Contemporary Figurative Painting found online

 

ONGOING as I find them

*************

Jenna Gribbon

Such a gift for composition 

She must 

 see the world as painting non- stop

Jenna Gribbon

And so much joy in her youthful body

(Presumably a self portrait)

Jenna Gribbon

Jacob Collins

What a projection of personality 

of a person you would like to know.

Collins speaks about the lack of institutional patronage 

for  "authentic American painting" on Youtube, 

to which i dared append a comment.

Henry Taylor,  72 x 96, 2016

The times they ain’t changing fast enough

Most of his paintings aren’t this good.

Presumably, this subject moved him.

Iian Faulkner, Leaving Venice, 2020

The elegant woman and the expensive luggage make a fine duet

on the canals of Venice

Alex Kanevsky

A bit more about the  painting than the woman.

I guess she’s singing in the tub

Sunday morning at the Art Institute of Chicago

 

With two new special exhibits, it was time to visit the museum before my membership expires.

I was going to review them, but as it turned out, neither were that remarkable.

On the other hand, this piece from the permanent collection really grabbed me:

Equestrian Figure Late 12th-early 15th century Bankoni Bougouni region, Mali 

Terracotta 

Ada Turnbull Hertle Endowment, 1987.314.

Seated on a bridled horse, this bearded equestrian has an elaborate hairstyle, facial scarifications, and jewelry that reflect wealth and status. The rider's sheathed knife further indicates the key role that warriors on horseback played in expanding West Africa's great empires from the 1roos to the early 160os: Quick-moving cavalry could maintain control over vast territories. Traveling merchants who served these powerful states traded goods and ideas with the Mediterranean world, the Middle East, and Asia. Figures in this style have been unearthed in Bankoni, a village near Mali's capital, since the 1950s.

Part of a five piece set, it stands alone quite well.

Presumably it’s been in the African gallery for decades, but I just can’t  remember it.

Stick figures are like tubes of energy,

just actual wooden twigs,

and can be quite delightful when bent, proportioned, and placed just so.

I’m guessing that this way of handling clay

followed a way of twisting, cutting, and arranging natural pieces of wood.

Nothing shows more inner power than a tree branch.

This guy has as much motion as a static object can have.

*********

Korean exhibition

These two Bodhisattvas from the 7th Century 

All these pieces come from  the formerly private collection of the Chairman of the Samsung Group.

Overall, it’s disappointing.

Pieces were probably acquired for historical rather than aesthetic value.

The above, however, appear to have both.

So gentle and lyrical.

Kim Kichang,  1914-2001, 1955

Bold and fun …. but nothing more.

Buncheong ware, c. 1500

12th C. Celadon 

Open doors to infinite nothingness.

Yi Haeung (1820-1898), Orchids

Statesman in the royal family and father of Korea’s last king,

as well as very adept artist.

Especially like the goofiness of this piece.

The contrast of loose and tight.

Hard and soft.

Kim Whanki 김환기, I9I3-1974 Echo of Mountain  산울림 I9-I1-73#307 1973 Oil on canvas , 104”x84”

Kim Whanki was one of the first abstract artists in Korea, ushering in a new chapter in modern Korean art in the 193os. Throughout his career, he explored diverse forms of abstraction, culminating in his Echo series in which he painted dense dots to create immersive surfaces. While living in New York from 1964 until his death, Kim longed for his home country and often reflected on his cultural heritage. He found solace in the repetitive act of adding dots to canvas, and he likened blue to the sky and ocean of Korea. 

Reminds me of a show by 

Young-il Ahn (1934-2020)

that came to Chicago a few years ago.

Both artists moved to America and made meditative surfaces.

Doesn’t really play well in a noisy museum.

**********

 The Matisse Show

Matisse : The Horse, The Rider, and The Clown,  194

A dynamic design that races out to the corners.

And what a  nice setting for the colors.

They are the stars of this show.

This is the entire series of prints now called “Jazz” , designed with pieces of cut paper.   It’s so much easier to see them online where a backlit screen does them justice. 

