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Negation, Subtraction, Dissolution, Kantor Gallery, Los Angeles, CAposted June 3rd, 2010
Amy Granat, Chemical Scratch (Return of the Creature), 2003 May 24 – June 28, 2010 Arranged by Front Desk Apparatus Participating Artists: John Cage, Jesse Cohen, Quentin Curry, Philippe Decrauzat, Matias Faldbakken, Amy Granat, Gareth James, Jacob Kassay, Jutta Koether, Amir Mogharabi, Steven Parrino, Seth Price, Josef Strau, Andy Warhol Every image is offered our gaze is only presented, in its very obviousness, by means of the disconcerting economy of paradoxes that are always tied up with other paradoxes. Every image is offered only as a maddening, often sublime, intensity of simultaneous contradictions, a meeting of heterogeneous orders that move unhindered between thing-representations and word-representations. But in this “freedom” of imaginary associations, we have to recognize a true fact of structure, where every image becomes clear only in passing within view of all the others, however disparate or dissemblant they are among themselves. –Georges Didi-Huberman Nathan Hylden: Affinities, Paul Kasmin Gallery, New York, NYposted October 10th, 2009
Nathan Hylden, Untitled, 2009 October 1-31, 2009 Paul Kasmin Gallery presents “Affinities,” a show that juxtaposes new paintings by Nathan Hylden with works by Josef Albers, Frank Stella and Andy Warhol. Curated by Meredith Darrow, the show connects Hylden’s geometric forms and repeated gestures with those of his art historical predecessors. Like Albers, Stella and Warhol, Hylden uses a regulated process to create variations within a systematic sequence and to continue Modern Art’s redefinition of pictoral space. Starting with a stack of identically sized aluminum panels, Hylden adds layers of paint and ink to these reflective surfaces, changing the order of operations for each panel. As the series progresses, older panels are used in the creation of newer ones— for example, vertical bands of white paint bridge the borders of separate panels, forming an indexical link between these individual works within the larger series. Another unifying motif presents itself in the screen-printed image of a one-to-one photograph of a blank canvas hanging on a wall. Hylden deliberately chose the loaded notion of a “blank canvas” to evoke long-standing concerns about the relationships between the illusory depth of an image and its physical support. Grounding itself in Albers’s pure geometry, Stella’s insistence on the potential of formal abstraction, and Warhol’s interest in serialized imagery, Hylden extends the conversation to the next generation of artists and viewers. Nathan Hylden was born in 1978 in Fergus Falls, Minnesota, and currently lives and works in Los Angeles, California. He studied at the Art Center in Pasadena and at the Städelschule in Frankfurt/Main. His works have been shown in several international group exhibitions, as well as solo exhibitions at Richard Telles Fine Art in Los Angeles, Misako & Rosen in Tokyo, Art: Concept in Paris and Johann König in Berlin. Meredith Darrow is an independent curator living and working in New York City. Drawing Sculpture: Drawing, Sculpture, Video from the Daimler Art Collection, Daimler Contemporary, Berlin, Germanyposted October 9th, 2009
Installation view September 12, 2009 – February 28, 2010 ‘Drawing Sculpture’ is presenting a selection from the Daimler Art Collection’s wide-ranging holdings of works on paper for the first time, complemented by sculptures, videos and picture objects. About 60 works by 28 artists are being shown, dating from about 1960 to the present day. In each case the presentation will stage dialogues between classical Minimalist positions from the 1960s and international contemporary art. The exhibition is not addressing drawing as a tool for sketches and preliminary stages leading to actual works of art, but presenting it above all as an independent and potentially creative medium. Drawing’s conceptual possibilities resulted from developments in the course of the 20th century, especially in connection with the move away from figurative to abstract art. Here the changed perception of the work of art not as a completed unit but that of art as a process has an important part to play. One further aspect addressed by ‘Drawing Sculpture’ shows drawing’s potential for working in three-dimensions. Again and again it is sculptors who exploit drawing’s ability to explore an exciting relationship between line, surface and three-dimensional presence, and who have paid attention to the creative function of line in outline and internal structure, in other words to disegno. Drawing in the present perception of art, also includes work that has been produced not by classical drawing but as a working process, and that suggests the essential character of drawing as the origin of order and structure, and its quality as a sensual and tactile expressive form. The concept of dialogue between works from different periods and styles will be drawn into focus once more, and taken outside the exhibition gallery by a special exhibition called ‘Auke, Giorgio, Ignaz & Oskar’. The Dutch sculptor Auke de Vries has chosen works from the collections at Daimler, the Gemäldegalerie and the Bode Museum in Berlin and the Staatsgalerie Stuttgart. These will strike up a conversation, as originals or large-format photographs, with de Vries’s sculptures, which are both abstract and richly allusive in their motifs. The artistic dialogues can be seen at Daimler Contemporary and at Bode Museum in Berlin. Participating Artists: Portrait of the artist as a biker, Centre National d’Art Contemporain de Grenoble, Grenoble, Franceposted October 9th, 2009
Steven Parrino, Untitled, 1993 October 11, 2009 – January 3, 2010 The MAGASIN is starting its season with a portrait of the artist Olivier Mosset. The exhibition takes the form of a tribute, gathering works by different artists, but never showing Olivier Mossetʼs own work. The artists are of all generations, from Carl André to Stéphane Kropf including the famous group of artists 1m3 among the youngest. As a key figure of the artistic scene and part of a family with the same artistic sensitivity, Olivier Mosset keeps close links with them. He collects or swaps works with them. He has today gathered an important collection, most of which was offered to the Musée des beaux-arts de La Chaux-de-Fonds. Other works are to be found at the MAMCO in Geneva, the Consortium in Dijon and in Tucson. The exhibition aims at drawing a portrait of the artist through a series of rooms organized around different specific subjects. A first room will introduce his roots, with Chardinʼs engravings (given each year by his grandfather to his colleagues), or Gregoire Müllerʼs portrait. Another one will highlight portraits of Olivier Mosset with Steven Parrinoʼs photographs of him and acrylic paintings by Walter Steding. Another room will reveal quotations, borrowings and copies (from Hugo Pernet in particular). The following rooms will show monochrome paintings, floor-based works, and the indestructible link between Olivier Mosset and the bikers world. Participating Artists: Anselm Reyle: Monochrome Age, Gagosian Gallery, New York, NYposted September 25th, 2009
Installation view September 17 – October 24, 2009 Gagosian Gallery announces “Monochrome Age,” Anselm Reyle’s first solo exhibition with the gallery. Reyle finds inspiration in his immediate environment, from the typical socialist architecture that dominates much of the landscape of post-war Germany to the flea-market finds that signify the march of global capitalism. Conflating all manner of extant social artifact with motifs from the annals of recent art history, he imbues them with new vigor and decorative allure. He works with found objects from diverse cultural backgrounds, treating and displaying them equivalently and without further comment. By reifying the cast-off material culture that surrounds him, he indicates its shifting signification in a country that has had such seismic effects on the social and political developments of the twentieth century. In his first major institutional survey at the Kunsthalle Zurich in 2006, provocatively entitled “Ars Nova,” Reyle pointed to his interest in the epochal concept, a moment in time elected as the origin of a particular era. In the sequel “Monochrome Age,” he offers a synthesis of modernism thoroughly subsumed together with the oppositional austerity of Arte Povera through his use of color (monochrome) and the specular power of reflective surfaces (chrome) as derivated from humble materials. White Earth (2009) reinterprets the neutral kaolin surface of Piero Manzoni’s Achromes as a shiny, lacquered