ROBERT KUSHNER
SSometimes a change of locale produces beautiful results. A different sense of light. The “ terroir ” of the plants and flowers. A sense of the distant, the unfamiliar, allows the artist to go in new directions. A different worldview. This happened last spring for Robert Kushner, following a gracious invitation from Andrea and Charles Woodman to visit and work at the Woodman Family Residency in Antella, Italy. This locale had been the summer home and studios for Robert’s close friends Betty and George Woodman for nearly sixty years. Kushner had visited his friends there on two occasions, but this time he would be working, along with a ceramist friend Patrick Loughran. George’spainting and photography studio, with its dramatic view of Tuscan olive groves and Renaissance blue hills, was Robert ’sstudio for the month of April 2023 . The paintings in this exhibition were begun in Antella and completed in New York.
Flowers have been Kushner ’sprincipal subject matter for some years now. However, recently, still life elements: textiles, fruits, vases, and bowls have interacted with the flowers to create complex harmonies of color and form. There was a lot to look at and select from in the gardens, the surrounding fields of wildflowers, and the kit chen cabinets and shelves to create the still life compositions in Antella Windows and Curtains . Looking at these works as a whole, there is indeed something different in the Mediterranean light illuminating these objects. Something relaxed in the compositions themselves and the fresh color harmonies. Being away but working hard in a place both familiar in some aspects and completely new in others.
In this catalogue, we have reproduced writings sent to friends by Robert Kushner as he completed each painting.
SEPTEMBER 8 , 2023
In April and May 2023, I was invited to paint at the Woodman Residency Foundation, the home and studios of my friends Betty and George Woodman outside of Antella, Italy. I worked there with ceramist Patrick Loughran surrounded by olive groves in the ancient and beautiful Tuscan hills. I was able to start eight oil paintings, each 36 x 48 inches, in oil and acrylic on linen. The paintings dried in the studio and then were shipped to me in New York and I have been working on them with gusto for the last few months unlocking sweet memories as well as bittersweet moments both of Italy and also growing up in the Mediterranean climate of Southern California. All this surfacing on a daily basis.
So much of the time there involved taking in the magnificent views and the ever changing sky and light. Therefore the overall title of this series is: Antella Windows and Curtains. This is the first painting in the series: Wisteria (which was blooming profusely when I arrived) and Tangerine. One stem of wisteria in a water glass. A small vase of wildflowers that greeted me on my arrival, a geometric Italian tile used as a hot plate in the kitchen, and an abstraction of striped countrystyle fabric one finds in any farm house. I had been thinking a lot about the work of another departed artist friend, Shirley Jaffe, for whom the white ground was a major part of her unique sense of abstraction.
ANTELLA CURTAINS AND WINDOW S, WILDFLOWER BOUQUET: WISTERIA AND TANGERINE , 2023 Oil, acrylic, conté
SEPTEMBER 1 3 , 2023
There was certainly no lack of still life subject matter at the Antella house. This trivet, intended for kitchen use, demonstrated Betty's interest in Baroque forms. A raku piece, executed with curves and counter curves. The olive trees, just coming into bloom, and an earthenware pitcher to hold them. A single red rose that fit well into an unused glass salt shaker. Grasses and wildflowers from the olive grove. The shapes came together quickly but the final colors didn't resolve until back in New York. The lavender and blue curtain pulled it all together, I think. Along with that olive green.
SEPTEMBER 2 2 , 2023
What to paint next? The Betty platters we served from daily seemed like a natural still life addition. A perfect lemon and its deep green leaves. Then the wild poppies appeared in the strangest places. Red gashes of gem-like color against the pervasive greens. A sprig of olive leaves and tiny flowers. The curtain appeared back in my studio. Rumpled with a vengeance. The colors, all sun drunk and Mediterranean.
ANTELLA CURTAIN AND WINDOW: LEMON AND POPPIE S , 2023
SEPTEMBER 2 8 , 2023
Same platter, same lemon, same poppies, sort of same curtain (but that aqua ground really changes things). Added a vase for the poppies and a sugar bowl. I wanted to see if I could capture Betty's marks on the platter, so I trimmed off a lot of the lemon's leaves and slid it over to the side. The underglaze shapes have a chatty raucousness. Then, piece by piece, the composition took shape. The two Lemon and Poppies paintings are quite similar but also distinct chromatically. The second is also a little calmer and more poised. After this reiteration, the series really breaks loose.
