Thalia Bond is a student at Unitec studying a bachelor of design and visual arts majoring in painting. She is about to complete her first year of this course and in doing so has compiled a series of works for assessment. These paintings are a combination of everything that influences her practice such as film, artists, stories and tales, art genres and her sisters. She speaks very highly of Ruby Jean (3) and Alice Rose (2). She considers them to be the biggest influence of her practice.
Thalia’s childhood was complex with family and parental problems but she worked through all of those challenges and this made her a stronger better person. She spends much of her time with her sisters and tries to give them the kind of childhood she had always wanted. Although her childhood was not perfect she considers it the best thing that happened to her because it has made her who she is today.
Thalia is highly influenced by the feminist movement of the 60s and 70s. While at high school, she took art history as a subject and fell in love with feminism; this has had a major impact on her work and her practice. Her paintings contain silhouettes of her sisters which she has taken with her camera, shapes, landscapes, narratives, textured backgrounds, lattices and colour. She uses all of these elements in a graphic way, with line against tone and mass, thick and thin paint against each other, as well as pattern and flat areas.
Films which have influenced her practice are Tideland (2005, Terry Gilliam), Pans Labyrinth (2006, Guillermo Del Toro), Hard Candy (2005, David Slade), The Girl Next Door (2007, Gregory Wilson), Coraline (2009, Henry Selick), and The Labyrinth (1986, Jim Henson). She considers films to be a main part of her practice because she likes to create her own quirky narratives with a sense of mystery and odd combinations. She loves the way stories and fables conjure up all sorts of images which she plays on in her paintings.
Practitioners that influence her practice include Sally Mann (Photographer), Henry Darger (Outsider Artist), Nicky Hoberman, and Piet Mondrian. Sally Mann photographs her daughters in a strange, violent, provocative manner and has had a lot of controversy over her photographs, Thalia enjoys the connotations associated with her work and aims to make her work odd and strange. Thalia also uses photography as a significant part of her process, she takes photographs of her two little sisters during play and then uses them to make silhouette characters in her paintings.
Henry Darger is an outsider artists whose claim to fame only came after his death in 1973, his artworks are about a group of girls called the Virginia girls they are protecting children from child slavery, his paintings are very naive because he is self taught and was not aware of girl’s anatomy. For example he assumed that girls had the same genitalia as he did, so you often see girls with male parts instead of female. Thalia considers him relevant to her practice because she enjoys his naive style, his sense of imagination that anything can happen. His playfulness of colour and his uses of repetition is intriguing and she has adopted some of these techniques into her own work.
Nicky Hoberman is an artist who paints little girls in a very peculiar way; she leaves body parts out, paints them in very off setting colours and generally makes them very odd. The sense that something is just not right in these paintings is what Thalia is trying to portray in her own paintings, she has a keen interest in the way Nicky Hoberman creates her paintings and uses things like colour, composition and attention to detail.
Piet Mondrian uses grid formation a lot in his works, Thalia has adopted this into a lattice form with blocks of colour and then transforms this into a faceting technique for her mountains. Mondrian’s grid forms is what inspired Thalia as they looked to her like fabric, for a blanket or a quilt. She uses this technique to make her paintings look hard edged and graphic as well as being soft and colourful.
Thalia uses a variety of sources to inspire and influence her work, which means she’s constantly drawing new scene and combinations of images as, she uses her drawings as a way to escape and experiment. She then uses her drawings to create some more composed final paintings. Thalia’s colour palette is often changing; she uses muddy and light colours with some dark colours used for outlining. Thalia uses student or artist grade acrylic paints in her works and often rolls on her backgrounds. She uses the roller and paint brushes to make patterns in some of her works, she also uses household imagery such as light switches and plugs next to the silhouettes of children to make it look strange and odd.
Her constant motivation is inspiring to any up and coming artist in the contemporary New Zealand art scene. Anyone interested in a figurative abstract artist that’s bringing something new and original to the art world should be looking her up. You can find Thalia’s blog on www.vox.com. Her work if often considered surreal, pop – like and hard edged. Thalia has an group show coming up on February 10th next year, so keep your eyes peeled, for this is sure to be a mind blowing experience.
Bibliography:
Divisions of the Plane by Computer: Another Way of Looking at Mondrian's Nonfigurative Compositions by Loe Fejis
What Remains (2006) by Chelsea Wayant
The Last Time Emmett Modeled Nude by Sally Mann
Drawn From the Home of Henry Darger
TILLY + THE WALL ON HENRY DARGER by KIANNA ALARID
Luc Tuymans:
Political.
