasons recounted in the Persephone myth result from a hard-won compromise: her captivity and freedom must coexist. The two states of mind define each other and together form a new cycle of the seasons. In thinking about my own story during the last three years of sickness and health, I have benefited from the formation of new ideas about captivity—new ways of thinking, my own compromise of seasons. This cycle will continue for me.

The “The Art of Captivity” exhibitions are intended for a broad audience—not only that within the Fordham community but also outside the university. To reinforce the interdisciplinary nature of the exhibitions, this fall I will be editing an ongoing online publication of student writing from Professor Cassuto’s English classes, as well as from students from other schools and programs in New York City. In addition to the writings, panel discussions will be hosted at both exhibitions, and other related lectures at Fordham will take place. This combination of artworks, books, and discussion forums will, I hope, extend our collective understanding of the dynamics of captivity—and liberation.

Mind's Eye Witness

2010-08-24T08:50:00.000-07:00

Using your memory is the only prerequisite for engaging with the group show, “You Were There,” at Rachel Uffner’s LES gallery this July and August. Curator Thomas Duncan selected two artworks each by artists Rita Ackermann, Justin Adian, Joe Bradley, Sarah Braman, Sara Greenberger Rafferty and Josh Smith: one from five years ago and a current piece for comparison. In keeping with the solipsistic effects of this summer’s heat wave, a reading of the evolution from the earlier work to the latter – a pin-ball like exercise when you take the show as a whole -- is meant to tease a parallel personal retrospection out of the viewer. “Where was I five years ago? How have I changed? What have I learned?”

Smith’s self-consciously painterly paintings are the only two pieces by the same artist shown side-by-side on the same wall, and so they serve as a key for reading the rest of the show: then versus now. His work also sets the overall stylistic tone: what is the least effort that can be made and yet still say something? Iterations and suggestions of the human form inhabit Rafferty’s, Ackermann’s and Bradley’s work; the other artists dwell more in an abstract realm. On the walls encircling Braman’s earnest set of knee-high, tumbling cube sculptures hang three pairs of paintings by Smith, Bradley, and Adian. Rafferty’s comedic and Ackerman’s popular fable work spar at the door and at the far end of the gallery. Scanning the show, you might be able to conclude, for example that Smith now voices his concerns more directly; or Braman has found more permanence and Bradley has learned to trust the human touch.

Five years is a meaningful span, Duncan told me, because it is long enough to remember and yet not too long to forget. The past is a construct formulated through the rolling lens of the present. Different distances at different speeds traveled within the same time span. We can know that for these particular artists the last five years have taken them from the early stages of their art careers to the next milestone (although Ackermann has had a bit of a head start.) The audience will have their own five years to dig into – wherever it may sit on their life’s number line -- and Duncan proposes that the fruits of the show lie in mirroring these impressions back on the show’s six youthful fictions.

The curator has successfully orchestrated the idea of multiple personal stories into the experience of reading the show. The under-built, barely held-together aesthetic heightens the fascination and reinforces the link to fleeting qualities associated with memory. Relinquishing to a purely formal reading reveals attractive cross-artist coincidences of color, form, and finish as the show’s visual underpinning. The pleasure of the making these surprising material connections has the feeling of a personal epiphany. This aspect of experiencing the show is more credible than any interpretation of a specific artist’s recent personal awakening, especially as it might relate to one of our own.

Any references to national or world events that have affected the artists’ or our own individual experiences over the last five years are underplayed here. They are perceptible, however, in the ways they have been integrated into the recent changes in our own lives and revealed in our own personal meditations on measuring how far we’ve come, successes and failures, beginnings and endings. This may explain the overall transient, purposeful lack-of-commitment attitude of the work. It matches the feeling of flux and instability of our times. In this regard, time and perhaps personal memory is evoked by “You Were There.”

The Rachel Uffner Gallery is a typical LES space -- for the time being, anyway. It is a small storefront with scuffed plywood floors and remnants of the old, decorative, red and white tile “welcome mat” still evident outside the front door. It opened in 2008 – midway through the show’s conceptual time frame. More polished – and distancing -- white cube galleries are getting increasingly easier to come by in her neighborhood. Maybe only within the artworld is this evolution dependable.

The already precious feeling of the space reinforces Duncan’s idea for the show. We can imagine a time in the near future, when the LES will be unrecognizable, Uffner will have moved to larger quarters, and the picture of an intimate, roughly finished interior filled with mid-summer afternoon sunlight will mark a lost moment. This palpable nostalgia for our own recent past is encouraged in “You Were There.” Beyond the artwork shown, Rachel Uffner’s gallery itself becomes fused with the show’s premise. Against a backdrop of change, what you can count on is the value of experiencing art.

Above installation image of the exhibition "You Were There," at Rachel Uffner Gallery with artwork by (from left to right) Joe Bradley, Rita Ackermann, Sarah Braman and Sara Greenberger Rafferty courtesy of Rachel Uffner Gallery.

What is Real?

2010-05-06T05:50:00.000-07:00

Josephine Halvorson, "Coral", 2009, 18" x 23", Oil on Linen (image courtesy of Sikkema Jenkins & Co.)

Anne Sherwood Pundyk, " A Little Kiss for Me", 2009, 10" x 8", Oil and Acrylic on Panel

Flesh or living matter is not a subject in Josephine Halvorson’s trompe l’oeil paintings. All of the materials, objects and substances she chooses to paint are inorganic or formerly organic at the time she paints them. Nothing alive can be found in her modest-sized paintings. So why do her paintings have such a palpable presence?

I turn to my own work to help me think through the answer. Several years ago, as I was sorting out an approach to painting, I decided that objects, landscapes and people were three distinct conceptual categories. The way I used paint when approaching each category would have to be completely different. With objects, I felt comfortable painting them. They were known entities and I could use a type of mimicry. With the brushwork I could construct with paint, more or less, how the object itself was constructed, situated and lit.

Landscape, I understood, could be painted (not represented, but conjured in paint) through a dance-like process. Landscape is everything beyond the object or outside the skin. Movement, as orientation, not mimicry, was the key to landscape. And then there was flesh. I studied traditional portraits; I looked extensively at other figure paintings. Sargent, Manet, Vermeer, Morisot, Cassatt. Time passed. My obsession with finding the alchemical formula for painting flesh continued. And it wasn't merely the flesh I wanted to paint. It was the resemblance, the form, the anatomy, the skeleton, the movement, the breath, the expression, the person, and the presence. Cecily Brown's work seemed to point the way -- other artists, too, including Amy Sillman, Francis Bacon, and even almost purely abstract work such as Joan Mitchell's.

Immanual Kant's Critique of Judgment provided the key. His methodological, categorical approach to the mysteries of beauty and the sublime opened a door. I became aware of the correspondence of the painter's body (and consciousness) to the world and the same correspondence shared between the artwork to the audience. I think it is just in my most recent work that -- by not trying to contain the notion of flesh, but paint the spirit contained in the flesh -- I can paint a living presence and world.

Now, back to Halvorson’s work. She has a clear-eyed, stripped down approach to both selecting her subjects (does she find them or do they find her?) and painting them in situ. Her choices appear to be the universe of the inorganic -- the breath, life and growth of her subjects are no longer present. But then it occurred to me what was happening. Her paint is the flesh. The act of painting her “overlooked subjects" (as she describes them) gives them their life.

Halvorson has linked her work to the children’s story The Velveteen Rabbit: or How Toys Become Real by Margery Williams (with illustrations by William Nicholson.) An inert toy rabbit grows conscious of the possibility of becoming not only beloved by the boy he belongs to, but a real flesh and blood rabbit. The toy rabbit must gain the boy’s love while surviving a lifetime of wear and tear. Another toy tells him, “…Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter at all, because once you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand." Halvorson’s planks, embers, gravestones, twigs and bricks have weathered several lifetimes and through her understanding they are resurrected in paint.

Introspective Shout Out: 2009

2010-01-01T09:23:00.000-08:00

Notable moments in my interior life from the past year. A list. Not a complete nor comprehensive list. And, not listed in any special order --more a way to lasso a few impressions from a herd of unruly ideas.

