Form and Space in Chinese Painting - James C. Watt Lecture at NYSS

The impeccable and erudite Chairman of the Department of Asian Art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, James C.Y. Watt, lectured on Form and Space in Chinese Painting at the New York Studio School January 9, 2011. I forgot my sketchbook so was unable to take notes but the loss facilitated full focus on the cogent images Watt presented. His focus concerned the evolution of form and pictorial space through Chinese history from early ceramic disks through Yuan Dynasty landscape, after the Mongols invaded China and opened its sphere of foreign influence.

From interlocking geometric patterns such as the yin-yang symbol, space evolved on and around spherical containers and maintained its finite structure as interlocking "cells" as in the Dunhuang Cave example at top. These cells, knit together in composite space, later dissolved into strong fore- and backgrounds with indeterminate middle distance bridging front and back, top and bottom, as in Ni Tsan, middle image. In the Yuan period, below, structure gives way to an emphasis on brushwork, resulting in imaginary "concoctions" (Watts' term) as in Wang Meng.

As a devotee of Wang Meng I felt gobsmacked by this categorization of his work as I have long cherished the Chinese dictum that landscape is both observed and translated. The idea suggested a fissure between Song and Yuan Dynastyies as radical as Renaissance painting to Impressionism--a rift I'd never considered in the history of Chinese landscape, which I've idealized in Taoist terms. The spare, geometric images Watts showed us expanded my awareness of Chinese landscape in a new way, reaffirming his allusion to Panofsky's insight that "the history of perspective may be understood with equal justice as a triumph of the distancing and objectifying sense of the real, and as a triumph of the distance-denying human struggle for control; it is as much a consolidation and systematization of the external world, as an extension of the domain of self." Not until Watt's talk did I link the emphasis in traditional Chinese painting on the anthropomorphic landscape with western perspectives, even having just read Panofsky's Perspective as Symbolic Form!

Click on the link above for a 1981 article by Watts about the Chinese zither (quin) in Orientations to gain a deeper sense of the instrument and how it was portrayed in various epochs of Chinese painting. His recent World of Khubilai Khan, Yale University Press, which accompanies his recent major exhibition at the Met, will be my next read.


Thanks to the New York Studio School for hosting such a wonderful lecture series, open and free to the public on Tuesday and Thursday nights. For more information about the spring 2011 lecture series, visit http://www.nyss.org/lectures/spring-2011/.

What are you doing Sunday?

Self Portrait with Striped Shirt, 2008

Sunday, I shall board the 1:38 from Grand Central Station to the Aldrich Museum to attend the opening reception of Jenny Dubnau's exhibition Head On. Click the link above to check out times, dates and online catalogue for the exhibition. I've known Jenny since the early 1990s; it's a pleasure to discuss painting with her in studio and gallery visits because her engagement with painting is so profound. It's also gratifying to observe her work evolve--she was always good,  but the work, though remaining in dialogue about painting and paint, invites directly transmitted experience that transcends the critical.

I'm particularly excited about these paintings as they represent a ripening maturity in her work. Starting from the above self portrait, 2008, Jenny mutes her palette, pushing the most subtle aspects of a color. She alters the internal scale of her figures for a more proportionally rewarding relationship to the space surrounding them and softens the lively dance of her brushwork to the barest flicker. The paintings are material, but atmospheric. Look at the stripes on the shirt, the edges of hair, eye and chin, or the strange double halo of head and neckline--they pulsate. The psychological self portraits from 2005, the nearly slapstick, black and white self portraits of 2006 and exquisite portraits of aging loved ones from 2007 search and give way, after a cataclysmic encounter with Velasquez' Las Meninas, to a more distanced, yet penetrating perception.

In Las Meninas, Jenny witnessed "vast circular space, through which dust motes fell," and that space offered the pivot she felt her work needed: literal room for human presence. In the double portrait below, the influence of Spanish painting is clearly felt in the atmospheric space and beautiful charcoal palette that invites the eye to roam. The figures and space share equal weight, enveloping and holding each other.