Influence on figurative painting.
Worked in film.
Thinking of new ways to look at an image.
Questioned representation.
Extracts references that are form graphic design, by removing key sources he allows the image to exist by itself.
Muted colour palette.
Wet paint, small.
If he can make a painting work by the end of the day he scraps it, also cuts out bits he likes of his larger painting.
Looking through a microscope is a device he uses to distance himself. Looks at skin diseases and forces his eye to elevate the bin ale.
Cropping device (cinema graphic).
Marlene Dumas:
Work exists on different sizes and modes.
Interested in figures and notions of figures not just in a pictorial way but about humanity, aspects of humanism.
She uses subtle things to change the colouration, eg on a child, makes the innocent look sinister.
Paula Rego:
Uses pastels in her later works, often not considered a high art material more a child’s material.
Highly constructed, clothes her models and sets them up in scenes. Very artificial.
Nicky Hoberman:
Exclusively paints children.
Artificial, contorted poses, colouration of them is complex and nauseating, puts children in adult poses.
(Wouldn’t be in the same class as the above painters)
Glen Brown:
Generation of WBA’s
Science fiction style.
Representational imagery, not considered high art.
Copies the sci fi paintings and blows them up to big scale to make an argument about high art.
New works:
Frank Albrecht – copies.
Photo realist painting of an abstract oil painting.
Distorts the image.
The paintings become sick, offensive.
The image doesn’t live in the way the original does, it s kind of diseased.
Cecily brown:
Abstraction with figures, dekooning, contorted mass of imagery, all over composition, uses the language of abstraction to be representative.
Highly sexualised theme.
Fragmented.
Classical French painting use of composition and adding her language to it.
Eber Havekost:
In terms of representation, clearly follow along with photography.
Camera can capture the strange perspectives.
Engages into that photographic argument.
Nothing fascinating in the images, devalues the image as a way of promoting the language.
Dexter Dalwood:
Title: Brian Jone’s swimming pool.
Scene, wouldn’t be important without media hype and knowledge.
Constructs ideas ,makes images about influential people.
Trading in on Americas past, Nixon forced to resign.
McCarthy witch hunt: rooting out communists. Time of political oppression.
Imagining what McCarthy’s batch would be like.
Tal R:
Colour.
Clumsy works.
Elegant abstraction.
Layered.
Margret Barron:
Photograph of the lamp post which is of her paintings, around the gallery.
You have to find her works they don’t hang in the gallery space.
Small oil paintings.
Sight specific.
Painted on adhesive tape.
Dana Schutz:
The Face Eater(Title)
Frank is a character she has invented, an imaginary man in an imaginary world with just her and him and creates a narrative in her paintings.
Constructs imaginary stories.
Major distortions and abstractions.
Sometimes things aren’t always nice in her world.
Scenes.
Christian Ward:
Drags the brushes.
Underground robbers.
Imaginary world.
Exaggerated forms.
(Connection: Sustains of the image, devalues the image to value language, imaginary ideal worlds, distortion and abstraction with figurative elements, political identity). (Ghada Amer)
Paul Noble:
Graphite.
Architecture.
Dysfunctional dystopias.
Bleak city of the future.
Howard Arkley:
Uses spray paint and stencils.
Middle class Australia.
Decorative patterns.
Psychedelic effects.
2d and 3d optical illusions.
Lisa Milroy:
Repetition, sequences.
Spending a lot of time in Japan, comments on the Japanese lifestyle.
Overlaying, images repeated.
Colour or lack of in some cases.
Kerry James Marshall:
Political images.
African American.
Authenticates African history as different from the American point of view.
Barry Mcgee:
Unemployed, drunks.
Reclaim the inner city streets.
Graffiti.
Putting their faces back onto the walls.
Large scale installations in galleries.
Put old men or containers into the gallery, bring all that gear from homeless life into the white walled gallery.
Framed drawings then installed, spray cans stacked up against the wall, his practice became part of his shows.
Margaret Kilgallen:
Graphics, kitsch, country and western style.
Jockum Nordstrom:
Collage, media imagery.
Coloured paper collage.
Decorative.
Marcus Harvey:
Low grade, soft core porn, painted in a thick sloppy wet, abstract way.
Mark Wallinger:
Fascinated by royalty.
Race horses, cross breeding.
Peter Doig:
Forest scene, building and strange surfaces.
Looked like bad reception on a Tv set.
Painted images of Canada when in England and vice versa.
Not interested in the landscape but his understanding of the image, reconstruction of the landscape in his mind.
Used tourist brochures to give himself inspiration.