Re-reading Critique of Judgment about Beauty and the Sublime: Kant reinforces the identify-defining role of the individual in making judgments.
Experiencing Linda Norden's game-changing programming of art exhibitions at CUNY Graduate Center’s The James Gallery.
Attending Diana S. Pitt's memorial service.
Working with Susan Eley Fine Art.
Realizing that having cancer is like getting fired: you are now "the other."
Seeing, reading and writing about paintings by Amy Sillman, Cecily Brown, Alice Neel, Joan Mitchell, Louise Fishman, Josephine Halvorson, and Angela Dufresne.
Working with Theodore Hamm, Thomas Micchelli (from The Brooklyn Rail) and Jeff Pundyk, to edit my ideas in writing.
Catching the “Beg, Borrow, Steal” show from the Rubell Family Collection in Miami with Karen Yama (reminding me of our good old days.)
Seeing Evan’s performance in School Lite.
Sitting on the floor of Borders bookstore with Rita Halbright talking about good books on feminism: my current favorite being “Women Who Run With the Wolves,” by Clarissa Pinkola Estes.
Refreshing my conception of photography with Walter Benjamin, Tacita Dean, and Andrew Bush,
Remembering Charles Daugherty, my art professor from Pomona College, who, of all my teachers from college through graduate school, attuned his responses to my expansiveness, not his own agenda.
Going to see Alice Neal’s work at David Zwirner with Mary Hanlon.
Being tipped off by Jeff about movie director, Kathryn Bigelow's interest in Jaques Lacan and how it's embodied in her film, "Hurt Locker."
Savoring Peter Scheldahl's art reviews, and those of Roberta Smith, Holland Cotter and Michael Kimmelman, and Barry Schwabsky.
Being reminded by Phoebe Pundyk about early Modernist art manifestos; and then thumbing through Herbert Read’s “A Concise History of Modern Painting,” pausing to read about Kandinsky and Cezanne while waiting for my radiation treatments.
Learning about post-Freudian ideas on psychotherapy, such as inter-subjectivity, following the recommendations of Beth Mehan and Barbara Faden
Having multi-directional conversations -- spun out from aspects of my work -- during visits in my studio with, among others, Orren Alperstein, Josephine Halvorson, Mike Quinn, Peter Scott, Wynn Kramarksy, and Linda Norden.
Touring "Younger Than Jesus" at the New Museum with Julie Saul and learning from her about Laszlo Moholy-Nagy.
Digging into Jacques Lecan's ideas, especially about the gaze, as explained by Zizek in "A Pervert's Guide to Cinema."
Seeing Francis Bacon's exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art -- noting the annex showing his source photographs -- after reading Gilles Deleuze’s “Logic of Sensation” (one of many readings suggested by Timothy Quigley.)
Appreciating the aesthetic qualities of the French while reading “Camera Lucida” by Roland Barthes. (More thanks to TQ)
Wondering why seeing Marlene Dumas's exhibition at MoMA was both upsetting and gratifying.
Talking to Lenny Cassuto about the theme of captivity and at his suggestion reading Sigmund Freud’s “Civilization and Its Discontents.” Seeing, later that Andre Agassis's autobiography "Open" was pried from him using some of Freud’s thinking about the death instinct as applied to Agassi’s self-destructiveness.
Swimming lanquidly through essays by Maurice Merleau-Ponty: “Cezanne’s Doubt” and “Eye and Mind.”
Running to see Monet’s Waterlillies at MoMA particularly after reading about their first installation in the 1950’s in Achim Hochdorfer's "A Hidden Reserve" in Artforum
While recuperating, watching on DVD all 8 seasons of "The Gilmore Girls" which blends effortlessly lessons from the Myth of Persephone with “What Not to Wear” (Thank you Phoebe and Tala Ginsberg)

Above image: Anne Sherwood Pundyk, "You're There and Then You're Not", 2009, Oil and Acrylic on Linen, 65" x 63"

"Unconsciousness Raising" article in The Brooklyn Rail

2009-11-18T16:02:00.000-08:00

I contributed this article to the September 2009 Brooklyn Rail:

This summer it was possible to wade in the waters of pornography, erotic art, psychoanalysis, and feminism by visiting four almost concurrent art exhibitions: Peeps at CUNY’s James Gallery; John Currin: Works on Paper—A Fifteen Year Survey of Women at Andrea Rosen Gallery; Dorothy Iannone: Lioness at The New Museum; and The Female Gaze: Women Look at Women at Cheim & Read. Taken together, these shows trace a line of erotic imagery from the crass commercialism of pure pornography to the more refined commercialism of the art gallery, raising questions about how these forms relate to modern sexuality. Let’s be explicit: sex sells. It sells itself—always one click away—and it sells other commodities: beer, cars, tennis rackets, and, yes, art. Certainly, the aspiration for erotic imagery presented in an art setting is that it would stimulate reflections on desire, sexism and human rights. Working from the opposite direction, however, the exploitative forces at work in the making and selling of pornography cannot be completely sugarcoated in a fine art frame...(read full article here.)

Tonight! ARTWALK NY 2009 Benefitting Coalition for the Homeless

2009-11-17T12:51:00.000-08:00

ARTWALK NY 2009
Art Auction Benefit for Coalition for the Homeless
Co-chairs: Alec Baldwin, Richard Gere and Carey Lowell
Artist Honoree: Pat Steir

Skylight Studio, 275 Hudson Street, NYC
6:30 pm doors/8 pm live auction
Tickets are $200 and $500
Full details here

ARTWALK NY unites artists and art lovers in an effort to help our homeless neighbors, and to celebrate the most important artists of our time. Coalition for the Homeless provides housing, food, job training, crisis services and children's programs to thousands of New Yorkers each day. We believe that affordable housing, sufficient good, and the chance to work for a living wage are fundamental rights in a civilized society. Since 1981, we've fought successfully for lansting solutions to homelessness through our renowned advocacy.

Article on Andrew Bush's Photography in The Brooklyn Rail

2009-11-17T12:39:00.000-08:00

I contributed "A Glance Backward While Driving Over the Edge" to The Brooklyn Rail's May 2009 Issue:

"Owning a car is an American birthright. It is the personalization of American power, prosperity, and autonomy. Regardless of the impact on the environment or national security, we Americans go where we want, when we want, and in the car of our choice. Speed is the hook: put your foot on the accelerator and go. At least, that’s the way it’s always been. Now, with the rapid slow-down of our economy, we are being forced to confront our relationship to our cars. Andrew Bush’s “Vector Portraits,” photographs of people driving their cars, can give us a place to start. Opening April 23rd, two Chelsea galleries—Yossi Milo and Julie Saul—are showing Bush’s near life-size color images taken in the 1990s..." (read full article here.)

Sigmund Freud Snack

2009-07-11T09:11:00.000-07:00

Freud's clearheaded description of religion's myths encourages further thinking about its ongoing pitfalls. In "Civilization and Its Discontents," published in 1930, Freud quoted below his own writing from another book, "Future of an Illusion," from three years earlier.

"...I was concerned...with what the common man understands by his religion--with the system of doctrines and promises which on the one hand explains to him the riddles of this world with enviable completeness, and on the other, assures him that a careful Providence will watch over his life and will compensate him in a future existence for any frustrations he suffers here. The common man cannot imagine this Providence otherwise than in the figure of an enormously exalted father. Only such a being can understand the needs of the children of man and be softened by their prayers and placated by the signs of their remorse. The whole thing is so patently infantile, so foreign to reality, that to anyone with a friendly attitude to humanity it is painful to think that the great majority of mortals will never be able to rise above this view of life.

Above image by Anne Sherwood Pundyk: "Dispersions (with Josephine in mind)", 2009, Oil and Acrylic on Panel, 10" x 8"

Judy Glantzman: The White Paintings, 1999-2001 at Betty Cuningham Gallery

2009-07-06T16:36:00.000-07:00

To die, to sleep.

To sleep, perchance to dream—ay, there’s the rub,

For in that sleep of death what dreams may come

When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,

Must give us pause.

It’s only from observing someone else’s death that we can get any clues about what dreams may come. All we have to go on is our experience as a witness to another’s death -- its approach, occurrence and aftermath. Our response to this sequence of events is shaped by how well we know the deceased and how well we know ourselves. There is a special pull and fascination with having proximity to another’s death. What we see “gives us pause.” Eventually, we know, it will be our turn.

Nearly a decade ago painter Judy Glantzman kept her father company as his health deteriorated. She briefly tried sketching him, she told me recently, but was not comfortable representing her father’s decline directly. Glantzman took the impulse of recording her experience of his death back to her studio. She wrote of bringing to her painting a heightened sense of the provisional nature of our “physical selves.” The resulting work was not shown widely at the time it was painted. It is, however, the basis for Glantzman’s show at Betty Cuningham Gallery this summer, “The White Paintings 1999 -2001.”

