The work of Gerhard Richter, James Brooks, and David Hockney challenge the notion that “painting is dead” and in fact demonstrate it’s alive and well and exciting! Richter considered one of the greatest living painters explores new cycles of painting from large-scale nearly-white abstractions to small-scale colorful lacquer on glass. Brooks’ work from the 1970s allows us to re-discover the lyrical pleasures of Abstract Expressionism by one of its original members. Described in his native country as “Britain’s most famous living artist”, Hockney turns his attention to painting landscapes “en plein air” meaning outdoors, something he’s never done before!
Installation View. Marian Goodman Gallery
Gerhard Richter
Abstract Paintings, 2009
Marian Goodman Gallery - 24 West 57th Street, 4th floor
until January 9, 2010
James Brooks
Geometry and Gesture, Selected Works from 1968 - 1979
Greenberg Van Doren Gallery - 730 5th Avenue, 7th floor
until December 23, 2009
David Hockney
Paintings 2006-2009
PaceWildenstein - 32 East 57th Street, 2nd floor
until December 24, 2009
1. Gerhard Richter: Abstract Paintings, 2009
Gerhard Richter has challenged expectations by eschewing a stylistic consistency and working in a variety of ways from photo-based figurative realism to colorful gestural abstractions. He also questions the very nature and validity of painting. This deep-rooted suspicion arises from his childhood. Born in Dresden in 1932, Richter’s experience of the Nazi movement and life in Communist East Germany shaped a life-long distrust of ideology of any kind. Yet, at 75 years old, Richter continues to amaze with the depth of his ongoing exploration of abstract painting and at the same time creating politically potent and historically important work.
Gerhard Richter. ABSTRACT PAINTING (911-1), 2009, 78 3/4 X 118 1/8 IN. ( 200 X 300 CM )
Entering the gallery, you immediately encounter 5 large-scale abstract paintings with predominately white surfaces. Take a few moments to look at them. What do they make you think of or feel? (In the exhibition catalogue, Benjamin H. D. Buchloh suggests a resemblance to Monet’s Water Lilies.)
Richter in an interview with Sarah Douglas for ARTINFO reveals “I always start these abstract paintings very colorful and very free.” What color(s) do you notice beneath the veils of white paint?
Gerhard Richter. ABSTRACT PAINTING (911-4), 2009, 78 3/4 X 118 1/8 IN. (200 X 300 CM)
Richter uses a signature tool, a squeegee-like device across the surface of the paintings which simultaneously covers and uncovers the layers of paint below. For these paintings, Richter also used wooden rulers pulled across the painting’s surface - can you find any marks made by the edges of the ruler?
Experience it...
As you walk through the exhibition, compare these works with the other abstract paintings on view to discover Richter’s decades-long investigation of abstract painting. Richter chooses a variety of surfaces to work on and notice the differences between paintings on canvas, wood, glass, and aludibond (an aluminum composite panel). Consider his choice of colors, process of layering and removing, and the resulting surface marks and textures. Don’t miss the unique Sinbad series where Richter creates pairs of glass panels painted on the back with lacquer.
SINDBAD (905/1-49), DETAIL, 2008, EACH 11 13/16 X 19 11/16 IN. ( 30 X 50 CM )
Talk about it...
Before you leave the first gallery, there’s a picture here that looks different from the rest. Look closely at it. What does it make you think of and feel?
Can you tell the medium of the image, for example, a painting, photograph, or print?
It’s a 2009 print of the painting September, 2005 that Richter along with collector Joe Hage gave as a gift to MoMA.
Gerhard Richter. SEPTEMBER, 2009, 26 X 35 3/8 IN. (66.04 X 89.85 CM)
On September 11th, 2001 Richter was on a plane headed to NY for the opening of his exhibition scheduled for September 13th. On this wall hung a series of gray paintings that people told Richter resembled photographs of the dust from the Twin Towers. Richter explains, “And so for sentimental reasons, this print is here in honor. Dedicated to that time.”
The wily artist gives us a high resolution reproduction of a painting originally based on a photograph. He explains he initially decided to make a print because “it comes from wanting to have something for me. I take a photograph of a painting just to have it. Then it becomes interesting how different it is from the original. It’s not only a reproduction. It’s different from the painting and has it’s own qualities.”
Even though the image is mechanically made and flat, our eye takes in many details including the texture of the paint and the nap of the canvas heightening the tension of what are we exactly looking at.
Richter originally felt his painting September was a failure. ”It was a very typical photograph of what happened. Colorful - red, yellow, fire. I couldn’t use this image, It didn’t work. It was wrong…” Robert Storr shares in his catalogue, September that after sleeping several nights under the unresolved painting, Richter knew what to do and scraped off the surface layers with a kitchen knife (rather than applying his usual squeegee).
Why might Richter feel the image is more successful in it’s blurred state with subdued color? Consider how the dissolution of the image echoes the dissolution of life and buildings.
For an in-depth study of this important history painting, read Robert Storr’s catalogue available at gallery desk and/or watch a video discussion with him.
Also, Jerry Saltz in his review of the exhibition points out that Richter who numbers his works made the white Abstract Paintings in this gallery part of series No. 911. For our adult audience, Saltz proposes that Richter’s ”911 paintings are abstract, unsentimental evocations of the annihilation that can come from ideology.” Wow!
