Fundacio Joan Miro - The exhibits, 3

Fundacio Joan Miro - The exhibits, 3

As always I am including the introduction from the first post. If you do not want to read it again, scroll down to the second picture after this.

We really enjoyed the time we spent in this wonderful museum. Even though it's a museum dedicated to the work of Joan Miro, many of the paintings are by another artist whose work has similarities with Miro's. An interesting way of presenting art, and one that I enjoyed enormously as it gave me an opportunity to find out about artists I did not know, or to see paintings I love once again. 

Joan Miro i Ferra, 1893-1983, a Catalan painter, sculptor and ceramicist. His work has been interpreted as Surrealism but with a personal style, sometimes also veering into Fauvism and Expressionism. He was interested in the subconscious mind, reflected in his re-creation of the childlike. His difficult-to-classify works also had a manifestation of Catalan pride.  In numerous interviews Miro expressed contempt for conventional painting methods as a way of supporting bourgeois society. He declared an 'assassination of painting' in favour of upsetting the visual elements of established painting.

He combined abstract art with Surrealist fantasy. His mature style evolved from the tension between his fanciful, poetic impulse and his vision of the harshness of modern life. He worked extensively in lithography and produced numerous murals, tapestries and sculptures for public spaces.

Though often referred to as a Surrealist, Miro considered his art to be free of any 'ism'. He experimented throughout his career with different media - painting, pastel, printmaking, sculpture, ceramics, collage, muralism and tapestry - and unconventional materials as a way of making work that expressed the contemporary moment without relying on realism.

In this section, some of the most iconic artists of the 1950s are to be found. Combined with a tendency for a grand scale, the paintings of this period often enveloped the viewer by filling the visual field. Jackson Poollock was recognised as setting the pace. Elaine de Kooning wrote of this trend in 1949, as 'flying lines... spattered on in intense, unmixed colours to create wiry, sculptural constructions'. 

Jackson Pollock, Eyes in the Heart, 1946

Lee Krasner, Untitled [Little Image Painting], 1947-48

Mark Rothko, Untitled, 1945-46

Elaine de Kooning, Untitled, 1950

Joan Miro, The Red Sun, 1948

Alfonso Ossorio, Number 14-1953, 1953

Michael Corinne West, Dagger of Light, 1951

Grace Hartigan, Six Square, 1951

Joan Mitchell, Untitled, 1952-53

Jackson Pollock, Number 14, 1951





Lee Krasner, The Seasons, 1957.

One of my favourite paintings of all time. Although faced with extraordinary challenges, Lee Krasner made The Seasons in a burst of activity in 1957. She had been in Paris the previous summer when she received news that Jackson Pollock had died in a car crash. In mourning, Krasner helped mount the Pollock memorial show at the Museum of Modern Art in New York and resumed her own painting in his now vacant studio. From that 'time of life and death', as she called it, this painting remains astonishing, with the physical effort of the bodily gesture matched by sweeping, productive forms. When included in Krasner's solo show in 1958, one reviewer recognised that 'the artist is directing her compositions, not just submitting to her materials'.

Franz Kline, Four Square, 1956

Robet Motherwell, Totemic Figure, 1958

Joan Miro, May 1968

By means of handprints and an explosive energy, May 1968 expressed Miro's alignment with the student protestors of that year. He also experimented further with pouring and working with the canvas flat on the floor.

Sam Francis, Blue, 1958

Sarah Grillo, Unfair, 1963

Mark Rothko, Untitled (Harvard Mural sketch), 1962

Joan Miro, The First Spark of Day II, 1966

Helen Frankenthaler, Canyon, 1965

Joan Miro, Self-Portrait, 1937-60


 

American Abstraction

American Abstraction at the Thysse- Bornemisza Museum, Madrid.

It was such a pleasure seeing these paintings, particularly those of O'Keefe.

Georgia O'Keefe, Shell and Old Shingle, 1926, (oil on canvas)

In the early 1920s O'Keefe produced isolated images of simple shapes found in nature such as shells, bones and flowers, in reaction to the excessive intellectualisation and insularity to which painting was being subjected at the time. 'We were shingling the barn and the old shingles, taken off, were free to fly around. Absentmindedly I picked up a loose one and carried it into the house and up to the table in my room. On the table was a white clam shell brought from Maine in the spring. I had been painting it and it still lay there. The white shape of the shell and the grey shape of the weathered shingle were beautiful against the pale grey leaf of the faintly pink-lined pattern of the wallpaper. Adding the shingle got me painting again'.

