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Douglas Witmer: Fruitville, Some Walls, Oakland, CAposted June 20th, 2010
Douglas Witmer, Fruitville June 20 – July 25, 2010 Some Walls is pleased to present Philadelphia-based artist Douglas Witmer’s exhibition Fruitville. Douglas Witmer is well known for his paintings which intuitively combine simple geometric imagery, emphatic color, and subtle manipulation of surface physicality. In addition to this widely-shown and growing body of work, for the past several years Witmer has worked on a series small three dimensional pieces using found wood as a support called Fruitville. This exhbition is the first time the Fruitville works have been shown publicly. Witmer has said about this series: “The Fruitville Pike is a road where I grew up in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. It’s a major thoroughfare, but it doesn’t go to, from, or through anywhere called Fruitville. My efforts to find Fruitville, if there ever was such a place at all, have been inconclusive.” So Fruitville exists in my imagination as a kind of Eden; a place of purity, clarity, and quiet delight. It manifests itself in an ongoing visual process of experimentation with wood, paint, glue, paper, ink, light, and shadows. The things that make up my Fruitville exist to be in relationship to the places where they can be seen, and also in relationship with each other. The sensitive, direct, and quirky color, spatial, and textural qualities that appear in Witmer’s paintings and works on paper are also found in the Fruitville series, continuing his approach to making art that is lush, playful, and deceptively simple, yet rigorous, iconic, and commanding. Some Walls is a curatorial and writing art project in a private home in Oakland, California. Some Walls is open by appointment only. To view the exhibition online please visit somewalls.com. To schedule a visit, or for more information, please contact Chris Ashley at info@somewalls.com. Escape from New York, Curated by Matthew Deleget, The Engine Room, Massey University, Wellington, New Zealandposted April 22nd, 2010
Mark Dagley, Final Sequence, 2007 April 22 – May 8, 2010 The Engine Room MINUS SPACE is delighted to announce the group exhibition Escape from New York at The Engine Room, Massey University, Wellington, New Zealand, from April 22 – May 8, 2010. Curated by Matthew Deleget, the exhibition surveys reductive strategies by 29 artists living in and around New York City. Each artist will present a single small work, as well as an open letter to the local community of artists. Escape from New York originated at Sydney Non Objective, Sydney, Australia, in 2007, and later traveled to Curtin University in Perth in 2008 and Project Space Spare Room, RMIT University in Melbourne in 2009. Participating Artists: Also on view at The Engine Room: Collective Monochrome: Billy Gruner & Sarah Keighery. SUPPORT MINUS SPACE’s programming is made possible by the generous support of The Golden Rule Foundation, as well as individual donors. We thank you! Douglas Witmer: Ring the Bells Anew, Recent Paintings, Blank Space, New York, NYposted February 27th, 2010
Douglas Witmer, Things Mean a Lot at the Time, 2010 March 4-27, 2010 Blank Space Gallery presents Ring The Bells Anew, an exhibition of recent paintings by Douglas Witmer. This is the artist’s third solo show in New York, and his first with the gallery. Over the past decade, Witmer has gained increasing attention for his uniquely distilled sensibility related to his paintings’ surface and color. His recent canvases feature one or two rectangles of solid color on top of and interacting with varied gray washes that cascade down the painting’s surface. Though reductive in their attitude and appearance, the resulting works are anything but “minimal.” Contrary to first impressions, Witmer’s compositions are not planned or diagrammed. For the artist, painting is a process of inquiry; each piece is an individual result of decisions made intuitively and directly. The critic and art historian Vittorio Colaizzi has written, “Witmer paints the inheritance of modernist abstraction, and perhaps, metaphorically, the more ecumenical spirituality of today, in the openness of his compositions, their perpetual almost-ness, and their refusal of closure or perfection.” About the title for this exhibition the artist states, “I am trying to underscore the idea that my paintings embody new acts of declaration using long-existing means. Taken further, it communicates a hope in the continued relevance of abstract painting.” Douglas Witmer holds a B.A. from Goshen College and an M.F.A. from The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. In New York his work has recently appeared at P.S.1/MoMA in the group exhibition “Minus Space,” as well as The Painting Center and M55 Art in Long Island City. Other recent venues include: Pharmaka in Los Angeles, Gallery Siano in Philadelphia, The University of Maryland, The University of Dayton in Ohio, Sydney Non-Objective in Australia, and Bus-Dori Project Space in Tokyo, Japan. He lives and works in Philadelphia. My Certain Fate, Pharmaka, Los Angeles, CAposted May 29th, 2009