The focus of the show is five large, mostly white oil paintings. In each work there is a single, ambiguous presence drawn in contours of paint using minimal color – mostly reds and muted blues. Centrally placed, the lone figure is female and has a youthful, fidgety appearance. The effect is spare, as opposed to the colorful, populated feel to much of Glantzman’s prior and subsequent works.

The figures are incomplete and misshapen, missing arms, a torso, or legs. Rendered quickly in narrow painted lines, several wear a veil or headpiece and some are clothed in a full gathered skirt. The most prominent element in each painting is the subject’s doll-like face. The stylized facial features have similar proportions as they face the viewer. They could all be drawn from a classicized conception of the human face rather than from a specific individual.

Overall, the works have an interrupted and erased feel as if the artist made multiple, incomplete attempts at rendering her subject. What is left of the figure for us to see has been partially covered or reworked. However, the unfinished quality of the rendering does not result in an unfinished work. The striving and repeated attempts to understand her idealized subject suggest that which we can never really know.

Above image courtesy of the artist and Betty Cuningham Gallery:

by Judy Glantzman "Angel," 2000, Oil on Canvas, 90" x 80"

Julian Schnabel's Midtown Cave Paintings (Post Script on Takako Azami)

2009-06-13T13:24:00.000-07:00

The nearly perfect grid of streets covering Manhattan was designed to provide a stream of unimpeded vehicular and pedestrian traffic. A bird flying over the mid 40’s, however, can see that three monumental buildings in a row -- Grand Central Station, the MetLife and Helmsley Buildings -- sit squarely over Park Avenue. Who allowed this mass of structures to divert the flow? I vowed, on a sunny Sunday afternoon, to take back the streets from this blunt act of developer and city planning ego. With a bookstore on 57th Street as my destination, I pledged to walk in a straight line from Murray Hill directly up Park Avenue “through” this walled midtown fortress, as if it wasn’t there.

I made it through Grand Central Station from the south side, but got jammed up trying to get into the MetLife building. Just as the security guard waved me to stop I noticed -- with an overwhelming jolt -- two huge paintings by Julian Schnabel in the stone-faced interior lobby. What? Art? Here, in the heart of this imposing citadel? In perfect contrast to their polished, corporate setting – they were oversized, nearly falling apart, on dirty, wrinkled-looking canvas. The ham-handed strokes and forms looked to be painted by a giant who almost didn't care. The artist who, “cultivates provocation and paradox,” loves to define himself as a “cave painter,” according to a press release issued about the paintings when they were shown in Italy in 2006.

Immanuel Kant contrasts the beautiful with the sublime in his “Critique of Judgment.” A judgment of beauty involves a perception of harmony and purpose with respect to something we can grasp all at once. Judging the sublime adds size and scale to the equation – it addresses things that are bigger than us and even beyond our ability to imagine. “The feeling of the sublime is …produced by the feeling of a momentary inhibition of the vital forces followed immediately by an outpouring of them that is all the stronger…The liking for the sublime contains not so much a positive pleasure as rather admiration and respect, and so should be called a negative pleasure.” Schnabel’s oversized paintings functioned as a single sublime thread hanging from a tailored suit of stone. If tugged, the thread could unravel the entire building.

The guard let me see a third Schnabel on the floor closed to the public and explained that there were two more even bigger — measuring probably twenty feet square -- on the lower level. From there I could get back to Park Avenue and fulfill my mission. Ogling the larger Schnabels and making only one wrong turn inside the Helmsley building, I found my way uptown on the other side.

Julian Schnabel says about his work, “I use any tool I can to realize the physical embodiment of my impulse.” There is a connection between the artist’s impulse and their materials that is replicated in the audience’s experience of the work. The British photographer Tactita Dean believes “art works best when it responds to the autobiography of the viewer.” The connection may not be so much the gratification of a desire, or fulfillment of a fantasy, but a sublime “negative pleasure” such as recognizing our fears. Stumbling upon the paintings unexpectedly, my surprise drove the connection deeper. As I faced down my concern about getting lost in the labyrinth of stone and steel over Park Avenue, I found the treasure: Schnabel’s cave paintings.

Post Script: Takako Azami

On a different day I set out on a "safer" straight line to see a short list of shows In Chelsea. The walk was just a typical stroll from point A to point B, and, unlike my trek up Park Avenue, I fully expected to see some art. In thinking about Schabel’s translation of impulse to artwork, the clearest connection I saw was in Takako Azami’s ink paintings on stretched hemp paper at M.Y. Art Prospects. “Pine Trees”, in particular, felt musical with its rich array of tones and intervals. The artist has trained in the traditional style of Japanese ink painting, but has adapted and transformed the technique over the last 10 years. Visible on the surface of the stretched paper is the “back” of the artist’s dabs and blots of black and grey ink and white chalk pigments. The simple directness and intelligence of the work was right on the surface.

Above image: by Takako Azami, "Pine Trees," 2008, Ink, pigment on hemp paper, 4' x 6', courtesy of M.Y. Art Prospects Gallery

Pecha Kucha: MoMA, M.Y. Art Prospects, CUNY's James Gallery, Cuchifritos, Monya Rowe and CRG

2009-05-15T06:43:00.000-07:00

I went to a panel discussion at MoMA expecting to learn about the six artists presenting, and ended up more curious about the format of the lecture: Pecha Kucha. Each presenter is allowed 20 images and has 20 seconds per image to comment. MoMA is hosting five presentations in this format this spring in conjunction with the exhibition, “Compass in Hand: Selections from The Judith Rothschild Foundation Contemporary Drawings Collection.”

Pecha Kucha, which translates from Japanese as “chit chat,” is a recent innovation first used by architects. In 2003, Mark Dytham and Astrid Klein, who have a Tokyo-based firm, saw the potential for expanding the role of the design presentation into the realm of nighttime entertainment. Pecha Kucha tightens up the parameters of a traditional lecture presentation relocating it to a bar or nightclub. Consider Pecha Kucha as a substitute for Karaoke or a drinking game. In the new, relaxed atmosphere, the shorter presentations allow architects and designers to quickly share their ideas.

So, does it work for artists?

To get in on the game, I am modeling this post on the Pecha Kucha style. In addition to the MoMA presentation I will cover several recent art events: a lecture on surf blogging and an exhibition of Carolyn Swiszcz’s paintings at M.Y. Art Prospects; Thomas Torros Cordova’s performance, “Everybody Loves the Sunshine” at CUNY’s new James Gallery; Josephine Halvorson and Andy Rosen ‘s two-person show, “Close to Home” at Cuchifritos; and Angela Dufresne’s new paintings at Monya Rowe and CRG. This is more than I would normally write about at once, but I’ll try for short and sweet.

Ready, set, go.

At MoMA, the artists presenting were Christian Holstad, Kim Jones, Julian Hoeber, Dana Schutz, Dannielle Tegeder and Elizabeth Simonson. Most of them started with older drawings from the exhibition, followed by more recent work in other media. While the styles and subjects of their work were diverse, by the end all of the artists where united in feeling nerve-racked by the constraints of the Pecha Kucha format. Disco lighting and a pitcher of beer might have helped.

One side effect of presenting under pressure was a generous outpouring during the Q and A and the end. The artists offered personal advice to the audience about countering some common professional hazards. Elizabeth Simonson stressed the importance of having a studio and keeping a close circle of friends. In response to a question about disappointment, Dannielle Tegeder offered, “it is a natural part of the process of making and showing work.” Dana Schutz says she fights doubt by making lists of ideas and running. Several artists agreed with Kim Jones that doing yoga helps. Looking back, it may be that the artists’ discomfort came from trying to jam the contents of a more traditional presentation into too small a space. The most memorable moments came after the timer had stopped and the artists were more at ease.

Moving right along.

To mark her gallery’s 10^th anniversary, Miyako Yoshinga has initiated a monthly informal lecture and discussion series called Telling Evenings (T.E.) at M.Y. Art Prospects. On April 9 -- the debut of the series -- new media artist and filmmaker, Marcin Ramocki talked about the brief history of surf-blogging. He projected on-line examples of this visual telephone game, played by closed surf clubs on the Internet. Surf blogging sprang up from the fertile crescent of amateur pornography connoisseurship and Internet image piracy. The audience’s reaction to Ramoki’s presentation was swift and polarized: outrage at the unauthorized use of images posted on the Internet, and delighted fascination with the humor and creativity of the results.

