ISCA GREENFIELD-SANDERS
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ISCA GREENFIELD-SANDERS THE THINGS I CAN’T FORGET
511 West 22nd Street New York NY 10011
515 West 22nd Street New York NY 10011
525 West 22nd Street New York NY 10011
520 West 21st Street New York NY 10011
POINTS OF VIEW By Phyllis Tuchman Isca Greenfield-Sanders’s figured landscapes1 transport viewers to light-dappled lakes, mountain trails, rustic sites where wild flowers bloom, and ocean shores bounded by sandy beaches and sunny skies. These are well-trodden places that people like to visit. Often, they appear to be startingly familiar. You might feel that you have already been there—or to somewhere very similar. There’s her noteworthy palette to consider, too. It’s unobtrusive. Though you immediately notice how this third-generation artist2 occasionally swaddles her scenic vistas in pinks or blues, you probably remain unaware that she also practices restraint. She doesn’t overload her canvases with lots of different colors.
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As it is, Greenfield-Sanders upends our notions of how landscape artists proceed. She is not a plein air painter. She does not sketch, let alone create watercolors, in front of her motifs. Indeed, she does not even visit the places she lovingly portrays. Instead, Greenfield-Sanders makes all sorts of decisions as she creates her works from scratch. In some ways, what she does can be compared to the skill set of an author who writes nonfiction novels or the director of a movie that features real-life characters. Over the course of many years, Greenfield-Sanders has developed a highly original manner for executing her compelling landscapes. It involves several unusual steps. “In the early years,” she recently said to me, “I wasn’t thinking about a format.” For starters, she collects vintage 35mm slides from the 1950s and ’60s.3 Many come from garage sales; others are purchased from dealers who stock old Kodak color slides. She has discovered that amateur photographers consistently take pictures that have much in common. That is, the friends and relatives who pose for them change, but the settings are more alike than you might suppose.4 One afternoon in her studio, which is not far from where she was raised in lower Manhattan, she told me that she finds “the randomness very appealing.”
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“Almost every lot,” she added, “has something special.” Once Greenfield-Sanders chooses an image that she might eventually paint in oil on a substantially sized canvas, she makes at least one watercolor, and sometimes more, of the subject.5 She does not necessarily respond to the whole scene. Occasionally, she might duplicate only a section of a photograph. By the time she is done, she may have moved a few figures or even some trees from their original locations. She will even obliterate the sky. After Greenfield-Sanders has completed the watercolors, she will make 17-inch-by-17-inch oil paintings based on them. These become guideposts for the larger canvases. At this stage, she has determined many aspects of what will appear in the final works, including their colors, overall composition, and how she might deviate further from the original image.6 4
Like actors who ad lib from a script, Greenfield-Sanders can be quite improvisational. Unlike other landscape artists, she reminded me last March, “I’ve never been to these places.” Or, as she forthrightly explained, “I’m not aiming at realism.” Greenfield-Sanders’s latest paintings of beaches, including Silver Beach (Blue), Pink Wave (Detail), Blue Wave (Detail), Aerial Beach, and Bathers, illuminate the variety of approaches that inform her art. She carefully adjusts the vantage points for viewers. We do not consistently look straight ahead. Unsurprisingly, given its title, Aerial Beach presents a bird’s eye view of the scene below. From a great height, we look down on the bathers and the ocean. (If the figures were not there, we might not realize how high up we are made to feel.) Then, there are times when GreenfieldSanders puts us so close to the ocean, as in Blue Wave (Detail) or Pink Wave (Detail), that we can practically feel the tumultuous, roaring water splashing against our faces. “I love painting water,” she said not long ago. “If there’s one thing I think my technique is suited to, it is water. The layering that I use creates paintings with depth and vibrancy.”7
Henri Matisse, Bathers with a Turtle, 1907–8, oil on canvas, 71 1/2 x 87 in. (181.6 x 221 cm), Saint Louis Art Museum, Saint Louis, MO. Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Joseph Pulitzer Jr. © 2022 Succession H. Matisse / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
She also takes into account how she situates her bathers. They don’t face us. They are not looking at the camera and saying, “Cheese.” With their backs turned toward us, we’re gazing at what they are regarding. There is a term for these beachcombers: They are “Rückenfiguren,” which we are used to seeing in, say, paintings by Caspar David Friedrich, the German Romantic artist. There are not a lot of details to distract us. You won’t find product placements, as you would in a photorealist picture from the 1970s. Nor, for that matter, are we overly conscious of the types of bathing suits these figures wear. This allows us to identify even more with the scenes GreenfieldSanders paints. And then, there are the colors she applies to her canvases. When depicting water, sand, and sky, Greenfield-Sanders often uses lots of blues or pinks. Recently, she executed two versions of Silver Beach, one in blue and one in pink. Because these canvases are so similar, you can see just how thoroughly Greenfield-Sanders has transformed photographs taken by other people into her own independent paintings. The two versions of Silver Beach are comprised of three stacked, broad bands that portray sand, ocean, sky. These substantial stripes are so forceful that it is difficult to believe the canvases on