Michael Zahn, Police and Thieves, 2009 May 14 – June 6, 2009 “To me, making a tape is like writing a letter — there’s a lot of erasing and rethinking and starting again. A good compilation tape, like breaking up, is hard to do. You’ve got to kick off with a corker, to hold the attention. . .and then you’ve got to up it a notch, or cool it a notch, and you can’t have white music and black music together, unless the white music sounds like black music, and you can’t have two tracks by the same artist side by side, unless you’ve done the whole thing in pairs and. . .oh, there are loads of rules.” — High Fidelity, Nick Hornby Crossing genres, blending generations and connecting the emotional dots, My Certain Fate, a group show curated by Timothy Buckwalter at Pharmaka. Bay area artist Timothy Buckwalter made his first mix tape in 1979 while staying up late trying to record Pink Floyd’s runaway hit song “Another Brick In The Wall, Part One.” The 45RPM had been sold out at his local record store for weeks. Lying on the floor with his RadioShack portable cassette player – its microphone jammed against his clock radio’s speaker – waiting for Pink Floyd to come on, Buckwalter realized that he could go beyond recording that one contemporary song of rebellion. He was soon jotting onto tape anything that evening that seemed connected to that song: Blondie’s Heart of Glass, Billy Joel’s My Life, M’s Popmuzik, The Knack’s My Sharona, Herb Alpert’s Rise and Don’t Bring Me Down from ELO. Combining photography, painting, sculpture and text-based works in My Certain Fate, Buckwalter has crafted an exhibition that mimics the dynamic behind the mix tape – a genre he believed that evening he had invented but which is in fact a popular element within youth culture. Since the mid-70s the creation of a mix tape has been seen as an expression of the individual compiler’s taste in music. And, of course, as a gift, it has often been put forward as a tentative move toward creating some kind of emotional relationship with the tape’s recipient. Featuring more than 65 works from 28 U.S. and international artists, My Certain Fate explores and connects the feelings emoting from each piece to create an overarching narrative. Bubbling to the surface of a photo is a mysterious tale of yearning and denial. A drawing begins to crack under the weight of its own smugness. A crisp Miminalist painting offers a space to breathe, a break in the mix. Lurking beneath a sculpture is a less than obvious tale of redemption. The title for the exhibition is excerpted from one of Buckwalter’s favorite songs, “That’s How I Escaped My Certain Fate” on Mission of Burma’s 1982 album “Vs. “ – a track that exudes a boatload of melancholia mixed with the possibility for love through self-sacrifice. Included in the mix are works from John Altoon, Angela Baker, Val Britton, Martin Bromirksi, Manuel Dominguez Jr., Bill Dunlap, Sacha Eckes, Sylvia Fragoso, Tammy Harper, Kevin Parks Hauser, Jeffrey Cortland Jones, Michelle Lewis-King, Joe Macca, Michael Macfeat, Rob Matthews, Mike Monteiro, Marlon Mullen, Christopher Saunders, Jen Siska, Dean Smith, Brian Stechschulte, Katy Stone, Rebecca Whipple, Billy White, Jim Winters, Douglas Witmer, Michael Zahn, and Nina Zurier. A catalog — with an essay by DJ and blogger Heidi De Vries, poetry by Suzanne Stein, and a Q&A between the curator and painter Michael Zahn – will accompany the show. Included will be a mix CD (playing during the show). Escape from New York, Curated by Matthew Deleget, Project Space Spare Room, RMIT University, Melbourne, Australiaposted May 8th, 2009
May 8-29, 2009 RMIT University School of Art and Sydney Non Objective present contemporary non-objective practice from MINUS SPACE New York. A survey of reductive strategies by artists living in and around New York City. Presenting a single work from each artist, as well as an open letter to the artist community affiliated with RMIT Non Objective. The exhibition originated at Sydney Non Objective in 2007, and later travelled to Curtin University in Perth in 2008. Participating Artists SUPPORT MINUS SPACE extends a heartfelt thanks to artists David Thomas and Billy Gruner for bringing the show to Melbourne! Additional thanks to Daniel Argyle for his assistance.
FINAL WEEKEND: MINUS SPACE at P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center/MoMAposted May 1st, 2009
Installation view Closes Monday, May 4, 2009 The exhibition is curated by artist, Brooklyn Rail publisher, and P.S.1. Curatorial Advisor Phong Bui. The exhibition marks MINUS SPACE’s 5th anniversary. We greatly thank curator Phong Bui and the remarkable staff at P.S.1, the participating artists and their galleries, and our generous donors, whose financial support made this exhibition possible. Exhibiting Artists PLEASE NOTE: Our exhibition in P.S.1’s Boiler Room space closed on January 26, 2009. Field + Stream: New Paintings by Douglas Witmer, The Painting Center, Project Room, New York, NYposted April 23rd, 2009
April 28 – May 23, 2009 Since the late 1990s, Douglas Witmer’s paintings demonstrate an increasingly distilled sensibility related to surface and color. Intuitively combining simple geometric imagery, emphatic color, and subtle manipulation of the surface, his paintings are inquiries into the materiality of seeing, perception, feeling, and memory. In a recently published interview with the Tokyo-based artist Brent Hallard, Witmer said, “I want the present moment of seeing to be charged with the possibility of some kind of change in the next present moment of seeing. I hope for that to activate the sense that you feel yourself seeing. I like to think of these moments as clear, pure, innocent, and solitary. And if you can get to them, then you have, in a way, started an experiential engine for yourself, and your thoughts can begin to move in uniquely personal directions.” The exhibition title “Field + Stream” is taken from the popular hunting and fishing magazine, which the artist often saw as a young boy. This title acknowledges the influence of nature in Witmer’s paintings, and refers to the binary elements in his work: rectangles of dominant color set upon a cascading gray ground. Minus Space at P.S.1 Extendedposted January 22nd, 2009
Installation in cafe space Exhibition in cafe space continues until May 2009. (Boiler Room exhibition closed on January 26, 2009.)