Carrie and Sheila, 2008

R. With Grey Shirt, 2009

After Spain, Jenny began to hire models. This brought a natural evolution to the Aldrich show, which includes artists, curators and others associated with the museum new to her acquaintance. The emotional space evolves a more compassionate feeling in the work. It imbues perception, in a paradoxical shift of emphasis, with the agency to negotiate the mechanics of vision through the body. This activity, encapsulated in flickering brushwork, becomes the true subject of the paintings.

Peter Saul at Haunch of Venison, 1230 6th Avenue (48th/49th), Last Day Today

Trumpets of joy at this briliant survey exhibition by Texan bad-boy Peter Saul. For many years, Saul taught in Texas and is now living in New Hampshire. His satiric antics are in full play in the twenty paintings of this show. Painter Susanna Coffey commented that the paintings looked immediate, as if done yesterday--and are loaded with visual ideas: flat, blocky areas of color surrounded melting refrigerators or jets, pearlescent, pellet-like teeth and sponge-like die. It's hard to know where to land first: juicy refrigerator still lifes, with striped and checkered backgrounds, linseed oil still looking wet on the surfaces; the razor-sharp articulation of "Columbus Discovers America," 1992-5, in which low, muted color sweeps into a Byzantine goldmine of yellows and Indian reds that turns out to be a group of women in chains; or the tour-de-force painting of cops on a subway crash epic from 1979, or the weird and furry paintings Saul is doing now. The overriding impression is, what a colorist. The second is, look at those edges! The longer you look, the more rewarding, on a purely visual level, the paintings become.

Saul lived and worked in Europe for eight years, returning to the San Francisco Bay Area in 1964. He states in the exhibition catalogue that Americans weren't really studying their culture yet, so he was able to plumb its riches from afar. His work intersected with and/or likened to R. Crumb, the Hairy Who and Guston, and these intersections come immediately to mind when you see the paintings; they also conjure, from a greater distance, Leon Golub and Nancy Spero, also in Europe in the late 1950s.In the catalogue interview with Chris Byrne, Saul responds to a question about why he draws distortion: "I like to draw cartoony because it adds a feeling of movement." He adds, "a great many mistakes are a good thing because they slow down the viewing, and become interesting points to look at..." and cites an incident in London in 1956 when artist Pietro Annigoni was criticized for making one of the Queen's arms too long and Saul, with 20,000 others, stood on line to see it. Saul states, "like Ingres he was trying to stretch the body a little further. A few years later I began to think about this event: 20,000 people looking at a mistake."

Saul's show is one of those that makes you wan to drop everything and paint.

Happy 2011!

OPENING RECEPTION: January 1, 1-3PM

Monday, Monday: Post Blizzard

Blizzard, 10 PM

New Year, New Work, New Faces

My painting Interlude is included in the second incarnation of New Year, New Work, New Faces, opening the second year of STOREFRONT gallery in Bushwick. The exhibition page is linked above; scroll the gallery's home page to read articles and reviews about the gallery, its founders and the artists who have shown there. STOREFRONT has quickly become a Bushwick staple, and its programming is excellent.

A benefit for Norte Maar, gallery co-founder Jason Andrew's community organization, will take place December 28 from 7 to 9 and the exhibition opens January 1, 2011, from 1 to 6 PM. Norte Maar sponsors local activities as well as summer 2010's Camp Pocket Utopia, documented earlier on this blog as well as AT World and Two Coats of Paint.

Wishing all a very happy 2011!

Cadaqués, Spain

Photos by Sergio Sagnier

Joan Wickersham, Writer.

It is my pleasure to introduce writer Joan Wickersham, creator of Suicide Index, one of the best books I have ever read. Click on the link above to find out more about Joan and her work. Rarely has this reader experienced such searing honesty and elegant skill together and the combination, not to mention the content, is unforgettable. If you think a book about suicide does not pertain to you, take a look anyway. If you experience the human condition, there will be something for you in it.

Joan writes a column for the Boston Globe so once you finish Suicide Index and feel bereft, there is a way to read more.