Surfaces: different surface, white.
Captures a memory.
How? Pieces the memory together (collage)
Puts collage through a process such as photocopying and then abuses the drawing, rips it, spills coffee etc and then re does them until satisfied, destroys the initial image of the reason why he chose the image so he takes the cliché image away. Then copies it directly.
Used iconic images like Alcatraz and the Alman brothers.
Prints and paintings from Daumier painting.
Chris Ofili:
Elaborate and decorative scheme, glitter etc.
Paintings are often held up etc by elephant shit or stuck on.
Cut out collaged faces of magazines showing African people.
Elephant shit: contrast sacred with profane or opposites. Comes from his exploration of his identity, grew up in Brixton, London, he came from Nigeria. Culture of being the black man living in London.
Went to Africa to explore himself, went on a safari. Saw an Elephant, crapping himself. Became a powerful talisman, sanitises it and infuses it into his paintings.
Uses racial prejudices to motivate his work. Stereo type of Black men being pimps and black woman being prostitutes, sacred image of virgin Mary, makes it black.
Crude image but beautifully constructed.
Julian Schnabel - Self promoter.
- Neo expressionist - American equivalent.
- How could you be genuine in the 1980s? was the main question posing artists of this time.
Eric Fischl 'Bad Boy'
- Brings back straight forward, representational painting.
- 1980's - identity art preoccupied most artists. - Identity politics.
- Being a white, middle class, male during this time was the only group with nothing really to complain about, so they weren’t able to explore their identity.
- Strange mid western American, middle class life.
- Strange images - odd, could be innocent but he allows reader to draw on much darker thoughts on the subject matter.
- Paints about the period of adolescence + exploration which is deeply traumatising territory.
- Sets up, draws on transparent paper so he can move the images around into the perfect composition.
- Monoprints in the early nineties allow him to play with colour and this poster like imagery.
- Spent a lot of time at resort beaches watching peoples holidaying habits, and behaviours.
Philip Guston
- The most influential factor in painting at this time.
- 1940s -50s
- 1st generation abstract expressionist painter, given a lot of credit and admiration during this time.
- Guston - precise, each brushstroke is delicate and thought about, not actually expressive (technically).
- Mainly three colours, dirty pink (red), green, blue.
- 1957
- Abstract colour fields are inhabited by blocks of colour etc.
- Prior to Guston going to NY, he was in California.
- Made wall murals - early days.
- 1st exhibition of his more figurative paintings of KKK members ended badly when the KKK showed up and shot his paintings.
- 1970s - symbols appeared in his paintings, faceless characters, not explicit.
- Art world went insane (ape shit) - publicly came out saying he’s lost the plot, gone crazy.
- Highly loaded images.
- Wonky cartoony style.
- Fischl, Schnabel + Salle - Guston became an idol to them because after doing amazingly well in his field he threw it all away, to do what he wanted.
(Robert Crumb - underground comic artist claimed Guston stole his style, Crumb was a hater of women and Jewish people.)
Icons - boot, light bulb, clock, cigar, wine bottle - symbols of himself, his own narrative.
- Although his paintings may seem casual they are incredibly precise, that of an amazing craftsmen.
George Condo
- Picasso meets Walt Disney.
- Characters, distorted figures, messed up to create these quirky characters.
Neo Rauch
-European figurative
(Communist, eastern Germany)
-Iconography + figurative
-Can’t lock into a time or place.
-Mix and match of scales + figures.
-Middle of doing something
-Strange colours
-Screen printed style
(Propaganda Posters)
-Artificial structures
-Big
-Sublime painting skills
-Pulling stunts
- Status in Europe.
90s in America
-Guston bursts doors open.
-No longer orthodoxies for painting
(Pluralism)
-No dogma
Where do painters turn to now?
-Using sources that don’t belong.
Karen Kiliminik
-Sourced – girls zone annual
-Animals appear
-Manor house
-Adolescent fantasies
-Wet onto wet paint became her trademark style
-Verged on cliché.
Elizabeth Peyton
-Watercolour, small
-Used sources outside of the arts to inspire her works
-Feminises her portraits of males and generalises there features
-Celebrity and musician stalker buys into the whole facade of paparazzi.
John Currin
-Sexual poses
-Pin – up
-Heads distorted
-Sexual themes (playboy)
(image making – lesser status)
-Cliché young beauty with older man
-Images and conventions of beauty
-Notions of sexuality
-Classical painting
-Masters techniques
-Bringing Pre 20th century into the modern day
-Deformity
-Early 2000 – 3 friends
-How our views on beauty and femininity change
-Explores the ugly as well as the notions of beautiful.