Georgia O'Keefe, From the Plains II, 1954, (oil on canvas)

The vastness of the plains of Texas is imposing, heightened by the horizontal format of the canvas and by the flaming colours of the sunset. O'Keefe commented on this painting that 'the colour is just plain colour out of the tube - red and orange to lemon - it shocks me so that I'm rather struck with it - I don't know what it will get to'.

O'Keefe has simplified and enhanced the abstraction of the image in order to provide a visual equivalent of her memories. 'My first memory is of the brightness of light - light all around you', she said on one occasion. Her obssession with the light, which had moved her so greatly in Texas, led her to spend long periods away from New York from 1929 onwards in radiant New Mexico, and she settled permanently in the small village of Abiquiu in 1949. In these remote parts the luminosity of her paintings became even more transparent. She also used increasingly large formats to adapt to the imposing scale of the desert landscape.

Georgia O'Keefe, White Iris No. 7, 1957, (oil on canvas)

As in her other paintings of flowers, O'Keefe depicts the iris as if viewed from a close-up camera lens. Also derived from the photographic framing technique is the manner of cutting off the subject-matter at the edges, a device that further adds to the abstraction of her compositions.

Close-up views of flowers were a frequent theme in O'Keefe's artistic output. These images have very often been explained from a gender perspective and nearly always interpreted as having a sexual significance. The painter systematically rejected what she considered an erroneous interpretation, as evidenced by the text she published in the catalogue of the exhibition held in the New York gallery in 1939, in which she stated: 'Well - I made you take time to look at what I saw and when you took time to really notice my flower you hung all your own associations with flowers on my flower and you write about my flower as if I think and see what you think and see of the flower - and I don't'. Wonderful!

Jackson Pollock, Brown and Silver 1, 1951

Pollock, one of the foremost practitioners of Action Painting, began to work on his first drip paintings in 1947. From then on, he firmly espoused the idea of automatism, an automatism derived largely from Surrealism. 'When I'm in the painting, I'm not aware of what I'm doing', he said. Furthermore, with the invention of the drip technique, he gave up easel painting and for the first time avoided any direct contact between the artist and the canvas: 'I continue to move further and further away from the painter's usual tools like easel, palettes, brushes and so on. I prefer sticks, spoons, knives, flowing paint that I drip or a thick paste with sand, ground glass and other unusual materials'.

He has applied the brown paint straight from the tin, using sticks and dry paintbrushes and has approached the composition from all four sides.

As the painting is not signed, it is not possible to ascertain its correct position.

Willem de Kooning, Abstraction, 1949-51

In this painting, De Kooning reveals a new conception of painting based on gesture and colour - an accomplished style of his own that is far removed from any previous modern language. Despite being titled Abstraction, this composition is based on traditional pictorial motifs, and is infused with figurative references.

The iconography of death, present in the skull in the lower right corner and the symbolic representation of Golgotha in the ladder and post to the right of the composition, contrasts with the unusually distorted and brutal pink and yellowish flesh tones. The force and mobility of the planes and figures result in a confusing image of life and death.

Agnes Martin at Tate Modern

Agnes Martin at Tate Modern.

It was such a pleasure a while ago when we were at Tate Modern to come across some of Agnes Martin's abstract paintings. I first came across Martin's paintings in New York at the Whitney Museum of American Art in 2012. I was bowled over. I have since seen more of her work, notably at Tate Modern again in 2015 where I have written a full analysis of her work and life. I also saw some of her work at the Hugh Lane in Dublin. 

Her work invites contemplation, reflecting on perfection, beauty and spirituality. Her work was influenced by Zen Buddhism and Chinese Tao philosophy. Her paintings explore the inner emotional world and the human desire for peace and serenity. She considered art to be a transcendent experience. 'Beauty is the mystery of life. It is not just in the eye. It is in the mind. It is our positive response to life', she said.

She was a key figure in the male-dominated field of abstract art in the USA. In the 1950s and 1960s, her work was oftern associated with abstract expressionism and minimalism. However, Martin's methods were different. In her meticulous, hand-painted artworks, ordered geometry and imperfection co-existed.

The paintings in this post consist of horizontal bands of colour, divided by delicate pencil lines. The bands initially appear uniform, but on closer inspection, faint brushstrokes and pools of paint emerge. These marks give the artworks a hand-made feel, undermining the rigid geometry of the composition. As she said: 'the work is about perfection as we are aware of it in our minds but... the paintings are very far from being perfect - completely removed in fact - even as we ourselves are'.