Also at M.Y. Art Prospects through May 23^rd, “Minnesota Miracle,” an exhibition of Carolyn Swiszcz’s paintings combines a bleak “South Park” aesthetic with pitch-perfect atmospheric effects also found in Hokusai’s ukiyo-e landscape woodblock prints. The artist’s use of repeating geometric shapes to depict modern suburban architectural facades – they are “rubber stamped” – becomes a commentary on the winter-weary heartland mindset. Her gaze at an impoverished, strip mall and beer-pong culture is both sympathetic and steady.

Next.

Under the new directorship of Linda Norden, the programs at The Amie and Tony James Gallery at CUNY’s Graduate Center located at 35^th and Madison have nearly exploded out of its large-windowed corner gallery space. Performances, videos, readings, and politically charged exhibitions rotate in and out of the gallery at a whiplash pace. On April 17, 2009, film-maker, performance artist and crooner, Thomas Torres Cordova screened his 3-D film “Everybody Loves the Sunshine.”

During his performance Cordova narrated and sang over his video montage accompanied by Woody "Uncle Woody" Sullender‘s live banjo playing. Cordova is a full-time on-the-ground airlines employee whose family runs an air-conditioning business. Airplane crashes, “loony” astronaut love triangles, the American need for artificially controlled air environments, and the mass merchandising of art, piled together spell out an SOS in sky-writing. Where, in our airtight, super-sonic space age, is there room for the lonely heart to sing out and be heard?

Home stretch.

In “Close to Home,” curators Melissa Levin and Mike Quinn have paired fine art “souvenirs” from a northeastern sensibility at Cuchifritos in the East Village through June 13th. The modestly sized still life paintings by Josephine Halvorson exhibit a wry, deadpan humor and play off the physical comedy of Andy Rosen’s nautical sculptures.

Last one.

A double dose of work by painter and musician Angela Dufresne’s is now up at Monya Rowe and CRG in Chelsea in “Modern Times I and II.” Painting the movie of her life, scored by Bob Dylan and scripted by Charlie Chaplin, Dufrese’s friends understudy for contemporary and classic movie stars. She slides a filmic veneer under her painted forms and strokes reminding me of the late Picasso's, and the paintings of Louise Fishman and Cecily Brown. There’s a split-screen music video made by Dufresne floating around the Internet I wish would show up in her galleries.

Done.

Pecha Kucha for writing: is the result a haiku collection or a shopping list? I’ll take their word that it works for architects; the jury is out for fine artists. “Chit chat” implies a tuned out superficiality, but it sounds like the process is supposed to be more like skipping rope, it gets the heart rate up, hopefully pumping more oxygen to the brain. Maybe fine art is less programmatic than architecture, so its harder to regulate. Or should MoMA be serving cocktails?

Above Image by Carolyn Swiszcz, "Walker Art Center, Minneapolis," Acrylic and rubber stamp on canvas, 36" x 48", 2009. Courtesy of M.Y. Art Prospects.

Returning Abroad, Leaving Home

2009-05-03T16:00:00.000-07:00

The Watercolors

"Souvenir," means to remember. A souvenir acquired while traveling is brought back home (a small crystal bottle from Versailles, let’s say.) Through its displaced physical presence -- it came from somewhere else -- the object disrupts the present. Is that how we remember something? Watercolor brush marks animate small blue and white bedroom interiors rippling the present tense of their photographic source images, like cyanotype snapshots. At 16, the girl’s bedroom at home in New York City, in the year 2007, becomes a point of departure. Her souvenirs remind her that further adventures await her and that at some moment in the future, she will make her own way and her own home.

The Paintings

The last royal resident of The Chateau Versailles was another girl, who at 14, in 1769, left her mother in Austria to become Queen Consort of France and of Navarre. The presence of the paint, in layers and strokes, supports the nearly life-size images of gilt furnishings from Marie Antoinette’s palace, covered in yellow, red and blue. Taken outside like the chairs, the images slip off the edges, as if pulled toward the water. The swirls and curves of the Queen’s carpets and chairs gaze back to the decorative bottle on the girl’s bedside table, across the wake of the Atlantic Ocean. Messages under the waving surfaces are migratory commands. The pattern repeats. The story repeats.

The Video

From the translucent souvenir flows a video of free associations: memories from the trip and from further back in time. With a cross dissolve logic moments remembered vie with the pull of the present. Images collect, connect, sort and fade: a walk along the Rue de Rivoli, a rooftop in Manhattan, and a cloudy day at Versailles. A photographic veneer hovers under the animated flow of paint forms and strokes. Typewritten reflections describe the adorned fountains in the formal gardens at Versailles. A landscape is mirrored across the water.

Later we can see that leaving home happens in marked stages. Making her new home at Versailles, the young Queen shed her girlhood clothes, wearing now only clothes of the Court. New experiences, new responsibilities. Her golden chairs encircle the round table, pulling back toward the water. The North Fork marshes of the girl’s childhood summers flood her dreams. From whose mind’s eye are these images being projected? Who is writing the story? The girl is my daughter. These are my paintings. I hold hopes, as any mother does, for my child to make a home for herself -- to fearlessly define her own world.

Image above: Anne Sherwood Pundyk, "Journal", 2008, 10" x 10.75", watercolor on paper

View the watercolors, paintings and video

100% Real Painting (Versailles)

2009-03-01T19:49:00.000-08:00

Crossing the Line

2009-02-27T20:04:00.000-08:00

I first saw Alyssa Pheobus's work as a tiny graphic on my computer screen. I was drawn to the terse black and white image primarily through the words she had chosen to seemingly scratch, or draw. They began with, "HEY LITTLE GIRL, IS YOUR DADDY HOME..." and continued with three verses. I didn't realize until much later that they were the lyrics from Bruce Springsteen's haunting, "I'm on Fire." I found, though, in the un-sourced words the recognition of a pervasive subculture of sexual brutality. It's a theme that spreads throughout Pheobus's work.

With her drawing, "I'm on Fire," Pheobus took the popular Springsteen lyric that you've heard at home, on your car's radio, or in any number of public places and separated it from it's beat. You might have tapped your foot and sung along not even aware that it's a song about the singer's tortured sexual desire, but taken out of that context and hung on the wall there is little doubt. In another drawing, Pheobus uses Leonard Cohen's lyrics from "I'm Your Man," in which the singer offers to transform himself, and take any abuse his lover can dream up, in order to be her man. "I'll do anything you ask me to; And if you want another kind of love; I'll wear a mask for you," goes the familiar song.

We know these songs of love, and many more like them. They are all around us, like wallpaper. Pheobus asks us to take notice -- to pick the words out of the air -- and pay attention to the stories of desire, submission, sexual aggression and physical violence. Her work questions what the works say about us and how we connect with them. These songs and other poems and phrases used in her drawings are one element of Pheobus's work. The stringent, yet open-ended way she "plays them back" to us is an equally important part of her call to acknowledge our own involvement in the subculture of violence and desire.

The penciled letters, words, phrases, and primitive, cross-stitched-like designs of Pheobus's work hold together large wavy oceans of creamy, skin-like paper. The blank paper's presence tells the story first. Most of the drawings in her solo exhibition this winter, "Lay in the Reins," at Bellwether Gallery were big enough to be bed covers. They were lightly pinned to the wall, hanging freely, sculpted by changes in the humidity.

As a whole, the aesthetic of her work, as determined by its construction and execution, is shockingly simple. A stenciled pencil mark -- a small, barbed, dart shape -- repeated hundreds of times creates the letters and framing graphic forms. The grays and emphatic blacks are made in a way reminiscent of Minimal Art drawing scenarios such as Sol LeWitt's cross-hatched drawings where density is built up by superimposed lines.

Some of the song lyrics, poems and phrases, such as "ROUGH SEX WITH A BIG MAN," sit where they are told on cleanly seamed sheets of handmade paper. Others fume and beg -- "I'LL DO ANYTHING YOU ASK ME TO," -- muttering and spitting down from the top of the drawing until they are worn out. The drawings's compositions -- or graphic layout might be a better term -- lend attitude and spin as they refer to embroidered samplers, architectural plans, Gold Rush era wanted posters, 60's Minimal Art, bored student doodles, quilts, or outsider art.

