In the week that has seen a woman secure the presidential nomination of a major party for the first time in US history it seems fitting that our ARTCRITICAL pick should be an all-female lineup that in turn honors — at least in title — an indomitable fighter of yesteryear. “If Only Bella Abzug Were Here” acknowledges congresswoman and activist Bella Abzug, founder of WEDO (the Women’s Environmental and Development Organization) and celebrated for her trademark big hats. The big hat exhibition, curated by consciousness-raised Marc Straus gallery directors Tim Hawkinson and Ken Tan, includes work by Holly Coulis, pictured here, alongside Nicole Eisenman, Anj Smith, Joan Levinson, Tomona Matsukawa, Eleanor Ray, Ann Craven, Rachel Selekman, Bettina Blohm, Lily Kelly Napangardi, Anna Leonhardt, Genieve Figgis, Emma Rivers, Tarra Bandet, Rachel Garrard, Sarah Crowner, Shara Hughes, Nicole Cherubini, Shirin Neshat, Emily Wardill, Kirsi Mikkola and Liliane Tomasko.

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Bettina Blohm, a graduate of the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich, moved to New York City in 1984. Currently she divides her time between New York and Berlin, maintaining studios in both cities. This, her first exhibition with Marc Straus Gallery, coincides with a landscape-painting survey in Germany, which originated at the Kunsthalle Bremen and will later travel to Städtische Galerie Bietigheim-Bissingen. Although Blohm’s paintings often appear to be completely abstract, she actually makes many drawings in the landscape. Her paintings comprise loosely geometric shapes and patterns. Working intuitively, the imagery evolves over time, through repeated addition and subtraction of paint. The resolved image is not anticipated. Grids spill and torque their rigidity in favor of what amounts to a visually kinetic structure. Procrustean Physics (2014), for instance, comprises a black-blue ground ostensibly over-painted with an impure white diagonal grid. The diamond shapes formed between the lines are themselves adjusted with over painting such that the lines of the grid that picked up traces of blue appear at moments in front of, and at other moments behind, what become segments of more proximate color pushing forward as if through a net. The grid is subject to an occasional doubling, with an extra line running alongside at an angle, like an after-image.

Great Escape (2014), which like Procrustean Physics measures 68 x 84 inches, has black curved strokes that change direction from one square to the next appear to possess a restless energy — like a flickering diagram. In counterpoint, the squares each tilt at a shallow angle, maintaining the rhythmic shifting of both space and surface. Matisse certainly comes to mind in the red, black and white color range and the way in which the black curved lines recall the body, albeit indirectly. The degree to which decorative effect and broken pattern proliferate changes from painting to painting. Sometimes the linear element becomes an improvised knot, as in Small Snag (2013), where white painted lines are inconsistently opaque across black to produce subtle grays as well as white, tracking the artists’ movements across the surface. Diagrams of abstract thought come to mind that in the perceiving invoke different emotions.

In fact, two works on paper come from a 2014 series titled Diagram. Diagram 1 comprises a number of vertical lines that are bisected with irregular circles toward the lower edge of this horizontal format. A similarity to musical notation connects this pictorial composition to musical composition as does the pulsed repetitions of frame echoing verticals and obliquely oriented disks. Acrylic, charcoal and ink are used in this work and acrylic and charcoal in Diagram 10, completing the notion of an importation of traditional means from drawing to painting and from painting to drawing. Altogether, it is true to say that Blohm has no problem moving between a non-representational mode and its opposite, although it is the former alone that is present in this current exhibition. Interchanges between figure and ground and an evolving variety of similar forms both make for a concise vocabulary that repays close attention to her work.

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February 1 to March 15, 2012
Campus Center, Main Level
Route 107. Old Westbury, New York, (516) 876 3056

Hyewon Yi (Gallery Director at SUNY College, Old Westbury, and curator of this exhibition) has put together a thoroughly engaging show by two New York abstract artists. Lisa Abbott-Canfield and Bettina Blohm both work with large, organic forms that sometimes feel like pure abstraction and at other times seem to incorporate references to the actual world. Abbott-Canfield’s art is of muted hues—grays and blacks—while Blohm’s art looks to bright colors that affiliate in some ways with the landscape. Both artists are practiced in their process, and Yi’s exhibit shows how the two painters make sense of organic abstraction in New York, whose history runs to three generations at this point in time. Painting is far from being moribund in New York, despite the elegies of critics and academic writers; its place as the dominant medium in the field can be challenged, but not its ongoing practice. Abbott-Canfield and Blohm look to the tradition in the hopes of furthering its presentation; their work, whether melancholy or upbeat, posits a continuing tradition. So, while their work contrasts rather markedly given the specifics of color and form, their overall outlook is not so far apart. They speak to both a newer generation of painters and a more current audience in time.

