Here, Gotham News reflects the action and frisson of a large urban centre, featuring reportage in the form of newsprint in the lower left corner. Yes, this concatenation of colour might prove frightening to the naïve or uninitiated but might this be a nod toward the superhero Batman at the rescue? Perhaps.
De Kooning’s work is found at major museums across North America, including the Philadelphia Museum of Art — home to seven of his works — as well as at the Art Institute of Chicago.
SG
14. Six in Vermilion with Red in Red (1970)
Patrick Heron (1920–99)
Patrick Heron, Six in Vermilion with Red in Red, 1970
Screen print, 59/100, sheet: 72.4 x 101.6 cm
Gift of Robert Borns, 1980
Albright-Knox Art Gallery, New York
© Estate of Patrick Heron / SODRAC (2017)
Photo credit: Albright-Knox Art Gallery / Art Resource, NY
A stylish adventurer into abstraction, influenced greatly by his exposure to Cézanne, Patrick Heron was born in Leeds, England, in 1920. He came to observe his contemporaries Georges Braque and Henri Matisse, the former of whom gave Heron the motivation to paint his own Abstract Expressionist paintings, the latter of whom spurred his use of colour.
Creating a dynamic tension between colour and space, in Six in Vermilion with Red in Red (1970), there is not so much a conflicting presence of colour that overwhelms the viewer; rather, Heron generates movement and a vague sense of form through the emergence of colour. For Heron, as for many other late twentieth-century painters, abstraction was the vehicle to provoke thought and contemplation, leaving the viewer to discern meaning, if any.
In 1956, after a Tate London show of Rothko and Newman, Heron embarked on creating a broad collection of abstract paintings, drenching his canvases in a variety of colours to merge the pigment in a robust and striking way. Like ocular caffeine, a jolt to the eye.
Heron died in 1999, but left a painting and literary legacy as a critic behind. Although much of his work is now held privately and not predominantly featured in North America, some galleries that show his work are the San Diego Museum and the Boston Museum of Fine Arts.
Chapter 3
Chicago, Illinois
Art Institute of Chicago
The Art Institute of Chicago is a spectacular gallery, enhanced by the Renzo Piano Modern Wing, constructed in 2009.
It is huge in space and full of great art. The second floor on the west side is the sculpture room. Huge, all white walls. When I visited it (three times in 2015 alone), it had Charles Ray’s sculpture — only eight pieces in this immense white cavern.
The rub is this: the view over Millennium Park, the Gehry Bandshell, all of Chicago’s architecture, an explosion of a city panorama. Nowhere else.
15. Earthly Paradise (1916–20)
Pierre Bonnard (1867–1947)
Pierre Bonnard, Earthly Paradise, 1916–20
Oil on canvas, 130 x 160 cm
Estate of Joanne Toor Cummings; Bette and Neison Harris and Searle Family Trust endowments; through prior gifts of Mrs. Henry C. Woods (1996.47)
The Art Institute of Chicago
© Estate of Pierre Bonnard / SODRAC (2017)
Photo credit: The Art Institute of Chicago / Bridgeman Images
I was at Drouot auction house in Paris one day when a Bonnard lithograph of a yellow cat came up for sale. A charming image, it went for a steal at around € 900 and I have passing regret for not buying it. (I was under the weather at the time.)
What a sweet painter, Pierre Bonnard, one of the most instinctive and sensitive artists of all time. Still-lifes to nudes, modern landscapes to bygone communities, small scales to large, he showed it all while incorporating some of the best colour techniques ever mastered.
Fortunately, for any number of reasons, he eschewed a career in law and government for our viewing enjoyment. After a year of military service, Bonnard moved into a studio in Montmartre with Maurice Denis, Édouard Vuillard, and Aurelien Lugne-Poe to begin his career. Like many of his contemporaries, he was inspired by Japanese prints.
After a time as part of the Nabis, a group of painters determined to rejuvenate painting after the post-Impressionists, Bonnard found new interest in landscape. In 1910 he discovered the south of France, source of much of our modern French art and the land of twentieth-century wish-fulfillment. Connecting his art with the landscape of Provence became his obsession. He used calming hues to achieve the effect of light and feel of warmth in his canvases.
Bonnard later returned to painting nudes, but this time he focused on emphasizing structure instead of just purely colour. He painted Earthly Paradise somewhere between 1916 and 1920. It shows Adam, the intellect, and Eve, the sensuous, part of our Western mythology.
Of prodigious output, you can find other Bonnards at the Fogg Museum of the Harvard Museums of Art.
Now, then, about that yellow cat….
SG
16. Still Life with Fruits and Stringed Instrument (1938)
Georges Braque (1882–1963)
Georges Braque, Still Life with Fruits and Stringed Instrument, 1938
© Estate of Georges Braque / SODRAC (2017)
A deconstructionist still-life, a mind-altering experience without herbal stimulant, just the neurons brought alive. Along with Picasso, presaging Jacques Derrida and his ilk, Georges Braque makes us see a different reality.
An early-twentieth-century, French, multi-faceted artist and not-so-distant artistic cousin to, say, Duchamp, Braque traversed several periods of gorgeous painting with elegance and grace. As a young man, he painted houses by day and attended the École des Beaux-Arts by night, changing his style from Impressionistic to Fauvist. He took inspiration from Matisse and Derain, who used colour and free form to mine deep emotion, something Braque wanted to realize on canvas.
In 1907, Braque encountered Pablo Picasso’s painting Les Demoiselles d’Avignon , and this turned into a close friendship between them, founding a revolutionary art movement known as Cubism. While Picasso moved away from Cubism, Braque continued to create within the Cubist realm, now making collages with only pasted paper instead of painting. Braque covered his collages in geometric shapes with hidden dispersion of musical instruments, fruit, and furniture, bringing to them a three-dimensional element never seen before.
After a time, Braque reverted to painting, now doing still-lifes, trying to depict space in an unconventional way. Braque captured on canvas how different things transform over time in their different temporal dimensions. Still Life with Fruits and Stringed Instrument is one of many pieces Braque painted during this period, one that reflects his style perfectly. At first glance, the visual data Braque displays is almost overwhelming, but a second, closer look reveals Braque’s unconventional sense of beauty. The round, clothed table is full of fruit, sheet music, and a stringed instrument of some sort. To the back of the table, on either side, are two figures: one possibly a metronome; the other, the red one, is anyone’s guess. These are shapes informed by colour. Think of a traditional still-life superimposed by Cubist elements.
During the Second World War, solitude and sweetness took over his canvases. His subjects became little birds, the ocean, landscapes, and more,