ANTELLA CURTAIN AND WINDOW: LEMON AND POPPIES II , 2023
OCTOBER 2 4 , 2023
This small bouquet greeted me in Antella, and became part of the first two still lives. Unlike many wildflowers, these lasted and lasted and then one morning, the individual plants looked straight up to the sky and were a different composition. I painted it without any other still life elements but couldn't figure out how to complete the painting. Back in my own studio, I found a way to weave it together with the addition of the striped curtain, a sun drenched window and one of my favorite Japanese fabrics on the table.
NOVEMBER 4 , 2023
And then there were ROSES. Everywhere. Climbing on the 15 foot stone wall, outside my studio door, beside the car park. Huge, fragrant, effulgent. I chose three beauties in three colors and put them in a simple vase. Patrick found a piece of striped curtain, with the stripes going two directions and that became a dramatic backdrop. Suddenly the 48 x 36 inch format became dramatically too small with the expansive energy of the flowers.
NOVEMBER 1 7, 2023
It fascinates me how, at the beginning of a month, time is leisurely and passes slowly, but at the end it is all mayhem and a rush to the finish. With my month in Italy nearly over, and two blank canvases left, what to paint?
One day Caroline came home from her walk with a handful of gorgeous, fragrant purple irises. Iris, with their bizarrely convoluted crenellations always seduce me. Not to mention that regal violet. The rest of the composition took shape with some familiar faces and some new elements as well.
Two iris, wild onions in a glass vase, an old fashioned rose, a different Betty dish with color swatches and a loquat, a blue and white vase and a piece of an Ann Agee tile. I added the Japanese fabric and the striped curtain later, here in New York.
A fun roller coaster ride.
NOVEMBER 2 7, 2023
Looking back, nearly six months ago, to the end of May in Antella: one last week to work, one last blank canvas. Simultaneously the urge to keep making strides forward and at the same to take time to look back and take stock. I chose the latter, to sum up the various explorations and discoveries of the previous month.
The rampant and shameless plenitude of the roses, the poppies and grasses between the olive trees, the two ceramic tiles I had previously used, the familiar blue and white vase, and a new art deco bud vase. All jammed together, to be made sense of later in my New York studio.
Compendium, indeed. And of course, as these things happen, it made yet another new direction to move toward. For now, arrivederci Toscana.
JULY 1 2 , 2023
Waiting, waiting for the unfinished Antella paintings to come to me in New York, I started two more pieces as a continuation of the Italian still lifes. I wanted the objects to be everyday items I looked at all the time, the fruits, flowers, grasses to be true to the season. The use of the color white, so important in the Antella paintings continued to be a central part of my investigations.
Mangoes & Apricots echoed our New York dining room table with its array of early apricots, a ripening golden mango in a Japanese Oribe dish, a single campanula in a gifted blue vase, an Indian bidri vase and shell shaped box, and a lovely rhythmic tangle of grasses. Something about grasses seems so humble, rustic a simple on one hand, yet totally graceful and eternally elegant on the other. I seem never to tire of drawing them with my Japanese brushes.
MANGOES AND APRICOTS , 2023
Oil, acrylic, conté cray on, and pencil on canv as, 48 x 48 inches
AUGUST 4 , 2023
Su m m er Morning continued the diaristic origins of the Antella pieces. Every morning I had my tea made in this sweet Chinese teapot and drunk from a white Japanese tea cup. These loyal companions are front and center as they were every summer morning. But perhaps the star players were this big bouquet of diverse wild flowers and garden flowers and a rumpled striped fabric. It took a long while for the colors to come together and coalesce but once they did the composition felt like an evocation of the easy plenitude of summer mornings, part devoted to working and part day dreaming....
SUMMER MORNING , 2023
D C MOOR E GALLE R Y
Published on the occasion of the exhibition
ROBERT KUSHNER: ANTELLA WINDOWS & CURTAINS
DC Moore Gallery, March 21 – April 2 7, 2024
© DC Moore Galler y, 2024
Notes on paintings © Robert Kushne r, 2024
ISBN : 978- 1-7367723-3-1
DESIGN : Joseph Guglietti
PRINTING : Brilliant
PHOTOGRAPHY : © Steven Bates
STUDIO SHOTS : © Patrick Loughran
COVER : SUMMER MORNING , 2023 (detail)
Oil, acrylic, conté cray on, and pencil on canv as, 48 x 48 inches
DC MOORE GALLERY