Monet and Abstraction - A Show Essential to Know About

One of the greatest exhibition catalogues ever. My regret is not having seen the exhibition personally. Click on link to find out more.

Let Us Face the Future. British art 1945-1968 - Fundació Joan Miró

Let Us Face the Future. British art 1945-1968 - Fundació Joan Miró

New York Touchdown

I took a Chelsea sojourn between 29th and 23rd streets today:

29th St.
Steve di Beneditto at Nolan, two in particular, the Quarry and a smaller painting on the same west wall; beautiful pencil drawings in the back;

26th St.
Vivid, Female Currents in Painting - too many wonderful painters to name, curated by Janet Phelps (click on link to visit Shroeder, Romero and Shredder) and Pavers, those who pave the way...among the group of Pavers and Vivids: Judy Linhares, Carrie Moyer, Rosanna Bruno, Susanna Coffey; a particularly sharp Wendy White, more, more! You've got to go.

Lee Krasner at Miller, 26th - an ultimate Paver - oh, this show is good - the umber paintings are perfect, and there is a plummy, patterned pathway in alizarin crimson or similar, that is just delicious. Rhythm and pattern start here;

Philip Pearlstein at Betty Cunningham - saw this quickly but the beauty was on the back west wall, no head - just body and toy;

25th St.
Stephen Mueller @ Lennon, Weinberg- sucks sky-space into cups of colorful fades;

Hans Hartung  @ Cheim and Reid - like Krasner, a just-right historical show at this moment in abstract painting; makes me think about the typically western desire to 'construct' a painting offset by traditional eastern mastery of idioms that gives "bone" to immediacy.

Thomas Noskowski at Pace - of all the shows, this thrilled me to the marrow with its unbelievable freedom. Drawings, paired with paintings - informing each other - reveals the shifts in decisions and visual logic so natural to working in the studio - inspiring. (Image above, snapped from the Pace website - go see this show!)

23rd St.
Ellen Lanyon @ Pavel Zoubok - elegant, illustrative, fun-to-paint still life narratives accompanied by a tableau of the actual objects and lively collaborative book with poet / curator Lynne Cook

Julie Schenkelberg@ Asya Geisberg - not enough time to see but through the window - looks promising, a wild ramble through domestic rubble.

22nd St.
Keltie Ferris at Horton - touches of Mark Bradford and Chris Martin conflate in urban cityscapes, while having nothing to do with this painter at all! Expansive, spray-painted musings on painting and being.

Larissa Bates at Monya Rowe - she has done her homework on Indian and Chinese idioms, and her works in gouache show the gyrating structures in those works - and a delicate touch with the oils as well.

Look forward, after Barcelona and Cadaques, to view the rest of Chelsea more in depth. But am gratified and visually nurtured viewing the simultaneous history and presence of abstraction, today.

November 11, 2010

October 2010

A Wonderful Poet

I'm traveling through mid-December so posting will be light. The above link will take you to a poet I am currently reading, Jane Hirschfield. Her book Nine Gates is a must.

Musings on Relational Aesthetics

In a summer New York Times article on public sculpture, critic Ken Johnson wondered if, philosophical dimensions of art works aside, does the work visually compel?

This took me to Nicholas Bourriaud’s 1990 book Relational Aesthetics, which describes the evolution of aesthetic to social or philosophical frameworks in art works.  As visual recognition becomes faster and more complex, so that we see a tracking shot as a single image, our understanding of symbols, from keyboards to advertising, is immediate and comprehensive. Given the visual speed at which we absorb information, one might conclude, as Bourriaud does, that visual language becomes one trope among many, a factor in a confluence of factors that include social interaction and time as means of shared experience.  For him, social interactions and time re-invigorate the social aspects of viewing formalist artworks in ways that feel more relevant in contemporary life. For Bourriaud, the object is not necessary to establish a sense of shared connection.