surface, the result of several elaborate production processes, while the physical ambiguity of the cast aluminum paintings is central to a reconsideration of the abstract sublime. Reyle has designed “Monochrome Age” to create vistas in the vast white spaces of Gagosian Gallery Chelsea punctuated by pure color or pure reflectivity in the form of huge monolithic sculptures that embody his preoccupations with monumentality, economy of means, seduction, and desire. Eternity, a large, plinth-mounted sculpture directly inspired by an African tchotchke found in a local flea market, is enlarged then rendered to the point of fetishistic obsession using a lacquered patina normally reserved for cars. With a nod to Andy Warhol’s transcendent Silver Clouds (1966), Straw Bales attests to an ongoing belief in the alchemical potential of banal materials whilst evoking diverse narratives, from the agrarian conditions of pre-industrial life to Rumpelstiltskin, the dwarf of German fairy tales who spun straw into gold. The modules comprising the massive works entitled Relief and Philosophy are both derived from design objects that Reyle found on the premises of the East German Robotron computer company. While Relief is “charged” with morphing LEDs to create a mesmerizing Op-Art effect like a giant lava lamp, Philosophy derives its perfect luster from chrome-plating, an industrial technique borrowed from the car industry. The exhibition will coincide with the publication of a fully illustrated monograph published by Dumont, with essays by Laura Hoptman and Jens Asthoff and photographs by Hedi Slimane. Anselm Reyle was born in 1970 in Tübingen, Germany and lives and works in Berlin. His work is featured in the Boros Collection, Berlin; DaimlerChrysler Collection; Rubell Family Collection; and Collection Francois Pinault. Recent solo exhibitions include “Ars Nova” at the Kunsthalle Zurich (2006) and “Licht und Farbe” (light and color) at the Neuer Aachener Kunstverein, Aachen (2004), and “Acid Mothers Temple” at Kunsthalle Tübingen in Germany (2009). Harmonious Life: Interview with Steve Reich, by Dan Fox & Mark Godfrey, Frieze Magazine, October 2006posted July 5th, 2009
Just came across this interview with Steve Reich published in Frieze Magazine back in 2006: “Steve Reich is one of the most important American composers of the past 40 years. With influences including Béla Bartók, Igor Stravinsky, John Coltrane, African drumming, Balinese Gamelan and Hebrew sacred music, Reich’s music has been a major inspiration for subsequent generations of musicians such as Brian Eno, Bang On a Can and Sunn0))). Often misdescribed as ‘minimalist’, Reich’s music is characterized by a complex integration of harmonic invention and rhythmic construction; from groundbreaking early works using multiple tape loops and a rigorous focus on process, through multimedia collaborations with his wife, the artist Beryl Korot, to his recent major compositions for voice and orchestra You Are (Variations) (2004) and Daniel Variations (premiered this autumn). On the occasion of ‘Steve Reich @ 70’, an international series of concerts celebrating the composer’s 70th birthday, Dan Fox and Mark Godfrey talk to him about his music and relationship to visual art Mark Godfrey: From the beginning of your practice there’s been a strong relationship between your music and the visual arts. You were aware of seriality in American art in the mid-1960s, as in the work of Sol LeWitt, for example. However, seriality meant something completely different in terms of the dominant European music of the time. Could you explain a little what the difference is between seriality in music and seriality in visual art? Steve Reich: In serial music the 12-tone series of notes has no harmonic relationship between one note and another, and cannot really be heard as a pattern. Maybe Pierre Boulez could hear it, but this was something most musicians would have to take on faith, not something they could perceive as listeners. Visual serial art was very obviously repeating a given image or varying it in some way that one could walk into a room and immediately grasp it. You see Andy Warhol’s many Mona Lisas, and within five seconds you know you are looking at many Mona Lisas – you don’t have to be given a theory. In my music what I was striving for was something much more connected with American serial art. It was a rejection of European musical seriality…” John M. Armleder: Olivier Mosset New Paintings, Galerie Andrea Caratsch, Zurich, Switzerlandposted March 13th, 2009
Installation view March 7 – March 28, 2009 “I believe the work that is considered to be mine is someone else’s…anybody’s… the whole world. My work is a cultural event, an inevitable event. If all artists were to disappear, art would be produced by others with a different understanding, different means and different materials. As an individual, an artist simply fills a void. He is the means to an end, so that this arrangement, this accumulation of events can be organized.” – John Armleder, “Une sorte de salade russe sans oublier la mayonnaise”, a conversation with Christian Bernard and Françoise Ninghetto, Semaine no. 01. On January 15, 2009, the Galerie Andrea Caratsch in Zurich opened an exhibition showing new works of Olivier Mosset. When it closes on March 7, 2009, John Armleder will open an exhibition with the title Olivier Mosset New Paintings on the same day and in the same place. This exhibition will consist entirely of the preceding one: while the paintings of Olivier Mosset were created by him and while the display in the gallery is exactly the same as the show that closes on March 7, the new exhibition is that of another artist. Although nothing will change, it is With Again (2008), the Galerie Andrea Caratsch already presented an example of a similar aspect of Armleder’s work: an exact replica of the frieze in the large room of the adjacent Kronenhalle restaurant – which leads me to believe that Again (aka Kronenhalle) is the most recent example of a radical strategy of relocation, delegation and sabotage of the legitimacy of authorship – of which Olivier Mosset New Paintings is yet an even more extreme expression. Both projects address the questions of the ready-made, of the artist’s hand, of the exhibition space (and even of the subject of the exhibition itself), of the identity of the object exhibited, of the de- or recontextualization, of theft and appropriation, as well as the question of déjà vu. (1) Since the late 1960s, John Armleder has produced a number of projects – some were realized and some were not – without any physical intervention of the author, which involved the borrowing, without any modification, of a site, a situation, or an event, as the object of an exhibition.(2) This type of practice seems to be of the Zeigeist, and many artists today are guided by similar concerns. Among Armleder’s works, it is worth mentioning the exhibition as artwork, without any other intervention, of a gallery wall (3), and the display of a painting by another artist (4). Other less “passive” interventions partook of the same spirit: for example, repainting a (white) gallery white, while the work of another artist was on exhibit5; displacing a piece of furniture inside a museum (or elsewhere), or his more well-known works from the period between 1960 and 1970 (such as the ones where he served tea to the visitors, or where he invites museum guards to display works of their own choice in their cafeteria, those where he kept the light on after the gallery closed, or where he showed the period between two exhibitions in a gallery.) At the 1976 Biennale de Paris, he displayed toys in his assigned space and instructed the guards to let the children take all of them. As a result, his room was empty one day after the opening and it remained bare for the duration of the exhibition… More recently, a part of Don’t Do It at the Mamco in Geneva (1997) consisted of a number of films shown in real time on monitors and displaying a canvas mounted in a frame elsewhere in the museum, without the slightest intervention of the artist (who neither personally made the films, nor select the canvases to be filmed). Some of these works were initiated by his collaboration with the Ecart group or other artists with whom the group maintained ties (in The same spirit lives in several of the artist’s publications, such as Steal These Books (2 Times) from One Star Press (2003) where he asked that a facsimile of the publisher’s current catalogue be published as an art book. A more recent association with the new show at Andrea Caratsch in Zurich is John Armleder’s exhibition at Le Parvis in Tarbes in 2008. It involved an exact reproduction of the one he had presented