Pheobus has cited the writings and films of Jean Genet as important to an understanding of the way she creates her work. In "'Prisoner of Love," Genet's last book, he writes of his time in the 1970's in the Palestinian refugee camps in Jordan. His writing reflects his mistrust of all forms of institutional authority and his long time familiarity with captivity. The book begins with a description of the process of writing, which leads to a philosophical supposition closely paralleling Pheobus's work and vision:

"The page that was blank to begin with is now crossed from top to bottom with tiny black characters -- letters, works, commas, exclamation marks -- and it's because of them the page is said to be legible. But a kind of uneasiness, a feeling close to nausea, an irresolution that stays my hand -- these make me wonder: do these black marks add up to reality? The white of the paper... may posses more reality than the signs that mar them."

So which is it for Pheobus, the marks or the white? After thinking her work over a period of months, something shifted for me. The queasy fear from the implied threats collapsed. It was her deadpan delivery, I think. Fueled by Pheobus's recognition of subversive oppression (even the forms we ask for and participate in) I wanted an escape. What came to mind? I conjured the exacting physical comedy of Buster Keaton's silent films, where we confront pain with laughter. How about one of Pheobus's phrases, " NO INTEREST IN FREE LOVE," becoming a petition passed around a commune after the first blush of utopian freedom fades and no one has bathed in weeks? Push past the dread until it turns into the absurd. Can you see the possibilities? I can protect myself as Pheobus does, with the juxtaposition of the wild threat of the words with the controlled sureness of their setting. I'm not sure its part of her intention, but Pheobus's brave thinking and sumptuous execution help serve as my shield.

Image: "NO INTEREST IN FREE LOVE," 2007, graphite on cotton rag paper, 100" x 68" (detail), courtesy of the artist.

Alyssa Pheobus's work is included in a group show, "The Practice of Joy Before Death; it just would not be a party without you," a Die Storung situation, opening Saturday February 28, 2009, from 6:00 pm - 8:00 pm, at the Scaramouche c/o Fruit and Flowers Deli, 53 Stanton Street. (212) 228-2229.

Diana's Forest

2009-02-11T11:21:00.000-08:00

Anne Sherwood Pundyk, "Diana's Forest," 2008, 65" x 68", oil and acrylic on linen.

Diana Pitt's first visit to my studio was last summer, even though I'd known her for 20 years. Looking over my artwork, Diana took her time, examining closely everything she saw, asking all sorts of questions. We had met initially on the job, working in a fast-paced environment with constant, unrealistic deadlines. As soon as she joined the department, I felt for the first time the impossible might be possible. While not immune to stress, Diana could articulate under pressure the precise qualities and dimensions of any given insanity we faced. Naming the chaos -- which took steely courage and a war chest of perfectly chosen works -- was the first step in taming it. Of special note was her writing. She countered any urge of mine to oversimplify, generalize, or re-use professional jargon with a solid demonstration of clear, relevant, forceful prose. Her ability to write, I believe, was directly tied to her unabashed curiosity, and her ability to focus outward, listening and looking intently. Simultaneously, she could sift and sort all she was taking in, discerning layers of meaning.

During her visit, she told me that in addition to the work itself, she was struck by the fact that it was mine. At this point, I should say that she knew I was a painter, but when we first met I was taking a hiatus from making artwork. (My reasons? New young children, a full-time job, and uncertainly about how being an artist fit into this few life.) But looking at my work, she asked me why I had stopped painting, as if that had been a wrong decision. Looking from one piece to the next, she seemed to be enjoying the experience of seeing it all. One painting held her gaze, an interior from a french chateau, flooded by North Fork marshland. "Someday," she said, "I'll have to buy that painting. It's as if there's a sunken treasure there."

In the years since we had worked together, she started a family too, and by the time I returned to painting full-time we had fallen out of regular touch. When we reconnected three or four years ago, she had been working for a decade at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, writing about the museum's exhibitions. We picked up our friendship where it had left off. Still, she didn't make it into my studio until this visit.

After guiding her through all the completed works, I pointed to a large unfinished painting: a wooded landscape beginning to take shape, with most of the underpainting still visible. Diana said, "Well, it's perfect just as it is. I can't imagine what you would add." She knew this might not be welcome news and laughed at what she guessed was my vague horror at the suggestion. Yes, I had plans for the work, but at the same time, I trusted her, knowing that her comment was genuine -- and besides, I had seen something there, too. I knew that something was happening in the painting that was worth looking at longer. But, if she hadn't said something, I don't think I would have had the nerve to stop. In an email after the visit she wrote, "Amazingly fun -- I'm so happy that we've reconnected. Are you around this weekend for a quick walk through your portfolio again? Maybe Sunday (Reassure Jeff that I won't take much of your time.) I keep dreaming about your little Japanese prints. And promise not to touch your unfinished masterpiece until next week, though I'm sure it's luring you over ....Love, di"

A month later, in August, the painting remained untouched. What about the painting made it possible to see it as both finished and unfinished? In relation to other work in my studio there was less actual paint on the canvas, and yet it had everything it needed. I thought about the reasons why I thought it was unfinished: I wanted more detail, more sense of depth, alright -- I admit -- I wanted the feel of putting the paint on the linen. Each reason disappeared when I saw that the qualities I sought were already there. (If I wanted to apply more paint, I could always move on to the next piece.) I sent Diana pictures of my studio on which she commented, "Your studio looks great with the "unfinished" masterpiece by the door -- I really like the interaction among the paintings, which are quite different from one another. I'm glad to see the forest unchanged. Thankfully there are not bears in my forest, though a few pugs might be nice. Plus, the view of the chair shrine is cool."

By September I accepted Diana's challenge to leave the painting as it was, fusing forever a positive feeling from Diana with taking aesthetic risks. The summer ended; the flurry of Fall in Manhattan; the energizing election. In November, Diana told me of unsettling news of her health. Her breast cancer had returned. We were able, thankfully, to get together for another lunch or two, but with a devastating speed and virility, cancer took her life on February 2nd. Hearing her many friends and her parents describe Diana for the overflowing crowd of mourners, I saw Diana captured in words. For the briefest, impossible moment she was back with us, listening intently, laughing, eagerly taking us all in. I am keeping what Diana gave me; I am keeping Diana's Forest, untouched.

Bi-Lingual Travel Documents: A Look at Photography and Painting

2009-02-02T07:35:00.000-08:00

The exhibition "Passages in Black and White" at the Susan Eley Gallery documents the travels of artists Jessica M. Kaufman and Heather Boose Weiss to places far from home through their (mostly) large-scale, gelatin silver prints. In different ways, and for different reasons, each photographer alters the straightforward documentary process of photography. Painterly practices are injected into the work; for Kaufman, during the processing of her negatives, and for Weiss as she exposes her film. For me, as a painter, the show raises the question of photography's relation to painting.

In the 1930's, Walter Benjamin wrote passionately about photography's beginnings, clearing room for thinking about what qualities are unique to photography as an art form. In his essay, "A Little History of Photography," painting and photography shadow each other from photography's start. The first camera -- the camera obscura -- known since the Italian Renaissance, was initially a draftsman's tool showing that mechanized image making has long been a part of painting. As photographic printing technology came into being, early photographers such as David Octavius Hill, Julia Margaret Cameron, Victor Hugo, and Nadar used the medium in ways that distinguished it from painting, in Benjamin's view. Photography was able to capture startlingly realistic details, as well as close-ups and a specificity unavailable (if not liberating) to painting. During the late 1800's and early 1900's, Eugene Atget produced an unprecedented body of work by documenting thousands of uninhabited Paris street scenes. Similarly, August Sander, in the early 1920's and '30's, catalogued working class citizens of Germany. These encyclopedic applications of photography had no relation to painting of the time.

Benjamin saw the effects caused by the long exposures required by early portrait photographers as particular to photography. Soon enough, though, advances in technology, commercialization, and a form of "sibling rivalry," photographic portraiture was tainted, according to Benjamin, by painterly practices such as propping and styling subjects to resemble paintings and retouching negatives. Paving the way for a more modern arbitration of the two media Benjamin said, "And yet, what is again and again decisive for photography is the photographer's attitude. Camille Recht has found an apt metaphor: 'The violinist,' he says, 'must first produced the note, must seek it out, find it in an instant,' the pianist strikes the key and a note rings out. The painter and the photographer both have an instrument at their disposal. Drawing and color, for the painter, correspond to the violinist's production of sound; the photographer, like the pianist, has the advantage of a mechanical device that is subject to restrictive laws, while the violinist is under no such restraint."