MINUS SPACE The exhibition is curated by artist, Brooklyn Rail publisher, and P.S.1. Curatorial Advisor Phong Bui, and includes the work of 54 artists from 14 countries. The exhibition marks MINUS SPACE’s 5th anniversary. Participating Artists Ongoing Performance Douglas Witmer: Joseph’s Coat, The Philadelphia Cathedral, Philadelphia, PAposted January 19th, 2009
February 5-28, 2009 The Philadelphia Cathedral Joseph’s Coat is a group of new large paintings intended for the Cathedral, to be installed unstretched and flowing. The project takes its title from the Biblical story of Jacob, who gave a fabulous multicolor tunic to Joseph, his youngest and most-favored son (Genesis, chapter 37). Witmer’s series does not attempt to follow or in any way illustrate the narrative of the tragic family story that ensues. Rather, he uses his early childhood memories of the story of the coat and the idea of a gift as beginning points for a new exploration of color. How Soon is Now: Interview with Douglas Witmer, Visual Discrepancies blog, by Brent Hallardposted December 4th, 2008
Douglas Witmer, How Soon Is Now?, 2008 Douglas Witmer: Today is the Day, New Paintings, M55, Long Island City, NYposted November 6th, 2008
November 13 – December 7, 2008 Minus Space, Curated by Phong Bui, P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center / A Museum of Modern Art Affiliate, Long Island City, NYposted October 19th, 2008
Exhibition poster October 19, 2008 – May 4, 2009 (Daniel Göttin’s ceiling work in the cafe continues through summer 2009) We are delighted to announce our exhibition at P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center, an affiliate of The Museum of Modern Art in New York. P.S.1 is one of the oldest and largest non-profit arts centers in the United States solely devoted to contemporary art. The exhibition is curated by artist, Brooklyn Rail publisher, and P.S.1. Curatorial Advisor Phong Bui, and includes the work of 54 artists from 14 countries. The exhibition marks MINUS SPACE’s 5th anniversary. We greatly thank curator Phong Bui and the remarkable staff at P.S.1, the participating artists and their galleries, and our generous donors, whose financial support made this exhibition possible. Participating Artists Ongoing Performance Interview Press / Blogs MINUS SPACE at P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center / MoMA, Abstract Contemporary Art Blog, December 18, 2008 Top Ten 2008, by Jerry Saltz, Artnet Magazine, December 15, 2008 (MINUS SPACE is cited in #10) The Year in Art: The Top Nine Shows (and One Event), by Jerry Saltz, New York Magazine, December 7, 2008 (MINUS SPACE is cited in #10) Michael Brennan at 210 Gallery and P.S.1, by Paul Corio, November 16, 2008 Interview with Simon Ingram / MINUS SPACE exhibition at P.S.1, New York, Vernissage TV, November 10, 2008 MINUS SPACE, by Eva Lake, November 10, 2008 MINUS SPACE at P.S.1, The James Kalm Report, November 2, 2008 Update, Henri Art Magazine, November 1, 2008 Reductive Art at P.S.1, by Jon Meyer, October 25, 2008 Gallery Credits Additional Credits
Lynne Harlow: BEAT, MINUS SPACE, Brooklyn, NYposted December 8th, 2007
December 2007 New York City and Providence-based artist Lynne Harlow presented BEAT, which translated an earlier work, Lena’s Beat, from an intimate wall piece to a large-scale installation and performance. BEAT combined specific, yet inherently unrelated elements: color and music. The shared space and resulting energy were the focus of the work. The performance took place on Saturday, December 8, from 4-6pm, and consisted of two hours of solo drumming by various volunteer musicians. BEAT was a collaborative work that was completed by the participation of the drummers and all those who attended. Lynne Harlow (b. 1968 Attleboro, MA) has exhibited her work nationally and internationally. Recent exhibitions include Sideshow Gallery, Smack Mellon Gallery (Brooklyn); New York University, White Box, International Print Center (NYC); Sydney Non Objective (Sydney); and Kunsternes Hus (Oslo). Harlow was a visiting artist at the Chinati Foundation (Marfa, TX) in 2002 and elected member of American Abstract Artists in 2006. Her work has been reviewed in The New York Times and Artnet Magazine, among others. She holds an MFA from Hunter College (NYC) and a BA from Framingham State College (MA). TEXTS
Escape from New York, Curated by Matthew Deleget, Sydney Non Objective, Sydney, Australiaposted August 3rd, 2007
August 3 – September 2, 2007 A group exhibition surveying reductive strategies by artists living in and around New York City. Each artist will present a single work, as well as an open letter to the artist community affiliated with Sydney Non Objective. Participating Artists: SUPPORT
Letters Soledad Arias > view letter Richard Bottwin > view letter Sharon Brant > view letter Michael Brennan > view letter Bibi Calderaro > view letter Mark Dagley > view letter Gabriele Evertz > view letter Daniel Feingold > view letter Kevin Finklea > view letter Linda Francis > view letter Zipora Fried > view letter Julio Grinblatt > view letter Lynne Harlow > view letter Gilbert Hsiao > view letter Andrew Huston > view letter Steve Karlik > view letter Daniel Levine > view letter Sylvan Lionni > view letter Rossana Martinez > view letter Juan Matos Capote > view letter Manfred Mohr > view letter Karen Schifano > view letter Analia Segal > view letter Edward Shalala > view letter Robert Swain > view letter Li-Trincere > view letter Don Voisine > view letter Douglas Witmer > view letter part 1 / letter part 2 Michael Zahn > view letter MINUS SPACE Artist Douglas Witmer Releases New Album Condensery, by The Consolidated Hand Mouth & Ear Instituteposted March 23rd, 2007
Inspired by a line from American objectivist poet Lorine Niedecker, the new album is primarily instrumental, a mix of electronic and acoustic, rather downbeat/mellow, perhaps meditative. I Walk the Line: Three Abstract Artists in the 21st Century, Mary Early, Linn Meyers, Douglas Witmer, Union Gallery, Stamp Student Union, University of Maryland, College Park, MDposted February 20th, 2007
March 1 — April 12, 2007 Features MINUS SPACE artist Douglas Witmer. Across the Borderline: Collaborative Works by Chris Ashley and Douglas Witmer, Rike Center Gallery, University of Dayton, Ohioposted January 8th, 2007
 January 10 — February 10, 2007 Artists Chris Ashley (Oakland, CA) and Douglas Witmer (Philadelphia, PA) are mounting an exhibition of collaborative works on paper. And they have been cataloguing their collaborative process online. Check it out. Interview with Douglas Witmer, by Chris Ashleyposted December 1st, 2005
introduction Witmer’s varied and improvised use of color, surface, form, and material is surprisingly expressive. Anyone who spends time with Mondrian’s signature paintings, for example, knows that they are not rigid repetitions. Similarly, the viewer will find that Witmer’s paintings are individually achieved, and this is part of where his purposefulness lies: geometry is not something always precisely measured; it can be nuanced and emotional, and it often breaks rules or has unlikely sources. My mention of Mondrian of course risks a misunderstanding via an assumed derivation or inheritance, so perhaps a more appropriate and useful reference might be Klee’s sensitive, playful, and inventive qualities. As for the purpose of Witmer’s paintings, this is always the tricky part — society generally wants to know what a piece of art is about, what it means, and what it is good for. But what does it really mean to understand art? Does it mean to know something with certainty, to explain it definitively, and then to move on? There usually isn’t a single answer to art’s meaning. Most good art is slippery — the meanings we try to catch and hold instead make us return to an art object again and again for confirmation and renewal. Willem de Kooning’s oft-quoted statement is apt here: “Content is a glimpse of something, an encounter like a flash. It’s very tiny — very tiny, content.” What we get from art may come in fragments, on the periphery and over time, and is often unexpected, indirect, and personal. Not only are Witmer’s paintings open to viewer associations, but they intentionally invite these associations. This, I think, is part of the purpose of Witmer’s art: these beautifully crafted, carefully considered paintings bear graphically clear but ambiguous images that make pictorial and physical spaces for the viewer to see, feel, and think. These spaces, handmade and shared, where nuance and touch are important, and where close-up observation of details matter, are where glimpses occur and meanings arise. These paintings involve the artist and the viewer in an intimate collaboration of looking. In a poem called Telling You All Rilke writes: “Let’s invite something new/by unifying our silences;/if, then and there, we advance,/we’ll know it soon enough.” Meaning is found in the experience of looking at Witmer’s paintings, not just in explanations, and in that looking a kind of knowing is possible. — Chris Ashley, December 2005
The following conversation between Douglas Witmer and Chris Ashley was conducted via email between late August and early November 2005, and supplemented by extended conversations and studio visits in Philadelphia during October 6-11. For further information about Chris Ashley, please visit www.chrisashley.net.