in the same space in 1997, Peintures Murales 1967-1997. He does not consider this to be a re-actualization, but rather “a new exhibition, simply consisting of identical works, in this case murals – where the exhibition itself is to be viewed as a work of art“ (6). Olivier Mosset New Paintings is the first realization of a project pertaining to this series of works. It follows a simple principle: showing the preceding exhibition as a work of art in itself, and in this case, the exhibition of another artist. Armleder appears to have done this at Gallery Marika Malacorda in the 1970s already, although with one of his own exhibitions – a sort of prolongation in the eyes of the visitor, a new creation in the eyes of the artist. Here in Zurich, some will also view the Mosset display as a prolongation, others will see nothing at all… or the latest deception of a lazy artist. Armleder considers himself to be at least honest and lazy – and he is exceptionally prolific. Appropriation, from Marcel Duchamp to Maurizio Cattelan, and via Elaine Sturtevant, Sherrie Levine, Cindy Sherman or Mike Bidlo is an old battle horse of modern art. While Cattelan, for example, presents it playfully, even farcically, in a specific context, one could assume without a doubt that Sherrie Levine takes quite a different, more radical stance. Armleder, while acting formally, shows no conceptual, political or partisan approach in this kind of work. In fact, he utilizes cooptation like any other tool he may have available in his studio… And he uses it almost coincidentally. There is no intent or purpose. These add-ons develop out of their own volition. They are, in the artist’s mind, “outlets”, and sometimes they are even therapeutic. Armleder believes that the issue of authorship is hackneyed. He goes as far as saying that there is no author. And yet, this exhibition, which grew out of somebody else’s, is his own only by virtue of his custodial signature. It is therefore only his quality as an author, even by appropriating a show as ready-made, which permits John Armleder to show an exhibition that has nothing to do with him. And Armleder’s work Olivier Mosset New Paintings is the logical conclusion of this. One needs to know, however anecdotal this may be, that there was no premeditation of this project. It was, knowingly or unknowingly, not planned at the time the exhibition of Olivier Mosset opened. Any other show at Caratsch could have served the same purpose: Andy Warhol, Giorgio de Chirico, George Condo or Jiri Dokoupil, for example. Would it have produced the same effect? Armleder would maintain that it certainly would; personally, I am not quite as sure… If we assume that the concept is similar, that the means itself is the end, we would tend to agree with the artist; however (to his great displeasure), all his paintings which follow the same principle (Pour Paintings, Puddle Paintings, Dot Paintings, and even his Furniture Sculptures) are not equivalent or even similar. Finally, we detect a hint of ambiguity in the selection of Olivier Mosset: Armleder and Mosset have often exhibited together. Several times in the past, they have been mentioned together by critics, and a certain degree of complicity has occasionally been attributed to them. The choice, with respect to Mosset’s oeuvre, also does not appear to be entirely innocent: It is well known that Mosset painted exactly the same painting about two hundred times between 1966 and 1967, and in 1994, unless we are mistaken, Olivier Mosset gave John Armleder a number of aquatints he considered to be inadequate (thinking that Armleder would doubtlessly use these for packaging materials or something of this nature), and then Armleder published them under the title Olivier’s Rejects (7)… Armleder’s project Olivier Mosset New Paintings was presented to Olivier Mosset almost as a fait accompli, without a doubt because he was not expected to be annoyed, in spite of a practice certainly more relentless, radical, and in Armleder’s opinion, more “authentic”. We still need to understand what we are actually looking at. Let’s think for a moment of the long admired works of great masters, which were suddenly found to be those of other, less renowned artists. Such a painting thus changes, because it was created by somebody else. Nevertheless, the original remains intact. It is not Armleder’s intent to take over Mosset’s paintings. They will remain recent works of Olivier Mosset, as the title suggests. At the most, he appropriates the exhibition of Mosset by prolonging it, and thus making it a new creation, possibly his own. If we go to a shop, mustn’t we at least know what must be weighed? For example, a dealer could sell Armleder’s piece on one side and offer Mosset’s paintings on another. If one goes by the status quo, he would be better off finding one single collector for the whole lot! One must know that Armleder’s conceptual creations of this kind follow the formula of the music score. The piece therefore has a current title, Olivier Mosset New Paintings, but the composition (the reprise of an earlier exhibition) would effectively allow the use of Rembrandt, l’oeuvre tardive or Le mécénat dans les musées de province. In the context of music, an interest often observed in Armleder, one would add the aspect of time. This piece, once it has been realized, is assumed to last a minimum period of time. The artist does not elaborate on these facts, but he appears to prefer a length of time similar to the preceding exhibition. He told me that the prolongation of the earlier exhibition by one single minute would produce a different outcome, as would the remake of another’s artist exhibition at a different point in time (meaning not right on after it) – versions which, incidentally, he considers realizing one day… In an earlier conversation, John Armleder said that he dreamed of one day going to an exhibition and seeing a painting he did not identify and then, reading the label, to find out that it was actually his own. He would therefore have created a work sufficiently removed from his own personality for him to ignore it. Today, in a sort of back flip, a work which is not his own is attributed to him at his own discretion… although he always runs the risk, when visiting his exhibition, of paying more attention to another’s work than his own. The repertoire of the artist (John Armleder) is a work in its own right and allows anybody exposed to it to understand each individual detail separately, his paintings or sculptures, for example, or at least to assess them under a presumably coherent perspective. This is the goal that the Galerie Andrea Caratsch pursues by undertaking to showcase the production of such a versatile artist, avatar after avatar, through a series of quasi-thematic presentations. However, John Armleder has good reasons to play more than one card. He only needs these to shuffle them, from porridge to flan, to pudding and aspic. His affinities with Zen also tell him to turn the gaze inwards as often as possible. And to see nothing. –Willy Parker, Aspen 2009 (1) For other examples of the artist’s work involving other strategies ad-dressing this problem, see the document published by the gallery on the occasion of Again. Carl Ostendarp: Pulled Up: RISD Museum, Providence, Rhode Islandposted February 5th, 2009
Carl Ostendarp, Aaarrgh, 2009 (detail) February 13 – August 23, 2009 The RISD Museum of Art presents Carl Ostendarp, “Pulled Up,” an exhibition in its Lower Farago Gallery that not only borrows its title but also its optimism from the 1977 Talking Heads song of the same name. “Pulled Up” will feature works chosen by the artist from the Museum’s collection together with new paintings of his own. Ostendarp (American, b.1961) has taught and exhibited widely, and his artwork is held in the collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, the Museum of Contemporary Art (Los Angeles), the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Walker Art Center (Minneapolis), and the Whitney Museum of American Art, among other museums. Ostendarp came to the attention of Judith Tannenbaum, the Museum’s Richard Brown Baker curator of contemporary art, when she encountered an installation at Museum für Moderne Kunst in Frankfurt, Germany, called All Tomorrow’s Parties. In this work—which took its name from the 1967 Velvet Underground recording with German singer Nico—Ostendarp presented Pop Art classics by Andy Warhol, Robert Rauschenberg, and others against bright pink walls bordered with red drips. Last year, the Elizabeth Dee Gallery (New York) presented an 18-year retrospective of Ostendarp’s work; a review in the New Yorker described the installation as “tangy conflations of Pop, minimalism, color-field, and cartoons.” After seeing Ostendarp’s work in Frankfurt and New York, Tannenbaum invited him to produce an installation at The RISD Museum. During a visit to view the collections, he was drawn to works on paper by a range of master artists in styles as varied as Dada and Surrealism to Abstract Expressionism, Minimalism, and Pop. In the completed installation, these works from the collection will be juxtaposed with two new paintings by the artist and hung on a two-color, drip-pattern mural designed by Ostendarp and painted by him with the assistance of several RISD graduate students. The works from the collection range from Odilon Redon, Hans Arp, and Joan Miró, to Adolph Gottlieb, Barnett Newman, Roy Lichtenstien, Andy Warhol, John Wesley, and Ed Ruscha, among others. Ostendarp’s work is both cheerful and sly. Typically spare and often including simple biomorphic forms or words, his compositions are flooded with flat color. Often inspired by music, Ostendarp will create multi-sensory experience for visitors by playing the Talking Heads 1977 album in the gallery, producing a total experience that invites visitors to see these older pieces in a new light. PROGRAMMING Brandeis University to Close Rose Art Museum and Sell Off Its Collectionposted January 29th, 2009
