Rothko in 222 Bowery 1950's

It's quite well known in the art world that Michael Goldberg took over Mark Rothko's Bowery studio back in the 1960's, but until now we had never seen what it actually looked like when Rothko had it. The recent off Broadway Play - RED is set in the studio and way back then it was where Rothko painted the Four Seasons commissions. The red paint that he used remains scattered over the original studio floor. It was a sacred part of the history of the studio and Michael Goldberg avoided (for the most part) dropping his own paint over the areas splattered with what we referred to as the Rothko Red. Stanford University just happens to have images of the studio back then, with Rothko's paintings stacked up around the studio. We had to share them:

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The Codex Coner and Michael Goldberg [c. 1510 vs c.1980]

The Codex Coner is one of the most beautiful surviving architectural manuals from the Renaissance. Created around 1510, the illustrated manual was complied in Rome and documents historical and contemporary Roman architecture by the likes of Bramante (1444--1514), Raphael (1483--1520), and Michelangelo (1475--1564). The scope of it's contents and information are unmatched and can be attributed to draftsman & Florentine carpenter: Bernardo della Volpaia (c.1475--1521).

The manual was discovered by Michael Goldberg during his time in Italy and influenced a major body of his work from the late 1970's until the mid-late 1980's. 'Codex Coner Piede Vicentino' by Michael Goldberg 1980 [pictured below left] references the fundamental structures of Roman architecture, the divisional lines appearing as abstracted columns supporting the uneven weight of the pink colorfield. The technique Goldberg used to create these works on handmade paper was particularly fresh. Matt medium was applied to the paper with water to create a wet surface that Goldberg would draw into with lecturers chalk - a material that the artist would find an affinity with and subsequently use in paintings for the remainder of his career. Renowned collectors Herb and Dorothy Vogel found particular interest in this work and acquired several drawings for their collection. 'Codex Coner Piede Vicentino' was donated to Yale University as a part of the Vogel's 50 x 50 - 50 Works for 50 States, after Dorothy's passing in 2012. We are thrilled to work with the Goldberg Estate to include 2 of these amazing and historically important works in our limited edition print collection. Visit our SHOP to see the available work, or enquire with the gallery about sales of the original works.

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Art Without Words or Wall Plaques

The contemporary visual art experience has gotten all caught up with the written word. It's quite unusual now to walk into a gallery and see the artwork without an accompanying blurb that attempts to convince you that the art is new, pertinent to the world around and will someday have a place in history - therefore purchasable. It's no secret that the value in art tends to rise from it's historical relevance, it's innovation in relation to the period in which it was created. Problem is that dealers and galleries are using social relevance and art jargon as written propaganda to sell paintings. Contemporary artworks are priced to parallel the pricing of artwork that has long since been part of the cannon without the guarantee that the art will ever be cannonized - despite what the exhibition blurb or wall plaque may insinuate. It would be nice if art returned to an aesthetic experience - people might even feel that they can relate to it without the intellectual rhetoric that plagues today's visual art experience. Remove the big bucks from the equation and we might actually see less writing in the galleries and more focus on the work itself. Artist Lucio Pozzi summed it up perfectly in his essay Affirmations 8/19/2008: 'I want to re-visualize visual art. I wish for words to remain parallel to- but disengaged from the visual event. Recently the visual has become dependent on the verbal. A work of visual art today seems to need explanations to exist. I have been wondering why this has come to be. The reason, I feel, is nostalgia for consensus about the purpose of art, a consensus that no longer is possible. Art was obvious in the societies of old. It was necessary. It was fulfilling tasks that were agreed upon by everyone. When Modernity, with the advent of the Renaissance, exploded the hierarchies that supported art in the past, what was assumed to be certain became uncertain.

In response to the Big Bang, art people desperately scrambled to search for referential structures that could replace the lost foundations of the past. Art history became a cacophony of concurrent contradictory proposals. Surrogate standards were proposed from left and right. Each was submitted as the single exclusive foundation for a new consensus in the arts. These surrogate standards came under the guise of verbal explanations, manifestos, captions, taking the place of that which before had been obvious. The mistake was to assume that consensus is still a necessary condition for artistic discourse. 3. THE NEW The strongest surrogate standard of recent times was the concept of progress in the arts. Like an addictive poison it is the surrogate standard that many of us still rally to, again and again. We hang on to it as if it were a last raft before we drown and instead it makes us sink deeper and deeper into a bureaucratic quagmire. Bereft of arguments to validate our preferences many of us qualify or disqualify a work of art by determining whether it is new or not.