 If you disagree, you can always see them whenever you want in the museum’s Print and Drawing room.  Nothing here was borrowed from other collections.

So this exhibit mostly serves as an inexpensive way to appeal to a larger and likely younger audience 

Here are the others that I like:

The Circus

The Swimmer in the Tank

Icarus

Love the contrasting legs - and arms too.

There’s something so classical about taking joy from someone else’s misfortune. 

The French text is translated as:

“Such a free moment. Shouldn’t we also make a big plane trip for young people who have finished their studies.”

The old French modernist was making joyful figurative art at the same time some young Americans were abstract expressing confusion and despair.

********

On the way to the Matisse, I ran into this in Gunuslaus Hall:

Raqib Shaw : Paradise Lost

Detail

I reviewed it  "here" 

 The cosmic spectacle certainly captured my attention - like Thomas Cole’s “The Course of Empire” - but it’s too painful to ever want to see again.  

At 1200 square feet, it’s  the largest piece in the entire museum.

But still it felt claustrophobic and I badly needed fresh air.

  

Finally, I had to visit the great Rodin standing figures above the main stairway. I’ve recently been studying contrasting accounts of “the father of modern sculpture”, and posted the photos taken at the very end of this post.

Abstract Chicago III :From Chicago to Gowanus

 

Has anything like a comprehensive exhibition of Chicago abstract artists ever been mounted in Chicago?  None that I can recall, but now one is popping up in a gallery in Brooklyn. It's a not-for-profit,  artist-run affair that is running out of money.  This may be its final year.

Ortega y Gasset Projects came together as an artist-run space in April 2013 when a group of artists realized how much their practices were dictated by their circumstances. José Ortega y Gasset’s famous maxim “yo soy yo y mi circunstancia” (I’m myself and my circumstance) deeply resonated with the group, so they named the space as a nod to the philosopher’s pragmatism and realist phenomenology, that came to be known as the “philosophy of life.” Ortega y Gasset Projects celebrates 10 years in May, 2023.  

OyG is entirely run by working artists, who recognize that exploration is key to artistic vitality. We embrace an exploratory model where artists take the role of curator, critic and promoter. Working without concern for commercial profit or an explicit curatorial ideology, the goal of OyG is to mount exhibitions that support under-represented, marginalized artists and emerging artists, provoke dialogue and bolster artistic community . In doing so, we participate within a wider forum to disseminate aesthetic experience and expand our roles, priorities and scope of influence within art culture.

Not sure how artists who have nothing in common but exhibition space can be much of a community. And why would they want to "expand their influence within art culture", when they may, or may not, agree about anything at all.  Yet still we may note the use of the phrase "aesthetic experience" in their mission statement.  "Art culture" and aesthetics have long since parted company - so, like me, they are at the margins of the artworld.

This exhibition invites viewers to consider the evolution of abstraction through a distinctly Chicagoan lens, one infused with an irreverence toward tradition and a deep connection to place. It is an invitation to think about abstraction not just as a visual form, but as a metaphor for the ongoing exploration of our relationship to the world, to nature, and to each other. 

Metaphors be damned!  It is the undoing of contemporary art whenever formal expression is finished as soon as sufficient metaphor has been recognized   Or even worse - when visuality is intentionally kept from being the center of attention.  This is the curse of conceptualism - and more than half  of these artists suffer from it.  It’s not especially a Chicago thing - except within its university art departments. In the American artworld, it dates back to Bernard Newman (1905-1970),

Below, I’ve listed all 26 of the artists - but some are figurative, some are photography, a few are traditional crafts, and many are primarily conceptual.  Thankfully, however, none appear to be about gender/racial identity, or social justice. 

I’ve  only shown those that interest me as abstract art. Those pieces which actually appear in this show are marked as such.

 Lynn Basa, 

Looks fabulous.

She specializes in public commissions, 

not gallery sales.

Leslie Baum (in the show)

This kinda-figurative work is atypical for her, though it does seem appropriate for the “Chicago” theme of this show

Phyllis Bramson, Figurative Imagist painter.  