“The Rose Art Museum on the Brandeis campus houses what is widely recognized as the finest collection of modern and contemporary art in New England. With more than 6,000 objects — paintings, sculptures, works on paper and new media — the Rose collection has particular strengths in American Modernism, American Social Realism, post-War American, Abstract Expressionism, Minimalism, Surrealism and Photorealism. Recent acquisitions include works by Nam June Paik, Anri Sala, William Kentridge, Thomas Demand and Matthew Barney. These names comprise a virtual “who’s who” of art since the 1960s. With its mission to “engage its communities in the experience of modern and contemporary art,” the Rose maintains an active exhibition program, presenting new art while embracing its foundation in historical modern art.” (excerpted from the museum’s web site)
In a move to correct its current operating deficit and shore up its lagging endowment, Brandeis University’s board of trustees recently voted unanimously to close the Rose Art Museum and sell off its collection of art. A few quick thoughts come to mind: 1. Stop treating your museum collection like an ATM machine. Art is not cash.
Recent News Articles Brandeis to sell school’s art collection, by Geoff Edgers and Peter Schworm Brandeis to Sell All of Its Art Outcry Over a Plan to Sell Museum’s Holdings, by Randy Kennedy and Carol Vogel Museum backers seek halt to selloff, Say art should stay at Brandeis, by Geoff Edgers Hawk this gem? Unconscionable, by Sebastian Smee Brandeis may keep art, says president, Reaffirms need to close museum, by Geoff Edgers The Rape of the Rose, by David Bonetti Brandeis on the Brink, by Judith H. Dobrzynski In the Closing of Brandeis Museum, a Stark Statement of Priorities, by Roberta Smith Museum director assails Brandeis’ plans Is the University’s Museum Just a Rose to Be Plucked?, by Daniel Grant Audio Interview with Brandeis University President Jehuda Reinharz, by Tracy Jan Museum Rescue Sought, by Carol Vogel and Randy Kennedy Letter: Brandeis president apologizes for handling of museum issue, by Geoff Edgers
A Letter from the College Art Association (published on January 29, 2009) The College Art Association (CAA) was shocked and dismayed to learn of the decision by BrandeisUniversity to close the Rose Art Museum and sell its entire art collection for operating revenue. CAA supports the Codes of Ethics of the American Association of Museums and the Association of Art Museum Directors, which clearly state that works of art in museum collections are held as a public trust and that any proceeds of sales must only support the acquisition of new works. However, perceiving an entire art collection as a disposable financial asset and then dismantling that collection wholesale to cover other university expenses is deeply troubling for all college and university collections. The closing of the museum at Brandeis will be devastating to the academic community, not only affecting our colleagues at the museum and students and faculty in the Department of Fine Arts, which offers programs in both studio art and art history, but also depriving the entire arts-loving public in New England and around the world. The teaching of art and art history in higher education is untenable without the direct study of physical works of art, and it appears the Brandeis Board of Trustees has disregarded the kind of scholarship and creativity that have been the hallmark of CAA members for nearly one hundred years. According to news reports, neither Brandeis University nor the Rose Art Museum is on the brink of economic collapse, nor are they unable to maintain the collections. Given that no clear explanation has been offered on the school’s financial exigencies, the closure of the Rose Art Museumand the sale of its collection appear to be in violation of professional museum standards and of academic transparency and due process; the decision also demonstrates a lack of academic responsibility and fiduciary foresight. We appeal to the Trustees of Brandeis to revisit and reverse their decision. Paul B. Jaskot Linda Downs
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MINUS SPACE welcomes your input! Comment below. John Weber: In Memoriam (1932-2008)posted May 31st, 2008
Born in Los Angeles in 1932, New Yorker art dealer John Weber had a prominent role in the contemporary art world and was one of the first dealers in Soho in the 70s, leaving his mark on New York’s art scene of that period. Owner of the popular John Weber Gallery, which opened in West Broadway in Soho in 1971, he then moved to Chelsea in the ’90s where he began his rise in the art world. After leaving the Navy, Weber accepted a job at the Dayton Art Institute as member of the curatorial staff. Later he attended the Institute of Fine Arts at New York University and worked for the Martha Jackson Gallery in New York. He then made the successful move to the Dwan Gallery in Los Angeles, where he was involved in many outstanding shows and worked with artists like Robert Smithson, Walter De Maria, Arman, Yves Klein, Franz Kline, Sol LeWitt, Andy Warhol, Richard Long, Jeff Koons, Joseph Beuys, Hans Haacke and many more, collaborating as well with the Fluxus Group and the Arte Povera movement. (courtesy: Flash Art Magazine) Color Chart: Reinventing Color, 1950-Today, Museum of Modern Art, New York, NYposted February 29th, 2008
Purchase on Amazon.com March 2 — May 12, 2008 Color Chart celebrates a paradox: the lush beauty that results when contemporary artists assign color decisions to chance, readymade source, or arbitrary system. Midway through the twentieth century, long-held convictions regarding the spiritual truth or scientific validity of particular colors gave way to an excitement about color as a mass-produced and standardized commercial product. The Romantic quest for personal expression instead became Andy Warhol’s “I want to be a machine;” the artistry of mixing pigments was eclipsed by Frank Stella’s “Straight out of the can; it can’t get better than that.” Color Chart is the first major exhibition devoted to this pivotal transformation, featuring work by some forty artists ranging from Ellsworth Kelly and Gerhard Richter to Sherrie Levine and Damien Hirst. Small Differences Make All the Difference, by Lynne Harlowposted August 20th, 2007
In his series of lectures, Pictures of Nothing: Abstract Art since Pollock, Kirk Varnedoe asks tough questions. Why abstract art? What is abstract art good for? These questions, the topic of his six lectures, are familiar. It seems to me that they are asked, and in a sense answered, every time an artist makes an abstract work. They are the questions that artists ask as we wrestle with the history of abstraction and as we work to move abstraction forward. And for artists making abstract work now, Pictures of Nothing is necessary reading. The 2006 publication of these lectures, given as the National Gallery of Art’s Mellon Lectures in 2003, offers the many of us who could not attend the talks access to his clear, concise, deeply informed and often funny examination of the art of the last fifty years. The discussion of abstraction begins, after a very brief summary of the early 20th Century, with the 1950s – the Cold War and Abstract Expressionism. While it progresses to 2003 in a fairly linear chronology, Varnedoe also moves sideways, describing the significance of multiple and seemingly contradictory things happening at once.
