L.C. Armstrong, 2017 by Marlborough Gallery

L.C. ARMSTRONG Signals at Sunset

FEBRUARY 8 - MARCH 4, 2017

4 0 W E S T 57 T H S T R E E T N E W YO R K , N E W YO R K 1 0 0 1 9 | 2 1 2 - 5 4 1 - 4 9 0 0 M A R L B O R O U G H G A L L E R Y.C O M

Paradise Pool: Peacocks, 2016 acrylic on linen on panel, 36 x 28 in., 91.4 x 71.1 cm

S I G N A L S AT S U N S E T E. Luanne McKinnon

Shot gold, maroon and violet, dazzling silver, emerald, fawn, the earth’s whole amplitude and nature’s multiform power consign’d for once to colors; the light, the general air possess’d by them – colors till now unknown, no limit, confine – not the Western sky alone – the high meridian – north, south, all, pure luminous color fighting the silent shadows to the last.1

--Walt Whitman

L. C. Armstrong’s latest flowerscapes2 depict locales as diverse as New York’s Central Park, rural India, and even Heaven in which small figures pose in resplendent scenes. Among several species of animals and birds a Bengalese tiger and water buffalo commingle with the eagle and swan. Together, beast and fowl are portrayed with different types of people, living and dead, fictional and real: a Hassidic man; Abraham Lincoln; the Infanta Margarita from Velázquez’s Las Meninas; and, Adam and Eve all of whom are positioned behind a shift-in-scale stratum of oversized flowers. Effulgent blooms divide the compositions in two ways: their hierarchical prominence insists upon our contact with them first, which is not without symbolic power; and, the deeper space behind them is otherwise a pictorial stage. This amalgam evokes a heritage with Magic Realism from the 1930s and ‘40s; and, midnineteenth century American landscape painting. In the spring of 1943, against the backdrop of World War II, the Museum of Modern Art mounted the exhibition, Realists and Magic Realists. Alfred H. Barr, Jr. defined “Magic Realism” as the work of “painters who by means of an exact realistic technique try to make plausible and convincing their dreamlike or fantastic visions.” Lincoln Kirstein further explained, “Magic Realists . . . convince us that extraordinary things are possible simply by painting them as if they existed.... There is often a tenderness of the capable hand . . . acquired from a complete knowledge of the subject.”3 This coup of Imagination over Reason, with its tangible debt to Surrealism, was a triumph of Heart over Mind. Above all, artists working in this realm proposed What if...then. Historically, this kind of painting originates with Hieronymus Bosch and descends through the Antwerp style of miniature people cast in vast landscapes by Pieter Bruegel the Elder (1525-1569). Armstrong’s work is more specifically Anthropological Magic Realism in that her imaginative expressions of a natural world

are set side-by-side with certain worldviews. Consider Paradise Pool: Peacocks (2016). A man and woman (Adam and Eve) walk toward the sun whose reflection doubles in an oval pool visited by a pair of male peacocks, solar birds of immortality whose feather “eyes” were believed to see the eternal. An iris is poised directly beneath the sun. Its petals are emphasized as praying hands; a gesture of gratitude or supplication to the light. Of the second legacy, Armstrong’s work continues the spirit of Luminism, a subgroup of the Hudson River School typified by supernal light and the suspension of time and motion. The elemental qualities of air, land, and water coalesce in a near metaphysical manner; and, figures too are not separated in the union accorded. This non-divisiveness is bound to nineteenth century idealism and the Transcendentalist tenets of Oneness with nature. In Emersonian terms, it is this tree, this bird, and this state of the pond on a summer evening or winter morning that rises in particularity and will become Thoreau’s subject that finds him “suddenly neighbor to” rather than a hunter of birds.4 In variation to such pantheistic realism,5 Armstrong’s work (that also affirms the sense of god-in-all-things) is personal and made present-day in her own terms. Her upbringing in Humboldt, Tennessee was a mixture of Protestant fundamentalism and daydreaming in the woods. This background provides a glimpse into what her young imagination conjured and the imprint that has remained and been transformed in non-doctrinal ways in her art over time. Moon Over Monsoon (2016) arrests a day soon after a deluge. In Norse, Biblical, Mesopotamian, and Ancient Greek flood myths, deities sent drowning rains upon humankind as an act of divine retribution. In these traditions, floods symbolizes rebirth, a second chance; now, we believe that they evidence global warming. Armstrong controls the scene in which everyone seems unharmed. More than their survival, the emblematic feature of the painting is the saving of one precious thing that each person holds above his head, or around her shoulders, or pressed closely to their bodies. Armstrong’s husband, Philip, holds aloft one of her paintings, but facing backward leaving us to wonder which flowerscape he chose to protect. Their daughter, Alexandra, holds a ukulele. Nearby, a doppelgänger for Vogue’s editor, Anna Wintour, is draped with a live red fox rather than a mink stole! In Incan legend, the fox was a magical diviner-