Chris Ashley: I first became familiar with your paintings and drawings through digital images, and now after having recently seen quite a bit of your work while in Philadelphia I can say that the digital images are plainly not an adequate substitute for seeing the real thing. For example, there is subtlety around the edges of your shapes, nuanced brushwork, and small shifts in size between similar shapes, each with unique edges from the hand-placed taping. Because often a valuable starting point for looking at and comparing art objects is simply to take note of what you see, I thought it might useful for you to describe some of the essential material and physical characteristics of your recent paintings and works on paper, and some thoughts about how and why you chose these.
Douglas Witmer: I sort of break it down into a short list of dualities: horizontal versus vertical, light versus dark (more recently I might call this “color” versus “white”), brushstroke versus lack-of-brushstroke, shape versus field, and gloss versus matte. When I first started exhibiting my work it was quite gestural and “expressionist.” There came a point when gesturalism lost its meaning for me. I rejected the improvisatory way I painted at that time and began a process of isolating and examining the choices I make in painting. Eventually I reduced my painting to a single repeated mark. This might sound funny, but I enjoy watching cooking shows, and I especially like overhead views of chefs working with all the ingredients pre-measured in separate containers. As I took my painting practice apart, I began to think of my painting choices this way. It had a clarifying effect, because I could feel like I knew—or was conscious of—what I was doing. By rejecting gesturalism, I effectively eliminated my hand from my painting for a number of years. More recently I came to realize how much I enjoy the feeling of brushing and how I missed seeing it in my work. And so, to use my cooking show analogy, reintroducing a visible brushstroke was a matter of looking at the ingredients/components of my work and making choices in order to find a new balance.
CA: Following this analogy, every painting requires a unique recipe or you’re just making the same thing over and over, which would be a violation of your past declaration that, “painting is not a statement,” but is instead an ongoing, evolving relationship. Elsewhere you wrote, “Perhaps contrary to their first impression, my compositions are not pre-planned or measured ahead of time.” Few of your current paintings seem to share a constant size, and color varies quite a bit from work to work. Can you say a bit more about how you actually go about making a painting?
DW: I work under the assumption that within simplest dualities there are infinite and complicated possibilities. I try to treat every piece as an individual, and I like the challenge of working out the decisions directly on the pieces. With processes like mine that involve handiwork and an emphasis on touch and tactility, even if it is quite subtle, I don’t think I could repeat the same painting twice if I tried. I don’t think of myself as especially prolific. There’s a lot of time spent just looking and considering and mentally thinking through possibilities. You could say that I have made some definitive choices about the things I do in painting and the things I don’t do, but I’m not systematic about those choices. Nothing I do is meant to be preparatory. I make sketches, but they’re just notations and they rarely go directly into anything. Occasionally I make a painting on paper and I will repeat its basic components on a canvas. Size, scale, shape and color are determined according to what feels right. Recently I made a large and small version of the same painting, but they were just very similar to each other and very different from each other. Finally, there’s something I can’t explain about myself when I work. No matter how much planning, scheming, ruminating or whatever I put into a work, when it comes to the painting action, I never do what I thought I was going to do. Or perhaps I should say, I’m never prepared for what happens in painting.
CA: An encounter with paintings by the mid-15th Century Sienese painter called the Osservanza Master was very significant for you, and led you to identifying a kind of geometry that has become an important aspect of your work. How did that happen?
