Link to Post:
http://www.pirihalasz.com/blog.htm?post=910288
Piri Halasz reviews three exhibitions at Spanierman Galleries: Perle Fine: 30 Years of Painting, Dripping! Pouring! Staining!, and paintings by James Walsh (all through May 25).
Halasz writes that the exhibitions"might be said to constitute one show of three generations. The first show celebrates Perle Fine, an artist associated with the first generation of abstract expressionists; they mostly came to their artistic maturity in the later 1940s. The second exhibition offers work by a group of artists usually associated with the second generation of abstract expressionists: they mostly established their reputations in the 1950s and 1960s. One of the few exceptions in this group didn’t have his first solo exhibition until 1985, and thus represents a third generation. This artist, James Walsh, is further featured in a small exhibition of his own."
Link to Post:
http://www.pirihalasz.com/blog.htm?post=907117
Piri Halasz reviews four recent and current painting shows in New York: Radiance: The Paintings of Stanley Boxer, 1970s—1990s, Thirteen Contemporary Artists, and Frank Bowling: Paintings, 1967-2012 (through April 20) at Spanierman Modern, and Painterly Pasted Pictures at Freedman Art (through May 18).
Link to Post:
http://abstractcritical.com/note/frank-bowling-paintings-1967-2012/
Courtney J. Martin writes about the paintings of Frank Bowling on the occasion of the exhibition Frank Bowling: Paintings 1967 – 2012 at Spanierman Modern, New York, through April 20, 2013.
Martin writes that Bowling's "poured paintings were often a combination of action painting and compositional devices, like vertical lines, that were used by the group of abstract painters that Clement Greenberg supported. A work like Leanora’s Seas (1976) – with its ambiguous reference to a close friend, and the painting’s marine green – were part of the body of Bowling’s art that Greenberg encouraged. Here the poured section of the paint is confined to the center of the canvas, implying a rigidity within the otherwise uncontrolled action of pouring paint. On either side of the poured paint, two background colors form a solid, tonal band. They are tight, linear rectangles in the otherwise fluid-looking surface. After a break of several years, Bowling returned to pouring paint in 2012, creating a new body of poured paintings that includes, Upright (2012)."
Link to Post:
http://abstractcritical.com/note/intimate-abstraction-at-the-searchers-contemporary-bristol/
Curator Nick Moore writes about the Intimate Abstraction, and exhibition of works by John Bunker, John Eaves, Patrick Jones, Frank Bowling, at The Searchers Contemporary, Bristol, on view through April 5, 2013.
Moore notes: "The title of this exhibition derives partly from the size of the gallery and the choice of smaller works to include in it, but more importantly from the layers of meaning in the word intimate. Intimacy is usually thought of as the feeling of being in a close personal association, a belonging together; a familiar and very close felt connection with another. Genuine intimacy requires dialogue, transparency, vulnerability and reciprocity. The adjective, 'intimate' also indicates detailed knowledge and experience of the other, be it a person or a thing. And so the working processes of the painter with the depth of knowledge and experience of the material they use, have experimented with, investigated and tested through a long relationship (possibly thirty or forty years). This can result in a connection in which there is an emotional range involving both robust conflict, and intense loyalty to the medium being used, a dynamic partnership in which there is give and take. It is this sense of connection with the process that initially drew me to these four painters and the richness of the particular way paint is extended through the inclusion of other materials."
Link to Post:
http://patternsthatconnext.wordpress.com/2012/12/06/british-abstract-painting-in-the-seventies-stagnation-or-new-possibilities/
Andy Parkinson blogs about the exhibition New Possibilities: Abstract Paintings from the Seventies at The Piper Gallery, on view through December 21, 2012.
Parkinson writes: "In the seventies abstract painting in Britain was in crisis. At least that’s how it seemed to some. If during the sixties it had become hegemonic that privileged position was on the wane. Peter Fuller would shortly declare American abstraction to be not much more than a CIA plot, within the discipline of painting figuration was in resurgence, whilst outside it performance art and conceptualism were fast becoming the dominant art forms, leading to the stagnation of abstract painting. The exhibition... of fourteen painters from the period (all still painting today)... counters this viewpoint, demonstrating that instead abstraction in this decade was vibrant and varied."
Link to Post:
http://abstractcritical.com/article/frank-bowling-interview/
Robin Greenwood talks to painter Frank Bowling about his life and work at the exhibition Drop, Roll, Slide, Drip… Frank Bowling's Poured Paintings 1973–8 at Tate Britain, on view through April 30, 2013.
Bowling remarks: "What we inherited from the first generation [of abstract expressionists] was the freedom to apply the paint in any which way you want, pouring it, spilling it, dripping it … It was a kind of exhilarating thing to feel, that you can make a work, and make a work that's really rich, and right on the way… to the best that's ever been done with paint by spilling and dripping, pouring… the whole thing was so open…"
Link to Post:
http://abstractcritical.com/2012/07/bonfanti-and-bowling-brief-notes-on-two-very-different-exhibitions-of-abstract-art/
Sam Cornish reviews two exhibitions that might represent poles of abstract painting: Arturo Bonfanti: Paintings, Reliefs and Sculpture 1960-1972, at Austin Desmond and Frank Bowling: Recent Paintings at Hales Gallery, both on view through July 27, 2012.
Of Bonfanti's work, Cornish writes that "One of the interesting ways in which they fight against being simply tasteful or decorative arrangements is the sense some have of being made from occlusions and omissions as much as from direct and wholly visible assertions, so that they appear deconstructed as much as constructed." Of Bowling's: "what struck me about the paintings was the frequent appearance of a just submerged symbolic imagery... most particularly in the repeated statement of a heroic upright. However the 70s paintings are tight, formal and so restrict an associative reading, whereas those at Hales billow and find associations with weather (storms and tempests) and with more directly figurative spaces. A few of the recent paintings seem to stage a specifically Christian imagery..."
Link to Post:
http://www.frieze.com/issue/article/the-middle-of-the-day/
Courtney J. Martin interviews painter Frank Bowling.
Bowling recalls "I was engaged with all those people, especially Newman. He turned the Mark Rothko shape on its side. You had to have permission to get past Newman. It was like a wall, so I thought you should open it up, open up the surface. My poured surfaces didn’t billow like Rothko's. Mine billowed like the kind of heat haze that you get in Guyana in the middle of the day. The sun is so hot that the water evaporates, rises and stays still: it is just there. You get a kind of heat haze that is almost impenetrable. If you go outside, you have to go out into the water. I felt those things about these pictures. I had to open it up. I thought that I could challenge geometric abstraction within the rectangle."
Link to Post:
http://www.tate.org.uk/context-comment/video/tateshots-frank-bowling
Painter Frank Bowling discusses his work in a new video filmed in his studio.
Bowling remarks: "In my youth I tended to look at the tragic side of human behavior an try and reflect that in my work, but gradually, as I became more involved in the making of paintings, I realized that one of the main ingredients in making paintings was color - and geometry - and I found this was the place I felt the most comfortable, and I've been going along this track ever since." He continues, describing his painting process in detail, noting: "It all happens very much in an extemporary way. I don't have any pre-plan idea about how I'm going to make a painting."
Link to Post:
http://anaba.blogspot.com/2010/11/abstract-masters.html