curer; and, mercurial like the unconscious, the vulpine was a guide through transformational spaces in the service of wholeness. Others hold a spider monkey, a house cat, and, a white rabbit. These too are auspicious signifiers. The monkey was immortalized in Mayan myth for being the only creature to survive the gods’ destruction of Creation. The clever Hindu monkey-god Hanuman, and the Egyptian god, Thoth, communed with wisdom spirits. And, the trait of simian trickery was balanced with monkey’s attainment of immortality in many world myths. For centuries, the moon and rabbit have been linked in Chinese and Mayan lore as survivors of the shadow-world where they hide from prey only to reappear in the light, treading softly in thresholds of transition. Lewis Carroll’s Alice fell through a long hole and when she landed she saw a large, white rabbit ahead of her and followed him into an uncanny and inexplicable world. The shift in scale in that imaginary realm is not without correspondence to Armstrong’s arrangements.

The painting’s panoply of pink and pale yellow roses is the epitome of tenderness. Yet, this wall of fully blossomed roses, thirty-one in all, stands in defiance against the coils of galvanized steel razor wire fencing that the artist witnessed in Jerusalem. This is an anti-war, anti-hatred painting without the rhetoric of battle and death. The prominence of flowers throughout her oeuvre, including the new neon-lit Neon Daffodil (2016) and Neon Iris (2016) wall sculptures, is a device of seduction. We are drawn to them, face to face, and in so doing recognize that the floral form based upon a circular axis, are blooming mandalas, which in Jungian terms generate order and wholeness. The deeply historic network of flower images, sacred and profane, are archetypal in that they have always meant perfection, generosity, completeness, fragility thus compassion. L.C. Armstrong’s flowers remain uncut; they are attached beyond the edge of the painting, to the ground or into the soil; their nectar attracts the hummingbird that will continue its work to proliferate beauty. They are living to testify, to implore us to a reckoning in the light.

And then, there’s the light! The sun holds our gaze. Its careful placement in each composition restates an early iconographical motif: the cosmic Good of omniscient light; an altruistic eye; and, the sun as deity. In poetic terms, this stark bi-section, whispered by William Blake as a “fearful symmetry,”6 was never more potent in modernism than with Barnett Newman’s fiery “zip,” a defining artifact of the Sublime that reinterpreted the primal moment, And then there was light. Recalling the pictures of Fitz Henry Lane (1804-1865) and Martin Johnson Heade (1819-1904), principal Luminist painters, variances of radiance beguile as the sun rises in spectrums across Gloucester Harbor; and, shifts in its setting of golden-greys on the salt marshes of the Jersey shore. When Heade’s biographer, Robert McIntyre first saw, Thunderstorm Over Narragansett Bay (1868), he extolled, “I was struck by the force of the thing . . . it might be a concluding phase of human existence, [or] the prelude to a new chapter. For a brief moment I felt myself back in the time of the Book of Genesis.”7 With Armstrong’s virtuosic intonations of the humid apricotgreenish-azure dusk in the India-inspired, Moon Over Monsoon (2016); the pink-to-lavender blue sky and fresh sunlight in Blossoms Over Beaver (2016); and, the pale violet-grey, ice-light in Dawn Over Duck Pond (2016) one is struck by their atmospheric credibility.