DW: In 2000 I was in the midst of a frightening dry spell with my work, and I was terribly ambivalent about the meaning of any kind of painting gesture. One day I was in a used bookstore thumbing through a catalog from an exhibition some years back at the Metropolitan Museum called Painting in Renaissance Siena. I was particularly excited by the work of the Osservanza Master, and then came across the reproduction of a painting that’s here in the collection of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, one that I was always fond of in a very basic, naive, like/dislike kind of way. I really didn’t know anything about the painting, but something about seeing that painting on that day in my life enabled me to move on. I still had no idea of what to do next. In those Sienese paintings I was attracted to the beautifully warm and radiant colors and the tight geometric compositions. But the most meaningful part is how, despite their attempt to depict space on the flat panel, each and every one fails, at least to my 21st Century eyes. It was like there was this visual longing trapped inside the limits of the painter’s body. To me they completely expressed the crisis I felt I was in, a sort of breakdown of seeing versus belief. There was so much devotion or desire, but in the end no way to fully represent that visually. I tinkered a lot during the next months. I traced the reproductions in the catalogue to see if I could isolate the compositions from the religious scenes they were depicting. What came out of that process was the use of a trapezoid shape, usually anchored to an edge of the image. It easily connoted a receding plane, but could be handled so as to make it not function the way it seemed like it was supposed to, and so it became a “space symbol.” In terms of an image with a personal emotional significance I thought of it as pushing my painting down into itself in order that I could re-enter the process, like walking out onto a platform into a new unknown. It seemed right at the time to make the paintings large enough to feel that you could physically enter them. So I had these paintings that were kind of spatial. And around that time I started investigating the issue the opposite way, by making tiny wooden reliefs—the Fruitville series— that projected out from the wall, but were subtly manipulated to make them appear flatter. All that work made between 2000 and 2003 was very involved with the idea of the perception of space, how that impacts one’s sense of reality, and more symbolically, one’s belief in something. Today I think I’m working with much less of an idea. That is, I’m not trying so hard to make a painting achieve a desired result. I rely much more on intuition, with components that I allow to move or that I guide into place. I work from the visual relationships and personal associations that occur during the process. I feel like they come out of having a lot more faith in painting. I don’t have a need to make them present questions of themselves. And they are quite a bit flatter.
CA: What do what you mean by “pushing my painting down into itself in order to re-enter the process.”
DW: I was making a huge overhaul of my painting. The body of work that was current at that time (which is very different than what I do today) had a distinct identity. I suppose you could say I had formed an identity around it as well. My own work became a kind of barrier for me. I liked the idea of pushing the painting down, but into itself. It enabled me to learn that I can exert a lot of personal will into painting, but that painting can also respond to and hold that. And that is when I began to use the word “relationship” a lot in reference to my practice.
CA: I’m interested in what you called “space symbol,” and how this occurs or is used in your work. I think you mean something different than a repeated or signature image, not just a device. Do mean “symbol” as something that comes out of culture, or is even archetypal? Some of the shapes you use are found in lots of places; for example, you’ve acknowledged an interest in Indian painting, too.
DW: In earlier work I think the trapezoid actually was a device for me. In our time, the idea of one-point perspective is so completely ingrained in our minds that we take it for granted. It’s like we assume the view of the camera’s eye— the lens— when we think about seeing. We forget that this is not the way we see naturally with our two eyes, and that something is functioning physically in our brain to blend both views into what we perceive. It’s easy to see a trapezoid and automatically think “receding plane,” whether or not it actually operates illusionistically. My intention was to use it to fool the mind more than the eye. That’s what I mean by it being a “space symbol.”
CA: You talked about devotion in Sienese painting as both an act and a “visual longing trapped inside the limits of the painter’s body,” which I think of as a feeling of striving towards something. We have also talked about devotion and reverence. How does thisfigure in your work?
DW: I aspire for my work to convey a sense that it is grounded in a personal spirituality. This spirituality is not clearly delineated for me in a way that I can put into words. But reverence and devotion are components of how it manifests itself. Devotion can simply be seen as practice, and reverence as an attitude within that practice. For me reverence connotes something very quiet, a kindof hushed awe in the presence of something larger than oneself. This larger presence could be nature, history, or an ideal. I have been trying to make my work seem quieter and quieter, even if it is strident in terms of its design. I would like to think of it as silent. Silence is a precarious balance that can be broken; it’s a situation with so much potential. In terms of devotion, I just resonate with the idea of a constant, even, but not closed and not unchanging practice, a momentum that is built up by making, considering, even loving one’s work. Tending to, caring about, cherishing the work, working joyfully— do these seem like passé values? Or is this the big secret that artists keep from one another because it’s not smart enough to pass through the critical threshold, that we do it because of love and devotion? Does it go without saying? Should it go without saying?
CA: This seems like the right place to ask about your Mennonite background, aspects of which you’ve referenced in statements and conversation as being important in your art. I’m particularly interested in the notion of the word “plain-ness” and the attitudes and practices that go with that.
DW: I grew up pretty steeped in the Mennonite culture of Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. Plain-ness is a practice that arose in 19th Century America as a material acting out of earlier Mennonite ideals. It was a primary way of distinguishing oneself from contemporary society. Being plain meant forsaking expensive clothing, accoutrements, and conveniences in favor of living a simple life and demonstrating humility rather than pridefulness. There are still traditional Mennonite and Amish groups who would use the word plain to describe themselves. My family didn’t dress plain or drive a buggy or car with all the chrome painted black, but there were vestiges of that in the church where I grew up. Plain-ness was also prevalent as a sort of “anti-design” principle in Mennonite architecture. For instance, looking at the church I attended growing up, you wouldn’t be able to distinguish the front from the back except for the double doors on one end. It’s just a red brick rectangle with a simple pitched roof sitting on top; no ornamentation, no steeple. No images inside either, and in fact, Mennonites prefer the term “meetinghouse” to “church”. The architecture of houses and barns is similar, and these kinds of structures are all over Lancaster County. It’s almost a “minimalist” look, except using that word evokes a kind of high-minded aesthetic which of course the Mennonites had no clue about. From a plain perspective, it’s just about having a decently built, simple and functional structure. It’s not a design principle. I think plain-ness comes from the literal way Mennonites approach the Bible. Mennonites take the example of Jesus’ life literally, and growing up in this church culture I didn’t learn how to think in terms of metaphor. So when I started becoming an artist I found myself drawn immediately to the basic components of painting. I had little or no interest in depicting subject matter, but a lot of interest in terms of how a painting could be made. And I think I took it for granted that a “well-made” painting was in fact a message in and of itself. These days I find myself trying to do things in ways that are very clear. I like when actions sort of “name themselves” in a painting, such as brushwork that just declares itself as brushwork, or a color that is simply itself, not an in-between kind of color. Or I like when certain components of a painting show you what other components are, such as a matte surface calling attention to a gloss surface. The more I consider it, I think the tendency towards plain-ness comes out of a desire for a mindset of purity and humility that is integrated in a way that is always guiding one’s thoughts and actions. Whether or not this is still the way plain-ness is practiced materially by current Mennonites, I believe it is an ideal that guides my painting practice.