Untitled #5, 1991, (acrylic paint and graphite on canvas)

This work is one of the last six-foot square paintings Martin made. It is also one of the final works she produced from her home in Galisteo, New Mexico, where she lived for 25 years. Martin was inspired by Chinese Tao philosophy and the vast desert landscapes that surrounded her. She said: 'I want people, when they look at my paintings, to have the same feelings they experience when they look at landscape. It's really about the feeling of beauty and freedom'.

Untitled #5, 1994, (acrylic paint and graphite on canvas)

Martin used a short metal ruler and masking tape to create her lines. She applied the paint in vertical stripes, rotating the canvas by 90 degrees once the paint was dry. She explained: 'you can't put it horizontally, it would drip down'. Despite her use of a ruler, the lines Martin produced are not rigidly straight. They trace the texture of the linen canvas, creating an undeniably hand-drawn quality.

Faraway Love, 1999, (acrylic paint and graphite on canvas)

Before 1993, Martin used a six-foot square canvas for her paintings. This size appealed to her for its enveloping relationship with the viewer's body. She saw it as 'a size you can walk into'. Martin found the large canvas increasingly difficult to handle as she grew older. She made the decision to reduce the size to a five-foot square. This canvas still takes up most of the viewer's visual field, allowing them to absorb the subtle variations in line, tone and texture without distraction. Something that is, alas, impossible to do when looking at a computer screen.

Happy Holiday, 1999, (acrylic paint and graphite on canvas)

Martin applied an opaque base coat of white acrylic gesso (or primer) to this work. The gesso was overlaid with stripes of diluted blue and peach acrylic paint. The layered application of materials creates a translucent and light-reflecting finish. Graphite pencil is used to demarcate the coloured stripes. The paint strays beyond the pencil lines, giving the work a gestural and hand-made feel when viewed at close range.


 

Women Artists and Global Abstraction, 1940-1970 - Section 5

Action, Gesture and Paint: Women Artists and Global Abstraction, 1940-70 at the Whitechapel Gallery.

An exhibition celebrating the women artists of mid-20th century gestural abstraction, showing how they shaped modern painting. The story of abstract art took a radical turn in the 1940s. Fusing bodily, gestural and emotive expression with colour, mark-making and the materiality of paint, this new movement was termed (in the USA) as Abstract Expressionism. It is often thought to have been centred in New York, where it was defined mainly by the work of white male artists. However, this new style of painting was a global phenomenon, shaped as much by local cultural and political context as by inernational exchange and dialogue.

The contributions of women have long been marginalised in modern art. The paintings presented here demonstrate how women across the world were fundamental in evolving the story of abstraction, incorporating experiences of turbulent social change into their work and promoting freedom of expression. Their art was made in a period of great historical shifts: the aftermath of WWII, global industrialisation, the rise of civil rights and post-colonial movements and a 'cold war' - marked by the threat of nuclear extinction - between capitalist democracies and communist states. Against this backdrop, the USA promoted abstract art as a form of western propaganda, to counter the influence of communism.

The exhibiton explores how artists made the canvas an arena for experimentation and personal expression through form and colour. It focuses on five themes: paint as material and process; symbolic languages drawn from myth and ritual; abstraction as an expression of the self; painting as movement and dance; and the canvas as environment.

This is the last section of the exhibition.

Section 5: Environment, Nature, Perception.

Lived experiences of the environment are expressed here through canvases that emphasise space, texture, light and atmosphere. These artists distill a momentary impression, observed or remembered, using a palette drawn from their surroundings - rural and urban. Like poets wirting at this time, they developed an aesthetic language that communicates the instantaneous experience of a time and a place, immersing us in the sensations of a landscape or interior. The epic scale of some of these canvases also presents the painting itself as an environment.

Janice Biala, Poland/France, Yellow Still Life, 1955, (oil on canvas)

Biala was one of the few women associated with the New York School of Abstract Expressionism and her work fused gestural lyricism with the aesthetics of the School of Paris.

Maria Helena Vieira da Silva, Untitled, 1955, (oil on canvas)

Maria Raymond, France, Montagne, 1961, (oil on canvas)

Anna-Eva Bergman, Sweden/France, Finnmark, 1966, (oil and silver on particle board)

A Norwegian artist who became one of the most famous post-war Scandinavian painters. Her early works were expressive depictions of landscapes, before she turned to Abstract Expressionism.