_______________________________________________________________________ 1. Walt Whitman. “A Prairie Sunset” (1891-92) in Whitman: Poetry and Prose; New York: Library of America, 1996, p. 632. 2. A term coined by McKinnon for Armstrong’s exhibition at Marlborough Chelsea, April 30 - May 30, 2009. 3. Press Release, The Museum of Modern Art, “Exhibition of American Realists and Magic Realists,” February 1943, pp. 2-3. 4. Henry David Thoreau. Walden, Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1989, p. 85. 5. John I. H. Baur. “Trends in American Painting, 1815-1865,” in M. and M. Karolik Collection of American Paintings, 18151865; Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1949, p. xv-lvii 6. William Blake. “The Tyger” from Songs of Experience (1794) quoted in Robert Rosenblum, Modern Painting and the Northern Romantic Tradition: Friedrich to Rothko; New York: Harper & Row, 1975, p. 210. 7. Robert G. McIntyre. Martin Johnson Heade, 1819-1904, New York: Pantheon, 1948; p. 2. E. Luanne McKinnon, Ph.D is modernist art historian; and, an authority on Pablo Picasso’s Guernica and the imagery of incandescent light in his oeuvre. She is an author of Eva Hesse Spectres 1960; James Turrell and the Emblemata Sacra; and, several monographs and exhibition catalogues. McKinnon is the former Director of the University of New Mexico Art Museum. She resides with her husband in northern California and southwestern France.

We would be mistaken to believe that the flowers and birds are mere ornament; or, that the fictive characterizations of people in her work are a caprice. I suggest instead, that L.C. Armstrong’s art calls for reconciliation and regeneration through our care of this world, recognizing the fragile nature of its eternal return in dystopian times. She nuances a desire for wholeness through languages of the natural world. What are the voices of the poppy and the orchid that do not convey the sentiments of dying blooms in the tradition of vanitas still lifes? And, what are the roles of the lone beaver and the feral boar, of gorgeous flamingos and all those hummingbirds in a world with its tremendous anxieties? How does Roses Over Razorwire (2016) correspond to the realities of on-going war; ferocious racial and gender hatred; and, lethal borders that keep those out whom are deemed as Other, as enemy? 4

Night Bloomers Over Lawndry, 2016 acrylic on linen on panel, 36 x 28 in., 91.4 x 71.1 cm 5

Roses Over Razorwire, 2016 acrylic on linen on panel, 36 x 72 in., 91.4 x 182.9 cm 6

Petals Over Party People, 2016 acrylic on linen on panel, 20 x 16 in., 50.8 x 40.6 cm 8

Sunset Over Cymbidium, 2016 acrylic on linen on panel, 20 x 16 in., 50.8 x 40.6 cm 9

Blossoms Over Beaver, 2016 acrylic on linen on panel, 36 x 28 in., 91.4 x 71.1 cm 10

Dawn Over Duck Pond, 2016 acrylic on linen on panel, 28 x 22 in., 71.1 x 55.9 cm 11

Moon Over Monsoon, 2016 acrylic on linen on panel triptych: 48 x 144 in., 121.9 x 365.8 cm each panel: 48 x 48 in., 121.9 x 121.9 cm 12

Dawn Over Lilly Pond, 2016 acrylic on linen on panel, 20 x 16 in., 50.8 x 40.6 cm 14

Flowers Over Flow Ers, 2016 acrylic on linen on panel, 20 x 16 in., 50.8 x 40.6 cm 15

Pink Moonrise Over Paradise, 2016 acrylic on linen on plywood triptych: 48 x 144 in., 121.9 x 365.8 cm each panel: 48 x 48 in., 121.9 x 121.9 cm 16

Pale Moon Over Passion Flowers, 2017 acrylic on linen on panel 24 x 18 in., 61 x 45.7 cm 18

Roses, Ruby Throats & Razorwire, 2017 acrylic on linen on panel 24 x 18 in., 61 x 45.7 cm 19