Jason Branscum,  photographer 

Judith Brotman,     Conceptual 

Robert Burnier

More clever than satisfying,

but clever nonetheless,

and skillful too.

Dee Clements,   Basketry

William Conger

The only really Chicago piece in the show.

The world is closing in on this artist’s beautiful but ominous vision.

Laura Davis figurative, conceptual 

David Ese Gagoh,   Photography

Diana Guerrero-Maciá

Pattern play for the sake of pattern play.

Steven Husby, 2021, 30 x 24 ( in this show)

My favorite in this show.

The ever turning wheels of existence.

Sam Jaffe

Just a bit too cheerful,

.

At the edge of scary.

Kelly Kaczynski

I’ve liked isometric projection ever since I took a university class in mechanical drawing.  It’s a happy, floating world enhanced here with color.

Michael Kaysen,   Potter

Anna Kunz. (In this show)

This reproduction does not make it for me - but her large works, in person, are quite uplifting.

Olivia Schreiner

I’m Intrigued 

Part fantasy, part ordinary reality.

Joe Scott

The colors seem so right for the cart like construction 

as it barrels and smashes through space.

Edra Soto. Conceptual architecture 

Shonna Pryor,   Conceptualist

Tony Tasset,  ( in this show)

This is the world of Clyfford Still,

so I may like it much more in person

when I can better feel the paint’s thickness.

Ann Toebbe,    Representational

Selina Trepp,   Conceptual

Nathan Vernau, conceptual graphics

Christine Wallers,  conceotual

Justin Witte

A floral mystery.

Is the mood happy or sad?

******

Here’s an installation view pulled off Instagram.

Will OYG eventually show the complete checklist online?

Tribute to Robin Greenwood and friends

 

Robin Greenwood’s "Thuvia , Maid of Mars,"  210 x 120,  1990

A funky, dramatic interplay of solid colors for the sheer fun of it,

So appropriate for the absurd pulp fiction for which it was named.

**********

Robin Greenwood (1950 -- 2023)

To be ‘new’ a painting doesn’t have to have been painted in 2018, or even by a living painter. What this survey and the comments show is that time, discernment and taste has not yet caught up with many of the paintings on display. A painting is ‘new’ if it opens up untapped resources for others that have been lying fallow or unnoticed, or if it reasserts the fundamental eloquence of the means, the simple elements of colour, line, plane, area-shape, facture, in a surprising way — (confined surprise, as Greenberg called it, not literal theatrical surprise -Seminar 8).”   Comment by Alan Gouk on Key Paintings of the 20th Century, a ‘Musée Imaginaire’, Part 2, 11.3.18.

“For something to be “new” in this sense, not only does it not have to be painted in 2018 or by a living painter, but it doesn’t have to be either modernist or abstract. Just saying.”   Comment by RG in reply, 12.3.18.

*******

Above is a brief exchange between Robin Greenwood and one of the artist/writers who posted text on Abcrit,  an online forum he created to talk about art.  He also created the Branchester Chronicles to document and discuss the exhibitions he invited into the gallery he started.

As you may note, Greenwood does not connect judgment to a narrative of art history.  But his approach to art is so theoretical, I’d hesitate to call him an aesthete.  He wants sculpture that has no frontality  - so all figurative and much non-figurative is off the table.  His own work looks like fluff balls of tangled metal - and I doubt they would engage me in person. 

He wants painting that is free from all associations, striking out as its own new thing. energizing space with a swirling gyre of mark making.  He offers the abstract expressionism of Pollock and Krasner as examples:

Lee Krasner

Meanwhile, he despairs the. “drift” of the work by Frankenthaler and Olitski, two of Abstract Expressionism’s most dubious and indulgent painters …..in clear detriment to the “all-over energy” of Pollock; or, for that matter, the best of 

A work of art is the unavoidable result of countless feelings, memories, ideas, experiences etc.  But still, the greater prominence given to theory, the worse it’s going to look.  Analytical Cubism is a classic example.