Christopher Bedford, curator in the Department of Contemporary Art at Los Angeles County Museum of Art, in his recent essay, "Qualifying Photography as Art, or, Is Photography All It Can Be?" echo's Benjamin's observation and looks at all the components of making a photograph: technical and other "explicit indices of intention, intellectual reflection, and considered action, all of which -- in a sense -- mimic the minute decisions and adjustments that take place during the execution of a painting, for example; every detail therefore, may be understood as intentional and vigorously interpreted as such." A photographer based in Los Angeles, Andrew Bush, outlines a framework for current contemporary photographic inquiries, some of which appear in Kaufman and Weiss's work. He says there is an interest in "camera-less" abstractions which involves various exposure, chemical and printing processes. In contrast, there is also work done to produce documents that become a social force, a fulcrum for our understanding and awareness of subjects outside of a "listened-to" voice. Alternatively, photography is a way to document a performance where the idea of a photographer-as-witness changes to the photographer-as-subject. Finally, a completely manufactured world is created to become the photographer's subject. The elements of light -- which Bush points out symbolizes truth -- the camera, the subject, and the print can all be examined for evidence of the artist's intentions and become factors in interpreting the work of art.

Let me incorporate the thinking of Maurice Merleau-Ponty into this discussion of photography as he talks about painting in his essay, "Mind and Eye," from 1964. Moving away from an objective, science-driven vantage, Merleau-Ponty inserts the body as a metaphor for how we experience the world. He delves into painting (specifically how the quality of depth is developed) but opens up the possibility of relating painting to photography by equating light with flesh. He quotes the pagan prophet, Hermes Trismegistus, Art is "the inarticulate cry, which seemed to be the voice of light." Merleau-Ponty continues with, "And once it is present it awakens powers dormant in ordinary vision, a secret pre-existence. When through the water's thickness I see the tiled bottom of the pool, I do not see it despite the water and the reflections; I see it through them and because of them. If there were no distortions, no ripples of sunlight, if it were without that flesh that I saw the geometry of the tiles, then I would cease to see it as it is and where it is -- which is to say, beyond any identical, specific place."

Returning to "Passages in Black and White," both artists have traveled with their cameras to unfamiliar places and have stories to tell about their experiences. The distortions of the water in Merleau-Ponty's image -- a metaphor for the subjectivity and specificity of our sight -- plays to the painterly distortions employed by Kaufman and Weiss. When looking at the work in the show, the question becomes, what are the artists' intentions in incorporating the painterly effects and gestures in their work? Kaufman wants to express her feelings of being a stranger in a foreign country, in this case China. Each of her images show lacy evidence of the way she chemically treats her negatives. Her engagingly composed landscapes, urban scenes, and interiors are simultaneously exotic and familiar. But what about the "voice of light?" I can't help but think that the decision to alter the negatives has been uniformly applied to her work -- in fact she may have decided even before starting her trip that she would address her work in this way. Her negatives have been transformed, but, lovely as the images are, I'm not entirely convinced that the traveler has been.

Addressing the disorientation caused by travel, Weiss has found a way back to equilibrium by becoming in-tune with each location she visits. She inserts herself into both the image itself and the exposure process. She responds differently to each location: spinning as a spiral of light deep inside a cave, flowing in a feathered rivulet down a jungle ravine, or illuminating a gesture mirrored over dark waters. Often her body is not distinctly photographed or even visible as a human form at all, but her intention of showing us that each place requires a different way of being is evident. The resulting images are printed in sizes suited to their subject: small intensely contrasting compositions, along with large landscapes of subtile washes of gray. Her physical engagement with her location, responding with sculptured gestures, results in mesmerizing photographic images that feel authentic and exemplify Merleau-Ponty's "seeing flesh."

Ultimately, the rivalry of painting and photography, for me, is an empty debate -- it is not genuine. From its beginning photography has been an art form, but as with painting, not all photographers are artists. It is not the choice of the media, or even the decision to combine techniques from both media that is important. It is the intention of the artist and her ability to authentically express her vision.

Image courtesy of Susan Eley Gallery: by Heather Boose Weiss, "Cala d"Ego", gelatin silver print, 50 x 50 inches, 2008 (Majorca, Spain)

Walter Benjamin Snack

2009-01-30T17:49:00.000-08:00

Written in 1935, by Walter Benjamin, "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction," contains the following paragraph notable for its relevance to the current state of the Internet and for its coherence:

"For centuries a small number of writers were confronted by many thousands of readers. This changed toward the end of the last century. With the increasing extension of the press, which kept placing new political, religious, scientific, professional, and local organs before the readers, an increasing number of readers became writers --at first, occasional ones. It began with the daily press opening to its readers space for "letters to the editor." And today there is hardly a gainfully employed European who could not, in principle, find an opportunity to publish somewhere or other comments on his work, grievances, documentary reports, or that sort of thing. Thus, the distinction between author and public is about to lose its basic character. The difference becomes merely functional; it may vary from case to case. At any moment the reader is ready to turn into a writer. As expert, which he had to become willy-nilly in an extremely specialized work process, even if only in some minor respect, the reader gains access to authorship."

Omit Needless Paint

2009-01-19T10:57:00.000-08:00

I recently re-read Strunk & White's The Elements of Style, the classic guide to writing. E.B. White gives us an image, "Will [Strunk] felt that the reader was in serious trouble most of the time, a man floundering in a swamp, and that it was the duty of anyone attempting to write English to drain this swamp quickly and get his man up on dry ground, or at least throw him a rope." The book's rule number 13 for saving the reader is: "Omit needless words."

Josephine Halvorson's still life paintings save us from the swamp by omitting needless paint.

I was not familiar with Halvorson until I ran into her work at the Perception as Object exhibition opening, January 8, 2009, at Monya Rowe Gallery. I saw a row of five, modestly sized, immaculate trompe l'oeil paintings. Fortuitiously, Alyssa Pheobus, a draftswoman I know, was at the opening and is friends with Halvorson. We were introduced and talk about her work. Halvorson offered that I can see more paintings down the street at Sikkema Jenkins & Co., but the exhibition closes soon.

There is suspense and stagecraft in the presentation of the objects in Halvorson's still lifes -- a whiff of Hitchcock. I am intrigued by the way they are structured and by the paint itself. Each of the five works at Monya Rowe Gallery: the envelope, the boarded window, the puzzle, the math worksheet, even the farm machine have a finite space you could measure with a ruler. Within these shallow spaces, however, there are puns and jokes embedded into the paint strokes. A playfulness abounds. The colors are somber, humble, as if from an earlier, more simple time, but the compositions are sophisticated, witty and dry.

Halvorson paints each work in one sitting and in situ. Her method is exacting and it is not always easy or straightforward to locate her subject and finish the work. I hear from her about one of the paintings, "Farm Machine (Squeeze Chute.)" Sitting in front of the machine, in a barn on a farm she "thought she had permission" to visit, she is interrupted by the farmer. An inquisition ensues. It goes both ways; the artist secures permission to paint and learns what the machine does (it holds the cow in place during vaccination.)

Another painting at the Monya Rowe Gallery is "Envelope Back." The painting was made on the first day of January, 2009 -- we know because the date is written on the painting -- just days before we are standing in front of it. There is a story about the envelope, but I don't know what it is. I can only guess. It has been openend two ways, slit open at the bottom with an opener, and also at the top. But is has been taped shut. I surmise one scenario: what is inside has been sealed, opened, resealed, sent and opened by someone else. Or was it returned after opening, did it come "back?" What is inside the envelope? What does the year ahead hold for us?

Several days later, I take in nine of Halvorson's paintings at Sikkema Jenkins & Co. They are the same modest size. The list of titles reads like a poem" "Batterie Allemande," "Chateau Souvenir," "Dirty Window," "Hot Coals," " Crumbs," "Three Photo Albums," "Momento Mori," "Meter," "Fireplace Farm." Unexpectedly, Halvorson walks into the gallery, I've been speculating about if she works larger? There is a restraint in her work, and I wonder if it ever takes flight. Halvorson offers that the work is intentionally small (in "relation to the body") and in keeping with still life tradition -- it is portable work originally intended for a middle class audience.