CA: Where do your current images come from? Do any of your paintings contain shapes borrowed or derived from the farms, landscape, or crafts around Lancaster County? There are kinds of framings and structures in your current work that can be read as fields, boundaries, foundations, skeletons and scaffolding.
DW: This is a really difficult question for me to answer. Earlier this year Linn Meyers asked me a similar question— “What are your paintings pictures of?” In retrospect, I answered somewhat flippantly. I said I don’t paint pictures of any thing; I make paintings. This was kind of a half-answer, of course, because the images I end up making absolutely come from very personal places for me. What are the names for these places? I’m as ambivalent about answering a question like this for you as I am for myself. On the one hand shouldn’t I scrutinize this in the same way I scrutinize the mechanics of my painting? Or is it better that I leave it unsaid, wordless, in a way protected even from myself, to be simply felt in my (or your) act of seeing it, whatever “it” is? I guess I would feel badly if I knew that things I said about my work would become a stand-in for someone’s actual experience of seeing my work. I‘ll reiterate that when it comes to my imagery I don’t think in the types of words you have just said, though I welcome those associations. I tend to focus on the obvious materiality of what I have made. So what I would call a glossy white rectangle you might read as a boundary. Nevertheless, I care that I make the material specifics of the glossy white rectangle have the potential to convey feeling that is quite immaterial. I will also tell you about something particular I’ve noticed recently while I work. To a degree, I have always been an observational painter in that things I see or fragments from things I see undergo a process of distillation in the studio. I photograph a lot of things for future reference. But there has been a shift in my thoughts from this kind of observation towards visual memories from my early childhood. This is relevant as we talk about where and how I was raised. Lancaster County and the Mennonite community there have both changed drastically since I was a child. It was a much more distinct and, I think, special kind of place and culture than it is today. Just as an example, off the top of my head I can think of at least a dozen families my family knows whose once-pristine farms have been paved over and developed into McMansion subdivisions. My own family’s greenhouse business, begun in 1898 by my great-great grandfather, was forced to close this year; the land has been sold to developers. Every time I drive back from Philadelphia it breaks my heart to see and experience it dissolving into the mainstream American culture of affluence and consumption. Talk about innocence lost. You could say that I idealize or fantasize my memories of that time and place, which is probably true. But it’s a useful fantasy for me. It generates a feeling of an ideal that I can paint towards.
CA: Where do you see your work fitting into the continuum of abstract art?
DW: Once I heard someone refer to some artists including Agnes Martin as “heaven painters.” I can’t recall the context, but I remember thinking I wouldn’t object to someone using that term for me. To an extent, I see artists falling into two very generalized groups: those who go for layering and complexity, and those who go for distillation and simplification. Of course, I am among the latter. People still argue abstraction’s validity. I assume they focus on the arc of 20th Century abstraction practiced in Western civilization as codified by Western art history. The fact of the matter is that abstraction, and geometric form in particular, has long been—has perhaps always been—connected to human spiritual aspiration.
CA: As we’ve talked several topics have been raised that seem to share a religious thread. You’ve talked about Sienese religious painting, Mennonite culture, and ideas about devotion and reverence, and you said, “I aspire for my work to convey a sense that it is grounded in a personal spirituality.” All of this has been instrumental in the formation of your current work, but you haven’t made any claims that your work is itself spiritual, or aids a viewer’s spirituality. Instead, you say that your work is very much rooted in the material, with color and form being nothing more than what they are. The experience of looking is important for you. You want this experience, as I understand it, to be for the viewer about observation, time, and presence. I see that as realism. I see your work as perhaps secular, but certainly not agnostic; instead, I see your work as trying to reach people, and I think of that as social, as serving a purpose. I wonder if you see your art in that way.
DW: You’re right. I do not and cannot make a claim that the work itself is spiritual. At one time I would have also suggested that my paintings were not necessarily art—that all I could do was do the best I could to make the visual situation and then release it in hope that another person could have an art experience in relationship to it like I did. This attitude was formed during that period of profound questioning, and I was reacting exactly to what you bring up in terms of the paintings being “nothing” but fabric stretched over wood with pigmented liquefied plastic applied to it. The Mennonite culture has produced a lot of highly skilled functional craftspeople, but few studio artists. Warren Rohrer was an enormous exception— no surprise that his life and work have been great examples for me. I think the assumption is that a painting doesn’t do anything, and that attitude dogs me all the time, from within myself. Add to that the more contemporary notion of “art for art’s sake” and painting can quickly stand for isolated self-centeredness, which is a complete affront. But then there are all these examples— the Sienese panels are just one instance from human history—of painting having a real use to a community or society. One of the things I love about some of those Sienese panels is they actually exhibit use: people would scratch at the eyes of the evil spirits portrayed. So I have these related questions: What use is there for my painting? What can my paintings do? I realized at some point that the simple act of seeing, in a situation where you can actually feel or perceive yourself seeing, is where all the power in an art experience is for me. It’s a sort of para-intellectual experience. It doesn’t turn its back on anything that you know, but in the moments of this kind of seeing, processes of explanation or definition are suspended. In my mind it has everything to do with the material specifics of the art object. I assume that if I feel the need for this kind of experience then others do as well. Maybe that thought forms a kind of statement of purpose, perhaps a statement of faith that I didn’t always have for painting. The Legacy of Agnes Martin: A Collection of Thoughts by Artistsposted December 18th, 2004
Agnes Martin, by Steve Karlik I went for a walk yesterday; a thin veil of snow cloaked the sidewalk. At once, grids became apparent. The accumulation of packed snow in the concrete’s seams made opaque grids, grids that were again defined by planes of less dense, more transparent layers of snow that covered the higher surfaces. The combination of these lines and planes brought me back to painting and why painting has significance for me. Reason, logic, the man made: the systems and structures within which we navigate that need to be expressed because we navigate them. I saw what I needed to think about. Where the snow began to melt the planes fell away and the grids softened, I was reminded, as I am with Agnes Martin’s work, that with structure there is always the poetic that defines it.