I’ve given this some thought and conclude it is ultimately an academic argument that sidesteps the issue of criteria altogether in favor of a premise that expands the field of what art can be. The performative aspects of relational aesthetics recall Fluxus, Art as Life, Happenings, but the conceptual foundation is different through leveling  visual, social and philosophical frameworks.  Johnson concludes a preference for work that engages the eye beyond function - citing the visual symbolism of Tom Otternes-- but experience tells me art's presence influences people when it is in the world, no matter what. Connections are forged in different ways - how can they be any different than learning styles, or ways of thinking? They aren't, really. 


But, what interests me most in painting is the narrowness of its limitations and strictures; its unforgivability. What once seemed binding now points to freedom. For such a malleable medium, paint can become as complex as any other visual experience, real or filmed. To make a painting come alive, step away from its long, digested history into the present, remains compelling to do and see.

NurtureArt Auction October 12, 2010

Click on above link to preview the works at auction. Please consider donating to this wonderful cause!

Brooklyn Tornado path

Photos by Yiwen Chow.

Yiwen arrived Thursday in the late afternoon; around 5.30 we headed from Bed-Stuy to Tribeca for an errand before openings and the aborted attempt to attend a wine tasting on the LES. Upon disembarking the C train at Canal, we noticed it had rained. But the city's energy felt dense and congested beyond the usual sensory feast; traffic was stalled on Broome, gridlock everywhere and not a cab to be found. Small surprise: a tornado had just blown through while we were underground!

These images were taken Saturday on State St. in Brooklyn Heights.

The scale of the tornado effortlessly shifts perceptions of the landscape. Space reconfigures: the skyline is cropped of tree canopies, the streets shape a new flow of traffic to accommodate felled trees so that cars that once barreled down straight streets now carefully zig zag through leafy green barriers.

Ode to Lefferts Street

Enter Lefferts St. one block south of Fulton at Classon, where you'll find an old hotel with an awning that looks like an over sized bronze tongue. From there Lefferts runs three blocks and ends at St. Marks Place, which faces into it. Biking down the quiet lane, I imagine the London of Mary Poppins, with lives conducted behind dignified facades. The brownstones share the street with old, wooden houses and low-slung, renegade churches. Sycamores arch above, creating respite from the concrete, car shops and traffic on Fulton and Atlantic Avenues.

The transition from being in a place to drawing it--or tracing it, from sketchbooks, scrolls and photos, as I have been doing in the studio, adds a layer of experience upon returning. Brush pens drain images of color, leaving only line and contour to define them. Line simplifies and equates information, reducing image toward gesture. There is great pleasure slowly retracing images of a location, reliving memories and combining them with others. Multiple connections evolve densely layered constructions, rendering landscape just one element in a larger often abstract situation. Yet returning to a place I've drawn, I see it differently, after visually absorbing it.  Meaning returns, not through metaphor, but in the heightened awareness, the new and more familiar relationship. It's a little uncanny.

Goodbye, Summer Days of Bedford-Stuyvesant

As summer wanes, these images conjure the imaginary relief from heat on concrete experienced on sweaty tromps through the neighborhood. One thing that stands out overall is how alcohol-related businesses beckon customers with nostalgic touches of days gone by. An example is the Tip-Top Bar + Grill, which comes alive at nights when its signage alights. Red and green lights -- hybrid lantern and subway stop globe shapes-- twirl above the entrance; when lit, the beer sign allures as a pirate chest would. Such touches make the mundane magical, as do the cardboard displays in liquor store windows that juxtapose faded, corrugated cardboard backdrops with images of cruise ships and martinis.   

Beyond my front door heading to Fulton Street (I'm three doors in) is the unused construction shed that surrounds a building with wood-covered windows. No construction in sight. This same building was where the Claver Place Mens Club used to be. At night, the neighborhood men would gather (with some guest women on occasion) to play pool, drink beer and congregate under low-hanging lamps. Now, homeless folk argue and sometimes sleep under the construction shed.  I miss the men with the aviator glasses, who pulled up chairs outside of the club and chatted in the late afternooons before heading in to their pool game.  

I often look at the willow above Family Dollar and wonder where it grows from - an empty lot? Someone's back yard? It reminds me of Chinese scrolls that have been suddenly transported to another time and place.