L.C. ARMSTRONG 1954 Born in Humboldt, Tennessee 1982 BFA, Art Center College of Design, Pasadena, California 1987 BFA, San Francisco Art Institute, San Francisco, California The artist lives and works in New York, New York. AWARDS 1991 The Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant, The Pollock-Krasner Foundation, Inc., New York, New York SOLO EXHIBITIONS 2014 L.C. Armstrong: Recent Paintings, Marlborough Chelsea, New York, New York 2013 L.C. Armstrong: Central Park Paintings, Marlborough Gallery, New York, New York 2009 L.C. Armstrong: Flowerscapes, Marlborough Chelsea, New York, New York 2008 L.C. Armstrong: The Paradise Triptychs, Cornell Fine Arts Museum, Rollins College, Winter Park, Florida 2007 L.C. Armstrong: New Paintings, Marlborough Gallery, New York, New York 2005 L.C. Armstrong - Paintings, Galerie Hübner, Frankfurt, Germany 2003 Marsha Mateyka Gallery, Washington, D.C. 2001 L.C. Armstrong: New Paintings, Postmasters Gallery, New York, New York 2000 Marsha Mateyka Gallery, Washington, D.C. Galerie Hübner, Frankfurt, Germany 1999 Angles Gallery, Santa Monica, California Postmasters Gallery, New York, New York 1998 L.C. Armstrong. Mall Flowers, Galerie Hübner, Frankfurt, Germany L.C. Armstrong: Paintings, Hofstra University, Hempstead, New York 1997 Bravin Post Lee, New York, New York Marsha Mateyka Gallery, Washington, D.C. 1995 Making and Unmaking, University of Southern Florida Contemporary Museum, Tampa, Florida 1994 Phillippe Rizzo Gallery, Paris, France Angles Gallery, Santa Monica, California Bravin Post Lee, New York, New York 1993 John Post Lee Gallery, New York, New York Marsha Mateyka Gallery, Washington, D.C. 1992 Galerie Sophia Ungers, Cologne, Germany White Columns, New York, New York 1991 Galerie Sophia Ungers, Cologne, Germany GROUP EXHIBITIONS 2016 The Conference of the Birds, Shirley Fiterman Art Center at BMCC, New York, New York 2014 Sargent’s Daughters, Sargent’s Daughters, New York, New York 2011 Art for Africa, Sotheby’s New York, New York, New York Drawing, Marsha Mateyka Gallery, Washington, D.C. Garden Paradise, Kathryn Markel Gallery, Binghampton, New York FireWorks, Hunterdon Art Museum, Clifton, New Jersey 2009 Selected Works by Gallery Artists, Marlborough

Gallery, New York, New York Summer Exhibition, Marlborough Gallery, New York, New York Summer Exhibition, Marlborough Chelsea, New York, New York Works on Paper, Marlborough Gallery, New York, New York 2008 Summer Show, Marlborough Chelsea, New York, New York Summer Show, Marlborough Gallery, New York, New York Art Basel Miami Beach, Miami, Florida Blumen/Flowers, Galerie Hübner, Frankfurt, Germany Transfigure, Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas City, Missouri Modern Love: Gifts to the Collection from Heather and Tony Podesta, National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, D.C. 2007 Wit and Whimsy, Marlborough Gallery, New York, New York Summer Show, Marlborough Gallery, New York, New York 2006 Garden Paradise, Arsenal Gallery, Central Park, New York, New York Revising Arcadia, Cornell Fine Arts Museum, Winter Park, Florida Portrait, Galerie Hübner, Frankfurt, Germany 2005 Group Show, Marlborough Chelsea, New York, New York Artistic Entropy, Weiss Pollock, New York, New York Image of Time and Place: Contemporary Views of Landscape, Elaine L. Jacobs Gallery, Wayne State University, Detroit, Michigan POPulence, Blaffer Gallery, The Art Museum of the University of Houston, Houston, Texas; travelled to The Museum of Contemporary Art, Cleveland, Ohio; and the Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art, Winston-Salem, North Carolina (through 2006) 2004 Flower Power, Musée des Beaux Arts, Lille, France Open House, Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, New York 2003 After Matisse-Picasso, P.S. 1 Contemporary Art Center, Long Island City, New York Cologne Art Fair, Galerie Hübner, Frankfurt, Germany 2002 Life is Beautiful, Laing Art Gallery, Newcastle-up on-Tyne, England 2001 Burn: Artists Play With Fire, Norton Museum of Art, West Palm Beach Florida; and Columbia Museum of Art, Columbia, South Carolina Between Earth and Heaven, PMMK Museum Voor Moderne Kunst, Ostende, Belgium Fleurs du Mal, Santa Barbara Contemporary Arts Center, Santa Barbara, California 2000 Gardens of Pleasure, John Michael Kohler Arts Center, Sheboygan, Wisconsin Twisted: Urban and Visionary Landscapes in Contemporary Painting, Van Abbe Museum, Eindhoven, The Netherlands Greater New York, P.S. 1 Contemporary Art Center, Long Island City, New York Full Serve, 547 W. 27th Street, New York, New York 1999 Art Frankfurt, Galerie Hübner, Frankfurt, Germany 1998 Cornucopia, Winston Wachter Fine Art, New York, New York The 45th Biennial: The Corcoran Collects, 1907-1998, The Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. 20