James Turrell, A Frontal Passage, 1994 Pop Art and Minimalism emerging from the same moment. Frank Stella making paintings that are equal parts Pollock and Johns. Agnes Martin and Robert Ryman make quiet, subtle works that appear similar but are worlds apart. Although Varnedoe is forced, in the interest of time, to omit many artists and works that could have been included, he’s not working in art historical generalities. He’s looking at specific ideas, moments and relationships. With regard to this he says, “Epochs do not have essences, history does not work by all-governing unities, and works of art in their quirkiness tend to resist generalities.”
Frank Stella, The Marriage of Reason and Squalor, II, 1959 As he leads us through de Kooning, Johns, Judd, Kelly, Lichtenstein, Warhol, Hesse, De Maria, Turrell, Halley, Richter, Marden and Serra (and many others), Varnedoe keeps an emphasis on experience and our responses to the very particular details of a piece. Small differences, he says, make all the difference. Whether it’s how we experience the work directly or how the work relates to our experiences in the world, he ties the art to our personal encounters. Through this he builds his argument that abstraction isn’t grounded in something universal. Rather it’s based on responses that are our own. Subjective. Individual. It’s this, a culture that coheres because it values independence, that abstraction offers us. In Varnedoe’s words, “This is why abstract art, and modern art in general, being based on subjective experience and open-ended interpretation, is not universal or the culmination of anything in history but the contingent phenomena of a modern, secular, liberal society.”
Donald Judd, Untitled, 1968 Varnedoe concludes with a reference to the faith that abstract art requires. As he describes it, “Not a faith in absolutes, not a religious kind of faith. A faith in possibility, a faith not that we will know something finally, but a faith in not knowing…” His faith, his unwavering belief in abstract art is present in every word of these lectures and it’s what makes his insights and arguments so extraordinary. A modern, secular, liberal society. That’s something to have faith in.
Lynne Harlow is a New York City-based artist. She will present a project at MINUS SPACE project space in December 2007. Kirk Varnedoe. Pictures of Nothing: Abstract Art since Pollock. Foreword by Earl A. Powell III, preface by Adam Gopnik. Princeton and Oxford, Princeton University Press, 2006. Conceptual Photography: 1964-1989, Zwirner & Wirth, New York, NYposted May 11th, 2007
Guiseppe Penone, To Reverse One’s Eyes, 1970 May 9 — June 23, 2007 Zwirner & Wirth presents an exhibition of American and European conceptual photography drawn from a private collection. Spanning the years 1964-1989, the collection, which has been amassed over the last three decades, includes key examples of photo-based conceptual art by artists such as Vito Acconci, Giovanni Anselmo, John Baldessari, Bernd & Hilla Becher, Mel Bochner, Hans Breder, Marcel Broodthaers, Peter Campus, Robert Cumming, Valie Export, Fischli & Weiss, Dan Graham, Birgit Jürgenssen, Barry Le Va, Sol LeWitt, Robert Mapplethorpe, Ana Mendieta, Bruce Nauman, Meret Oppenheim, Hélio Oiticica, Giulio Paolini, Giuseppe Penone, Sigmar Polke, Richard Prince, Charles Ray, Allen Ruppersberg, Lucas Samaras, Laurie Simmons, Andy Warhol, and others. Interview with Linda Francis, by Matthew Delegetposted December 1st, 2004
The following interview was published on MINUS SPACE in December 2004 in conjunction with Linda Francis’ spotlight exhibition.
Matthew Deleget: I would like to begin our interview with a brief discussion of your background. You were born and raised in New York City (The Bronx). What was you first contact with the arts? Was visual art something that was understood and supported?
Linda Francis: At the time, one could get a decent education in public schools because there was still a social contract between government and the individual. Arts programs were not much in evidence though, but I do remember that my inattention very often landed me in the art room.
MD: You came of age during the mid sixties. What made you decide to study at Hunter College? Was your focus always on art?
LF: I didn’t go directly into college from high school. I really had no idea of what to do with my life. Finally, when I did go, I intended to major in the sciences, specifically biology and chemistry. I went to Hunter simply because it was a good school and free. I was able to work a couple of days a week to get by. One depressing New York City winter evening, I passed an art supply store on my way home. It was all lit up and somehow I thought to try to make a painting. Really it was like being hit by lightning. It seemed as though I had been looking hard at things all my life and didn’t know it. I transferred to the art department, which was run by Gene Goossen. A relatively small group of artists were teaching. I was so fortunate to have been there then — it was a wonderful time for the faculty. They were developing their ideas and beginning to exhibit them. The excitement was palpable. During that time Tony Smith had his first big show of sculpture in Bryant Park and MOMA mounted an exhibition called The Art of The Real curated by Goossens.
MD: You did your MA at Hunter where you studied with Tony Smith, among others. How did he teach? What were his major concerns in the classroom? How did he impact your development (or not)? What did you leave with?
