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Tag Archives: shaped canvas
Jessica Stockholder
If we posit some kind of unlocatable boundary between painting and sculpture, then Pfaff appears to be on the painting side and Jessica Stockholder might be just across the line into sculpture. Or is it the other way around? This … Continue reading
Judy Pfaff
My frequent meditations on the work of Frank Stella come out of my deep interest in it, however, it’s important to realize that he hasn’t worked in a vacuum, and many other artists have made valuable contributions, opening up the … Continue reading
Paper Works
Last fall I saw a very nice paper relief by Lynda Benglis at the Blanton in Austin Texas, part of the Vogel donation to that museum. It wasn’t this one, which is in another section of that vast gift, but … Continue reading
Posted in American Modernism, Uncategorized
Tagged abstract art, abstraction, Arp, feeling, form, Frank Stella, Lynda Benglis, painted reliefs, shaped canvas
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Edges Early and Late
I was reading the catalog for the show Frank Stella 1958, and one of the writers, Megan Luke, explains Stella’s thinking about edges, which led to the early Black Paintings. He noticed that many of the second generation abstract expressionists … Continue reading
Posted in American Modernism, Principles of Abstraction, Uncategorized
Tagged abstract art, abstraction, form, Frank Stella, illusion, shaped canvas
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Shaped Canvas 8
This piece by Martin Barré is very similar to another by François Morellet shown on this blog over a year ago. The continuation of the line across several discrete panels makes their edges more vivid—the panels punch holes in the … Continue reading
The Planar Dimension
Been reading the catalog of a 1979 show at the Guggenheim Museum called The Planar Dimension. The essay by Margit Rowell can only be described as lucid and enlightening. Her discussion of Picasso’s constructions is brilliant, and the essay in … Continue reading
Posted in Principles of Abstraction
Tagged abstract art, abstraction, cubism, form, Frank Stella, Pablo Picasso, painted reliefs, shaped canvas
5 Comments
Bornowsky’s Spheres
I’ve written a review of Vancouver artist Eli Bornowsky’s recent show in Toronto, soon to appear in the on-line edition of Canadian Art. His small works had wooden spheres, some drawn over with lines, attached to shaped supports. There are … Continue reading
Posted in American Modernism, Principles of Abstraction
Tagged abstract art, abstraction, Eli Bornowsky, illusion, painted reliefs, shaped canvas, space, volume
3 Comments
Questionable or Not
On the British web site abstract critical there is more debate about Frank Stella. I’m on his side but most aren’t. Much of the criticism seems to be based on a perception that the work does not hold together formally—the … Continue reading
Slightly Overwhelming
I’m pretty familiar with the illustrations in Robert Wallace’s book on the Moby Dick series, but when I see the actual pieces don’t usually recognize them. There’s something about the size and detail and rawness of the works that stuns … Continue reading
Biomorphic
The previous comments on Hofmann and Stella started me thinking about this work. Most of the Moby Dick works combine the curvy forms of the wave/whale shapes with geometrical sections, but this one is completely biomorphic, maybe even expressionist. The … Continue reading
Complexity and Simplification
Throughout the twentieth century, the formal complexities of modernist art have driven artists to simplify and clarify their work. Judd and the other minimalists were doubtless right in their feeling that abstract painting had become too fiddly and fussy about … Continue reading
Painted Surfaces
With the very complexly painted Moby Dick pieces, the original paper sketch makes it much easier to see the underlying form. That the painting on top of the forms works to hide and confuse them, to make it difficult to … Continue reading
Posted in American Modernism
Tagged abstract art, abstraction, cubism, Frank Stella, literature, painted reliefs, shaped canvas
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Plurimi
It’s worth it to spend more time on the comparison in the preceding post, which doesn’t need much commentary. Plurimi is a made-up name. Two views of the same piece, which has a crystalline quality—enclosing parts of the viewing space … Continue reading
Emilio Vedova
The Plurimi of Emilio Vedova are clear precursors of Stella’s relief paintings, and the differences between the two groups of work are revealing. Vedova’s works had an origin in sets for an opera by Luigi Nono that he had done … Continue reading
Inventors of forms
Why abstraction has to be literary in some sense, is, as Stella has also pointed out, because otherwise it may not have enough of the meanings that we care about, that it may be thin, shallow and dessicated. As Wallace … Continue reading
Stella’s Achievement
It’s always contentious to raise the subject of cubism in the context of American art. Today it seems remote. The pictures look small and intense in a way that pictures today are not. They also have a kind of antique … Continue reading
Posted in American Modernism, Ethics of Abstraction
