Link to Post:
http://glasstire.com/2013/04/23/forrest-bess-seeing-things-invisible/
Robert Boyd reviews the exhibition Forrest Bess: Seeing Things Invisible at the Menil Collection, Houston, TX, on view through August 18, 2013.
Boyd writes: " ...whether we understand the symbols or not, they tell us one very important thing–Bess was no formalist. He isn’t trying to arrange colors and shapes in an interesting, aesthetically pleasing way. I see his work as a compulsion, a need to get what he was seeing in his mind down on canvas... This kind of painting–symbolic, Jungian, mythic–was almost a movement in the days before Abstract Expressionism rose. Artists like Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko dabbled in this sort of primitive surrealist symbology. Think of Pollock’s Male and Female (1942) or The She Wolf (1943), for example. It’s hard to say that Bess was a part of that tradition since he was so isolated, but the works have a lot of similarities. Pollock and Rothko moved on. For Bess, contending with his visions was a life-long pursuit."
Submitted by Brett Baker on February 19, 2013
Installation view, Moderna Museet, Hilma af Klint - A Pioneer of Abstraction (photo:© 2013 Åsa Lundén/ Moderna Museet)
Hilma af Klint: A Pioneer of Abstraction is on view at the Moderna Museet in Stockholm through May 26, 2013.
The subject of a rare retrospective exhibitinon at the Moderna Museet, Hilma Af Klint was a pioneering abstract painter and one of the most enigmatic artists of the 20th century.
In the following video, Gertrud Sandqvist gives an informative, in depth lecture on the visionary painter. Sanqvist draws on unprecedented access to the artist's work and journals in her presentation of Af Klint's life, career, and spiritual approach to art. Working outside the European avant garde, Af Klint's abstract paintings pre-date the first abstractions of more well known modernist painters. This development is all the more striking because, as Sandqvist notes:
"[Hilma Af Klint] had no relationship to any other avant garde circles, being completely isolated in Stockholm at that time… her imagery is very, very similar - close to what later Malevich, Mondrian, and Kandinsky... were developing... [the] first abstract work that she was making was in 1907, two years before Kandinsky."
Sandqvist notes that the rediscovery of Hilma Af Klint's work began in earnest at the 1987 exhibition The Spiritual in Art: Abstract Painting 1890-1985 at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. That it took decades for her work to appeal to the public would not have surprised Af Klint according to Sandqvist:
"Hilma Af Klint's work was… esoteric, that means it wasn't shown during her lifetime. She herself in her last will said that this is 'for the future,' this is the message for humanity for the future."
Link to Post:
http://www.wbur.org/2012/12/13/gregory-gillespie-naga
Greg Cook reviews the exhibition Gregory Gillespie: Transfixed at Gallery Naga, Boston, on view through December 15, 2012.
Cook writes that Gillespie was a Massachusetts artist whose "geographical proximity might suggest a stylistic kinship with Boston Expressionists from Hyman Bloom to Henry Schwartz. But his hyper-real self-portraits, squirming landscapes, odd symbolic scenes, and Eastern mandalas fits more easily into the visionary 'Abject Expressionism' that over the past century ran through the work of artists like German Expressionist Otto Dix, Chicagoan Ivan Albright and Los Angeles’ Llyn Foulkes... Gillespie’s best work is itchy and uncanny. He paints a reality that’s not necessarily our reality, but he depicts it so powerfully, so convincingly that his images seem, almost, to be alive."
Link to Post:
http://www.canadianart.ca/online/reviews/2012/06/21/emily-carr-theatre-of-transcendence-vag/
Robin Laurence reviews the exhibition Emily Carr and the Theatre of Transcendence at the Vancouver Art Gallery, on view through September 3, 2012.