LF: The program was small and intense. The same people taught undergraduate and graduate classes. I continued on to the graduate school because of Tony. My memories were generally of a one-to-one dialogue when he came around to my studio. We talked and talked, mostly about science. We always discussed the latest issue of Scientific American since we both regularly read it. Smith was kicking around mapping ideas like the ‘four color’ problem. For him there was no better way to engage the issue of flatness in painting. He had worked with Buckminster Fuller and was very involved with his ideas. We read D’Arcy Thompson’s On Growth and Form, which proved to be the book that probably had the most lasting influence on my thinking. At the time, I was painting sort of sci-fi looking things with color arrayed as that seen through a prism. Tony used to tease me saying that I didn’t want to paint, I wanted to make magic. A few of us would often go out to Donohues bar after school hours and continue our discussions into the night. At some point Tony would open his beloved dog-eared copy of Ulysses and read aloud. After I graduated, I remember dropping in to visit him at Hunter one night. I tried to enter the room with the least possible disturbance as class was underway, but he spotted me. Tony turned around and fixed me with his profound stare, said something to the effect that he was glad to see me, and commenced reading Ulysses to the class for the rest of the hour.
MD: Who else at Hunter left an impression on you – faculty, etc.?
LF: Ray Parker, who had the sharpest eye for composition and detail in a painting. Lyman Kipp, an utter iconoclast. Bob Morris whose work could be understood by the assignments he gave in class. Ron Gorchov, Vinnie Longo, Ursula Meyer. I was never in Doug Ohlson’s class, but we became friends. I remember watching him hang his first show at Fischbach one night with Jane Kaufman and Tony looking on. I also have a memory of Twyla Tharp trying out a very beginning work performed for a small group of us at Hunter. It featured her husband, painter Bob Huot, a decidedly non-dancer. I took every class Leo Steinberg gave. Each lecture was an object of pure beauty.
MD: Who were some of the artists that you admired during this time. Were there any specific exhibitions or events that left an impact on your thinking and process?
LF: At the time there were allot of ‘happenings’.The idea of ‘performance’ was being developed along with improvisational dance. It was as though painting had relinquished some of its theater and became more a secret, alchemical process. There was a very amazing evening at the Armory with (I think) Kaprow, Rauschenberg, Morris, and Rainer. I was very interested in Cage’s ideas too and remember making a poster for a concert by him in Town Hall. I was reading Causality and Chance in Modern Physics by David Bohm and Louis DeBroglie. To me it was metaphysics. I loved contemporary music and did some performance myself in Town Hall and later at the University of New Hampshire with composer Gregory Reeve. To his Red Gongs scored for orchestra and two percussion sections, I made an immense blacklight painting on mylar with a brush wired for sound. Thinking about music led me to make some boxes that radiated light and some that radiated smoke. It was as if all absolutes gave way to the experimental. Heisenberg’s Uncertainty perversely fueled the perception that anything was possible. It was also a time when a strong humanistic sense prevailed. I remember being part of the March on Washington for Civil Rights and some time later part of the Art Workers’ Coalition, an artists’ movement in support of peace and democratic ideals. Some of the artists whose work I looked at with interest then were Matta, Lee Bontecou, Larry Poons, Jasper Johns, and Arakawa.
MD: After graduating from Hunter, you lived in Tribeca (downtown Manhattan) during the 1970s and 1980s. Tell me about the artists you hung around with and the places you frequented. Where did you go to see challenging work?
LF: It was a real community. Tribeca wasn’t “Tribeca”. Mostly everyone knew each other. Everyone went to each other’s studios, always visited, stopped in the street to talk, went to have a beer. There were many empty spaces, in Soho as well, and people used them to mount ad hoc shows, have events. The Tribeca milieu sort of resisted commerce. There were very few galleries in Soho then and none further downtown. Holly Solomon and Paula Cooper were first in Soho, I think. Bob Kushner and Tommy Schmidt were friends who were showing with Holly. Food restaurant was going strong. I remember seeing a performance by Joseph Beuys at Rene Block’s space. John Weber, Leo Castelli and Ileana Sonnabend opened at some point. Mel Bochner was doing wall paintings then. I remember he was the first artist I asked to come over to my studio to formally look at work. Walker’s was a basic burger bar which often took work in exchange for a tab. The Delphi known affectionately as “the Greek’s” was the one place where everyone met when a real dinner was needed. Brad Davis and Daisy Youngblood lived in my building. The door to my loft said “American Ballbearing Co.” Across the street was Suzie Harris and Gene Highstein, Keith Sonnier. Within a radius of a few blocks were David Reed, Judy Rifka, Richard Nonas, Susan Rothenberg, Ronnie Bladen, and many, many terrific artists. I saw Jon and Joanne Hendricks. There were Fluxus things going on. 105 Hudson Street was an office building with rooms that people started to use for exhibitions. I remember seeing a Louise Bourgeois sculpture there. She was relatively unknown then. Some time later The Dia Foundation bought the building and converted it for use by their artists. Hal Bromm opened a gallery in his loft on Beech Street, which he later moved to Chambers Street. The collectors Milton Brutten and Helen Herrick were often there. Hal did some terrific shows and put together many artists. It was there that I first met critics Tiffany Bell, Carrie Rickey and poet David Shapiro. Creative Time began a series of summer installations called Art on the Beach on the landfill, which extended the west side into the Hudson River.
MD: Between 1976 and 1980, you had 5 solo exhibitions and participated in several group shows at Hal Bromm Gallery. What issues concerned you at the time, arts-related or not?
LF: Hal’s gallery was a big part of the art scene in Tribeca. It was really an extension of the neighborhood and reflected its character. He showed many European artists too and did really nice group shows with all of us. All were involved with the abstract. My first show at Hal’s in 1976 was works on paper. One wall of 60 x 45 inch drawings, geometric structures using crayon on vellum, and on the opposite wall, brush drawings, which I did to relieve my wrist between crayon drawings. At the time I found mechanical ideas like Sol Lewitt’s art by proxy drawing interesting, but the pronouncement that ’painting was dead’ for the millionth time bored me. The work I liked had an eye for ‘phenomena’ as opposed to the programmatic exclusivities of the Minimalists. Transparency of process was important to me, as I guess it was with them, but, for me, it was only about understanding. I was particularly wary of the ’signature’ styles that were everywhere in evidence in Minimal art. It seemed to me that there was a great deal of work, which was defeated by its own program. I thought this work had the style of meaning, but very little intrinsic meaning. I was not opposed to style as a subject, but the Warhol direction was not for me. I admired Bob Grosvenor’s work. He seemed to me to be one of a very few who was capable of engaging his materials in a totally poetic, but rigorous way. We met when I showed in Paris in 1978 at Gislain Mollet-Vieville et J. P. Najar at the same time that he was showing at Eric Fabre. During that time we also met Yve Alain Bois who was editing the critical magazine Macula with Jean Clay. I was in Paris in 1977 too as the guest of Jean Paul Najar. I met many of the young French artists, but especially remember painter Christian Bonnefoi who took me over to Gallerie Jean Chauvelin to see a fantastic show of Russian Constructivist art. We went afterwards to the Chauvelin’s country house where we met the painter Martin Barre.