Abbott-Canfield’s persuasive paintings rely on a quiet presentation of organic shapes, which are often but not always placed on top of each other. Her work might be described as moody or melancholic, yet her technical abilities are such that the emotion of muted sadness leads to other feelings. Clearly the artist shows a considerable amount of feeling, which is evident in her quiet application of materials, as occurs in the small (4 x 11 ½ inches), highly evocative work In Completing What Loving Is Needing (2011). Done with pencil, ink, and gesso on printmaking paper, the drawing consists of a gray background on the top two-thirds of the paper and a black background on the lower third. On top there is a two-pronged, light-gray shape that seems to fall from the top into a bowl form, also done in the same gray. Clearly, the drawing’s affiliation is with abstraction of a lyrical nature; Abbott-Canfield shows us just how poetic her theme can be, as indicated by the title of the work. Living Fossil (2011), a larger vertical banner of a painting, is a gesso-and-oil composition. Consisting of a dark-gray background, the work’s interest lies in the two rows of diagonally angled, rounded shapes, painted a darker gray to contrast with its backdrop. Abbott-Canfield successfully compounds an abstract design with a seemingly external reference—poet and critic John Yau’s title for this painting gets at the opposition, between figure and ground and representation and abstraction, inherent to the imagery’s implications.

German-born painter Blohm also presents her own idiomatic abstractions, which offer representational readings to a slightly greater degree than her colleague’s works. One group of three paintings, all from 2011 and all the same size (68 x 84 inches) refer to small towns in the Catskills. Brightly colored with backgrounds of yellow and red and multihued squares, these works derive from the artist’s experience in the country. At the same time, they are engaging and accessible abstract-art experiences. The next group has patterns consisting of two many-pointed though roughly square forms—red and gray, blue and gray, and slate blue and yellow—that sit atop a single-colored background. These works from 2010 have something of a theoretical bent, in the sense that they explore different color combinations using a similar image base, much like the color theories of Joseph Albers. The final trio of paintings—each group was placed on a different wall—comes from a slightly earlier period 2008-09. These do not mesh in the similarity of their imagery: one consists of four clouds containing rounded red forms; another is very clearly a cross-like branch against a red background; and the last presents a group of randomly painted, curving black lines against a background of yellow, gold, and red squares and rectangles. In all cases, a lightness of touch prevails.

In each of Blohm’s paintings, the works suggest but do not explicitly state a relation to nature, while the bare tree in the shape of the form has the cultural underpinning of Christian iconography behind it. This is interesting because Blohm does not practice any religion, yet she seems interested in seeing what an image might imply in a contemporary secular society. Abbot-Canfield’s poetic explorations belong more exclusively to painting; they participate in the ongoing history of expressive abstraction. But she, too, looks at the interface between realism and abstraction, finding solace in a language that compels without the critic’s clarifications. Together, the show is a genuine success—it pushes painting forward at a time when doing so is sorely needed.

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Bettina Blohm’s paintings are Haiku-like visual landscapes that distill emotion into abstract form. They reflect a love of Eastern art with its focus on intuitive states of mind. Blohm’s paintings also engage with a Matisse inspired sense of color and an Abstract Expressionist scale, both of which come across especially within her compositional placement of gesture and shape. Enigmatic shapes or nature forms often seem to imply human presences. In earlier works where the human silhouette is depicted, more tensions arise which are emphasized by color contrasts and the formal placement of figures in relation to each other.

The following excerpts from an extended interview reveal the philosophy and approach she developed over 20 years as a painter and graphic artist. Her work forges together influences from Modernist and Asian art into a personal approach which is stands in opposition to prevailing postmodern and conceptual trends.

I am interested in your dedication to painting with historical roots in an aesthetic and Modernist tradition.

I work in the Modernist tradition. Someone once called me a third generation Abstract Expressionist. I believe the formal language is still relevant and can be built on. In the best Abstract Expressionist works there is a unity between the act of painting and their feeling and the world.

You clearly love the expansiveness of Abstract Expressionist scale and Matissean color.

Matisse is the greatest painter of the 20th century to me. Nobody else even comes close. Of course I love his color, but also his variety of formal solutions, his way of arresting shapes on canvas, and how each form is alive. His paintings are complex yet look simple.

