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SELECTED WORK #8:
IT’S A PSYCHOLOGICAL FACT PLEASURE HELPS YOUR DISPOSITION,
SIR EDUARDO PAOLOZZI, 1948
IT’S A PSYCHOLOGICAL FACT PLEASURE HELPS YOUR DISPOSITION,
SIR EDUARDO PAOLOZZI, 1948
SIR EDUARDO PAOLOZZI —Biography and Career
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SELECTED WORK #9: OUR GOAL IS COMMUNISM!, VITALY KOMAR AND ALEXANDER
MELAMID, 1972
MELAMID, 1972
VITALY KOMAR AND ALEXANDER MELAMID—Biography and Career
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The artist requested that after his death his entire collection be placed in a museum, but left no specific arrangements. After much delay, the Clyfford Still Museum opened in Denver, Colorado, in 2011. It houses the complete Still archives, as well as approximately 825 paintings and almost 1600 works on paper. The staff of the museum continues to make new and exciting discoveries as the immense body of work is still being unpacked and organized. The work we will examine here is from the extensive collection of the Still Museum.
PH-385—Analysis
PH-385, like most of Still’s mature works, presents a large-scale field of powerful color and brushstroke, with paint applied thickly with a palette knife and trowel. Still’s color choices in this oil on canvas piece are predominantly bright red in tone, punctuated by areas of darker red as well as patches of black and some white accents. His forms are very jagged, and the surfaces are often described as appearing as if one color layer has been “torn off” like a piece of paper, to reveal additional colors beneath. The effect is raw and intense, particularly if we consider the scale of the painting. The work measures over eight feet in height, making the “rips” quite large and aggressive in comparison with the size of a viewer approaching the work. That, coupled with the blood-red and black tones, makes for a work of great visual and physical power.
PH-385, like most of Still’s mature works, presents a large-scale field of powerful color and brushstroke, with paint applied thickly with a palette knife and trowel. Still’s color choices in this oil on canvas piece are predominantly bright red in tone, punctuated by areas of darker red as well as patches of black and some white accents. His forms are very jagged, and the surfaces are often described as appearing as if one color layer has been “torn off” like a piece of paper, to reveal additional colors beneath. The effect is raw and intense, particularly if we consider the scale of the painting. The work measures over eight feet in height, making the “rips” quite large and aggressive in comparison with the size of a viewer approaching the work. That, coupled with the blood-red and black tones, makes for a work of great visual and physical power.
The title of the work is intentionally unclear. It is interesting to consider one’s own experience of this work—do you find the imagery unpleasant or evil? Does that communicate anything about Still? The time period in which he worked? Your own soul? This open-ended quality is one of the reasons abstract art can provide such a rich visual and conceptual experience.
SELECTED WORK: Hemlock Joan Mitchell, 1956
Joan Mitchell—Biography and Career
Joan Mitchell was born in Chicago in 1925. She studied in Chicago, New York, and then in Europe, which greatly impacted her work and her life. She returned to New York where she was active in the art scene, but she was increasingly attracted to France. She finally relocated there permanently in 1955. Mitchell’s work was generally influenced by the landscape. Unlike paintings by most of the other artists associated with Abstract Expressionism, Mitchell’s mature work is not completely and purposefully non-objective. Though it is often difficult to “read” her paintings as landscapes, it is important to understand that they reflect her experience and response to nature in a direct and emotional way. Though Mitchell died in 1992, she continues to influence the art community by providing grants to support contemporary artists through the Joan Mitchell Foundation.
Joan Mitchell was born in Chicago in 1925. She studied in Chicago, New York, and then in Europe, which greatly impacted her work and her life. She returned to New York where she was active in the art scene, but she was increasingly attracted to France. She finally relocated there permanently in 1955. Mitchell’s work was generally influenced by the landscape. Unlike paintings by most of the other artists associated with Abstract Expressionism, Mitchell’s mature work is not completely and purposefully non-objective. Though it is often difficult to “read” her paintings as landscapes, it is important to understand that they reflect her experience and response to nature in a direct and emotional way. Though Mitchell died in 1992, she continues to influence the art community by providing grants to support contemporary artists through the Joan Mitchell Foundation.