Jonathan Lasker:
How is abstraction alive and well, exciting, new and different today?
-Painting should be flat and unified, Greenburg. In order to survive it had to distinguish itself from every other art form. Flat and painterly.
-90s artist.
-“The painting repeated the composition of the study, but not precisely, as it is a freehand rendition of the study only. The gap between the image which one is recreating and the image which one arrives at is an interesting study in perception and intuition. Surprisingly one is very much “in the moment” of creation when attempting to replicate an image, an attempt which is almost designed to fail in order to arrive at a picture, which in spite of its precedents, is unique.”
-Authentic mark, why can’t you copy or paint mechanically?
-Scale shift, different size brushes, playing with scale, line etc.
-Some of his linear squiggles have the look of writing and some are cross hatched together in a cage like mark. Combining imitation gestural squiggles with geometric forms. Bigger, brighter and striking. There’s no such thing as purity of form, the idea of no figure and flatness is broken down. Opening up of abstraction into figuration.
-Repetition.
-Youtube: Exhibition at Cheim and Read.
Thick abstract squiggles, bold colour, thick and thin lines, mass areas made up of tiny squiggles, decorative use of colour, each area of the canvas has a different surface. Paints thin paint, forms over top of the thickly painted areas. Rehearsed brushstrokes. Textured elements against flat elements. Handmade aspect to a lot of his paintings can be seen from up close.
Howard hodgkins:
-British painter.
-Decorative.
-Generous, loose.
-Naturalistic representation of the world.
-Broad brushstrokes and dots.
-Child – like quality, messiness, taken the skill factor out of the work.
-Spontaneous, vague forms made up of bright colours and bold areas.
-Receding and approaching forms due to his uses of colour.
Youtube: Celebrated for his use of colour, small scale, painter of feelings rather than ideas, memories. The feelings turned into something visual, lush colour.
Pia Fries:
-Thick paint, colour, weight and composition is linked to De Kooning.
-Luxurious thick paint.
-Sculptural in a sense.
-Layered blocks of colour.
-Distinctive texture.
-Differentiation of figure and ground.
-Knowing and considered way of composing works.
-Different techniques.
-Serigraphy – a stencil technique she adopts.
-It seems to have no harmony or structure, no compositional strategy.
Youtube: Screen printing works, taking her paintings and finding new ways to relay that into printing. Using different tools and fluidities. Uses different elements, space, and gesture. Ongoing process to find her own visual language.
Christopher Wool:
-Gestural work
-Screen printing, text, spray paint.
-Black and white.
-Conventions of surfaces and applications of paint not considered traditional painting.
-Stretched linen canvas, the concept makes the art.
-HUGE.
-Text works, although they are words and sentences there not particularly interesting to read they’re more about just looking at the painting not the letters, text becomes a way to make a non figurative mark.
-Stencils, white lines in the letters become dynamic as a kind of abstract mark.
-Mass and line overlap.
-Interesting imperfections.
-Simply a print of a repeating form, with human qualities due to it execution.
-Tiny mark with big blurry marks.
-Whiting out.
Youtube: Smudge marks next to thick and thin black marks. Thin, thick, precise and dripping marks. Smeared paint, layers.
Ross Bleckner:
-Stained canvas, oil on canvas.
-Same time as Philip Taffe.
-Decorative.
-Figurative aspect.
-Repeats and reuses forms.
-Variety of decorative sources.
-All over composition, unified surface.
-Ornate and geometric together.
Joanne Greenbaum:
-Based in New York.
-Geometric forms, shapes.
-Combination of idiums.
-Mathematical form is invested in human qualities.
-Low brow look.
-Oil on canvas.
-Diagrams, source.
-Some organic shaped forms.
-Plays with the principles of drawing.
-Paradox result of the combination of painting and drawing.
-Industrial design.
-Outcome of trying, balancing and unbalancing.
-Thin lines to the extreme, forbids artist to make corrections.
-Off key colours, environment, make up etc.
Thomas Scheibitz:
-Robert Diebenkorn
-Colours and edges, not perfectly up the edge,
-Colours underneath come through.
Franz Ackermann:
-Colour.
-Digital age abstraction.
-Installations (enormous).
-Figuration.
-Flat.
Youtube: 3d works, turned so the light reflects onto the walls surrounding. Collage, thick and thin paint, lines, solid colour, bold colour. Paintings painted straight onto the walls.
Michel Majerus:
-Text.
-Colour.
-Figures.
Fiona Rae:
-Layered.