Follow-up…
Visit Richter’s September painting at the Museum of Modern Art.
More on Richter:
www.gerhard-richter.com
James Brooks. Brandon, 1978. Greenberg Van Doren Gallery.
2. James Brooks: Geometry and Gesture, Selected Works from 1968 - 1979
James Brooks (1906-1992) is one of the least-well known of the first generation of Abstract Expressionists. Friends with Jackson Pollock and Lee Krasner, Brooks was among the first AbEx artists to pioneer the technique of “staining” the raw canvas with paint. Considered one of the most innovative and technically accomplished members of the New York School, Brooks received a full-scale retrospective at the Whitney Museum of American Art in 1963.
Experience it….
As you look at Brooks’ paintings, it may be helpful to remember how radical AbEx was in it’s day! Developing after WWII, artists challenged the status quo by rejecting recognizable subject matter and insisting on the primacy of paint, process, gesture, and the formal elements of color, line, shape, and form.
Can you tell Brooks made the large paintings by placing the canvas on the ground and pouring thin films of paint on to the surface? Notice how this approach creates an under-painting of translucent layers of color.
Returning to the surface of the painting, Brooks uses 2 different approaches of mark-making: geometry and gesture. Notice how in Leen (1974) and Nalon (1968), he uses angular lines and flat geometric forms to suggest depth and at the same time assert the flatness of the picture plan.
Compare those works with Khrog (1974) and Yarsboro (1972). Notice how the mark-making is more organic and calligraphic. Also, the forms swell within the space sometimes obscuring each other and sometimes defining each other as their edges touch.
With your new awareness of Brooks visual strategies of geometry and gesture, look at his works on paper. How do they compare with his paintings? How does his palette often being limited to black and white affect your experience of the works on paper?
More on Brooks:
www.jamesbrooks.org
Installation View. Pace Wildenstein Gallery.
3. David Hockney: Paintings 2006-2009
At 72, David Hockney is having his first painting show in NY in 12 years and the subject is brand-new for the artist long associated with portraiture as well as photo-collages, opera stagings and more. He’s returned to the landscape of his youth in East Yorkshire, England and is painting it “en plein air”.
Watch a video and audio slide show on the New York Times.
As a British artist, it shouldn’t be surprising that Hockney has taken up landscape painting like the British painters before him such as John Constable and J. M.W. Turner. However, Hockney has never followed in the expected path: painting figuratively when abstraction reigned, openly referring to homosexuality in his work while it was still illegal in England, and dying his hair blonde and decamping to LA where he has lived since the 1960s.
Hockney had been visiting his mother in Bridlington since 1980 and in 1997 began spending more time there when a friend was ill. As he drove back and forth to visit his friend, he began to see the landscape with a new interest. In 2005, he moved there and as Lawrence Weschler states in the exhibition catalogue has become engaged in “the fiercest, most joyous, most sustained, and most prolific bout of painting in his entire career, one that shows no sign of abating.”
Installation View. Pace Wildenstein Gallery.
Experience it…
At the entrance to the gallery, you’re greeted by a quote from Hockney, “I’ve taken to thinking of these recent canvases of mine as figure painting… you the viewer are the figure in them.” As you view the paintings, imagine entering them.
A favorite subject for Hockney is the Hawthorne blossom who’s brief blooming only lasts 3 or 4 days in late May and June. Compare the 5 paintings on view here to discover Hockney’s ongoing interest and investigation of this shrub. For example, note his choice of different viewpoints, sometimes the Hawthorne blossoms are front and center versus being seen along the side of the road. In these works and the others on view, enjoy his passion and exuberance evident in his brushstrokes, colors, and patterns.
The largest painting on view is The Big Hawthorne (2008). Notice it is composed of 9 canvases. Hockney needed to devise a way to create large-scale paintings that could be painted outside in all types of weather as well as transported back and forth from the studio to the field. After driving around hours at a time to find a view of interest, Hockney creates a charcoal sketch on site. Back in the studio, he devises the scene he wants and proceeds to divide it up between several canvases. He works on them individually outdoors before rejoining them back into one painting in the studio.
Compare the charcoal sketches with the finished paintings. Notice the carefully observed and rendered details in the drawings and how Hockney in his paintings remains true to certain elements as well as subtly and dramatically changes others.
Installation view. Pace Wildenstein Gallery.
Talk about it…
In the spring, when Hockney returned to a favorite spot he had painted in the summer and winter, he found a scene which the artist described as “a massacre”. All that remained of the mighty sycamores and beeches were sawn trunks rising up and the limbs of felled trees on the ground.
In his series of these cut trees, how does Hockney communicate his feelings of loss and at the same time his visual appreciation of the stacks of massive trunks? Why might he refer to the sawn trunks as “totems”? Hockney is documenting the thinning of the old forest in East Yorkshire that no one has paid attention to before.
Drawing it…
Inspired by Hockney’s fondness for the Yorkshire landscape, select a site that interests you and record the scene throughout the seasons. Try creating a painting of the site “en plein air”. Since Hockney has always been attracted to the “new”, for example he’s currently making iPhone paintings, consider a second approach to depicting the site using digital or computer technology.
Follow-up:
Visit Hockney’s companion show at PaceWildenstein located at 534 West 25th Street.
More on Hockney:
See an audio slide show of Hockney discussing “his homecoming” on the New York Times