Dan Christensen: Stains and Loops by LewAllen Galleries

Dan Christensen STAINS AND LOOPS

Dan Christensen Stains and Loops

June 28 - July 20 2019

Railyard Arts District | 1613 Paseo de Peralta | Santa Fe, New Mexico 87501 | tel 505.988.3250 www.lewallengalleries.com | contact@lewallengalleries.com cover: Song of Ceylon (detail), 1979, acrylic on canvas, 73.5" x 91"

Dan Christensen: Stains and Loops Dan Christensen will go down in art history as an artist who came to New York from Nebraska in 1964, picked up a spray gun, squeegee, roller and turkey baster and used them to help revitalize the future of American abstract painting. The great 20th century art critic Clement Greenberg even anointed Christensen a painter “on whom the course of American art depends.” Christensen arrived in New York in 1965, at about the same moment that many younger artists were sensing that the then-dominant movement in American painting, Abstract Expressionism, had become moribund and lost its vitality. AbEx, with its dynamic and expressive intensity and dense, energetic, ego-driven paint handling, had been the predominant direction in painting after World War II. But by the mid-60’s much of the art world began to feel that the movement had run its course and was losing its authenticity and originality. Some in the art world even proclaimed that painting as a form of original artistic expression was in serious decline or “dead.” Fortunately, for the future of American art, some artists rejected the notion that painting was defunct, and resolved instead to find new ways of immersing themselves in the process of making non-representational painting exhilarating again. Christensen and others such as Kenneth Noland, Morris Louis, Helen Frankenthaler, Larry Zox, Ronnie Landfield, and Jules Olitski, began to evolve new forms of artistic expression, using newly-developed paints, innovative color combinations and inventive methods of applying paint to canvas. This dynamic new movement launched a 40-year career for Christensen, characterized by continuous innovation with new tools and materials with which to make paintings, and a creative vitality that impelled him to constantly explore new genres in his own work. What he was able to do, with a consummate sense of curiosity and an adventurous drive for invention and innovation, was help inspire a cutting edge avant-garde that worked to invigorate new energy, meaning and relevance for painting that made an indelible mark on the progress of American art history. Clement Greenberg viewed Christensen as an exemplar of “post-painterly abstraction”—a term he coined for the movement that followed Abstract Expressionism which sought to move towards what the critic regarded as a “pure art” that would eschew subject matter, spatial illusion and an artist’s persona in favor of revealing the “truthfulness” of the canvas. Christensen’s approach was characterized by continuous innovation with new tools and materials with which to make paintings, and a creative vitality that impelled him to experiment constantly with new genres and 2

techniques in his work. In a 1968 Artforum article, Christensen was applauded for his innovative “abstract luminist” work and was described as a “virtuoso in execution.” Christensen had become increasingly recognized in the New York art world for his work with spray guns as alternative vehicles for paint application, and his more controlled, though dynamic, response to the desultory techniques of paint application seen in Abstract Expressionism. This work had established Christensen’s early renown that included exhibition of work at the Museum of Modern Art in New York and inclusion at the age of 25 in the 1966-67 Whitney Annual. Christensen, however, was never one to rest on laurels or deny an impulse for exploring continued innovation and discovery of fresh means of authentic expression. During 1969-71, Christensen had put down the spray gun and progressed to the use of commercial paint rollers and window-washing squeegees to create a group of work called the “Plaid Paintings” that were richly tailored and geometric in order to allow him to put more paint onto his canvas than spraying allowed. These works were followed by the “Slab Paintings” in which Christensen used masonry trowels and broad brushwork to create paintings with thick, dense, scraped surfaces. The current LewAllen exhibit, entitled Stains and Loops, features three other important periods of Christensen’s career beginning in 1976 and extending through the years immediately preceding his death in 2007. These are his Early Stain Paintings, his Late Stain Paintings, and his Last Loops. This was mainly a happy time in the artist’s life, working in a new, large studio in the Hamptons and marrying the actress and sculptor Elaine Grove with whom he had two sons. His joy comes through in the exuberant colors, adventuresome techniques, and playful use of line that appears in much of the work from these series. The Early Stain Paintings The first of these series involved Christensen’s interest in using thinned paints to merge pigment with the knobby texture of raw canvas, an important part of the artist’s aesthetic goal. The Early Stain Paintings, created during 1976 through 1984, are excellent examples of Christensen’s interest in mining the possibilities provided by modern paints and painting products in the latter part of the 20th century. In this series, Christensen made innovative use of acrylic paints--which were sold commercially 3