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Brice Marden, Grove IV, 1976, Oil and wax on canvas, two panels, 72 x 108 inches (182.9 x 274.3 cm), Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York Purchased with funds contributed by the National Endowment for the Arts, in Washington, D.C., a Federal agency; matching funds contributed by Sidney Singer, 1976, © 2022 Brice Marden/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
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which they appear are squares and not horizontals. The broad bands also call to mind a pair of predecessors painted decades apart: Henri Matisse’s Bathers with a Turtle and Brice Marden’s Grove Group. This connection with earlier banded works is yet one more way Greenfield-Sanders reminds us that she is making a painting, not duplicating a photograph. As she told me a few months ago, “None of the colors are natural. I use a fairly tight set of colors that work with one another.” Many of us who live on the East Coast have been to the seashore. We’ve felt the scorching sun beating down on us. We’ve walked on the hot sand. We’ve sat on towels or lounged on chairs under umbrellas looking off into the distance. We’ve ventured into the saltwater to jump the waves or body surf. When we’ve left, we’ve had to figure out how to clean off the wet sand clinging to our feet. But this is not what Greenfield-Sanders is depicting. She’s creating general—not generic— impressions. She’s providing us with memories that we actually have not experienced on our own. Mountain View and Red Wood represent the more rugged, hearty side of Mother Nature. We find green trees and billowing white clouds in this sort of terrain. Where beaches suggest summertime leisure and people bobbing in the water or relaxing on the sandy shoreline, mountains call to mind adventure and more individual pursuits. One type of scene tends to be low-lying while the
other can be dominated by gigantic trees. Indeed, the redwood in the painting of the same title is so tall that it is, again, hard to believe that the canvas is a square and not, in this instance, a vertical. Instead of looking down, we glance up. With Field Flowers and Queen Anne’s Lace, Greenfield-Sanders truly rounds out the diverse ways we experience her art. The wildflowers she depicts grow so densely and appear to be so close to us that we feel as if we are practically confronting a jungle. By filling her canvases with these growths, we occupy what’s called a worm’s eye view. These paintings, which feature so many plants and flowers, also are the most animated. Do we hear birds chirping? No, it is more like insects issuing a symphony of sounds. And, as we imagine their cacophonous tones, we realize just what a rich sensory experience Isca Greenfield-Sanders offers viewers of her art. This is landscape painting refreshed and practiced with understated originality. 7 Phyllis Tuchman writes for artnews.com, Artforum, and the New York Times. In summer 2018 she curated the exhibition Ellsworth Kelly in the Hamptons for Guild Hall, East Hampton, and lectured on Helen Frankenthaler at the Provincetown Art Association. She is currently working on This Is the Land: The Life and Times of Robert Smithson. Endnotes 1. This is the term that Greenfield-Sanders uses when referring to her own paintings; uncited quotes are from a conversation the two of us had this past March. 2. Greenfield-Sanders is the granddaughter of Joop Sanders, an abstract painter, and the daughter of Timothy Greenfield-Sanders, a filmmaker and portrait photographer. Greenfield-Sanders told me she has always painted landscapes. In high school, she was drawing with charcoal and pen as well as executing watercolors. At Brown University, she majored in both mathematics and art. She would take her academic classes in the morning and study at the Rhode Island School of Design in the afternoon. 3. She estimates that she has looked at thousands and thousands of slides. 4. A talk delivered at the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University, March 2020; available on Vimeo. According to
Greenfield-Sanders, “I see a lot of images of Old Faithful, the geyser; I see days at the beach, backyard picnics, monuments, vistas, and things I’m not interested in like birthday cakes.” 5. A conversation recorded at the Haunch of Venison gallery in London, November 2012; available on YouTube. About working with watercolor, computer printouts, and paint, Greenfield-Sanders has said, “I try to highlight what I think are the best qualities of each medium. Oil has this vibrant, luminous color, especially when used transparently, which is what I do.” 6. Ibid. “Working with someone’s inherited images frees me from the subject,” Greenfield-Sanders has said. “This gives me the opportunity to build an image that is layered with photographs, watercolors, and oil paints.” 7. Op. cit., Institute of Fine Arts, New York University.