-Colour.
-Linear elements.
-Overlapping imagery.
Youtube: Layers, works on her own, 8ft long palette for her oil paints, brush collection, laid out. Source imagery: cartoony, child like, playful.
What is Julian Schnabel's best and worst painting? Explain.
I consider this painting to be one of the best Schnabel paintings.
Firstly because the portraiture subject matter is something im really interested in and respond to.The sad lonesum character in the landscape.
Secondly because of his use of line and mass. The entire painting is made up on mass images with line painted over the top, which gives a painterly graphic reading, the torso placed over top of everything in a blod colour really attracts my attention because it out of place but it stands out when overlapping the blue sky and blends in when over the red earth.
Lastly because of his use of textured background, especially only on half the page, it gives is a really nice look, clean vs dirty. The way he paints over some of the smashed plates and blends them in, but at the same time leaves some of them just plain white in the background, it brings them into the foreground because theyre bright but because they only go half way up the painting it flattens the painting out aswell.
I consider this possible the worse Schnabel paintings.
The bold dirty red colour is scribbled on and scratched back. The painting itself is straghtforward and simple, too simple, once you have seen the painting, theres nothing more to it. The image in the painting doesnt add anything to it and the way its cut through and then the paint is carried threw the cut links the two together. When i first saw this painting i thought that maybe it was a quick sketch of an idea, not throughtprovoking, just what it is.
Where do you stand on procreation of images? Appropriation? Find two examples.
An example of appropriation is the artist Arturo Herrera; he uses scenes and characters from well known children’s books like snow white and then paints or collages over top of them. His use of appropriation is suitable to his work as he uses some collages as basis for his paintings, and vice versa. I don’t mind the concept of appropriation as long as your abiding by copyright laws, although there are exceptions, I don’t think I’d like anyone taking my paintings and changing them slightly and reselling, so I guess it’s really a controversial issue. Another instance of appropriation is in Jeff Koon’s sculpture “String of puppies” which was a copy of a photograph taken by Art Rogers for generic postcards etc. Rogers actually took Jeff Koon’s to court over the breach of copyright. The court sided with Rogers, finding the sculpture to be a direct copy of Rogers work.
ROTHKO AND NEWMAN à Abstract Expressionism
Johnsà Post painterly abstract
E KELLY
Colourfield:
Noland
Louis
Olitski
Minimalism:
Stella
Agnes Martin
Robert Ryman
D. Judd
C. Andre
Serra
Smithson
Morris
Post Minimalism:
P. Halley
G. Hume
Mona Hatoum
Rachel Whiteread
Robert Rauschenberg à POP!
Get life back into art: R.R
Consumer Culture:
Warhol: commercial graphic art background, consumer culture needed to be elevated to art. Screen prints: technology for advertisements he used to make art. Not only aesthetics and technologies were connected to the art but the culture they were living in everything around. Bright colours and repetition are devices he uses to contribute to his works. Uses everyday conventions as artworks. Became the artwork, became the celebrity rock star notion of being famous. Development of the velvet underground. Deregistered colours, what gave the work its artiness. 1960-Fridge.
Roy Liechtenstein : turns abstract expressionism into a brand, takes the piss, turns it into an advertising. Technology used: screen dots easy way to print. But originally he painted them handmade, which makes for an interesting surface.
Wayne Thiebaud: Commercial cakes, fabulous painter with great skill, geometric.
Raymoss: consumerism, cars, women, comic characters, cheap nasty images, overused.
Richard Hamilton, 1963: starter of pop art.
Peter Blake: English Pop art, speech bubbles, colour.
Ed Ruscha: Text, colour, text and image works, graphic design, drawings. Photographing gas stations and made books out of images.
New Zealand’s Pop artist: Dick Frizzell
1976, work from art school, cubist still life with hulk comics. In one sense he’s taking the piss and was made to learn cubism in Cambridge. Geisha: NZ icon. The metaphysical cheese. Advice from Us pop artists: go back home and look around you. 1981: New Zealand landscape. Inventing NZ icons. Black stump: tongue and cheek reference to a man called Weeks, had an influence on early paintings, said look go out and paint your landscape as it is. From the eighties onwards he was fascinated by the history of NZ, and landscape painting. Northern European folk art, art made by peasant over centuries, broad, descriptive style, every brush mark, was a fascination. He is a fabulous painter. Rural lifestyle, traumatic experience. Tiki series: cubist tiki, ominous tiki etc. In the early nineties, cultural procreation became an issue, caused a cultural debate with the Maori, intervenes into the debate. Caused a lot of publicity and anger. Political stunt.