Laurence writes that the show "examines how Carr, her contemporaries and present-day practitioners have all expressed an aspiration towards transcendence, towards a state or experience beyond the ordinary." Laurence continues noting that Carr "was a deeply yet idiosyncratically spiritual person, steeped in a very personal Christianity and opposed to what she saw as the false pieties and oppressive constraints of organized religion. For her, God resided not in 'stuffy' churches but in the soaring cathedral of the British Columbia rainforest, in the sepulchral shade of its densest recesses and in the spectral light of its clearings... It symbolized and in a sense consolidated the state of mystical connection she experienced while immersed in the natural world."
Link to Post:
http://youtu.be/kQiPAhNvZpY
James Kalm creates an in depth to of video tour of paintings by Forrest Bess recently on view at Christie's and at the Whitney Biennial, on view through May 27, 2012.
Kalm's video includes fantastic close-ups of Bess' paintings. He notes that Bess is "one of the most mythic and eccentric American painters of the Twentieth Century... this program records over twenty-six minutes of paintings, possibly documenting twenty-five percent of his life's output."
Link to Post:
http://www.studiointernational.com/index.php/alan-davie-works-on-paper
Dr Janet McKenzie reviews the exhibition Alan Davie: Works on Paper at Gimpel Fils, London, on view through April 21, 2012.
McKenzie writes that the exhibition "demonstrates the unique style and epic quality; [Davie] has the power to mystify his audience. Here we see the great importance of drawing to his artistic identity. Not only do his rapidly executed drawings portray his own private language of signs, they also exemplify how music influenced him and his interest in ancient and non-Western belief systems."
Link to Post:
http://www.capitalnewyork.com/article/culture/2012/03/5587936/visit-bob-witz-quite-possibly-new-york-citys-only-remaining-outsider
Jed Lipinski visits with artist Bob Witz on the occasion of the exhibition Bob Witz: I Know Where I am Goin' at the New York Studio School, on view through April 16, 2012.
Lipinski writes that "If such a thing as an outsider artist still exists in New York City, Bob Witz may well be it... The show, which represents the largest exhibition of [Witz's] work to date, is somewhat shocking to behold; the 45 paintings and sculptures resemble less the work of a single man than a collective of slightly disturbed, post-war folk artists from the Deep South... It's strange to think that the creator of these ghostly works is still living - let alone residing in an apartment in Chelsea."
Link to Post:
http://hyperallergic.com/48974/without-elaboration-part-2/
In the second part of his essay Without Elaboration, John Yau traces the history of Forrest Bess' rise from obscurity to recognition.
Yau describes Forrest Bess' influence on subsequent generations of painters noting: "Amidst all the hoopla about the return to painting, specifically figuration (and the overheated frenzy about Neo-Expressionism), Bess offered an alternative, particularly to painters interested in abstraction." He also connects Bess to the Abstract Expressionist painters who "wanted to make a painting that was naked, a work stripped down to its essentials. They were in crisis because they wanted their work to go beyond aesthetic issues... Although Bess had little to do with his peers, he too wanted to make a painting that was naked, one that could serve as a surrogate for his conflicted mind and body."
Link to Post:
http://hyperallergic.com/48551/without-elaboration/
In the first installment of a blog series, John Yau provides background on painter Forrest Bess. Yau focuses on Bess' background and the formation of the 'visionary' philosophy behind Bess' art.
Yau quotes a statement by Bess: "I term myself a visionary artist for lack of a better word. Something seen otherwise than by ordinary sight. I can close my eyes in a dark room and if there is no outside noise or attraction, plus, if there is no conscious effort on my part - then I can see color, lines, patterns, and forms that make up my canvases. I have always copied these arrangements without elaboration."
Link to Post:
http://sameoldart.tumblr.com/post/19253042647/james-castle-in-light-of-the-prinzhorn-collection
Spurred by a recent exhibition of works by James Castle at Galerie Karsten Greve, Paris, an interesting post considers the true dynamic of influence between the avant-garde and "outsider" artists such as Castle. Although Castle's works look like those "who might have been a follower of Jean Dubuffet and Jean Fautrier... The fact that parts of the avant-garde incorporated 'outsider art' into their visual repertoire draws a different picture of the role of 'influence' than is suggested" by recent history.