Agnes Martin, by Kevin Finklea “I hope I have made it clear that the work is about perfection as we are aware of it in our minds but that the paintings are very far from being perfect — completely removed in fact — even as we ourselves are.” This is the opening of the Notes section of Agnes Martin’s Writings/Schriften (1991, Hatze Cantz Verlag, Ostfildern, Germany). I found myself opening this book for the first time in many years. This book essentially replaced the scattered notes, xeroxes and catalog quotations I had gathered over the years from Agnes Martin. I held on to this and Profile: Agnes Martin (vol. 1, no. 2, March 1981, Art Institute of Chicago. Chicago, Illinois). While there is much that I can say about her work that was and remains important to me; it was her writing and interviews that were of the greatest use to me as a young artist. Her ruminations on investigation, truth and perfection are absolutely peerless. My recent interview with MINUS SPACE suddenly sprang to mind. I recalled saying that nothing I paint is perfect. I then used the word approximation to further describe my work’s perceived perfectness. I have to admit a wave of embarassment came over me. While I felt momentarily like a plagerist, I soon realized that I had actually internalized and put into practice much of what Martin had to say about painting. It is employing this sense of self-analysis and reflection that was Martin’s greatest contribution to non-objective painters. I can not encourage young non-objective painters enough to read what she had to say. I offer the following from Profile: Agnes Martin: “The work of artists is an investigation into truth, and you’re going to see it in your mind, you own mind.”
Thoughts on Agnes, by Douglas Witmer There was record flooding in south central Pennsylvania, where I grew up, in the aftermath of Hurricane Agnes in 1972. I was too young to remember the event, but the phrase “flood of Agnes” was often spoken in my childhood. I didn’t know Agnes was a woman’s name. The sound of it definitely left an impression. This is an aside, though… I long fancied making a visit to Taos to visit Agnes Martin. I read she took visitors. I never knew what I would ask or say, though. Words tend to drop away for me when it comes to her work. I believe I did not actually “see” the first Agnes Martin painting I was exposed to. It was likely “The Rose,” which sometimes hangs at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and the time was probably in the late 1980s. It took interacting with the work of my mentor Warren Rohrer, who shared affinities with Agnes, for my consciousness to be opened. I’ve begun to think that’s how some work is — invisible until its viewer is ready to see. In my upbringing I was encouraged to “be in the world but not of the world” and this is definitely a feeling I got from Agnes’ work. The feeling was bolstered as I learned more about her life and writing. The story of her move to the desert, building a house by hand (one account made it sound like she began by putting adobe around her camper and worked outward from there) and of her “quitting” painting for the better part of a decade: I find all of that an inspiring example of taking an alternative path. I wrestle personally, though, with the viability of that kind of asceticism for an artist of my generation. Seeing her early work at Dia:Beacon this past fall was a true highlight. Whereas her gridded paintings could at times seem a closed system, cutting themselves off from the world, the early works were incredibly open, humble, innocent, and vulnerable. I could see they came from a special time and place. I am very curious about her decision to revisit some of those images in what was her last exhibition at Pace Wildenstein. I made a special trip to see those paintings in real life. I’m glad I did, but they made me sad because in them I felt like I could see that Agnes no longer possessed the physical mechanics. The paint quality didn’t carry the images like it had before. Her paintings, like all reductive or distilled work, have such possibility for total failure. In this (our) kind of work, it’s a real accomplishment when feel you have made a success. Agnes’ work for so long had all the parts in play so beautifully and I am thankful to be able to experience that.
Meeting Agnes Martin, by Sharon Brant In 1973 Agnes Martin was in New York City. I think she was here in preparation for a retrospective of her work at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. This may have been the first retrospective for her, because she was not famous in a widespread way as she is now. Mostly, painters knew and loved her work. Somehow I heard, maybe through the art world grapevine, she was going to give a talk at Cooper Union. I was excited and could not believe my good fortune. She was a painter I admired very much and I was going to be in her presence. This was an unusual event because she had left NYC a long time ago and was living in New Mexico in a reclusive way. The group that had gathered was not huge. It wasn’t held in Cooper Union’s big auditorium. It was in a classroom. She spoke slowly and carefully, as if she had prepared succinctly the entire talk. At one point she was silent for a really long time, as if she was trying to remember what she wanted to say next. Now, regardless of its reason, the combination of this silence and succinctness is so appropriate, because it’s what we experience in her paintings. I don’t remember the specifics of her talk, but I remember the stance about painting she embodied as she stood before us. The way I would put it is that she made paying attention to her thoughts and attitudes the main purpose of her life and that painting then developed out of that awareness. Yes, the painting comes out of how we live our lives.