Shane Cottons, reappropriation of Dick Frizzell’s image, he was putting a moko on it commenting on pop culture debate.
Denys Watkins
Grant Chilcott
Paul Hartigan
George Baloghy utilised pop art strategies, all agreed with using an urban landscape.
Essentialism with tactic – reductivism.
High modernism.
Sol Lewitt, represents another variant of this artistic impulse in the field of mathematics, the logic and irrationality. His artistic practice was an opening to his mathematic obsession, cubes, early 60’s work that made him famous, towards 80’s they became wall works, public institutions would ask him to paint for them, he devised mathematical calculations and other people would paint and construct the work for him. Also known for designing tableware, merchandises himself in a way.
Ellsworth Kelly wasn’t aware of abstract expressionists like Barnett Newman etc, because he was in the army, the abstraction was something rounded in reality, actually has a reference in the world. Abstraction and minimalism. Pixilation – insane. Returns to America interested in squares, makes from photographs. Studio in 1986, filled with triangular shaped paintings. Artworks and architecture this is how he thought about his works. Putting his pieces into an environment, outside inside, etc . Houston, they commissioned Kelly to make a structure for the outside.
Post painterly abstraction
Hard Edge
Colour field
Kenneth Noland: typical colour field painter, every conceivable colour experiment. Takes advantage of newly available house paint as a cheap source of material.
Morris Louis: Large acrylic paintings dripped on un primed canvas, wanted to stain canvas didn’t want it to sit on top like classic painting.
Jules Olitski: same colour field style.
Robert Ryman: started at the same time but only in 10 years has it been reconsidered as part of the generation, small works, puts his name large on the painting, only painted white or light and this is the interesting thing to him, sometimes brought it black, thin and thick paint. Fascinated by surfaces. Paintings an object so you tend to the sides of the frame as well. In the 80’s uses industrial materials and surfaces, sheet steel, brackets, tiny white brush marks. So particular about light, takes two weeks to set up work when it may only be in there for a week.
80’s
Peter Halley: Day glo prison, painter and a writer, wrote critical discussions in the 80’s, created the phrase “Neo – Geo”. Minimalism to Post – Minimalism. Takes a minimalist aesthetic and uses day glo paint, losing some of the sanctity, subject matter or reference to an outside image, nightclub with bars on the windows. Bars became a significant image. Minimalist, abstract painting images, contradictory. Talked about his institutionalised society, behaviours are channelled, purely formal abstract elements represent social, political and institutionalism systems and how they change our behaviour. Little drawings that become large colour field works, papered the walls of the gallery from a computer image plus the painting over top. Diagrams metaphorical of what painting is. Computer chip circuitry boards.
Textured industrial tacky brown surfaces, 70’s thing to do. Ways of surfacing things. Liked the tacky nature. Formal serious abstraction with silly surfaces. System diagrams. Blurry line, homage to early minimalists, but talking about day glo paint and textured surfaces so your clearly not.
Gary Hume: Hospital doors, institutional doors, prisons, schools and hospitals. Commenting on institutionalisation, grew up in north London the poor side of London, ghettos. Hospital, prison and school are the most important institutions, health is free, when Margaret Thatcher took this away and caused extreme poverty. Learns about minimalism, how does it help, intellectual art, makes a deliberate strategy and makes overt references to the doors, bright shiny enamel paint, reflective quality, working class painting into refined sensibilities of minimalism. Commercial colour, paint.
Minimalism is brought down from its ivory tower, to the working class. Continues to use bright shiny enamel paint, layering a linear image and silhouettes.
Rachel Whiteread: protest towards London city council that were demolishing tenant houses, usually generation and generations of families had lived in them. She did a deal to make a work, simply filling the house with concrete and removed the exterior space, taking negative space and making it positive. In order to do this project she had to get council backing, she had to omit the family from the house. Filled the whole house, possibly been demolished. Library, book shelves, where library was getting rid of primary school libraries etc. Cast of a stairwell. Concrete or plaster were her materials, some works where made out of resin, underneath of the stool. Political, social and intellectual ideas but aesthetics are constructed by minimalist ideas.
Post minimalism is a small part of post modernism.
Mona Hatoum, born in Beirut, whole city has endured a decade of fighting, her works are cages, lockers put into a gallery, lit in a dramatic way to cast shadows. The notions of the cage are a metaphorical prison, experiences of war, religions oppressions. Found materials, changing materials, nature of the practice according to need unlike minimalists such as Donald Judd, circular structure in a gallery with a projection, moving image of the inside of her body going thru. References the body, exterior and interior, bodies are a political thing. Body as a site.