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Aerial Beach, 2022 Mixed media oil on canvas 17 x 17 inches 43.2 x 43.2 cm
Bathers, 2022
Mixed media oil on canvas 17 x 17 inches 43.2 x 43.2 cm
Blue Wave (Detail), 2022 Mixed media oil on canvas 17 x 17 inches 43.2 x 43.2 cm
Field Flowers, 2022
Mixed media oil on canvas 17 x 17 inches 43.2 x 43.2 cm
Fisherman (Pink), 2022 Mixed media oil on canvas 17 x 17 inches 43.2 x 43.2 cm
Fisherman (Yellow), 2022 Mixed media oil on canvas 17 x 17 inches 43.2 x 43.2 cm
Highway, 2022
Mixed media oil on canvas 17 x 17 inches 43.2 x 43.2 cm
Lake, 2022 Mixed media oil on canvas 17 x 17 inches 43.2 x 43.2 cm
Lake Cove, 2022 Mixed media oil on canvas 17 x 17 inches 43.2 x 43.2 cm
Moon, 2022 Mixed media oil on canvas 17 x 17 inches 43.2 x 43.2 cm
Mountain Blossoms, 2022 Mixed media oil on canvas 17 x 17 inches 43.2 x 43.2 cm
Mountain Forest, 2022 Mixed media oil on canvas 17 x 17 inches 43.2 x 43.2 cm
Mountain Valley, 2022 Mixed media oil on canvas 17 x 17 inches 43.2 x 43.2 cm
Mountain View, 2022 Mixed media oil on canvas 17 x 17 inches 43.2 x 43.2 cm
Pink Valley, 2022 Mixed media oil on canvas 17 x 17 inches 43.2 x 43.2 cm
Pink Wave (Detail), 2022 Mixed media oil on canvas 17 x 17 inches 43.2 x 43.2 cm
Queen Anne’s Lace, 2022 Mixed media oil on canvas 17 x 17 inches 43.2 x 43.2 cm
Redwood, 2022
Mixed media oil on canvas 17 x 17 inches 43.2 x 43.2 cm
Sailboats, 2022
Mixed media oil on canvas 17 x 17 inches 43.2 x 43.2 cm
Salt Flats, 2022 Mixed media oil on canvas 17 x 17 inches 43.2 x 43.2 cm
Silver Beach (Blue), 2022 Mixed media oil on canvas 17 x 17 inches 43.2 x 43.2 cm
Silver Beach (Pink), 2022 Mixed media oil on canvas 17 x 17 inches 43.2 x 43.2 cm
Field Flowers, 2022 Mixed media oil on canvas 34 x 34 inches 86.4 x 86.4 cm
Queen Anne’s Lace, 2022 Mixed media oil on canvas 34 x 34 inches 86.4 x 86.4 cm
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Salt Flats, 2022 Mixed media oil on canvas 51 x 51 inches 129.5 x 129.5 cm
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Silver Beach (Blue), 2022 Mixed media oil on canvas 51 x 51 inches 129.5 x 129.5 cm
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Silver Beach (Pink), 2022 Mixed media oil on canvas 51 x 51 inches 129.5 x 129.5 cm
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Blue Wave (Detail), 2022 Mixed media oil on canvas 63 x 63 inches 160 x 160 cm
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Pink Wave (Detail), 2022 Mixed media oil on canvas 63 x 63 inches 160 x 160 cm
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Aerial Beach, 2022 Mixed media oil on canvas 68 x 68 inches 172.7 x 172.7 cm
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Bathers, 2022 Mixed media oil on canvas 68 x 68 inches 172.7 x 172.7 cm
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Mountain View, 2022
Mixed media oil on canvas 68 x 68 inches 172.7 x 172.7 cm
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Red Wood, 2022
Mixed media oil on canvas 68 x 68 inches 172.7 x 172.7 cm
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ISCA GREENFIELD-SANDERS Born in 1978 in New York, NY Lives and works in New York, NY
EDUCATION 2000 BA, Fine Arts and Mathematics, Brown University, Providence, RI
SOLO EXHIBITIONS 2022 “The Things I Can’t Forget,” Miles McEnery Gallery, New York, NY “Ocean Eyes of Blue,” Michael Reid Gallery, Sydney, Australia
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2021 “Let’s Be Still,” Berggruen Gallery, San Francisco, CA “If I Could Go Back,” Baldwin Gallery, Aspen, CO “You’re My Favorite Thing By Far,” Wetterling Gallery, Stockholm, Sweden