beginning in the 1950s—and applied them in various manners, using turkey basters, broomstick handles, spray cans, rollers, and squeegees. In these early works, he explored the relationship between figure and ground, working on raw canvas with layers of thinned acrylic paint, serving as the background for biomorphic shapes of opaque gesso, brushed onto the stained surface. This was a reversal of the normal order of things: gesso typically was used as an under-layer primer for the canvas, rather than the gestural abstract subject that sat atop the colored acrylic, as with Song of Ceylon (1979) and Polar Rose (1978). These shapes present as translucent – even delicate and fragile – forms that appear to hover over his stained backgrounds, the color of which emerges partially through the gesso to create a cloudlike presence floating ephemerally across the surface. This effect is illustrated well in Bend Two (1978) and Parson’s Widow (1978). In a 1979 review for New York Magazine, noted poet and critic John Ashbery said about Christensen’s work from this series, “Occasionally the color becomes smoldering and sensuous … articulating the nuances separating patches of close-keyed dull pastel tones and he does it masterfully.” In regarding these Early Stain Paintings, Ashbery included Christensen as among the few artists that he saw as “extending the language of modernism in a more traditional and serious way.” The Late Stain Paintings During the period of 1998 through 2006, Christensen evolved the process he had innovated in the Early Stain Paintings to bring a new dimension of added vivacity to his paintings with the use of more saturated layered colors and a more activated sense of gesture. He produced surfaces that were more vibrant and radiant than the subtle and muted tones of the Early Stains. To these backgrounds, Christensen introduced energetic arabesques of multicolored lines that dance across the surfaces like the tracings of an ecstatic dervish. He overlaid gestural calligraphic lines in various colors, working with tools such as sticks and turkey basters to apply his paint. These paintings manifest Christensen’s fondness for drawing. For Christensen, the drawn line could signify the tempo of his artistic expression within a work – from bebop to smooth jazz, the currents of both of which seem evident in a work like Eve (2005). In these paintings, the line takes on a life of its own and emerges as the “subject” of the painting, fully as much as the stained canvas underlying it. The spontaneity of line laid down on a field of rolled color provides a unique sense of energy reminiscent of the life-signifying waves on a heart monitor, as in Rogue Red (2005) and Rama Red (2005). They swirl, bounce, hover, vibrate, and dance with utter spontaneity. In so 4

doing, they excite, energize and engage the viewer in new ways of experiencing the visual content of abstract painting. The Last Loop Paintings Christensen’s Last Loop Paintings, from the years just before his death in 2007, bring to mind the artist’s inventive technique of sprayed swirls of colors onto solid backgrounds that had contributed to his early fame in the late 1960s. Perhaps a fitting crescendo to a virtuosic career, they capture and echo many of the innovative dimensions of Christensen’s process – ground, gesture, color and material – that distinguished his success in revitalizing abstraction as a riveting form of artistic expression. In this last series of especially dynamic works, agitated swirls of oscillating lines course across solid backgrounds of often-vibrant colors, racing like sound waves into a vast unknown. In Ravel (2004) for example, one is tempted to see Christensen’s multicolored calligraphic bursts as the imprints on canvas of a generative energy that would act to continue the artist’s own vital life force after his brave battle with the ravages of polymyositis was over. These final paintings remind that color and light could be the means for all that Christensen was concerned to express in the pictorial language of his work. With them he could say it all: visual riffs on joys and loves, life and loss, enthusiasms and memories—expressive responses to the times of his life. In his work, he celebrated what he called “the harmonious turbulence of the universe.” His ethos was, and his legacy is, the unpremeditated spontaneity, artistic curiosity, and a resolve to experiment and let paint take him where it would. Throughout his career, and including his work with the three genres that are the subject of Stains and Loops, Dan Christensen relentlessly explored the protean varieties of paint’s possibilities. His virtuosity and never-ending experimentation put him at the center of many of the 20th century’s most significant developments and innovations in American abstract painting. With his resolute dedication to the myriad ways that abstraction can endure as one of the most exciting forms of art making, Christensen established his place in art history and became one of the leading figures in saving and revitalizing non-representational painting as an enduring, vital and relevant force in Modernism and artistic expression. Kenneth R Marvel 5