Angela booklow, a working artwork, where people are part of the artwork, mark making.
James Turrell: twilight, film, projection.
Callum McCollum: Every shaped rectangle has been framed and made into a work, all in one. Joins fittings, each is unique, plaster cast of dinosaur footprints from a museum, painted colours. Dinosaur bones.
Wolfgang Laib: 2000,2001 work, installing the work, square of pollen from a flower only harvested once a year in Afghanistan. Body senses is his fascination, smell, sight. Stimulating other senses instead of just visual. Bees wax structure, inside are big blocks of wax generating heat, activate the wax smell but not melt it. Environmental concept, natural materials, fine art resources and natural resources. Gallery covered is raw rice grains and under the rice are neon tubes, glows.
Parker: range of materials, allsorts of projects, interest in decayed rubbish, with no value. Plucked the fluff from the pillows and couch of Sigmund Freuds house.
Haim Steinbach: Jewellery displays, commoditive sculpture, buy and sell culture. Capitalist and mass production of goods. How can an artist compete? Invoke the power, also interested in the ways of which shops display, false environments, racks and racks of shoes. Strange items together.
Using minimalist abstraction and focuses have been used but adapted. Originality is fundamental to minimalism.
New Zealand artists and how they responded:
Simon Ingram: grid, colours in the gird, significant works, little machine, not high tech. Programmed to make the painting, flicks back onto the canvas. The only contribution from him is when he turns it off and on, takes 24 hours to make a painting. Exhibit the work with the machine making it. Contentious nature of his work.
Julian Dashper: influenced Simon Ingram, prominent in the 1980’s, skin of the drum, send it to a sign writer and get them to do a circular image on the drum kits. If we think of modernism, its second hand by the time it got to NZ, “The language of abstraction exists in the world, but you can re create it.” Fascinated with that history and tradition of minimalists. Name checked some of NZ’ famous modernist artists, what it is to be a New Zealander, second hand minimalism. His references were a tribute to the people he name checked. Typical Julian work, multiple canvases laid backwards to show how they are made. Curriculum Vitae, Art forum: magazine, Julian harassed them about why they wouldn’t show his work, took art forum and changed the cover, inserted himself into the magazine. In the last few years his reputation and intervention of art has been in an international forum, how distance changes things, how history changes things. If modernism was a car by the time it got to NZ we were driving.
it second hand.
Describe what is meant by a “paradigm” shift with reference to work of American minimalist of the 60’s and 70’s.
A paradigm shift was created in the 60’s and 70’s due to youth culture upraising, gender and race issues emerging and the structures and belief systems relied on were challenged causing a social, moral, intellectual and artistic crisis. Minimalism in America had six major artists working through this crisis and trying to solve the problems being faced at this time, they were Frank Stella, Donald Judd, Richard Serra, Robert Smithson, Eva Hesse and Agnes Martin.
Frank Stella was trying to recreate the objectness of a painting, independent of the artists hand, flat, industrial. He used new technologies such as enamel paint, and a new method of creating his stripes all identical. He didn’t think people should read anything into the work nor should they project their own philosophy on them, he wanted his paintings to look as good as the enamel paint did when he first opened it. Karl Andre shared a studio with Frank Stella he bought bricks from a store and arranged them in a pile in the Tate gallery challenging the notion that art is created by a single genius and also saying why can’t this a pile of bricks be art?
Donald Judd was a sculpture and a designer he never created a single work, he designed them and they were constructed by master tradesmen. This allowed his creations such as the boxes to all be exactly the same and made by hand. His works made you aware of yourself, your height in relation to the boxes, you were able to project yourself onto the work, in some works a reflective surface enabled you to project your image onto it as well. His works were all about the time, the time you spent looking at it, around, wanting to touch it, measuring yourself against it, it all takes time. The world around him was speeding up and moving fast so his concept was to cheat time and space and slow everything down. In Marfa, Texas he bought buildings to create a minimalist sculpture sanctuary, now used as a residency for artists to come and work as part of a foundation.
Richard Serra created massive industrial works, out of massive sheets of metal. This created a real feeling of scale, how big they are in comparison to you. They were huge, come narrow some wide, some seeming like they could fall on top of you any second. Serra worked exclusively in steel. One of his works can be seen on the farm of Alan Gibbs.
Robert Smithson created earthworks, a notion of time and blew it out in terms of geological time. (Spiral Jetty) the lake level around the spiral jetty has risen covering the jetty with water, which nicely fits in with his notions of geological time.
