September 14 – October 16, 2010
53 East 58th Street
New York City, (212) 832-1400

In Frank Bowling’s earlier, more representational work, he was often concerned with the kind of autobiographical and socio-political themes that occupy many other artists of Afro-Caribbean descent. In England, he is still best known for the semi-abstract “map” paintings he made in the later ‘60s, with stencilled images of South America on the far left and Africa on the far right, the ocean in the middle evoking the infamous “Middle Passage” by which captured or purchased African men, women and children were transported to slavery in the New World. Nevertheless, when Bowling made his own transition, around 1965-66, from being London-based to being New York-based, he gradually transferred his allegiance from the representational to the abstract, finding that abstraction liberated him to focus on those aspects of picture-making that mattered most to him. “The practice of painting within the boundaries of Formalism,” he wrote in May 1972, “provides a setting in which I am able to test and ultimately prove my own freedom.”

Today, he divides his time between studios in London and DUMBO (having been elected to membership in the Royal Academy of Art in 2005, and made an officer of the Order of the British Empire two years ago).  He was born in 1936 to a shop-keeping family in Guyana, then a British colony, and sent to England in 1950 to complete his schooling. Initially, he considered a writing career, but after visiting the Continent, and seeing Goya, Rembrandt and Van Gogh, he turned toward painting.  Graduating from the Royal College of Art in 1962, he at first moved in circles of representational artists, including Larry Rivers (then resident in London) and fellow RCA graduates like David Hockney. His full-time stay in New York lasted approximately ten years, and included a stint as a contributing editor to Arts Magazine from 1969 to 1972. He was introduced to Clement Greenberg in 1971, at a party given by Peter Reginato, and Greenberg became a visitor to Bowling’s studio, offering advice and encouragement.

The earlier paintings in the Spanierman show are in the tradition of color-field paintings of the ‘70s and ‘80s.  The Bowlings from the ‘70s, with their loose, vivid and flame-like pourings of paint, are clearly related to near-contemporary paintings by Helen Frankenthaler or Paul Jenkins. The Bowlings of the ‘80s, with their subdued, closely valued colors, often mottled or with intricately-wrought accretions of gel and other elements, are kissing cousins to the works of Jules Olitski and Larry Poons from this period. Yet all the work at Spanierman retains its own vigor and individuality. Nobody with any familiarity with this school could mistake a Bowling for a Jenkins, Frankenthaler, Poons or Olitski.  Though he belongs in their company, he is his own man. This is especially evident with canvases like 13th Hour (1976), in which a thrilling, vertical whoosh of brilliant yellow rises in the center of a narrow soft pink field, accompanied by accents of chartreuse and rust.  Another memorable picture is Odysseus’s Footfalls (1982), a monumental panorama of speckled cloudlike shapes of pink, purple and mint. It clearly takes its name from the enormous foot-like shape descending through its middle, though certainly Bowling never intended to paint a foot.  Rather, the shape must simply have emerged in the course of creating an abstraction, and the artist (whose literary talents frequently lead him to whimsy and word plays in his titles) titled it after the fact.

Were Greenberg still alive, he might not be as enthusiastic about Bowling’s work since the ‘90s, but it too is distinguished, in a different way.  Pictures are smaller, and the paint is much more controlled, often sutured into collaged elements. Squares, strips and rectangles of brightly painted fabric are cut out (sometimes with pinking shears) and stapled into place. In some of these paintings, especially those from around the turn of the century, the palette is ripe with rich, deep browns and other urban hues, but the newest works of this show are mostly clearer and brighter. This is especially true of a series of three done this year, in which a central area, dominated by yellow, is decorated with playful little flower-like dabs of pink and blue, and framed by strips of fabric in contrasting colors. The largest and most successful of this series is Old Dutch Vase (2010).   Some examples of the later work are a bit off from the high standard set by most of the other works on view, but this is a minor cavil.  On the whole, the show offers an outstanding artist who (as the Guide Michelin might say) vaut le voyage.

The post The Ultimate Proof of His Freedom: Frank Bowling’s abstract painting appeared first on artcritical.

“The second year looks good,” commented Washburn, the type of dealer who makes returning to The Armory Fair Modern a pleasure. Her long-term dedication to a core group of New York School artists has paid off: she has material that no one else even has access to—rarities from estates and other connoisseur gems. Seen here: a 1960 Ray Parker and 1957 Nicolas Carone, with a 2006 Gwynn Murrill feline in the foreground.

SITTING PRETTY

It just wouldn’t be an art fair proper, without Botero and Francis. And those two works provide a provenance for the future: the recent Damien Hirst spin painting directly beside.

THE HAVE KNOTS

A sidelong glance from Knoedler’s Anastasia Ehrich says it all—everyone loves Catherine Murphy’s paintings.

This solo show features the first works Murphy has ever made as a series. She became “obsessed with seeing repetitive things in her house,” I was told. In each, she depicts the ring stains that wood knots make through common house paint, leaving ghost-like circles. Murphy, a master of visual double entendre, locates these within larger plays of geometry and perception.