Halvorson emphasizes that she often selects subjects that are "inconsequential." The drama and commitment to the act of painting has consequences that imbue the overlooked objects with a presence. I feel it is not so much that the subjects she paints lack consequence -- the farm machine certainly has consequences for the cow, the envelope for the sender and the receiver, the tombstone in "Memento Mori," for its owner -- it is that the consequences are "off stage." The audience is eavesdropping on the main characters, piecing the story together.

I don't think I needed to have met Halvorson to have connected with her work. But her emphasis on being with her subject and finishing it in one sitting is now tied to my experience of meeting her twice -- and of being with her and her work. It feels like a balanced equation, the prerequisites for transferring experience and meaning. The paintings don't have figures in them, they are strictly still lifes. But, they have the evidence of people's actions, their presence imbued by Halvorson's disciplined approach to their creation.

Image above:

"Envelope Back," 2009, 14" x 17," oil on linen at Monya Rowe Gallery courtesy of the artist

Related Material:

"Josephine Halvorson", by Litia Perta, The Brooklyn Rail

A Collectors' Market in Times of Global Economic Turbulence

2009-01-11T09:03:00.000-08:00

I came upon a story about a facet of our current economic environment as it relates to art: A report from Sotheby's about the secondary art market. I don't think it will significantly effect large numbers of people compared to, say, the recent report of staggeringly high unemployment numbers, but it seems like a telling detail for the art world. In a press release from November 7, 2008, Bill Ruprecht, Sotheby's President and CEO states, "...our business is not immune from the unprecedented global economic turbulence." This message is positioned for Sotheby's clients in a recent video report called "Contemporary Art Market: A Candid Look from the Inside."

By viewing the video we learn that auction sale prices are down and estimates for art auction sales in the future are also expected to be lower. Tobias Meyer, Worldwide Head, Contemporary Art and Anthony Grant, Senior Specialist, Contemporary Art Worldwide, are using the November, 2008 auction most specifically, and their collective experience with several significant market cycles, to quantify recent changes in the art market. There are exceptions, they were careful to point out, but overall, prices are back to where they were 3 - 4 year ago.

The video report is based on the period between last summer, as artworks and estimates were assembled, and this fall, when Sotheby's large Contemporary Art Sales in New York City took place on 11th and 12th, 2008. During this time period, the Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped over 3,500 points, or 30%. Meyer saw the November auction as a "very, very important event in the art market" due to the weakened economic environment. Grant, observed a shift from "telling a collector how much they had to pay" for an artwork to "[the collector] telling us where they would be."

Beginning in November and going forward Meyer put special emphasis on the "presence of the object" for sale. "A great work holds and exceeds its estimate." A tightening of standards is underway and collectors will be looking for works that are"rare, great and fresh." The specialists observed that the buyers in November were established collectors who watch prices over time and recognize the opportunities presented. Meyer believes that "there is a market, it is stable and has a long tradition" and for now "it is a collector's market."

My takeaway from the report is that the financial market's volatility means art market assumptions will have to be checked more often, and possibly even thrown out and replaced with brand new ones. A broad-brush approach won't work as easily in the future: both in assessing the artworks to sell and the intentions of their potential buyers. Even though prices for blue chip artworks are down, the market's capacity for buying must be down, as well. I think, as with other markets, such as the stock and real estate markets, the level of uncertainty is high for the foreseeable future.

So, stepping outside the large, corporate art sales environment of Sotheby's for a moment (but staying safely within the art world): will there be any increased opportunities for art sales in the primary market? Will collectors who might not find the high level of quality or "freshness" that Meyer and Grant are suggesting they look for in the secondary market, look beyond Sotheyby's and buy quality art as it comes into the primary market though galleries and artists? I noticed a recent comment from art critic Jerry Saltz that parallels the positives in the message delivered by Sotheby's experts, but from a more grass-roots point of view. Saltz observes, "Now is a great time to be in the art world; chaos breeds art and life; artists don't have to open "big" anymore; small numbers are powerful again." The chaos of the financial markets has disrupted the status quo of the workings of established art markets and that creates opportunities.

Related Material:

Jerry Saltz's archive of reviews from New York Magazine

Sotheby's Auction Results for November 12th, 2008

Smells Like American Post-War Spirit at the Robert Miller Gallery

2009-01-04T05:23:00.000-08:00

NOTE: The show is extended through today, Sunday, January 4th.

Walking through "Beyond the Canon: Small Scale American Abstraction, 1945-1965" feels odd -- oddly comforting. The feeling resonates with our hopeful horizon for the new year, more specifically the short, 16 days we have left until Barack Obama's inauguration. I know it's not the same. We know more now; we know our indulgences, excesses, corruption and shortsightedness. But, I think it was comforting to see so much work, by so many different artists working in a time when feeling hopeful and idealistic about American was more easily possible.

Overlooking Young's link of the show's time period to our current "time of national self-examination," Roberta Smith focused her review in The New York Times initially on questioning the accuracy of the show's title. It seems ironic now (and probably did then, too) that the wild, inventive, explosion of painting that took place in Post-War America -- driven by ideas about breaking from European tradition, Existentialism, and Freudian thought -- attracted the controlling grip of two critics, Harold Rosenberg (1906-78) and Clement Greenberg (1909-94.) They apparently needed to own, limit, and otherwise dominate a phenomenon that took its own shape and size despite their efforts.

It also seems troubling that even now at the distance of nearly 70 years (if you start in 1940) their "standards" are still such a strong point of contention in talking about this fertile period. For example, the curator, Amy L. Young, states her motive for assembling the work in "Beyond the Canon" is to break the hold of Rosenberg and Greenberg and "recover our diverse heritage." Is it that the critics were so emphatic that even Smith is compelled to address the era's metrics? I'll add that the exhibition, and related documentation, at The Jewish Museum in May 2008, "Action/Abstraction: Pollack, de Kooning, and American Art, 1940-1976" is a good point of reference in these matters.

But, back to the show itself. I agree with Smith "Its relatively unfiltered view of art history is a wonderful thing to sort through." Perhaps that is more to the point. Labels aside, seeing these works in person, beautifully installed, allows us to make our own connections. While the works are mostly small, there is a variety of painted surfaces: canvas both course and fine, masonite, board, cardboard, and paper that come into focus while cataloging the range of media: oil, acrylic, watercolor, pencil, charcoal, collage and the variety of applications: brushed, dabbed, smeared, whipped, scraped, splashed, and dripped.

My list of favorites closely corresponds with Smith's. I'll add a work on paper by Sam Francis, a larger oil by Philip Guston, a blue/green work by Ad Reinhardt (one of the only hard-edged abstract works) and a small work by Melville Price. I found that despite Young's intent to fill out the picture with unknown artists, many of the most striking pieces were by artists we know well. I realize its it not so much that the paintings bring forth a nostalgia for our country's earlier days of optimism, its that the works themselves, apart from where they may fit into any given categories, embody a spirit of confident, risk-taking. I can almost hear a giddy, collective, "why the hell not?" walking through the gallery.

Image above by Philip Guston, "Slope II," 1961, oil on paper mounted on canvas, 40" x 30", courtesy of the Robert Miller Gallery.

Related Resources:

New Yorker review of "Action/Abstraction," The Jewish Museum

New York Times review of "Action/Abstraction" The Jewish Museum

History of Abstract Expressionism

YouTube video of "Beyond the Canon" (starting at 6 minutes, 14 seconds)

Anaba Blog

updownacross Blog

100% Real Painting (Versailles)

2008-11-04T19:24:00.000-08:00

Neptune's Basin, 2008, 18" x 24", oil on linen

Anne Sherwood Pundyk

ARTWALK NY 2008: Party Report

2008-11-04T17:29:00.000-08:00

On the eve of an historic national election (with a crumbling economy as the backdrop) a healthy slice of the artworld gathered to raise money for the Coalition for the Homeless. Attending the event was a way to pay tribute to Robert Rauschenberg, to celebrate the generosity of artists and galleries who have contributed artworks to be auctioned, and to enjoy the theatre of the evening. It is a well-known draw that artwork may be bought at below market prices at benefit art auctions and this year's ARTWALK NY was no exception. A list of the donating artists may be found on the Coalition's website.