Eva Hesse uses the same strategies, the cube form, she explored how interior is different from the exterior, the same as a body. Her uses of materials are up to date but not metals she used latex, plastics etc, so she could mould them into organic shapes. She plays with notions of skin and interiors, pointing towards a different reality i.e. post minimalist strategies. She explores how a women’s life is different, domestic labour and work, how it is a different type of experience. She explored how a typical woman’s day would pan out cooking, cleaning, washing and taking care of the children. Another woman involved in similar workings is Jackie Windsor.
Agnes Martin was ignored for some time, but now regarded as a pivotal figure in minimalism. She uses coloured pencil and stitching in her works, she is talking about the nature of woman’s labour. Hand drawing precise lines with exact widths apart not ruled, with elaborate and beautiful surfaces. Her system of production is the same as her day to day domestic household. Only able to work in short spaces of time, she created a routine of producing work which commented on her lifestyle. She used her work was a marker of time, domestic time in a domestic household.
In what regards to Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns comply within (classical) abstract expressionism, and in what ways do they deviate?
Robert Rauschenberg used gestural marks, drips, newspapers and paint samples to create work such as rebus collaborations of materials to find out what works, using methods produced in the abstract expressionist movement. His ‘White Painting’ created in 1951 also references Barnett Newman.
In Factum 1 and 2 he deliberately tried to make both paintings look the same which begs the question of originality, has it been done before by having both paintings side by side he wants us to see it for what it is!
He was given a drawing from De kooning which he erased completely, it was not out of disrespect, but respect because who on earth would want to erase one of De kooning’s drawings.
Rauschenberg began to use found materials and found objects to create 2D, 3D paintings calling them combines. These combines were free standing objects.
1962 – 63 discovered screen prints, and then added paint to it; it enabled him to use an image such as the images of Kennedy and the space race.
Differences: 3D, Starts challenging Greenberg’s obsession with the flatness of the picture plane, Figurative imagery, Autobiographical imagery: pictures of himself, challenging that concept of the brush stroke being the artist, smuggle life back into painting, references, close the gap between painting and life, life back into art.
Similarities: Push and Pull operates two of more special positions, activates the grid, mono chrome besides a couple of aspects, and balances his pictures. Visual language places Rauschenberg as an abstract expressionist.
Jasper Johns:
He thought of himself as an abstract expressionist, he chose a flag because it’s a flat image, obsession with flat picture plane. He wanted to paint something in the world that was flat, the white period is just as important as the flag in his paintings; he denies it as important symbol. Drawings of flags were gestural abstract drawing, precise marks, being gestural but also shows the flag. He combined Oil paint with paraffin wax and bees wax, creating an encaustic paint which dried quickly and made a precise mark.
“It was too hard to reach down to the bottom, so I just didn’t do it, after I’d finished it looks quite good” J.J
This all places him firmly in the abstract expressionist, how the technique should be revealed through the painting itself, Grey: neither dark nor light, not colour. This removes emotion from the viewers.
He investigated what expressionism in order to carry it on in order to work it out. Drip is not just an expression of wet paint, but was meant to create possibilities to challenge your eye. His paintings were not incredibly gestural but his precise tools enabled him to use gesture hidden, he was a every analytical painter, he regarded all the devices he used as tools. He was an abstract expressionist but an analytical and by doing this he changed it.
Painting of walls: cut up the painting in the middle and inserted two ball bearings, Why? Because it cuts the idea of the flat picture plane, ruptures it.
Canvas with stretcher: Not only devices of Ab. Exp but also shows materials used to make the canvas, what paintings really are.
Fools House 1962: towel, cup, stretcher, brush, broom – metaphorical brush, what is a painting made out of?
Left the tools in the work that made the gestural mark. Pivotal moment after Ab. Exp, in trying continuing it they actually stopped it and moved it into a new direction. Jasper Johns is considered a giant to minimalists for this device.
“There are no accidents in my work” – nothings left to chance.
Jasper Johns was very articulate and Rauschenberg was not, they are two different artists but they were trying to create the same thing.
My Groups
-
The Thinking Woman Updated: 2 hours ago
-
The Anti GV Movement Updated: 2 days ago
-
Girl Germs Updated: 6 days ago
Neighborhood
Explore friends, family, friends & family, or entire neighborhood.
Recent Comments
-
reymont cantil said:
[this is good]I love the st francis painting as well. have you seen this painting? http://artcritical.com/DavidCohen/sun_images_may/Schnabel/image2.jpg read more
on Julian Schnabel
Thanks read more
on Julian Schnabel