Link to Post:
http://sameoldart.tumblr.com/post/42581405480/the-many-mouths-of-lee-bontecou
A blog post considering the enduring individuality of Lee Bontecou.
"It is not all about brute sentiments in Lee Bontecou’s work in the 60s. Her assemblage pieces are never too mechanic to take on the look of manufactured goods. These are hand-crafted objects recalling structures that can be found both in the natural and industrial world. These are not Jasper Johns’ painted bronze cans or Robert Rauschenberg’s combines either. This is not to say that Bontecou’s work is comparatively better or worse. But what if we talked about Lee Bontecou in the way that we talked about Johns and Rauschenberg? What if we switched the order of hierarchies in favor of Lee Bontecou or Eva Hesse? Would younger generations of artists be looking at popular culture to the same extent? Are there other ways of making art than constantly referencing and manipulating icons of art history? What about the darker aspects of life? How do they fit in? "
Link to Post:
http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/arts/culture/la-et-cm-moca-void-review-20121006,0,889874.story
Christopher Knight reviews the exhibition Destroy the Picture: Painting the Void 1949-1962 at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, on view through January 14, 2013.
Knight writes: "Abstract painting's bodily metaphor was the vehicle for a wide variety of artists. For the 26 represented in 'Destroy the Picture,' destruction was their chosen strategy.... Punctured, flayed, torn, tattered, sliced, peeled, shredded, bandaged — creating through destructive actions was a strategy that emerged simultaneously around the world. Some might regard it as merely an emblem of the capitalist cycles of boom and bust that Marx identified. But Europe was a pile of rubble, Japan a shocked mound of ash. America wasn't physically touched, except in the isolated Pacific, yet the psychic scarring went deep."
Link to Post:
http://artinthestudio.blogspot.com/2010/12/discovery-of-lee-bontecou.html
Nancy Natale blogs her observation of Ivan Karp's discovery of Lee Bontecou as told in the recent book Leo and His Circle: The Life of Leo Castelli by Annie Cohen-Solal. Natale writes "I had wondered how she ever cracked the wall of discrimination against women at that time, and in this book I found the answer."