Tagged abstract art, abstraction, cubism, form, Frank Stella, Pablo Picasso, painted reliefs, shaped canvas
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Bringing the outside in
Another aspect of the way that Stella organizes individual works into groups by association, also well explicated by Wallace, is that in some cases he will cut a piece out of a wave-whale shape and then put the removed “negative” … Continue reading
Stella’s Color
Among other things, the Moby Dick series marks a real advance in color. Stella’s color always had a dash of the arbitrary, which was one of its most interesting features. Personally I give the Protractors, along with Richter’s Color Charts, … Continue reading
Posted in American Modernism, Principles of Abstraction
Tagged abstract art, abstraction, color, cubism, drawing, feeling, form, Frank Stella, painted reliefs, shaped canvas
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Painting in space
Stella’s constructions are to give him surfaces to paint on, so ultimately the work depends on the expressiveness of image, gesture and color, like any painting. A construction of curved, tilted and shaped flat surfaces or a single flat surface—is … Continue reading
Posted in American Modernism, Principles of Abstraction, Uncategorized
Tagged abstract art, abstraction, cubism, drawing, feeling, form, Frank Stella, painted reliefs, shaped canvas, space
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Putting shapes together
I’ve been reading Robert Wallace’s book on Frank Stella’s Moby Dick, and finding it very inspiring and important. More about the book itself later, but right now I want to keep thinking about Stella. Wallace says “he…[sees]…himself primarily as a … Continue reading
The life of forms
After the slight digression of two posts on art history, back to Stella and the movement of forms. The interest of the works made with french curves and other ready-made forms is the extreme difficulty in getting them to make … Continue reading
Pink and Blue
I remember Shep and I lying on our backs on the floor of the Ca’ Rezzonico in Venice, staring up at a large Tiepolo ceiling in cotton candy pink and baby blue. That work, which was utterly strange to me … Continue reading
Posted in Italian Art, Uncategorized
Tagged abstract art, abstraction, color, Linsley, literature, shaped canvas, Shep Steiner, Tiepolo, watercolor
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Things as they are
I’d like to return to a piece by Elizabeth Murray included in an earlier post, because it demonstrates something important about American art. The right hand part has three zig-zags and one curve, the left hand part has three curves … Continue reading
Vividness
It might be possible to propose a theory as to why modern art, in its later stage, has been preoccupied with scale and shape. Reduction of elements and simplification of form has the effect of making what is left more … Continue reading
Shaped canvas 7
I’ve been looking at Tiepolo’s curved frames for a long time, and wanting to use something like that myself, only with an asymmetrical arrangement of curves. I hesitated because I felt that the strong shape would inhibit the Islands. But … Continue reading
Posted in Principles of Abstraction, Uncategorized
Tagged autonomy, form, Linsley, shaped canvas, space, Tiepolo, TJClark
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Shaped canvas 6
Elizabeth Murray was very well known for her multi-panel works. I think the most interesting aspect of them were the spaces between the parts. The shapes are basically the shapes of the objects she painted, which are often in the … Continue reading
Shaped canvas 5
Just to touch base with the soft edged kind of pictorial support. The idea is to feel one’s way to the right size and shape, so naturally these works are not supposed to be framed. Paper is a good choice … Continue reading
Posted in American Modernism, Uncategorized
Tagged abstract art, abstraction, Dezeuze, form, Richard Tuttle, shaped canvas
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Shaped canvas 4
I’m happily surprised to find that this blog can be very productive for my work. I open my mouth to express what I believe, and find that I don’t believe it any more. I’ve been too doctrinaire about the organic … Continue reading
Posted in American Modernism, Italian Art, Principles of Abstraction, Uncategorized
Tagged abstract art, abstraction, form, Frank Stella, grids, shaped canvas, Tiepolo
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Shaped canvas 3
The relation between the interior and the edge of a shaped, meaning not rectangular, support, is the most interesting problem. Stella solved it in the classic modernist way by eliminating the interior, most importantly in his Polish Village series, one … Continue reading
Posted in American Modernism, Principles of Abstraction
Tagged abstract art, abstraction, form, frame, Frank Stella, illusion, plane, Richard Tuttle, shaped canvas
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Shaped canvas
My claim, in the previous post, that Picasso invented the shaped canvas might raise a few brows. But what is this mythic Cubist installation? Or rather, what side of it is more important, the plane from which it emerged, the … Continue reading