PAPERWORKS POWERHOUSE

Reinvigorated by their recent move to 11th Avenue, and their launching of the new Senior & Shopmaker space with a show of paper pieces by New York hometown hero, Thomas Nozkowski, these paired dealers are taking their act on the road in search of greater visibility.

PICTURES AT AN EXHIBITION

Suggesting fractured reality, this piece was originally made by the French stripe master for a show at the Hirshhorn Museum, according to the New York dealers offering it.

FISTS OF FURY

Schultz is a globalist, with branch galleries in Seoul and Beijing and a pan-international neo-pop stable of artists. The work he stands before was sold at the outset of the fair for 130,000 euros, he told me. “Tonight, we eat good meat,” he crowed, with Teutonic glee, shaking his fists.

ECCENTRIC ABSTRACT

One hardly expects to see such outré sophistication coming out of a gallery from the rural heartland. Here, geometry is played against personal idiosyncratic vision by three extremists of post-war non-objectivism.

HAIL TO THE CHEF

Art writer Lilly Wei strikes a supplicating pose in the presence of Julian Schnabel’s massive 2007 self-portrait at Galerie Forsblom, Helsinki.

PHOTO BOOTH

From 20th Century photography masters to odd ephemera from newspaper vaults and police mug shot files, here’s a trove of American Studies-worthy artifacts. “The hippest buyers are museums, like the Metropolitan and the Modern,” Winter told me. “They’re willing to buy something more edgy than collectors.” He expanded, “in painting and sculpture, you don’t have the museums leading.” The reason?  “Maybe it’s because they don’t have to re-sell the stuff,” he added, wryly.

MARRIAGE COUNCIL

East End of Long Island veteran dealer Borghi mounted a series of Elaine de Kooning ink nudes, Portrait of Bill—An Intimate View, unflinching and direct. A show of comparative small works by the abstract expressionist couple rounded things out.

A DEALER’S SECRET

Parsons helped launch Barnett Newman, Jackson Pollock, Clyfford Still, and Mark Rothko, among others. Her own contribution as an artist is overshadowed. In this rangy survey, viewers were left to connect the many dots: with evocations of Forrest Bess, Milton Avery and Robert Motherwell.

TONGUE AND GROOVE

New York’s Gary Snyder/Project Space Gallery takes a curatorial approach, working the gap between pop and abstraction. Both artists pictured here were represented by Pace Gallery in the 1960s and then fell between the cracks. Maybe the time is right to take another look.

And that’s the art of art dealing at The Armory Show Modern—instinct and timing.

The post The Armory Show Modern (Pier 92): A photo journal appeared first on artcritical.

Aged sixty-four, Dan Christensen died in 2007 of heart failure due to polymyositis,  a  muscle disease from which he’d suffered for years, but he left a large, diverse body of work. I’d followed his career since the 60s, when he created a stir with the raw vitality of his tightly-coiled “spray paintings.”  As art writer for Time, I saw to it that Time reproduce one of these paintings in color in 1969 (I later learned that Newsweek had featured Christensen in 1968).

I always thought the spray paintings were Christensen’s best, but the “plaid paintings” offer a truly worthy sequel.  Painted between 1969 and 1971, they lack the energy of the spray paintings, but offer a wonderful calm and serenity instead.

“Plaid” is a bit of a misnomer, for these paintings are not characterized by many narrow crisscrossed bands of color.  Rather, they incorporate broad, simple bands of color and/or rectangles–sometimes vertical, sometimes horizontal, only sometimes overlaid to create a “plaid” effect.  Facture is neither painterly nor hard-edged geometric, but in between–straight edges that nonetheless exude life.

By using different colors and canvas shapes, Christensen conveyed different moods.  Baze(1969) is a fairly narrow vertical with a crimson field. From top to bottom, it is bisected by a narrow vertical band of hot pink, behind which, about three-fifths of the way down the canvas, is a horizontal band of scarlet. On either side are vertical bands of chartreuse and peach, hanging most of the way down but cut off at the bottom by another horizontal band, of brown. Overall, the mood is cheerful, bright and merry.

Dark Tulip (1970), another winner, is a large horizontal, with a broad charcoal gray band across the bottom, atop which stand two vertical bands of color and three vertical rectangles of it.  Left to right, the order of these shapes and colors is blue-green (band), night purple (rectangle), brown (rectangle), Kelly green (band) and forest green (rectangle).   The mood is solemn, majestic, dignified.

Untitled (1970) falls in the middle range between these extremes. A moderate vertical rectangle, on the right from top to bottom is a broad vertical band of deep red (separated from the edge of the canvas by a narrow band of pale black that turns into a small area of whitish-lemon near the bottom). On the left is a shorter vertical rectangle of bright orange, with a smaller area of bright green beneath it.  A narrow horizontal strip of bright yellow separates the orange from the green, and the gray from the whitish-lemon.  The mood is solid, sturdy, workmanlike.

The post Dan Christensen (1942-2007): The Plaid Paintings at Spanierman Modern appeared first on artcritical.