BENT PERIMETERS: THE ‘SHAPED CANVAS’ AND ABSTRACTION, 1960s TO TODAY
DAVID RICHARD GALLERY
ISBN: 978-0-9907011-3-2 FRONT COVER: Tom Green, NEW DAY, 2009, Acrylic on canvas, 77” x 101.5” TITLE PAGE: Paul Reed, INTERCHANGE #F, 1967, Acrylic on canvas, 55” x 41” Paul Reed, ZIEGFIELD, 1967, Acrylic on canvas, 28” x 88” Paul Reed, MARMARA, 1967, Acrylic on canvas, 54” x 45” PAGES 8 & 9: Leo Valledor, ROTHKOKORO, 1988, Acrylic on canvas, 96” x 96” Leo Valledor, MILESPACE, 1980, Acrylic on canvas, 60” x 48” Francis Celentano, SIX RADICAL GLOBES OPENED, 2008, Acrylic on canvas, 48” PAGES 18 & 19 Charles Hinman, Pelican, 1977, Acrylic on shaped canvas, 30” x 47” x 5” Charles Hinman, Vermillion Verve, 2014, Acrylic on shaped canvas, 42” x 46” x 6” PAGES 22 & 23 Lilly Fenichel, Forbidden Fruit, 1986, Oil fiberglass, 36” x 37” x 3.5” Lilly Fenichel, Trikona, 1986, Oil on wood and fiberglass, 48” x 49” x 3.25” Lilly Fenichel, Parighal, 1985, Oil on wood, 34” x 29” x 3” PAGES 26 & 27 Ward Jackson, Ward Jackson, Ward Jackson, Ward Jackson,
Cross Series Orange Over Blue, 1981, Acrylic on canvas, 24” x 24” Cross Series Green Over Violet, 1981, Acrylic on canvas, 24” x 24” Passage Series #4, 1986-88, Acrylic on canvas, 24” x 24” Chord, 1990, Acrylic on canvas, 24” x 24”
BACK COVER: Tom Green, CORPUS, 1994, Acrylic on paper, 21” x 24.5” Tom Green, NO EXIT, 1994, Mixed media on paper, 14” x 17” Tom Green, IN CAME YELLOW, 2007, Acrylic on canvas, 43.75” x 77.5” ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Published on the occasion of the exhibition: BentPerimeters: The ‘Shaped Canvas’ and Abstraction, 1960s to Today April 17 – May 17, 2015 Curated by David Eichholtz and Peter Frank David Richard Gallery 544 South Guadalupe Street Santa Fe, NM 87501 P: 505-983-9555 | DavidRichardGallery.com Gallery Staff: David Eichholtz and Richard Barger, Managers Published by: David Richard Gallery, LLC, Santa Fe, NM All rights reserved. No part of this catalogue may be reproduced in whole or part in digital or printed form of any kind whatsoever without the express written permission from the copyright holder. Catalogue: © 2015 David Richard Gallery, LLC, Santa Fe, New Mexico. Essay: © 2015 Peter Frank, Los Angeles, CA Art: Francis Celentano © Francis Celentano Lilly Fenichel © Lilly Fenichel Francis Hewitt © Francis Hewitt Charles Hinman © Charles Hinman Paul Reed © Paul Reed Leo Valledor © Leo Valledor. Photos of art and installations: Greg Zinniel Catalogue Design: David Eichholtz and Richard Barger, David Richard Gallery, LLC, Santa Fe, NM
CURATED BY DAVID EICHHOLTZ AND PETER FRANK
DAVID RICHARD GALLERY
FRAME FOLLOWS FORM: THE SHAPED PAINTING IN AMERICAN ABSTRACTION By Peter Frank
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After the Second World War, American artists fell into a frenzy of formal experimentation. At first dominated by the theater of metaphysical narrative that defined abstract expressionism, this trajectory of extravagant invention took a more formal turn around 1960 The production of imagery gave way to the production of unencoded, optically self-sufficient structures, manifesting as hard-edge geometric art, color field painting, Op art, and, ultimately, minimalism. As distinct as those practices were from each other, in result at least as much as in intent, they shared not only the impetus to compose form and exploit color for their own sake, but to do so with often elaborate audaciousness. American painters wanted to break with, certainly to challenge, whatever traditions and conventions could be identified – including many traditions and conventions so basic to artistic practice they seemed invisible or insurmountable. One such convention was the rectangular canvas, hung parallel to wall and floor. Representational painting was supposed to register as window or mirror on the world, its boundaries stable and, by inference, functional. A painting could conceivably be round or oval, but should it have corners, they should be 90 degrees – and the surface of the picture should be (or at least appear) as flat as glass. With painting freed once and for all from its mimetic purpose, artists were no longer bound to the rectangle, or even to the flat surface. As a result, early in the 1960s painters began to take liberties with the supports upon which they worked, doing as little as tilting the canvas and as much as turning the canvas into a sculptured topography. American painters’ investigation of the “shaped canvas” (and shaped whatever-other-material-provided-support) had its antecedents in European and even South American abstraction -“even” because, while the European work, such as the lozenges of Piet Mondrian, was generally well known to the Americans, the more daring South American work, including the eccentrically boundaried abstractions of the Madí group in Buenos Aires (and later Paris), was not. To American audiences, breaking the frame, as painters in New York and elsewhere began doing after 1960, was a revolutionary move – especially in the large formats made popular by abstract expressionism – anticipated only by the