Richard Gere and his wife, Carey Lowell, graciously hosted the evening's tribute and live auction. Honored guest Alec Baldwin joined by Gere, applied his talent and wit to encourage the audience to buy art from the silent auction and bid higher during the live auction. Baldwin compared bidding in this auction to going to see a movie at a multiplex theater. There are plenty of movies to choose from; you may go initially to see one movie, but if its sold out you go to see another. If the artwork you want sells, find another to buy. He wryly suggested that Richard Gere's recent movie, "Nights in Rodanthe", would be the second choice movie. (Let the games begin!)

On a more sincere note, another honored guest, artist Chuck Close, spoke of Rauschenberg from his own student days. Close's tribute was based on personal friendship and professional admiration. Other members of Rauschenberg's personal circle added to the evening's tribute to this seminal artist. Coalition Executive Director Mary Brosnahan underscored the current economic reality as a reason to give even more to the Coalition for the Homeless and its proven programs. The need for the Coalition's services is only going to increase the the coming year.

Advance ticket sales were reported as matching last year's high levels, and tickets were bought at the door as well. The venue, The Metropolitan Pavilion at 125 West 18th Street, filled quickly. Attendees were equal portions of artists and art aficionados, professionals, paparazzi, beautiful people, and young beautiful people. The Coalitions new Junior Committee Co-Chair, Bettina Prentice, herself picture perfect, was very successful at bringing in young collectors to the event.

The Metropolitan Pavilion is a great place for this art party. The event is run by Scenic, headed by Craig Hensala and Simon Watson with support from the Coalition's Kim McCall (in high heels after running the New York City Marathon the day before!), Rachel Edelman, and many other Coalition members. The Pavilion was split into two large, airy spaces: one for the silent auction art exhibition, complete with open bars, hearty fare, passed hors d'oeuvres, and a DJ; the other a stage and reserved seating for the live auction. The installation of the silent auction artwork was intelligent and expert. Given that the works are up just for the evening, the placement of the works, including the lighting was lovely.

During the introductory speeches and tributes before the live auction, however, as well as during the live auction itself, the acoustics were compromised. It seems in past years, the party in the silent auction section of the hall shut down to watch the live auction show. The ongoing noise from the party seemed to make the live auction less special and harder for Baldwin, Gere and the auctioneer, a charming Christopher Gaillard, to urge on the bidding. Bidders responded notably to pieces by Chuck Close,Wade Guyton, Jenny Holzer, Dennis Oppenheim, Jack Pierson, Robert Rauschenberg and Ed Ruscha. Curiously, while not identical, two artworks, one by Jeff Koons and the other by Pat Steir, were very similar to last year's donated works.

Bidding at the silent auction was brisk, several pieces inspired many bidders including a Louise Bourgeois print and a print made collaboratively by Anne Collier & Matthew Higgs titled, "I Married an Artist". (My husband, Jeff Pundyk, and Alec Baldwin sparred several rounds on the bidding sheet for this piece until Baldwin tripled his bid.) I'll take this opportunity to say I'm grateful to report that the piece I donated sold.

This was the 14th annual ARTWALK NY, now a proven event that supports the tireless efforts of Mary Brosnahan and the Coalition for the Homeless. I have skimped here a bit on details of the candid remarks and unplanned antics: I encourage you to attend next your to see for yourself. It is an entertaining party and a great opportunity for art collectors. In the meantime, get involved with the Coalition, make a contribution of your money or time or both.

100% Real Painting (Versailles)

2008-11-02T13:22:00.000-08:00

Grand Trianon, 2008, 45" x 55", oil on linen

Anne Sherwood Pundyk

ARTWALK NY Studio Tours, Saturday November 1, 2008

2008-10-31T10:07:00.000-07:00

In addition to the ARTWALK NY auction and benefit, which takes place Monday, November 3, 2008 (further details are in my previous post) ARTWALK NY offers an insider's look at New York's art community, in a series of studio tours featuring some of the city's most prominent artists. Here are the details:

ARTWALK NY ARTIST STUDIO TOURS

Free to the Public/Saturday November 1, 2008

RSVPs are required. To reserve a spot, please contact (212) 776-2056 or

ArtwalkNY@cfthomeless.org

Tour 1: Chelsea: Begins at 2:00 pm at 526 West 26th Street, NY

Tour leader Robert Ayers has written extensively on painting, sculpture and the interdisciplinary arts for Art & Auction, Art Monthly, ArtInfo, ArtNEWS and countless other publications. Ayers has enjoyed a remarkable career, gaining a reputation not only as a writer, but as a teacher, curator, producer and as a tireless advocate for the contemporary arts.

Locations:

Louise Fishman Studio

Louise Fishman is recognized as one of the greatest American abstract painters of her generation. Her work is held in the permanent collections of the world's foremost institutions including the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Carnegie Museum of Art, The Art Institute of Chicago, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

William Steiger Studio

William Steiger paints icons of the American landscape such as grain elevators, tramways, railroad cars, roller coasters and ferris wheels. The combination of muted atmosphere, graphic style and an undefined and limitless space implies endless narrative without supplying story line. His work is included in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum, the Whitney Museum of American Art and the Museum of Modern Art.

Tour 2: Brooklyn: Begins at 2:00 pm at 20 Grand Avenue, Brooklyn, NY

Tour leader Naomi Beckwith is Assistant Curator at The Studio Museum in Harlem. Prior to joining the Studio Museum, Beckwith was a project coordinator for BAMart at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, a Helena Rubenstein Critical Studies Fellow at the Whitney Museum Independent Study Program and, most recently, the Whitney Lauder Curatorial Fellow at the Institute of Contemporary ARt, University of Pennsylvania.

Locations

Mickalene Thomas Studio

New York-based artist Mickalene Thomas is known for her elaborate paintings adorned with rhinestones, enamel and colorful acrylics. Her depictions of African American women explore notions of black female celebrity and identity while romanticizing ideas of femininity and power. Thomas' work is included in the permanent collections of the Brooklyn Museum, the Studio Museum in Harlem and the Art Institute of Chicago.

Shinique Smith Studio

With unexpected juxtapositions of everyday items, Shineque Smith's work evokes the spiritual qualities that exist in sometimes overlooked, mundane corners of life. Smith questions the relationships that contemporary societies have with the inanimate and the intimate. Smith's work is included in the collections of the Denver Art Museum, the Studio Museum in Harlem, the Margulies Collection and the Rubell Family collection.

Nicole Cherubini Studio

Nicole Cherubini is a sculptor known for her exploratory merging of raw building materials, structural forms and surface ornamentation. Cherubini is a Louis Comfort Tiffany Award recipient and currently has two concurrent exhibitions, one at D'Amelia Terras and the other at Smith-Stewart.

Michael Brown Studio

Michael Brown makes mixed media sculptures and drawings, often using found objects in his work to discuss ideas of loss and change. Brown has exhibited at Yvon Lambert New York, David Zwirner Gallery, the Hudson Valley Center for Contemporary Art and The Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art

ARTWALK NY 2008

2008-10-21T18:00:00.000-07:00

Voiceover: Picnic, 2007, 11.5" x 11", watercolor on paper,

Anne Sherwood Pundyk

(This work is available at the ARTWALK NY 2008 silent auction)

ARTWALK NY 2008

Benefit Art Auction which raises vital funds to help the Coalition for the Homeless provide a safety net for the thousands of New Yorkers who arrive at their doorstep every month. Tonight, 34,000 homeless New Yorkers will sleep in emergency shelters. 14,000 of them are children.

November 3, 2008

A Tribute to Robert Rauschenberg

6:30 pm Silent Auction and Cocktail Party

8:00 pm Live Auction

Metropolitan Pavilion

125 West 18th Street

New York City

For ticket information

please contact: (212) 776-2056

www.coalitionforthehomeless.org

100% Real Painting (Versailles)

2008-10-21T14:01:00.000-07:00

Spring Florals, 2007, 8" x 10", oil on linen

Roses, 2008, 6" x 8", watercolor on paper

Palatine, 2008, 49" x 50", oil on linen

Le Pont Neuf, 2008, 9.5" x 9", watercolor on paper

Tout a L'heure, 2008, 9" x 9", watercolor on paper

Rue de Rivoli, 2008, 24" x 24", oil on linen

"Girls" note cards available at Pumpkinseeds Boutique

2008-08-18T09:39:00.001-07:00

My "Girls" note cards are available at Pumpkinseeds Boutique located at 1 North Main Street, Lexington, VA 24450 (540) 464-5002. On display with the cards is one of the "Girl Paintings", "Lezane".