Hemlock—Analysis
Hemlock is a large, single-panel painting in oil that generally appears to be a white canvas filled with broad, gestural strokes in green. However, upon closer inspection, the mainly green and white painting is flecked with a variety of other colors, including reds, blues, and yellows. Underlying much of the green strokes are areas of black paint. And rather than being a simple play of color over a flat white ground, we can see that much of the brushwork includes white paint as well. The white strokes overlap and intermingle with the other tones across the canvas surface.
Hemlock is a large, single-panel painting in oil that generally appears to be a white canvas filled with broad, gestural strokes in green. However, upon closer inspection, the mainly green and white painting is flecked with a variety of other colors, including reds, blues, and yellows. Underlying much of the green strokes are areas of black paint. And rather than being a simple play of color over a flat white ground, we can see that much of the brushwork includes white paint as well. The white strokes overlap and intermingle with the other tones across the canvas surface.
The strokes are largely horizontal and vertical in orientation and both long and short in length. This gives a loose grid form to the image. The color is more intense down the center of the canvas, with the strokes feathering out and commingled with white at the right and left edges of the canvas. As with the abstract paintings we have already discussed by Hofmann and Still, Mitchell’s work here is primarily concerned with color and paint application as they relate to expression, rather than directly translating something of the world into a recognizable form. This results here in an expressive, abstracted image of nature.
SELECTED WORK: Jackson Pollock Herbert Ferber, 1949
Herbert Ferber—Biography and Career
Herbert Ferber was born Herbert Ferber Silvers in New York City in 1906. Before Ferber dedicated himself full time to art, he worked as a dentist. But during his schooling and into his professional life, Ferber still pursued studies in art. His artistic endeavors focused on painting and printmaking until he started working with carved wood in 1931. Over the next 15 years, Ferber worked primarily in stone and bronze, and began casting metal sculpture in the late 1930s and 40s. His sculpture work evolved under the influence of the Abstract Expressionists. He created his first welded sculpture in 1945, which resulted in lighter, more open forms in his work. Some of Ferber’s pieces were constructed on-site and were designed specifically for installation in a certain space. Because of this, Ferber helped establish the installation art movement in America.
Herbert Ferber was born Herbert Ferber Silvers in New York City in 1906. Before Ferber dedicated himself full time to art, he worked as a dentist. But during his schooling and into his professional life, Ferber still pursued studies in art. His artistic endeavors focused on painting and printmaking until he started working with carved wood in 1931. Over the next 15 years, Ferber worked primarily in stone and bronze, and began casting metal sculpture in the late 1930s and 40s. His sculpture work evolved under the influence of the Abstract Expressionists. He created his first welded sculpture in 1945, which resulted in lighter, more open forms in his work. Some of Ferber’s pieces were constructed on-site and were designed specifically for installation in a certain space. Because of this, Ferber helped establish the installation art movement in America.
Jackson Pollock—Analysis
Jackson Pollock is one of three “portrait” sculptures Ferber created in 1949. The identification given to the particular work we are examining here is based on the fact that, as Ferber biographer E.C. Goossen has noted, “Jackson Pollock was said to be violent, and many people believed, incorrectly, that he painted in a frenzy, wildly splashing and throwing his paints at the canvas.” In this light, the work may be interpreted as a vision of the painter at work.
Jackson Pollock is one of three “portrait” sculptures Ferber created in 1949. The identification given to the particular work we are examining here is based on the fact that, as Ferber biographer E.C. Goossen has noted, “Jackson Pollock was said to be violent, and many people believed, incorrectly, that he painted in a frenzy, wildly splashing and throwing his paints at the canvas.” In this light, the work may be interpreted as a vision of the painter at work.
The sculpture, built up from welded lead pieces, takes the form of two vertical elements connected by a series of arching horizontal lines and thicker, flatter horizontal elements. If one assumes the sculpture represents Pollock at work, the piece may be seen as the painter throwing paint (the arched horizontal lines) at a canvas. The idea is certainly abstracted, but the vision of Pollock’s dynamic way of working is effectively suggested here.
In another possible interpretation of the work, it is not paint being thrown through space, but instead it is Pollock’s spirit being transferred onto the canvas while he works. While either of these interpretations may be correct, as a portrait of Jackson Pollock, created by a sculptor of the Abstract Expressionist movement, the sculpture presents multiple views of the knowing, non-rational artist of postwar American art.