tondos and lozenges of Mondrian’s American followers. That said, American shaped-painting artists of the 1960s did invent some radical formats – then and since. Charles Hinman, for instance – celebrated in the mid-60s along with Sven Lukin, Richard Smith, and other abstractionists as “shaped canvas artists” – reconfigured the hidden supports of the canvas itself into a complex surface articulated and counterbalanced by areas of vivid color. Certain painters of the Washington Color School – Kenneth Noland and Gene Davis most famously, but Paul Reed most daringly – broke the lateral bounds of the picture plane in concert with the eccentrically interlinked forms on the canvases themselves. Painters of the Park Place group, including Leo Valledor, also pushed against the perimeters, and often the surfaces, of the canvas as a way of exploring the experiential and conceptual gap between painting and sculpture. Op artists such as Francis Celentano and Francis Hewitt shaped their canvases to their symmetric, often concentric compositions, giving those compositions added retinal oomph. Hard-edge painters like Ward Jackson played off against skewed circumferences, dynamically engaging the edges of their paintings in the compositions themselves. And when a gestural painter like Lilly Fenichel wanted to extend the practice of painting into something else – beyond sculpture, even, almost to furniture or fixture – she had wood or fiberglass
supports built that, painted monochromatically, would reach across and even off the wall as if leaping from a painting. Note that, while most of the examples of shaped painting here postdate the 1960s, all the artists here are veterans of that era. Even though the shaped-canvas “craze” burst and faded fairly quickly on the overheated ‘60s scene, the technique has retained its allure for abstract painters – most particularly, it would seem, those who were working at the time and whose dedication to abstraction as a rich and infinite realm of exploration endured long after the party ended. After all, as witty and celebratory as these giddy structures and loopy objects may seem, they have all been created in a spirit of earnest research and sober manufacture. Formulation and fabrication are points of pride for artists like these, and the shaped painting represents no mere dalliance with superficial design: it could have been, and still can be, a way to amplify form and enhance vision. The ideals of the ‘60s, not just the ideas, have persisted in the practice of shaping painting. Los Angeles April 2015
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Paul Reed ZIEGFIELD, 1967 Acrylic on canvas, 28” x 88”
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Paul Reed MARMARA, 1967 Acrylic on canvas, 54” x 45”
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Paul Reed INTERCHANGE #F, 1967 Acrylic on canvas, 55” x 41”
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Paul Reed TOPEKA #14, 1967 Acrylic on canvas, 56” x 28”
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Leo Valledor SOURCE, 1969-70 Acrylic and oil on canvas, 60�
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Leo Valledor FANCY DANCE, 1981 Acrylic and oil on canvas, 38” x 48”
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Leo Valledor MILESPACE, 1980 Acrylic on canvas, 60” x 48”
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Leo Valledor ROTHKOKORO, 1988 Acrylic on canvas, 96” x 96”
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Francis Celentano NINETEEN HEXAGONS, 1966 Acrylic on canvas, 48” x 41”
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Francis Celentano SIX RADICAL GLOBES OPENED, 2008 Acrylic on canvas, 48”
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Francis Hewitt PURSED, 1964 Acrylic on canvas on masonite, 24” x 24”
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Francis Hewitt OP ENDED, 1964 Acrylic on canvas on masonite, 24” x 24”
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Charles Hinman ORANGE WING, 2014 Acrylic on shaped canvas, 42” x 54” x 9”
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Charles Hinman DUSK TO DAWN, 2014 Acrylic on shaped canvas, 41” x 69” x 6”
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Lilly Fenichel FORBIDDEN FRUIT, 1986 Oil on fiberglass, 36” x 37” x 3.5” Lilly Fenichel PARIGHAL, 1985 Oil on wood, 34” x 9” x 3”
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Lilly Fenichel TRIKONA, 1986 Oil on wood and fiberglass, 48” x 49” x 3.25”
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Ward Jackson PASSAGE SERIES #4, 1986-88 Acrylic on canvas, 24” x 24” Ward Jackson CHORD, 1990 Acrylic on canvas, 24” x 24”
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Ward Jackson CROSS SERIES ORANGE OVER BLUE, 1981 Acrylic on canvas, 24” x 24” Ward Jackson CROSS SERIES GREEN OVER VIOLET, 1981 Acrylic on canvas, 24” x 24”
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DAVID RICHARD GALLERY
DAVID RICHARD GALLERY
544 South Guadalupe Street, Santa Fe, NM 87501 | p (505) 983-9555 www.DavidRichardGallery.com | info@DavidRichardGallery.com