Nevertheless - I really like almost all the painters in Greenwood’s circle.   Mostly, they’re old folks who picked up ABX at art school, loved it,  and never moved on.  That is not how to build a career - and like Greenwood, most of them needed another source of income.  Many don’t  have galleries or even websites. 

If I had a house in London, this is what I’d fill it with.

(No wall space left in Chicago)

Here’s a shot of Greenwood’s  last show.

His sculptures desperately curl away from surrounding space  as if it were toxic.

John Pollard,  Brutal World

These Brits are certainly not sentimental,

but still this is a world I’d like to live in. 

I feel joy, love, passion

whether intended or not.

Anne Smart, Broiderie Landings, 2013

Greenwood had this above his bed.

Less aggressive, still probably quite thrilling in person

where you can feel the surface.

John Bunker, detail

John Bunker. B. 1968

Fred Pollock, Clyde Magic,  2018, 30 x 39

The over stimulation of 

a hip urban scene 

Back in 2013, there was an interesting discussion of color in this artist’s work over on the Brancaster Chronicles .  

Ashley West: Fred, one thing for me that I find challenging looking at your paintings is the high key of the colour, the primary and secondary colours, and the fact that I’m used to looking at painting like this that’s primarily all about colour where the compositional structure is simplified to a degree, so that the colour can operate as free from that structure as possible. Do you see what I’m saying?

Fred Pollock: No, I’ve no idea what you are talking about.

Ashley West: Well, if you take geometric abstract painting, like Mondrian or Ellsworth Kelly…

Fred Pollock: Oh, OK.

I do wish Fred had stuck to his incomprehension because, like Fred, Mondrian’s colors occur within the context of an exciting graphic design.  The excitement in Kelly’s paintings, if any, is strictly intellectual.

But I am happy to report that at the end of this discussion, Robin Greenwood says in his typically self effacing way: 

 This is probably wrong – but I’m going to punt it out anyway. I think it might be worth considering Fred’s more recent paintings – i.e., all those here except for “Sunspots” – as being not about colour at all, which rather contradicts much of the above discussion 

 And so I’m missing Robin even more now.

He felt that the art theory he learned at school ( flatness, color, space) did not really identify what was special about the work of his friends - but he couldn’t come up with anything better.

I think we just have to switch focus from cause to effect - and talk about how the piece makes you feel - as ignorant as that that may appear.  Art is quite different from a baseball game. It cannot be tabulated on any kind of score card.

Patrick Jones, Picking up Sticks, 2022,   24 x 36

Cirque du Soleil ?

Want to see more.

Beautiful and thrilling

Nick Moore, Cryptic, 2017, 48 x 48

A classical feeing here.

The Fall of Troy?

Emyr Williams, Times Refresh,  50 x 30

Richard Ward, August 19,   27 x 27

Nice on-line discussion of  the “slap dash” used  in the above.

Richard Ward, 120 x 100”

Man  walking?

Noela James Berry

Henry Hay,  Word Go,  28 x 24”,   2019

Younger than most (b. 1990), now does figurative

#EC_ismyname

EC

This artist is coy about her name and every other detail of  her life.

But she is my favorite 

and still quite prolific on Instagram.

Always seems to be looking for whatever will surprise.

Alexandra Harley

The only sculpture shown that I liked.

 Definitely quite frontal, however.

Sadly, with Robin’s passing,

his gallery and both forum websites have passed away as well

Sic transit Gloria Mundi

***************************

 “To be ‘new’ a painting doesn’t have to have been painted in 2018, or even by a living painter. “…a number of the Tintorettos were new to us, and what’s more, were exciting and up-to the-minute. The experience of such art is often not only a ‘new’ thing, but also a ‘now’ thing, a revelation of the moment, even if we have seen it before. With art as good as this it is never just a matter for art history. And there is more originality and immediacy in a few Tintorettos than in a dozen FIACs.” [FIAC is a Parisian Contemporary Art Fair]. From a Poussin Gallery catalogue essay, “New to Sight”, by RG, January 2010.