Discussions and ideas about art and textile art
“I become timeless when I work with fiber. Each line, each knot is a prayer,” Lenore Tawney
Waters Above the Firmament
Lenore Tawney, sculptor, weaver, and collagist, died this week. She was 100.
“I’m following the path of the heart. I don’t know where the path is going.” Continue reading ‘Lenore Tawney, Fiber Artist (by Clairan Ferrono)’
Composition 1958
Recently while hurrying through the Art Institute (Chicago) to see the Vollard Exhibit (fantastic!), my eye was caught by a painting I’d never seen before, by an artist I’d never heard of: Zao Wou-ki. It was a beautiful abstract, on the small side, in a room of really interesting contemporary art. (They’re doing a lot of construction there, so I may never be able to find this room again. . . .) In any case, I was so struck by this painting that I came home and looked the artist up on the net. Continue reading ‘Zao Wou-ki (by Clairan Ferrono)’
Perle Fine
Sunblinded 1946
My continuing voyage of discovery among the Abstract Expressionists has lead me to the work of more women, who are, if certainly not completely unknown, then relatively obscure, despite their obvious talent. Perle Fine is one of them.
Perle Fine was born in Boston in 1908 and died in NY in 1988. In the 1930’s she studied with Hans Hofmann. This helped her “develop an intuitive approach to painting without sacrificing the structural soundness that she felt was essential to a successful composition.” (Perle Fine The Storm Departs, Helen Harrison, McCormick Gallery, Chicago) She was as interested in geometric abstraction , a la Mondrian, as in color relationships.
Ideomorphic Composition #1 1942
The landscape always served as an initial point of departure, but she was interested not in a “direct response to the surrounding environment” (Ibid.), but in an evocation of nature that revealed “an acceptance, serene and tranquil ” (Ibid). Her work, like nature, required balance, and for Fine that meant a balanced composition.
Charcoal Red (Winter) 1960
In the 1960’s she began her Cool Series which reduced both color and line to the bare essentials. She began experimenting with collage, because she wanted the surface of the canvas, the painting to have more texture.
Untitled – Cool Series 1960 Continue reading ‘Perle Fine (by Clairan Ferrono)’
Mark Rothko, No 10, 1950
I had meant to do another post (no groaning please!) on women Abstract Expressionists I’m discovering. I was deciding between Pearl Fine and Buffy Johnson (and no doubt they shall have their time in the sun). But then I read an essay that so moved me, and has kept me thinking and mulling over ideas, that I decided to post about it, although there are no pretty pictures. . . .
The title of David Grossman’s article “Writing in the Dark” reflects his situation: he is an Israeli novelist, who has lived, as he says “in the extreme and violent reality of a political, military and religious conflict.” He recalls the words of the mouse in Kafka’s “Little Fable” who, as a trap closes on him, says “Alas. . . the world is growing narrower every day.” Grossman states that a void is growing between people and the traumatic times and situations in which they live — a void which “is filled rapidly — with apathy. . .cynicism. . .and despair.” Continue reading ‘Art in the Dark (by Clairan Ferrono)’
Mary Abbott, a descendant of Pres. John Adams and Gen. Robert E. Lee, was born in Boston in 1921, bur grew up in NY and Wash., DC high society. As a young woman, she worked for a while as a photographer’s model, but from a young age she had decided she wanted to be an artist. At age 12 she began to take classes at the Art Students League. In 1942 she married the painter Louis Teague who was in the Air Force. While he served in the military during the war, she studied and painted. As she revealed to Thomas McCormick in a private interview in 2004, “I was reading Proust, Painting ling Utrillo, and absorbing the abstracting of Picasso.” When she rreturned to NY, her friend, sculptor David Hare, introduced her to The Subjects of the Artist– an “anti-school” anyone could join if they left their artistic past behind and just FELT — started by Hare, Rothko, Motherwell and others. Rothko, Motherwell and Barnett Newman became her mentors. She said of them. “They taught us to draw imagination.” Hare also introduced her to peyote, the hallucinogenic experiences of which greatly influenced her use and understanding of color. In the late 1940’s, Abbott began an important affair with William de Kooning, “the love of my life.”
Antioch 1950 oil and oil crayon on canvas 49 x 85″
Continue reading ‘Mary Abbott, Abstract Expressionist (by Clairan Ferrono)’
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