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Tag Archives: Gego
Nasreen Mohamedi
Just discovered a great but lesser known artist—Nasreen Mohamedi. The obvious precursor for a drawing like this one is Agnes Martin, but in feel it recalls Gego. Other drawings are a bit more severe and mechanical. A click will help … Continue reading
Posted in American Modernism, Asian Abstraction, Latin American Abstraction, Uncategorized
Tagged abstract art, abstraction, Agnes Martin, drawing, feeling, form, Gego, grids, illusion, labor, Nasreen Mohamedi
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Homage to Gego
This drawing from a couple of years ago is an homage to Gego. Also dedicated to my good friends and inspiring artists Leah James and Alexis Harding.
Posted in Latin American Abstraction
Tagged abstract art, abstraction, Alexis Harding, drawing, Gego, Leah James, Linsley, space
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Alighiero Boetti
A latecomer to Boetti’s work, I have no expertise in it. Right now I’m looking at this grid piece, “Niente da vedere niente da nascondere,” or “Nothing to see nothing to hide.” The title really adds something, and bears thought, … Continue reading
Scale internal and external
Continuing with T.J.Clark’s recent piece in the LRB, he had some very perceptive things to say about Picasso’s skill at scaling an image to its support. Looking with the eyes of the present, Clark can’t help but see that today … Continue reading
Posted in American Modernism, Principles of Abstraction, Uncategorized
Tagged abstract art, abstraction, cubism, form, Frank Stella, Gego, illusion, Pablo Picasso, shaped canvas, space, TJClark
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Discursive objects
Listening still to Boris Groys, whose ideas should by rights be central to this blog. He says: “We see artworks as incarnating art. The famous distinction between art and non-art is generally understood as a distinction between objects inhabited and … Continue reading
Shadows
Just staying on Gego for another post—couldn’t a shadow be a metaphor for interpretation, or even backstory? The object is touched by an illuminating gaze, let’s not say an imagination, but something less than that, a faculty of illumination from … Continue reading
Posted in Ethics of Abstraction, Latin American Abstraction, Principles of Abstraction
Tagged abstract art, abstraction, drawing, emptiness, Gego, light, value
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Expressiveness without backstory
Following from the previous post, Gego‘s work might be exemplary of an art which is just a sensitive handling of small particulars, when those small particulars don’t necessarily mean anything, or stand for anything, and don’t need a title or … Continue reading
Emptiness and need
The previous post touched on one of the reasons why abstract pictures might need titles, or maybe it is the psychological aspect of the objective problem noticed by Frank Stella in his book Working Space. As he said: “We often … Continue reading
Posted in Abstraction and Society, American Modernism, Principles of Abstraction, Uncategorized
Tagged abstract art, abstraction, aesthetics, feeling, form, Frank Stella, Gego, meaning, society, space, value
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Poverty
Another quote from my favorite literary critic: “We dwell in poverty, and we are that poverty, for our imaginative need has become greater than our imaginations can fulfill.”
Grids Part 3
Gego’s grids definitely have something to do with painting, firstly because they sustain an illusion, something like a thin soap film or an almost invisible plane suspended across the gaps. This can’t be photographed, but it is objectively verifiable, and … Continue reading
Grids Part 2
If in some cases two-dimensional grids stand for one kind of reduction of painting, the question is how far can we generalize this notion—to which other artists does it apply, bearing in mind that they themselves may not hold this … Continue reading
Posted in Principles of Abstraction, Uncategorized
Tagged abstract art, abstraction, Christian Bonnefoi, Eva Hesse, Gego, grids, illusion
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Stones
The art we commonly call abstract is a message from the non-human. But it’s not so clear exactly what qualifies. A stone on the ground is of the inhuman universe, but conventional criticism claims that the fact that the stone … Continue reading