Parson's Widow, 1978 acrylic on canvas, 45 x 69 inches

New York Lace, 1978 acrylic on canvas, 69 x 55.5 inches 7

Bend Two, 1978 acrylic on canvas, 53 x 81 inches 9

Song of Ceylon, 1979 acrylic on canvas, 73.5 x 91 inches 10

Polar Rose, 1978 acrylic on canvas, 50 x 40 inches 11

Triple Mesa, 1981 acrylic on canvas, 22 x 76.25 inches 13

Eve, 2005 acrylic on canvas, 72.5 x 35.5 inches 14

Rama Red, 2005 acrylic on canvas, 72 x 38.5 inches 15

Rogue Red, 2005 acrylic on canvas, 27 x 62 inches

Bowie, 2003 acrylic on canvas, 28 x 24 inches 18

197S9, 1997 acrylic on canvas, 20 x 16 inches 19

Calico, 2004 acrylic on canvas, 18 x 72 inches 21

Cora Cora, 2004 acrylic on canvas, 16 x 78 inches 23

102M4, 2002 acrylic on canvas, 40 x 30 inches

102M5, 2002 acrylic on canvas, 28 x 36 inches 25

Torodoro, 2004 acrylic on canvas, 58 x 99 inches 27

Ravel, 2004 acrylic on canvas, 16 x 68 inches 29

Night Garden II, 1986 acrylic on canvas, 42 x 24 inches 30

Dan Christensen

b. 1942, Cozad, NE d. 2007, East Hampton, NY

EDUCATION 1964

Kansas City Art Institute, BFA

AWARDS 1992 1986 1969 1968

Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant Gottlieb Foundation Grant Guggenheim Fellowship Theodoran Award National Endowment Grant

Over his 40 year career, Christensen’s work was featured in hundreds of leading gallery and museum exhibitions, both solo and group. For a full list, please visit our gallery website. Below are some highlights from that exhibition history: SELECTED SOLO EXHIBITIONS 2019 LewAllen Galleries, Santa Fe, NM (also 2015, 2013, 2011, 2009, 2007) 2015 Berry Campbell, New York, NY 2014 Spanierman Modern, New York, NY (also 2012-13, 2011, 2009, 2007) 2010 Elaine Baker Gallery, Boca Raton, FL (also 2008) 2009 Sheldon Museum of Art, Lincoln, NE 2009 Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas City, MO 2002-03 Parrish Museum, Southampton, NY 2001-02 The Butler Institute of American Art, Youngstown, OH 1999 Salander O’Reilly Galleries, New York, NY (also 1982-1998) 1994 Douglas Drake Gallery, New York, NY and Kansas City, MO (also 1991, 1988, 1987, 1984, 1980-82, 1976-79) 1984 Meredith Long and Company, New York, NY & Houston, TX (also 1978-1983) 1976 Andre Emmerich Gallery, New York, NY (also 1969-1975) 1972 Nicholas Wilder Gallery, Los Angeles, CA (also 1970) 1971 Galerie Ricke, Cologn, Germany (also 1969)

1967

Noah Goldowsky Gallery, New York, NY (Richard Bellamy, Curator)

MUSEUM COLLECTIONS Albrecht Art Gallery, St. Joseph, MO Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, NY Boca Raton Museum of Art, Boca Raton, FL Museum of Fine Arts Boston, Boston, MA The Butler Institute Of American Art, Youngstown, OH The Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH The Dayton Art Institute, Dayton, OH Denver Art Museum, Denver, CO Detroit Institute of the Arts, Detroit, MI Edmonton Art Gallery, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada Everson Museum of Art, Syracuse, NY The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, San Francisco, CA Greenville County Museum of Art, Greenville, SC Guggenheim Museum, New York, NY High Museum of Art, Atlanta, GA Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, DC The Museum of Fine Arts Houston, Houston, TX Indianapolis Museum of Art, Indianapolis, IN Kunstmuseum, St. Gallen, Switzerland Museum für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt am Main, Germany Ludwig Collection in the Wallraf-Richartz Museum, Cologne, Germany Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY Museum of Art, Fort Lauderdale, Fort Lauderdale, FL Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, IL Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO St. Louis Art Museum, St. Louis, MO Seattle Art Museum, Seattle, WA Sheldon Memorial Art Gallery, University of Nebraska, Lincoln, NE Toledo Museum of Art, Toledo, OH Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY 31

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Railyard Arts District | 1613 Paseo de Peralta | Santa Fe, New Mexico 87501 | tel 505.988.3250 www.lewallengalleries.com | contact@lewallengalleries.com ÂŠ 2019 LewAllen Contemporary, LLC 34 Artwork ÂŠ Estate of Dan Christensen