2015 “Those Few Hours,” Baldwin Gallery, Aspen, CO “I’ll Be Your Mirror,” Dubner Moderne Galerie d’Art, Lausanne, Switzerland 2014 “Somewhere Else, Somewhere Good,” John Berggruen Gallery, San Francisco, CA 2013 “Marines,” Galerie Klüser, Munich, Germany 2012 “Second State,” Haunch of Venison, London, United Kingdom 2011 “The Ocean Between,” Haunch of Venison, New York, NY “Film Edges,” Wetterling Gallery, Stockholm, Sweden 2010 “Field at Hollow Road,” John Berggruen Gallery, San Francisco, CA “Light Leaks,” Museum of Contemporary Art Denver, Denver, CO
2020 “Shade my Eyes,” Miles McEnery Gallery, New York, NY
2009 “A Beautiful Place to Get Lost,” Galerie Klüser, Munich, Germany “Light Leak,” Baldwin Gallery, Aspen, CO
2019 “Today and Everyday,” Galerie Klüser, Munich, Germany
2008 “Against the Fall,” Goff & Rosenthal, New York, NY
2018 “Inherited Landscape,” Berggruen Gallery, San Francisco, CA
2007 “Red Boat Beaches,” John Berggruen Gallery, San Francisco, CA
2017 “Keep Them Still,” Ameringer | McEnery | Yohe, New York, NY
2006 “Isca Greenfield-Sanders,” Museum Morsbroich, Leverkusen, Germany “Viridian Isle,” Galerie Klüser, Munich, Germany “Pinelawn Pools,” Goff & Rosenthal, New York, NY “Swimming Pool Paintings,” Wetterling Gallery, Stockholm, Sweden
2016 “Balance Point,” Reynolds Gallery, Richmond, VA “All Roads in My Mind,” Wetterling Gallery, Stockholm, Sweden
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2005 Sky of Blue, Sea of Green,” John Berggruen Gallery, San Francisco, CA “Paintings for Harley,” Baldwin Gallery, Aspen, CO 2004 “Silver Cove,” Galerie Klüser, Munich, Germany
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2019 “Striking Gold,” Fuller Craft Museum, Brockton, MA “RealitätsCHECK,” Art’Us Collector’s Collective and Kunstraum Potsdam c/o Waschhaus, Potsdam, Germany “Oceans Edge,” Brattleboro Museum and Art Center, Brattleboro, VT
2003 “Rose Point,” MoMA PS1, Long Island City, NY “Windswept Fields,” Galerie Klüser, Munich, Germany
2018 “Belief In Giants,” Miles McEnery Gallery, New York, NY “Always Greener: Seeing and Seeking Suburbia,” The Museum of Fine Arts Houston, Houston, TX
2002 “Beachwood Park,” Lombard-Freid Fine Arts, New York, NY “New Work,” Baldwin Gallery, Aspen, CO
2017 “Isca Greenfield-Sanders in Conversation with Julian Opie,” Galerie Fluegel-Roncak, Nuremberg, Germany
2001 “Three Project Rooms,” Galleria In Arco, Turin, Italy
2016 “Paulson Bott Press: Celebrating Twenty Years,” de Young Museum, San Francisco, CA “WATER|BODIES,” Southampton Arts Center, Southampton, NY
2000 “Memories,” Galleria In Arco, Turin, Italy
GROUP EXHIBITIONS 2022 “Unnatural Nature: Post-Pop Landscapes,” Acquavella Galleries, New York, NY and Palm Beach, FL “COMPETERE: An Exhibition of Artist Couples,” Bo Bartlett Center, Columbus, GA 2021 “Landscape & Memory,” Pamela Salisbury Gallery, Hudson, NY “Deep Blue,” Hall Art Foundation, Reading, VT “Water Marks: Images of Water in the Collection,” McNay Art Museum, San Antonio, TX 2020 “It’s All About Water,” The Storefront, Bellport, NY “Do You Think It Need A Cloud?,” Miles McEnery Gallery, New York, NY
2014 “Sargent’s Daughters,” Sargent’s Daughters, New York, NY “Domesticity,” Jason McCoy Gallery, New York, NY 2013 “Missed Connection,” Reynolds Gallery, Richmond, VA “Ten Years,” Wallspace Gallery, New York, NY “Playing with Process: Explorations in Experimental Printmaking,” Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Houston, TX “The Distaff Side,” The Granary, Sharon, CT “1XX” (curated by Sam Trioli), Launch F18, New York, NY 2012 “Radical Terrain,” Rubin Museum of Art, New York, NY “Beached,” Gallery Valentine, East Hampton, NY “Boundaries Obscured,” Haunch of Venison, New York, NY 2011 “U.S. Department of State,” Art in Embassies Program, Tel Aviv, Israel “Out of Focus, After Gerhard Richter,” Hamburger Kunsthalle, Hamburg, Germany “The Art of Giving,” John Berggruen Gallery, San Francisco, CA
