Trees…Not

One of the painters in my “What Would Mondrian Do?” group often brings photos of flowers and trees to class to kick off a painting session.

Keven Wilder is an accomplished painter.  The collectors of her work eagerly follow her latest output. The reception of this painting has been enthusiastic.

I’m glad.  I find the enthusiastic response of non-representational art very encouraging.  It’s a measure of progress in human consciousness, I think, not to be tied to the literal.

Nobody looks at this painting and says, “Oh, yes, trees. I see the blue sky and the vertical tree trunks and the horizontal branches.”

People who love this painting love it even after they find out that the artist started with a photo of trees against a clear sky.  They don’t get hung up on trees.  Sorry there.

People who love this painting love its color, shapes, texture, process, surprises.  It’s not an illustration, abstraction or diagram of anything.  It’s an object in itself.

An object of contemplation.

Keven Wilder showed this painting at the Ethical Humanist Society earlier this year.

Thank you, Keven!

http://ethicalhuman.org/

https://artamaze.wordpress.com/2016/07/05/exhibit-at-ethical-humanist-society/

All contents copyright (C) 2010 Katherine Hilden. All rights reserved.

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Who’s on First?

The clarity of what’s being depicted here may at first glance be satisfying. What have we here?  Answer: the basic shapes of two-dimensional geometry.  Square, circle, rectangle and triangle.  What a relief, you don’t have to work out some perceptual subtlety of modern art.

Well, actually you do.  It’s true, you’re seeing those four geometrical shapes.  But they are not on top, they are not resting on a surface, as they would be if the painting were about them.  What’s actually on top is the surface around them.  We see the square-circle-rectangle-triangle as the result of an act of omission.  The painter just didn’t get to those bits and let the “background” show through.  Just so happens, his negligence was overly careful.  You can verify this by looking at the “frame” that is the “background”—that splattered surface—and then it’s clear that the geometrical shapes floating in the middle are “nothing” but part of that “background.”

This foreground-background game engages the mind without ever getting boring.  You think you’re looking at the figure (foreground) and it turns out you’re actually looking at the ground (background) and you realize that they exist at the same time but your mind can’t focus on them simultaneously.  You get this flickering sensation in the brain, like a strobe light, and if you stay with it, you’ll get a buzz.

The artist, Harold Bauer, assures you that this is his game, by creating additional frames—frames within frames.  Just look at the edges of the painting. Where does this framing business end?  Seems to go on and on.  A mind game.

In a later version of this process, the artist takes us into deeper uncertainties.  Notice how in this painting the shapes are not easily named.  No clear square, circle, rectangle and triangle here. The edges between foreground and background get fuzzy and torn looking.  The artist is working with the same aesthetic ideas as in the earlier painting, but here the game is richer, more engaging.

Both paintings were shown at the Ethical Humanist Society of Chicago this spring.

http://ethicalhuman.org/

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Exhibit at Ethical Humanist Society

The “Mondrian Class” exhibited paintings for ten weeks, from mid-March to the end of May, at the Ethical Humanist Society in Skokie.

http://ethicalhuman.org/

This was a great opportunity for students to experience hanging a show, a rotating show in this case. The space is not a gallery, per se, but the large meeting room of the Ethical Humanist Society.  The painters had a chance to show their work without costs or complications and the people meeting in that spacious, high ceilinged room with one wall all glass, enjoyed the works and the inspiration it brought them—a winwin arrangement.

We got this space because I attended Darwin’s birthday party there in early February, saw the drawings displayed there and had an aha-moment. By coincidence, they were eager to have a new exhibit.  Ta-tah! Not only that, I mentioned that I could give a talk on “Morality in Modern Art” and, ta-tah, there was a day open for a presentation, April 24.  These things happen, you know.  The talk was well received and I hope to give it again this fall, at another venue.

Artists showing their work in “alternative” spaces is a well-established strategy.  Eateries of all kinds have been doubling as galleries for a long time.  Now, consider your living room as a gallery.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/04/arts/design/its-an-art-gallery-no-a-living-room-ok-both.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Farts&action=click&contentCollection=arts&region=rank&module=package&version=highlights&contentPlacement=8&pgtype=sectionfront&_r=0

Shown in these photos are  works by Robert Frankel, Harold Bauer, Keven Wilder and Terry Fohrman.

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