Concern for newness blinds us to the inherent characteristics of the single artwork. Several of the formulaic tenets that hamper an open creativity in the field of art derive from the prison of the new. Concern for newness causes us to shift attention from our feelings to matters that belong in the field of packaging more than in the field of visual substance. The package becomes more important than what it contains. An artist is encouraged to think her or his art in terms of how it shall be promoted rather than of how emotions and intellect weave into its substance. Concern for novelty reduces the time frame an artist works within to that of a short-lived commentary, consumed and tossed away in a hurry. It prevents a long view capable of engaging the deeper potentialities of existence, the mystery of life and death, the surprise and panic of discovery. 4. VALUE I understood early that I wished to avoid reliance on surrogate gauges for art but I also found no reliable standards shared by the community at large. I found only infinite options. It became clear to me that after the Big Bang it is impossible to assume that we may rely on any shared criteria of validation and evaluation in the arts. Value has become as uncertain as art itself. 5. CREATIVE MISUNDERSTANDING If there is no common purpose and no judgement is possible, there is no community of intent and no communication in the arts. Then what is there? In the arts that are not applied to utilitarian purposes, instead of communication there is flexible and revisable exchange, instead of judgement there is opinion, instead of conclusion there is open dialogue. Author and viewer are linked not by agreement but by creative misunderstanding. Neither party submits to the dictates of the other.'

Wise words from an amazing artist and thinker!!

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The Triangle in Visual Art

The triangle is a compositional element that has been used in visual art throughout history.

Triangles are inherent in perspective, a characteristic artistic technique developed during the Renaissance. It is based on a triangular theory of vision, where lines recede to a point on the horizon to imply depth. This concept revolutionized visual art and the artists ability to create 'real' space in their paintings.

Symbolically the triangle can represent a spiritual hierarchy, particularly in Christianity where the Trinity is depicted in three points of significance. Renaissance artists also used shapes and lines to arrange figures into a triangle on the surface of a painting for both hierarchical and compositional reasons—a practice modern scholars call triangular composition.

The orientation of a triangle can be important to it's meaning also. A point-up triangle might represent a strong foundation or stability, as it is rooted to the ground through a solid base. Point-up triangles can also represent ascension toward the spiritual world, while the point-down triangle can represent a descent into the physical world.

TWFA artists Clementine Barnes and Briony Barr are exploring the triangle as an aesthetic and structural element, focussing on the shape and how complex structures can be built from the simple triangular form. The pieces are both minimal and complex at the same time and are a great contemporary take on a form that has been used in visual art for centuries.

[caption id="attachment_9554" align="aligncenter" width="464"]

Collage Pyramid, 2014. Print by Briony Barr[/caption]

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The Beauty of Imperfection

The paintings of Rebecca Norton. [divider]

I was looking over some paintings by Rebecca Norton yesterday in the print shop. It struck me that the geometric forms of each composition are quite loosely painted and celebrate the painterly imperfections that ensue. By 'imperfections' I don't mean that the paintings are flawed, rather that they delight in their 'hand madeness', their loose brush strokes and unsteady edges. Norton works with geometry, a math based discipline rooted in accuracy and perfection. If I think back to the major players within art history who have worked with geometric form like Malevich, Mondrian, Kelly, Martin, Stella, there is an inherent accuracy and perfection of the geometry that is also incorporated into the way the artists painted. Lines were perfectly straight or angled, painting was hard edge and controlled to create ordered, seamlessly harmonious compositions. Norton's work however removes that controlled painterly element within the geometric composition. Instead her style of painting seems more improvised, expressive and loose. Imperfect by certain standards. To be honest, it is a combination that at first took me to a place of discomfort. It is a strange juxtaposition to see the angled forms and precise geometric compositions mixed with expressionistic brush strokes. But why is that so? First off, it is not what I am used to seeing when I look at geometric artwork, I'm used to that controlled brush stroke and hard edge. In a broader sense, as a consumer I think that I have become intolerant to apparent imperfection. There is little room for it when buying something, I don't want an item with an imperfect paint job or a book with a creased cover. When I look around at most contemporary art, I see the 'flawlessness' conditioning of our commodity driven culture where artists don't leave anything to chance or potential imperfection. A lot of painting seems contrived, or risk free. Norton's looseness is a breath of fresh air and quite unexpected.

While having this internal monologue looking at the paintings, I remembered Matisse's Carmelina painted in 1903. For the time, I'm sure people had a similar reactions to the one I initially had when looking at Norton's paintings. The deliberate looseness and resulting imperfection within the portrait is off putting, engaging and ultimately inspiring. The same can be said for Rebecca Norton's work. It's a mysterious contradiction of risky painting within an apparently ordered geometric composition. It functions beautifully as a metaphor for the sub atomic, mathematical chaos that ensues behind the facade of our seemingly ordered visual reality.

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TW FineArt