MD: During 1977 and 1978, you participated in two group exhibitions and a solo show at P.S.1, one of the first spaces in the country exclusively showing contemporary art and a defining force in the alternative space movement. What was happening there at the time of your exhibitions? What projects did you realize there?
LF: P.S.1 was a wonderful old brick and sandstone building in very bad condition. Alana Heiss had a marvelous vision for the place and it began functioning as soon as the doors were able to be open. The most successful works in the beginning were those that somehow dealt with the wrecked walls and the crumbling spaces. Most of the spaces were school rooms. In keeping with that, I mounted certain papers on the wall, the blackboard, and asked four painters to do something with them. I collaborated with poet Stephen Paul Miller. I had a painting in a large exhibition called simply A Painting Show. It was one of the first shows in the newly fabricated gallery space. The exhibition brought together most of the abstract painters working downtown at the time. There was a companion exhibition A Sculpture Show.
MD: In 1980 you designed some sets for “Harrisburg Mon Amour” by David Shapiro and Stephen Paul Miller with Taylor Mead at The Kitchen in New York. How did you get involved with this project?
LF: I went out by bus to Kutztown a few times with Stephen Paul Miller to make a print with him at James Carroll’s project space at the college. We met John Cage there who was making a print too. We all contributed to his print — my contribution was a coffee cup ring. The bus route ended up in Harrisburg, the site of the Three Mile Island nuclear disaster. Recording one of their bus trips to the college, Stephen and David used the distant reactor stacks at Harrisburg as a counterweight to their two-hour conversation about anything and everything. Taylor performed the verbatim script. He read on until sense was overwhelmed by inanity and began throwing unread pages away in exasperation. Taylor was the perfect tragic comic. Laurie Anderson did the music. I made some very large backcloths with giant atomic bugs on them. The whole thing was a kind of hapless shriek.
MD: In 1981 you participated in the exhibition “Drawing Distinctions, American Drawing of the Seventies,” which originated at the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Copenhagen and traveled throughout Europe. How did this show come about? How did the show’s curator, Alfred Kren, define what was distinctive about Americans drawing? Who else was included in the show? What was the response?
LF: I met Alfred at Hal’s. It was in 1977 during a group show called Moving. I was doing a big drawing on the gallery wall that changed over time and required me to do successive overlays at night when no one was in the gallery. Unbeknownst to me, Alfred, newly arrived from Germany, was staying there and watched me do the large free-hand arc. He loved drawing. It united information and painting. It was taking up more and more space in the canon. In Europe it was still mostly seen as studies or notes, although there were some terrific exceptions in the work of Francois Morellet, Henri Michaux, and Norwegian artist Jan Groth. Some of the artists in the drawing show were Artschwager, Borofsky, Grosvenor, Le Va, Lundberg, Sandback, Shapiro, Sonnier, and Tuttle. There was a very good essay by Carter Ratcliff in the catalog. Drawing is by its nature more intimate and I think Alfred was looking for the definition of self in them. Yet these works were independent of other objects. They were complete and self-referential in the same way as is painting or sculpture. His view was not encyclopedic, although it encompassed a plurality of ideas. He saw the common underlying imperatives. He was interested in my work for the way in which it positioned the “given” against the “interpreted.” In 1979, I made a breakthrough to the subjects and methods that continue in my work now. I began making work that took information — photographs of galaxies and nebulae — and attempted to recreate the images by using analogous processes. The goal was knowledge. The press in the countries to which the show traveled were interested in Alfred’s thesis. The German press was somewhat skeptical though for a number of reasons, but I think largely because there was a growing consciousness that contemporary “German“ art was driven by different realities than contemporary “American” art. The curators at the Stadtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus in Munich were very excited by the show, however, and made that very plain to me when I was there. I really liked meeting Arnulf Rainer there too and was impressed by his comments.
MD: Your work has been shown quite a bit in Europe, primarily in France and Denmark, but also in Germany, Switzerland, Norway, and Italy. Do you think the kind of work you make is better understood there than here in the United States? What do you perceive are the differences?
LF: Perhaps not better understood, just better valued. But abstract art is more significant to Europeans. They see it as a lasting language, after all it was invented there. Perhaps it is viewed less as a material enterprise. I don’t really know. Here it’s much like jazz and blues. That is to say, it’s the giant in the room that one sees when one is able to get enough distance.
MD: Let shift our discussion now to talking about your work – where it comes from and how you make it. Your work over the past 25 years has stemmed from a personal dialogue with science, particularly the laws of physics and astronomy. How did you initially arrive at this subject?
LF: I always was interested in the sciences. There is great beauty in the ideas and concepts about the physical world. Sometimes I see them as rational metaphors for the irrational. It is probably not possible for me to be involved in society in a more obvious way. I don’t admire it all that much.
MD: Every article or review I’ve read about your work tries to either prove or disprove your use of science, how your work is a manifestation of science or how it is not. Do you employ a scientific process in the studio –i.e., hypothesis, experimentation, and conclusion? Do you welcome this ongoing critical discussion of your work?
LF: I suppose the way in which I work admits to what one might call conjecture. For example, I ask myself questions like this — if everything is made out of atoms and atoms are always moving then what would a stable form look like? Or more precisely, how could a stable form arise? My working method is a kind of experimentation. That is, I limit the variables in the work so I can see if some transformation occurs as a result of my operations. As for science, per se, I am most obviously not a scientist and feel happy when I am able to understand the things that I try to read. My work is really intuition even though I think that it pertains to some of the ideas in cosmology, string theory and the like. In 1982, I did a show in Copenhagen of very large drawings, in which I attempted to pick out the structures embedded in certain spiral galaxies. I called the show The Order of Chaos mostly because I thought it funny that the word ‘chaos’ is defined as ‘disorder’. I had been reading Pirogine’s description of chaos, which really pointed out how orderly it is. Predictability is a different case.
MD: Have you had the opportunity in the past to show and discuss your work with actual scientists, not just artists and writers. How have they responded to your work? How has their response differed?
LF: I have not spoken enough to the scientists with whom I imagine I would like to have a conversation. I’ve been shy about it, but would love to have the opportunity. My work does have an admirer in a German biologist though who can understand the work from the standpoint of what he sees through an electron microscope. Many years ago, in a fit of illumination, I phoned the string theorist Abhay Ashtekar and went on about baseballs and motion in all directions at once. He just nicely asked me to send him some pictures, which, of course, I was then too embarrassed to do. There have been a couple of very positive responses from mathematicians who are familiar with the arts and are able to decode my quirky relationship to numbers and space. I felt particularly good when one of them recognized ‘the three body problem’ in a drawing.
MD: Are there other sides to your work or process that are deliberate and obvious to you that viewers rarely or never pick up on?
