I need practice! Will you model for me? Looking for patient and relaxed friends to come one morning (Monday or Wednesday) to Georgetown, 9:30-noonish. Lots of breaks, snacks, compensation negotiable. June or July. Sunday afternoon may be an option if you prefer. No promises on the outcomes! Thank you for considering this! Bob did it:
Yayoi Kusama: I think of her as super-creative because she works in so many different worlds: paint, performance, film, sculpture.
She is known for an indefatigable work ethic, filling enormous canvasses with repetitive polka dots (her signature symbol). I didn’t see her show when she came to town. Did you?
My small effort with polka dots:
I really enjoy working with charcoal. Probably because I feel comfortable, have a level of practice and hours into working with charcoal.
And I’d like to feel the same about paint. And don’t even get me started on watercolor! That is hard!
I had a gorgeous ruffle-y pink peony from my yard. Was excited try to paint. Less excited about results, working from “real life” (the peony).
So I switched. I took a photo of the peony (thinking it was going to start to fade and fall apart). Switched from color to b&w and got the charcoal out.
So then, today at art school, we got to talking about the difference working between real vs photo, and the result was to set me up with a photo of me (he took this a.m.) and I worked in b&w oil paint only. Next step, work from people (in person – not from photos) and see how the portraits change.
Ad Reinhardt 1913-1967
Ad Reinhardt was “one of the most relentless defenders of the purity of abstraction.” So reads the first line from the link, above. He would have scoffed completely at the use of the term “abstract landscapes”.
Two things stand out: other artist biographies in this course mention that Ad was a good friend. He was important to Agnes Martin.
The other thing is that he was a wicked cartoonist who taught/mocked through his cartoons. You can see them online in an 2013 article at hyperallergic.com.
In his last decade he altered his oil paints, reduced them to liquid pigment and painted matte black paintings with subtle color tints.
It’s hard to do – here’s mine:
And back to Agnes Martin for a moment: the latest New Yorker (June 10&17) has a short story byHan Ong, “Javi”. The painter in the story sure sounds like Agnes Martin, but Han Ong moves the timeline perhaps to the present?
Next up: Agnes Martin.
She gets called a minimalist, she considered herself an Abstract Expressionist. To her, the paintings expressed her deep spirituality, based on the Zen master who was influencing many of the artists of the time, D. T. Suzuki (I think).
The Guardian has a more complete biography of Agnes Martin (1912-2004). One of her recurring forms was a grid, taking up all the space on the painting surface. There are a zillion ways to produce a grid!
I appreciate her life story.
Here are my efforts:
"Not knowing how to do it is part of knowing how to do it." - Leon Kossoff 