Joan Mirchell, USA, Painting, 1958, (oil on canvas)

One of the leading American abastract painters, Mitchell arrived in New York in 1949 and joined what became known as the second generation of Abstract Expressionist artists, including Helen Frankenthaler and Grace Hartigan. She painted in a fluid Abstract Expressionist style throughout her long career, exploring 'remembered feelings of nature' and experimenting with printmaking and drawing.

Ida Barbarigo, Italy, Promenade, 1963, (oil on canvas)

Barbarigo abandoned landscapes and portraits after moving to Paris in 1952 and became associated with the abstract painting movement of the New School of Paris. Painting in ochre tones, rhythmical white brushstrokes, and using sinuous forms orchestrated against light, airy backgrounds, Barbarigo frequently incorporated personal references in her work, in an attempt to 'unlearn how to paint', as she described it, and be closer to her senses.

Joan Mitchell, Untitled, 1957, (oil on canvas)
 

Women Artists and Global Abstraction, 1940-1970 - Section 2

Action, Gesture and Paint: Women Artists and Global Abstraction, 1940-70 at the Whitechapel Gallery.

An exhibition celebrating the women artists of mid-20th century gestural abstraction, showing how they shaped modern painting. The story of abstract art took a radical turn in the 1940s. Fusing bodily, gestural and emotive expression with colour, mark-making and the materiality of paint, this new movement was termed (in the USA) as Abstract Expressionism. It is often thought to have been centred in New York, where it was defined mainly by the work of white male artists. However, this new style of painting was a global phenomenon, shaped as much by local cultural and political context as by international exchange and dialogue.

The contributions of women have long been marginalised in modern art. The paintings presented here demonstrate how women across the world were fundamental in evolving the story of abstraction, incorporating experiences of turbulent social change into their work and promoting freedom of expression. Their art was made in a period of great historical shifts: the aftermath of WWII, global industrialisation, the rise of civil rights and post-colonial movements and a 'cold war' - marked by the threat of nuclear extinction - between capitalist democracies and communist states. Against this backdrop, the USA promoted abstract art as a form of western propaganda, to counter the influence of communism.

The exhibiton explores how artists made the canvas an arena for experimentation and personal expression through form and colour. It focuses on five themes: paint as material and process; symbolic languages drawn from myth and ritual; abstraction as an expression of the self; painting as movement and dance; and the canvas as environment.

The exhibition was divided into five sections and I have replicated this with my posts. There are five posts which mirror the sections of the exhibition, each with the same introduction.

Section 2: Myth, Symbol, Ritual:

The paintings in this section are characterised by systems of marks or forms that suggest a non-representational language - abstract signs and symbols that exist outside of place and time. Their origins lie in the legacies of European and Latin Amerian movements such as Surrealism, Taschisme and Art Informel. Spontaneous or 'automatic writing' was seen as a way of by-passing rationalism to access unconscious drives and desires. The artists here were also interested in non-western systems of belief and their expression through calligraphy and graffitti, as well as the symbols and glyphs associated with ancient myths and rituals.

Akiko Miyawaki, Japan, Work, 1962 (marble powder and oil on canvas)

Miyawaki experimented with heavily built-up surfaces made from layers of pigment mixed with marble powder  over canvas on board, creating  mixed-media works with undulating dune-like surfaces  incorporating materials like glass. In 1966 she shifted towards sculpture, with her famous  Utsurohi (transcience) series of swirling ductile stainless steel cords.

Tomie Ohtake, Japan/Brazil, Roxo (Purple), 1966, (oil on canvas)

Ohtake did not begin to paint until the age of 39. Consistently experimenting with form and process, Ohtake soon ventured from figurative painting into creating abstract shapes and colour fields.

Tomie Ohtake, Untitled, 1960, (oil on canvas)

Lee Krasner, USA, Bald Eagle, 1955, (oil, paper and canvas collage on linen)

One of the defining figures of the first generations of Abstract Expressionists in New York. Her series of Little Images and collage paintings included fragments of discarded paintings which she let fall onto the surface of the canvas.

Lee Krasner, Feathering, 1959, (oil on canvas)

Charlotte Park, Jubilee, 1955, (oil on canvas)

Ethel Schwabacher, USA, Woman: Red Sea, Dead Sea, 1951, (oil on canvas)

Grace Hartigan, USA, Cedar Bar, 1951, (oil on canvas)

Hartigan was part of the dynamic group known as the second generation of Abstract Expressionists, which also included her friends Helen Frankenthaler and Joan Mitchell. In the 1950s she used the name George, which she attributed to her admiration for 19th century women writers George Eliot and George Sand.