Agnes Martin, by Chris Ashley I learned about Agnes Martin as an undergrad in the San Francisco Bay Area, around 1976. I had an early, natural attraction to abstract art, even as young as 11 or 12; on a trip to the Oakland Museum with my grandmother around 1968 I was as interested in Bierstadt [1], as, say, Hassel Smith [2]. I thought that a painting is a painting: they all deserve to be looked at, and that they weren’t that easy to make. Adults said that a child could make that, but I didn’t agree; I couldn’t make one, and I thought there was something going on there besides the skilled (or unskilled) representation of a person, tree, cow, or table top. I don’t know why I knew that so young. At age 18 or 19 I suddenly had access to a college library with freely available back issues of art magazines, which I studied pretty closely in the stacks. I particularly liked Art International and Artforum. This, combined with access to SFMOMA, the de Young and Legion of Honor, the Oakland Museum, and the Berkeley Art Museum, were the real foundation of my education, rather than the studio classes I took, where I pretty much ended up doing whatever I wanted to do anyway. I became really intrigued by what was usually called minimalist painting: Ryman, Marden, Novros, Berthot, Humphrey, etc., in NY; Charlton, Greene in the UK; the Swiss — Lohse, Bill; BMPT in France: Buren, Mosset, Parmentier, and Toroni; as well as lots of others. I was really interested in a number of question: what is a painting; how could so little could provoke so much looking; what is the basis for the artist of this kind of work; is this a reduction or expansion of painting, i.e., is minimalist painting additive (starting from zero) or subtractive (a removing from painting of other subjects, techniques, concerns); how are decisions made by the artist; what are the differences between similar kinds of work, and how does an individual resist the urge to fix things up, design, and decorate. The problem was that in the SF Bay Area I found little exposure to this work (that would change around 1979-80 when two SF galleries — Modernism and Shirley Cerf — were actively showing Saxon, Hayward, Tchakalian, Marioni, Hafif, Gimblett, Sims, Lawson, to name a few). I was trying to figure it out through reproductions, all the while still looking closely at Bay Area figurative artists like Diebenkorn, Park, Bischoff, Brown, and Neri. I recall on a late afternoon in 1976 buying a copy of Art News (vol. 75, no. 7, September 1976) [3] at the Oakland Museum. A Rembrandt self portrait is on the cover, and inside is a multi-page article about Agnes Martin. I remember that I bought the magazine because of this article; I had seen her name before. I remember walking down the street carrying the magzine, eager to read it later. I clearly recall that the sun was out, light was bouncing off the sidewalk, and it was warm and a little windy. I still have this issue. The article covered Martin’s history, talked about her leaving New York, the film she made called “Gabriel,” and discussed her new work. I believe the occasion of the article had to do with her first show of new work since she began painting again in 1974. What made an impression on me was the way she wrote and spoke. I had just read Alan Watts’ “The Book,” and I think I’d also begun Suzuki’s “Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind.” Martin’s thoughts and ideas were in this realm, but she spoke as a painter. I was immediately struck by her statement, “Anyone can look at a waterfall all day.” Having read that, I had just then learned a new way to approach a painting and to understand and talk about looking. I first saw an actual painting by Agnes Martin in 1977; I vividly remember the moment. I walked into a gallery at SFMOMA, at the old building in the Veteran’s War Memorial Building near the City Hall; it was one of the inner galleries just around the corner from the elevators. There it hung, and I instantly knew who the artist was. I felt happy, as if I’d discovered something. “Falling Blue,” 1963 [4], is six feet square, oil and pencil on canvas which actually looks like coarse, dark linen. Horizontal pencil lines perhaps half an inch apart are ruled to the edges of a framing border of bare canvas two inches or so on all four sides. In between the penciled horizontal lines dark violet-blue is painted in repeated strokes with a small brush from one side to the other; the blue line is brushed horizontally as far as the paint the brush can carry lasts, and then the brush is loaded with more paint to continue the line across. Each horizontal band of blue paint spanning the painting, then, isn’t completely continuous: you can see places in each band where the stroke starts, stops, and continues. Up close you can see the movement, the labor, the patience in these repeated thin stripes. But I didn’t see the details at first. I remember stopping at least ten feet away and seeing the whole painting. The thin stripes of paint turning thick and thin with starts and stops looked something like thin, soft, slowly undulating corduroy, and the painting shimmered. It both gave off and took in light. Multiple kinds of space could be seen: there was a deep space, difficult to pin down, fuzzy, wavy and distant; there was an intimate space, enveloping and up close, and the painting felt in its material like a real thing, handmade in small amounts like weaving; and there was the formal space of the boundaries between the painting and the wall, and in the border that separated the edge of the canvas and the inner painted area, slices of architectural space against painted space. The dark brown canvas and the dark blue paint were basically the two colors in the painting, but they simultaneously projected a brillaint image and also collapsed into a kind of mud that couldn’t be captured and separated by the eye. The painting wavered in and out of sight, not always easy to see, but the process of looking at it was an experience that was constant and steady. Finally, I began to see how so little could do and mean so much. I learned a lot from Falling Blue, and I looked at it at every opportunity. I learned how to look at a painting as a critical observer, and as one who experiences the painting emotionally and intellectually. It’s much harder to say, however, what I learned about making a painting, because the entire painting is there before me — canvas, pencil lines, strokes of blue paint — and the entire act of its making can apparently be deciphered. Why can’t this be easily repeated? I can look at he painting almost as a recipe, but I can’t make it. I learned something to do with intention (having an idea, following through on it, and staring down the results to decide whether or not to keep it) and contrivance (having a bad idea, illustrating an idea, losing sight of or failing to follow the idea, or just plain bad editing of work). “Falling Blue,” and successive paintings by Agnes Martin I’ve seen, taught me about using materials directly, finding and committing to a vision and voice, avoiding illustration, and the power of distillation. I think these are some of the strengths of her work. Happily, she was able to work for a long time, and I believe her example and body of work is very important to any kind of artist. [1] http://www.museumca.org/images/1151.jpg
MARTIN, Agnes Born in Saskatchewan, she emigrated to the United States in 1932 to attend college in Washington State and New York. In the early 1960s, a few years after relocating from New York to New Mexico, Martin began producing paintings of grids composed of horizontal bricks, so to speak, that run from edge to edge, both vertically and horizontally. Perhaps sensing that she had reached an ultimate image, much as her near-contemporary Ad Rheinhardt had, she stopped painting for several years before returning to grids that were even more subtle in making thin, straight parallel lines that shimmer, and thus evoke a spiritual experience outside of themselves. Not unlike Reinhardt again, Martin is also an assertive writer: “Art work is a representation of our devotion to life. Everyone is devoted to life with an intensity far beyond our comprehension. The slightest hint of devotion to life in art work is received by all with gratitude.” Especially in group exhibitions, in my experience, her work shines through the strength of subtlety. — Richard Kostelanetz, excerpted with permission from his book A Dictionary of the Avant-Gardes, New York: Schirmer Books, second edition, 2000 |
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