LF: I think one would have to know or understand the possibilities to which I am alluding in order to know or get pleasure out of seeing the impossibilities that come up in the work. Yve-Alain Bois is the one person who has talked about that aspect of it.
MD: Supersymmetry – a concept straight out of physics – is probably the best point of entry into your working process. Dealer Nicholas Davies described it clearest in relation to your work stating “every fundamental particle of matter possesses a ‘shadow’ particle, as yet unobserved, which holds a force, and vice versa.” Your work exemplifies the principals of matter and force. Please explain.
LF: When I first started using chalk and eraser in the seventies, I thought of the chalk as matter and the eraser as force. I understood that the way to account for form or mass was to look at force. The character of the form depends upon the type of force exerted upon it. That is how I was able to make chaotic patterns by moving around chalk with eraser in certain curved trajectories. Supersymmetry is a two-paneled painting, in which I tried to show how the same structure might look quite different depending upon what elements were visible in each case. That is actually an idea which informs most of my work.
MD: The appearance of your work can vacillate between the macrocosmic and the subatomic simultaneously. How important are these shifts in perception, these exponential shifts in scale?
LF: They are very important and I fully intend them.
MD: You’ve consistently used a geometric vocabulary in your work – aggregations of circles, ellipses, triangulations, quatrefoils, and pentagons, as well as arcs, waves, and spirals. Straight(ish) lines haven’t made an appearance in your work in the last 25 years, except in the rectilinear edges of your papers or panels. Tell me about the shapes, structures, and systems you use.
LF: The structures that I use come out of motion in curved space and the idea that every point on a curve is the same point. You can sort of see the possibility for time travel when you look at a spiral galaxy and see the arms propelled symmetrically from the center, but corkscrewed in opposite directions. From the time that I first looked at a photo of the great nebula in Andromeda, I knew that symmetry and curved space were what I wanted to explore. I understood that three dimensions were a kind of brain trick to enable us to orient our bodies in space and to be able to move through it. At the same time, I was aware that everything depends upon how we decode information — that flatness in painting is not any more real than three-dimensional constructs are. I remember looking at a Ryman and thinking that it didn’t matter if the three little screws on the surface were dots or holes or photographs, or whether one was looking at a painting that took pains to be read as a wall on a wall and actually was seeing, of necessity, windows. ‘Flatness’ for its own sake was not interesting. Those things, which add an element of psychological dilemma to reason, interest me. One thing I have been doing for the last ten years is equating a line drawn anywhere on a sphere with an edge or silhouette. The painting Pentagon is a good example of that. Also, Two Hexagons. This idea started with some drawings I showed in 1997 that came from thinking about the wobble of the earth in orbit and wondering whether one could actually translate that into a “flat” drawing. I did that in the drawing Equatorial Precession and a number of others. That was one of the drawings reproduced in Michael Brennan’s review of the show on Artnet.com.
MD: Smearing and erasing play a central role in your vocabulary as well. To me, they signal motion, vibration, resonance, or flux. Is this the reading you intend?
LF: Yes, but that is, however, the by-product of making and unmaking form.
MD: Do you see your work as entropic?
LF: No. That is, not as in the classical definition of entropy.
MD: Do you see your work as ironic or pessimistic?
LF: Absolutely not.
MD: Your drawings are almost always chalk on paper and are large in scale. Do you make preparatory studies for your drawings? How do you make a drawing?
LF: It would defeat my purpose to make studies. Really the drawings are a crap shoot. I most often don’t know what structure will come up. That is why I set limits in advance — a grid of spheres or circles for example. And then anything at all can happen.
MD: What role does the white paper ground play in the equation with science?
LF: A continuum. Or a convention — a piece of paper I can use to show you something.
MD: Although your works are largely black and white, you sometimes use specific key colors, such as red and blue. What are your concerns regarding color?
LF: Matisse said that you can tell a colorist by their use of black and white. It has been hard to see a use for color because my interest, for the most part, is in the structure. It seems that most color is either too naturalistic or too decorative. I use color when I think I can unite it with the structure, or when it can function as black or gray, or when I need to differentiate some part as one would with a word.
MD: Recently, you began making paintings again. Your paintings are exclusively oil on panel, which is undoubtedly a much slower process than your drawings. How do your paintings relate to your drawings, or not? What do they share in common? How are they different?
LF: I guess the activity of painting as opposed to drawing causes me to work differently. I am very aware of the architecture of the panels, the orientation of the horizontals and verticals in relation to external architecture, the palpability of the paint, the objecthood of the whole enterprise. I use a lot of diamonds because the oblique edge confounds conventional gravity-oriented space and seems to posit an endlessness. I like to play with their measurements against those of squares. I make a lot of what could be read as diagrams. The structures I paint take into account the same givens as in the drawings and are, I hope, shown to the same net effect. Certainly the conclusions are the same.
MD: Your work, in general, seems to lie almost outside the realm of space/time, frozen snapshots of a cosmic continuum. In this respect, your work is a rigorous depiction of reality. Of course, not based on what we see, but rather based on what we know is true, proven through scientific inquiry. Do you think it’s fair to interpret your work as representational — yes, in the traditional sense, albeit from a completely different perspective?
LF: I remember once telling a realist that I was a realist too, if that is what you mean. But I was just joking. As in relationship to the idea of verisimilitude, it would be nice.
MD: Another interesting interpretation of your work was included in the review of your solo exhibition at Condeso/Lawler Gallery in 1997. Painter/writer Michael Brennan wrote “these drawings are elemental, not Minimal, nor reductive, and they function at the building block level of knowledge…they are constructed outside of any conventional rectilinear idea of art.” How does your work belong to art? How does it belong to science? Are issues of aesthetics part of your thinking, or not? Can scientific information be aesthetic?
LF: I was elated when I read that review. It was what I had hoped for in the work and was grateful that someone could perceive it that way and describe it so clearly. I don’t really know how the work belongs to art or science. I think of aesthetics — yes. But the best thing anyone can say to me is that the work is elegant. Perhaps in aesthetics that’s bad, but in science that is beautiful.
MD: I would like to talk to you for a moment about your solo exhibition – “Linda Francis: quanta” – currently on view at the University of Alabama, which features a lot of your recent work. How did you structure the show? Which works did you include in it? What ideas were you trying to convey? How did you arrive at the title?
LF: Quanta are units or parts. I like to think the work does some quantifying. I suggested that we choose work that pointed up the relationship between the paintings and drawings. I’ve actually never had the opportunity to do that before because I work from a whole a priori conception that generates lots of simultaneous forms and ideas. I don’t think linearly. I’ve noticed anyway that the idea of a ’series,’ which stems from Newman’s work, is often perverted to justify a commercial design exercise. There were seven paintings in the show and ten drawings. We started with some work from 1997 and included work from almost each year up to 2004. Most of the older work had been shown in NYC, but three paintings and five drawings had never been shown before. |
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