2010 “Nothing Gold Can Stay,” Robert Goff Gallery, New York, NY 2009 “Extended Family: Contemporary Connections” (curated by Eugenie Tsai), Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, NY “One Size Fits All, On Stellar Rays,” New York, NY “In Their Own Right: Contemporary Women Printmakers,” McNay Art Museum, San Antonio, TX 2006 “Summer Group Show,” Carl Hammer Gallery, Chicago, IL 2005 “Carla Mattii, Isca Greenfield-Sanders, Silvia Zotti,” UnoSuNove, Rome, Italy “Convertible Fabric Pyramid” (curated by Demetrio Paparoni), Benevento, Italy “The Dreamland Artist Club 2005,” Creative Time, Brooklyn, NY “The General’s Jamboree: Second Annual Watercolor Show,” Guild & Greyshkul Gallery, New York, NY
2001 “Vice Versa,” Rare Gallery, New York, NY “Addition | Subtraction,” Carlin Space, New York, NY “Collectors Choice,” Exit Art, New York, NY “Nostalgia,” Ubanetc., Brooklyn, NY 2000 “Biblioteca Comunale,” Torre del Castello, Turin, Italy “School of Visual Arts Digital Salon,” Palacio de Santa Cruz, Valladolid, Spain 1999 “School of Visual Arts Digital Salon,” Visual Arts Museum, New York, NY
SELECT COLLECTIONS Brooklyn Museum, New York, NY Fine Arts Museuma of San Francisco, San Francisco, CA Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH
2004 “River Arts,” Cassola Gallery, Peekskill, NY 2003 “Frans von Lenbach and Art Today,” Museum Morsbroich, Leverkusen, Germany “Prague Biennale: Peripheries Become the Center,” Veletrzni Palac, Prague, Czech Republic “Photography as Model,” Wallspace Gallery, New York, NY “After Matisse & Picasso,” MoMA PS1, Long Island City, NY “All About Me,” Spike Gallery, New York, NY “Sanders & Greenfield-Sanders,” Fredric Snitzer Gallery, Miami, FL “25th Anniversary Show,” Wetterling Gallery, Stockholm, Sweden
Israel Museum, Jerusalem, Israel McNay Art Museum, San Antonio, TX Museum of Fine Arts Houston, Houston, TX Museum Morsbroich, Leverkusen, Germany Palm Springs Museum, Palm Springs, CA Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, NY Victoria and Albert Museum, London, United Kingdom
2002 “Painting as Paradox,” Artists Space, New York, NY “Gothic Mood,” Palazzo Delle Stelline, Milan, Italy “Friends and Family,” Lombard-Freid Fine Arts, New York, NY “27 Emerging Artists,” Spike Gallery, New York, NY
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Published on the occasion of the exhibition
ISCA GREENFIELD-SANDERS THE THINGS I CAN’T FORGET 9 June – 23 July 2022 Miles McEnery Gallery 511 West 22nd Street New York NY 10011 tel +1 212 445 0051 www.milesmcenery.com
ARTIST NAME TITLE GOES HERE, IF ANY
Publication © 2022 Miles McEnery Gallery All rights reserved Essay © 2022 Phyllis Tuchman
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Director of Publications Anastasija Jevtovic, New York, NY Photography by Jeffrey Sturges, New York, NY Timothy Greenfield-Sanders, New York, NY Color separations by Echelon, Los Angeles, CA Catalogue layout by McCall Associates, New York, NY ISBN: 978-1-949327-76-2 Cover: Bathers, (detail), 2022
511 West 22nd Street New York NY 10011
515 West 22nd Street New York NY 10011
525 West 22nd Street New York NY 10011
520 West 21st Street New York NY 10011
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