Chance Falls - Pat Steir at Locks Gallery

I first became aware of Pat Steir when I assigned an Art in America article about her work to a student years ago. I can't remember what the student did with it, but Steir's graceful, mesmerizing work really stuck with me. I was happy, therefore, to find it close to home, in a fine exhibit currently at the Locks Gallery in Center City Philadelphia. The large color drenched canvases seem somehow made for this particular setting with its dark ceiling and columns; the fit of space and content has an organic, inevitable feeling that adds satisfaction to the experience of the show. Any description of Steir's painting includes the word 'waterfall' - the pictures make the description self-explanatory. She treasures the happenstance of art-making, a value she credits in part to her friendship with John Cage, who introduced her to its potential. Steir's work testifies to her chronology - her Action Painting approach connects her not only to the ideas of Cage but also to older, but not distant contemporaries Joan Mitchell and Helen Frankenthaler. Color pours down her canvases in watery, nuanced sheets of layered hue, shade, and value: the action of the making continues in the finished work. At a distance the canvases give off a rich, soothing rhythm, but up close the general blur defines into fine trails that mingle, divide, and pool together. There is also a strong link to Chinese landscape painting, mentioned in the press release for the show, manifested in a feeling of ethereal grandeur as well as the fine layering of organic strokes. Most of the works in the show are named for the pigments she used in creating them: naples yellow, paynes grey, indigo, a particular green or blue. Several include gold pigments. A good part of the pleasure of the work, for me, was inspecting the surfaces at close range, finding the happy accidents that arise from Steir's process - rivulets of gold coursing through, over, and behind sheets of white, blue, green, leaving little nuggets at a crossroad where she made a divide, a buried color suddenly peeping through to make a quietly assertive statement.
Pat Steir: Water and Sand is at the Locks Gallery through November 26.
http://www.locksgallery.com/exhibits_works.php?eid=133

Chess - A Game of History and Charm: The Lewis Chessmen

My favorite little men are coming to New York - The Game of Kings: Medieval Ivory Chessmen from the Isle of Lewis opens at the Cloisters on November 15. Bug-eyed Kings dismayed at the prospect of close and bloody combat, Queens holding worried faces, Soldiers so eager to begin that they bite their shields in anticipation, Bishops gripping their croziers, Horsemen hunched and ready: these little ivory creatures give us a world that faded long ago, though their iconic battle persists and endures in the game of chess. It is a fact that these delicate but vigorously carved ivory creatures were found in 1831 on the Scottish Isle of Lewis. It's agreed that they date from around the 11th century (partly attested by the style of the Bishop's miter) but beyond that almost all is speculation. Are they Icelandic, or Norwegian, for whom were they created, by whom were they used? The pieces have so much personality; it's frustrating that they can't tell more of their story. The game of chess predates these 'men', which are likely pieces from four sets - some are now in the National Museum of Scotland and some in the British Museum (which lent theirs for the show.) Chess began sometime around 600 in northern India or Afghanistan - the vocabulary of chess and the basic forms and rules come directly from those origins. These Indian illustrations show chess games between Krishna and his consort Radha and another played outdoors by high born gentlemen. Chess became very popular in aristocratic Europe during the 11th century - the quality of the Lewis Chess Set identifies the owners, whoever they were, as being of wealthy and privileged rank. Even the backs are carved, in the intricate woven patterns consistent with the time and place. Norse mythology is written in these pieces, particularly in the 'Berserkers' those avid soldiers - Berserkers in the sagas were soldiers so frenzied by battle that they fought in a trance. The pieces are small, but larger than the ordinary chess 'men' of today's game - it is said that the board needed for a full game would have measured about 3 feet across - and that the board may have been red and white rather than black and white. Either color opposition makes symbolic sense: archetypal opposition can be seen as dark vs light, or as blood/passion red vs purity/innocence. A drafty battle tent, a lofty hall in a great stone castle, a blustery cold wind flapping and wuthering, the light from a fire flickering over battle-worn hands, faces creased as they ponder their moves and shift these woeful, charming little creatures - the Lewis Chessmen tell us silently that they were there, somewhere.  
The following links give information about the exhibit and the Lewis Chessmen.

http://www.metmuseum.org/exhibitions/listings/2011/the-game-of-kings-medieval-ivory-chessmen-from-the-isle-of-lewis

http://www.nms.ac.uk/our_museums/national_museum/lewis_chessmen_unmasked/meet_the_chessmen.aspx

 


In a park in Geneva, Switzerland life-sized men are 'men' in a giant game of chess. Do you play chess? Is it just a game for you or an iconic battle of good and evil?

RED, red, and Rothko

Mark Rothko, as presented in the play RED, is irascible, self-centered and selfish, in love with his own opinions, domineering .... the justification for such a personality looms over audience and players, the large RED painting meant to represent Rothko's actual work. When I saw RED (the play) recently, I found it to be meaningful but not as compelling as I had expected, partly because I thought the actor playing Rothko didn't have enough gravitas for the role. I'd like to see it again, with another actor, to see what it would be like. (the photo is from the NY production with Al Molina, which got rave reviews - not the one I saw) But that's ART, whether on the stage or on canvas. Rothko did miraculous things with the color red, but the same color is scrawled across handmade valentine cards and schmaltzy paintings of sunsets. The difference (noted in the play) is significance. One artist picks up a brush, a pencil, a piece of paper or cloth, and a few bits of color and creates an object that stirs deep in the soul and moves you to reverie or to tears; another makes a painting that goes well with the sofa. The glory and the frustration of being an artist is striving for significance and always fearing you'll just end up over the sofa. RED features a series of paintings - a 'mural' that was commissioned from Rothko by Philip Johnson, architect of the iconic Seagram's Building on Park Avenue in New York, to be placed in the high-style Four Seasons Restaurant. Rothko was paid a great deal of money and set to work, but somewhere along the line he apparently became to fear the 'sofa' problem (the play centers his doubts in a studio assistant who challenges his motives but the true reason is unknown) - he returned the money and refused the commission. The 30 paintings he did for the commission, however, remain to testify. (Some are at the Tate Modern, some in Japan and elsewhere) Rothko was known for his 'pickiness' - his insistence on proper lighting (very dim) and placement, and when 'he' explains on stage that he can't allow his work to be trivialized as a backdrop for the clank of silverware and the empty prattle of rich diners, it rings true.  There is a spirituality about Rothko's work that resonates deep and long with profound significance - it's no surprise that one of the most successful installations of his work is in a specially built Chapel in Houston. Red, of course, was not his only color, but it spoke a language that he understand like few others. The great painting Red Studio by Matisse, a supreme colorist, is mentioned in the play - another iconic use of this rich complex color. There is also word play with a litany of red shades and hues that is one of the delights for any painter - "cadmium, vermillion, alizarin...." Red has a myriad of variations, some deadly in pigment form. 10 years after the play was set, in February 1970, Rothko killed himself in his studio. His life and work, and then death, were defined by color - the colorful reds gradually disappeared over that decade, replaced finally by dark, heavy blacks, mud browns, and greys.

If you're interested in color you'll like this blog, full of information about colors, pigments, history, and uses

http://artists-pigments-index.blogspot.com/

What does color mean to you? What color defines YOUR life?