I tend to see a close analogy to your work in Milton Avery’s landscapes where elements become compressed in simple abstract motifs.

I like Avery’s color and the generosity in his later paintings. In those late works he achieves a beautiful synthesis between formal rigor and looseness and an exquisite poetic sense. In some paintings the motif becomes so compressed it is like a metaphor: a black and white bird hovering over a gray sea in Plunging Gull 1960 or the green horizon line which seems to contain the sea like a bathtub in Dunes and Sea 1960.

You have talked about your interest in Asian landscape painting and the abstract work of the Japanese American artist Miyoko Ito.

My first real encounter with Asian art was in 1992 in London at the exhibit of woodcuts by Hokusai at the Royal Academy. Certain images responded to my search for abstraction in figuration. Because Asian art was never that concerned with imitating nature the artists developed a greater individual freedom and expressiveness in their gesturers. I love the sense of poetry, of spareness, of essence, of humanity that I feel in these paintings. My ideas come from the visual world, or more specifically for the last 10 years from landscape, and that gives me something to push against. This is one of the pleasures I get from looking at Miyoko Ito’s paintings. Her mature work is abstract and completely self contained yet it is obvious how hard she looked at the movement of water or the spatial construction of a landscape.

When you arrived in New York in 1984 you were making paintings of trees with a kind of Expressionist fervor. What did these early tree works signify to you?

I came to new York right after finishing art school in Munich. I chose the tree as a motif because I had a strong emotional connection with trees. I would walk around the city’s parks and photograph different trees and then paint them in my studio. They were urban trees with chopped off branches which made them seem more human.

Human figure and silhouettes appear in your later paintings like Where Are They Going? from 1992. I cannot help feeling a sense of anonymity and distance in these figural works, with a rumble of emotional intensity just palpable below the surface. What was going through your mind?

At that time I hid my more emotional gestures under layers of flat paint and only at the borders between shapes could one see this undercurrent of turmoil. Formally it was a way to create depth. I wanted flat shapes but I also wanted to retain a sense of emotional urgency. Where Are They Going? was done at the time of the first Gulf war and the title reflects my feeling of hopelessness, the sense that everybody just followed mindlessly.

It seems nature and abstraction have given you a way for you to reflect on interior states of mind – a reflective space that at times balances between solitude and loneliness. Do you feel this too?

I always separate things. Every shape has a clear outline and there are borders; nowhere does one thing “bleed” into another. That may give a sense of isolation that you mention. I have a very strong sense of human loneliness and isolation: nature, however, offers me a sense of wholeness and connectedness.

I am struck by the difference between your works on paper and your paintings, especially because the paper works are more expressively stark and don’t often use color.

I rarely use color because drawing, for me, is about mark making. Drawing is the most direct, honest or humble visual medium. You cannot lie with drawing. From a drawn line you can immediately see the temperament of the artist. This is one of the pleasures I have with Classical Chinese landscape painting: after many centuries and over vast cultural differences you can still see the individual artist at work.

How has growing up in Germany shaped your art? What are the things you see as distinctive about having a European background that are still with you living in New York?

Growing up in Europe I may have a stronger feeling for painting as a medium with a long history. But its a specific culture, in my case German. I only became conscious of it when I moved here. Being European I may have a stronger sense of the precarious nature of the world. Life is not black and white but has gray zones. I loved New York city as soon as I arrived. I loved the nervousness and chaos of the city. I also loved that women were treated as equal and one had the sense that it was still possible to add something to the history of art. Today I have a nice combination of both worlds. I work in New York and travel 2 – 3 times a year to Germany where I have had some success with shows.

You have been a committed painter for over 20 years with a consciousness of what is going on in the contemporary art world in New York over a long period of time. What is your view of present affairs?

As a friend of mine says: today artists are like racehorses. Again and again artists are destroyed through commercialization. It is a fundamental problem in the American art world and not new. Eugene O’Neill describes in his play Long Day’s Journey into Night a gifted actor who got seduced by money and fame into playing the same part over and over.

And art education?

I believe art education has become too academic. Powerful emotions are at the basis of all art making. Today we do not have a compelling formal language as other times did and young artists have to find their way through a jungle of possibilities. The result is often an anxious obedience to the latest fashion.

What do you attribute this to?

Art movements have always been connected to political environments. There has been a feeling of apathy and cynicism, a feeling that nothing mattered but money that has been dominant in the art world and in the political system. The esthetic of an artist like John Currin is closely linked to the politics of George Bush; it is based on an all-pervasive contempt for people. If the political situation changes it may bring back some idealism and belief in art.

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