1996 Pittura Immedia, Neue Galerie/Landesmuseum Joanneum, Graz, Austria Angles Gallery, Los Angeles, California Bild verkundt: gesehen, Provinzial, Düsseldorf, Germany 1994 Laissez-parlez les petits papiers, Galerie Rizzo, Paris, France Jet Lag, Martina Detterer Gallery, Frankfurt, Germany Psychic Borders, Tyler School of Art, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 1993 A Lure, Jan Kesner Gallery, Los Angeles, California 7 Rooms 7 Shows, P.S. 1 Contemporary Art Center, Long Island City, New York The 9th Biennale of Sydney, Sydney, Australia Standards, Galerie Sophia Ungers, Cologne, Germany The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, a modest proposal, Galerie Jousse Seguin, Paris, France The Young Americans, Galerie Sophia Ungers, Cologne, Germany Reverberations: L.C. Armstrong, Michele Blondel, Suzan Etkin and Lisa Hoke, The Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. 1992 Transparency and Shape, Elga Wimmer Gallery, New York, New York Technorama, Barbara Toll Fine Arts, New York, New York Standards, Galerie Sophia Ungers, Cologne, Germany Letter S Road, Omi International Arts Center, New York, New York 1991 From Sculpture, BACA/Brooklyn Arts Council, Brooklyn, New York Gulliver’s Travels, Galerie Sophia Ungers, Cologne, Germany 42nd Biennial Exhibition of Contemporary American Painting, The Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. Prospectus, Sandra Gering Gallery, New York, New York Home for June, Home for Contemporary Theater and Art, New York, New York 1990 Galerie Sophia Ungers, Cologne, Germany Sandra Gering Gallery, New York, New York 1989 American Fine Arts Co., New York, New York PRIVATE AND PUBLIC COLLECTIONS ABN-AMRO Bank N.V., Amsterdam, The Netherlands Cornell Fine Arts Museum, Rollins College, Winter Park, Florida Fidelity Mutual Funds, Boston, Massachusetts Harvard Business School, The Schwartz Art Collection, Boston, Massachusetts Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas City, Missouri Morris Multimedia, Savannah, Georgia National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, D.C. Neuberger Berman, New York, New York Progressive Art Collection, Cleveland, Ohio Sony Corporation, New York, New York The Body Shop, Littlehampton, West Sussex, England The Contemporary Art Museum, University of South Florida, Tampa, Florida The Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. Wellington Management, Boston, Massachusetts

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Important Works available by: Twentieth-Century European Masters; Post-War American Artists D E S I G N / Dan McCann P H O T O G R A P H Y / Erin Davis P R I N T E D I N N E W YO R K B Y P R O J E C T

Many thanks to my friend and excellent photographer, Rick Schultz, for graciously allowing me the use of his bird photos as reference material. COVER IMAGE:

Roses Over Razorwire (detail), 2016, acrylic on linen on panel, 36 x 72 in., 91.4 x 182.9 cm

L.C. A R M ST R O N G Signals at Sunset

FEBRUARY 8 - MARCH 4, 2017

4 0 W E S T 57 T H S T R E E T N E W YO R K , N E W YO R K 1 0 0 1 9 | 2 1 2 - 5 4 1 - 4 9 0 0 M A R L B O R O U G H G A L L E R Y.C O M