George Hartigan, Portrait of W, 1951-52, (oil on canvas)

Franciszka Themerson, Poland/UK, Calligramme, 1960, (red emulsion and black enamel on paper)

Themerson created what she described as 'Bi-abstract pictures' using plaster and cloth in relief works and poured enamel paint onto paper in improvised drawings relying on chance.

Franciszka Themerson, Poland/UK, Calligramme, 1960, (red emulsion and black enamel on paper)

Franciszka Themerson, Poland/UK, Calligramme, 1960, (red emulsion and black enamel on paper)

Franciszka Themerson, Poland/UK, Calligramme, 1960, (red emulsion and black enamel on paper)

Franciszka Themerson, Poland/UK, Calligramme, 1960, (red emulsion and black enamel on paper)

Behjat Sadr, Untitled, 1956, (oil on canvas)

Judit Reigt, Hungary/France, Mass Writing, 1961, (oil on canvas)

When Reigt moved to Paris she met Andre Breton and was influenced by Surrealist ideas, particularly the technique of automatic writing that remained substantial throughout her career. Later she moved towards lyrical abstraction, in work that emphasised the gestural involvement of the body when painting.

Betty Parsons, USA, Looking Out, 1957, (oil on canvas)

Buffie Johnson, USA, Pentecost, 1958, (oil on canvas)

Sarah Grilo, Argentina/Spain, Black Wall, 1967, (oil on canvas)

Grilo was a member of the Grupo de Artistas Modernos who explored geometric abstraction in 1950s Buenos Aires. After the group dissolved she travelled to Europe, then moved to New York in 1962, where she developed a more gestural and lyrical informal abstraction using letters, numbers and symbols drawn from torn posters, signs and graffitied walls she observed on the streets.

Maliheh Afnan, Palestine, Concours, 1961, (oil on canvas)

Afnan was part of an important generation of female artists and writers who emerged in the Middle East in the new cultural climate of the 1960s. Her work touches on post-war themes of exile and memory, based on her and her family's experience being exiled from Palestine in 1948. Interested in Arabic and Persian scripts, she transformed these in her 'written paintings' into abstract forms, creating a visual caligraphic language concerned with memory and feelings of loss and displacement.

Vivian Springford, Untitled, 1962, (acrylic on canvas)

Sarah Grilo, Switzerland, Not Even One More Day, 1966, (oil on canvas)

Nadia Saikali, Moonrise, 1969, (oil on canvas)

Nadia Saikali, France, Gesture, 1960, (oil on canvas)

Saikali's interest in abstraction grew from a love of geography and geology, ancient civilisations and archaeology, which inform her mark-making and fluid gestures.

Helen Khal, USA/Lebanon, Ochre Over Brown, 1968, (oil on canvas)

Khal's paintings contain fluid blocks of colour in intimately scaled abstract works infused with light which she described as a way to create 'an oasis for the emotions'. In 1975, she published the influential feminist book, The Woman Artist in Lebanon.

Chinyee, China, Solids, 1964, (oil on canvas)

Nina Tryggvadottir, Iceland, Abstraction, 1963, (oil on linen)

Tryggvadottir was a painter but also employed collage, stained glass and mosaic. Her compositions referenced nature, Icelandic landscapes and Nordic light.

Elna Fonnesbech-Sandbert, Denmark, Myriader, 1959, (oil on canvas)

Fonnesbech-Sandberg was a Danish artist, collector an patron who, during the 1920s, built up a unique art collection of Scandinavian modernism. Following WWII, she shifted her focus to collect expressive abstract art. Fonnesbech-Sandberg started painting in 1947 at the request of her psychoanalyst, quickly developing a densely layered, abstract style consisting of numerous layers of paint that she then scratched through and repainted again and again.

Britta Ringvall, Sweden, Swedish Landscape, 1960, (oil on canvas)

Hedwig Thun, Germany, Dodona, 1962, (oil on canvas)

Thun's early works were figurative, and she turned to abstraction while a student at the Bauhaus school, where her early compositions show a similarity to her teacher Wassily Kadinsky. From 1950 onwards, Thun's works became more gestural as she experimented with various stain and drip techniques.

Carol Rama, Italy, (We moan, we do the Bop), 1868, (pigmented glue and dolls' eyes on card)