Day 78 - "Abstract landscape"?
August 2, 2018
Gallery 212 presented a unique challenge to me. In almost all of my previous visits, many works competed for my attention. In this small room, there are only three large works, none of which immediately spoke to me.
The gallery's theme, as a wall placard explains, is "The Landscape of Abstraction." The works are all by contemporary artists (the oldest was born in 1944, the youngest in 1964), and, as the sign notes, many modern-day artists were trained as landscape painters or found the tradition useful as a springboard for their imaginations. The sign goes on to say that the works in the gallery seek to reconcile threads of landscape painting with those of abstraction.
Frankly, I am not sure what this is supposed to mean, since in only one of the works do I discern any elements of landscape at all. (In this work, I also perceive anthropomorphic, sexual elements - buttocks, vulvas - but I readily acknowledge that this may indicate more about me than about the artist's intent!) The other two works seem to me to be purely abstract. Simply because an artist received training in painting landscapes, does this inevitably mean that we should see all of his (or her) works as reflecting that training? That seems wrong to me. I think of Mondrian or Kandinsky. Did they attend art school, I wonder? If so, I imagine that they studied landscape painting. Yet we would not describe their abstract works as incorporating the landscape tradition. Really, I wonder whether the term "landscape of abstraction" has been forced onto the works shown here in order to fit into the larger themes of the exhibition.
The work that, upon closer scrutiny, most appeals to me is the most abstract, and the one that can least be characterized as a landscape. It's a painting in ink on paoer, about six feet long and four feet high, made by Li Huasheng in 1996. At first glance, it looks like a grid made up of hundreds of narrow horizontal and vertical lines all across the surface of the paper. And, in a sense, it is such a grid. But in a moment, you notice that some of the lines are relatively straight, but most are somewhat wavy; some of the lines are thicker and others thinner; most of the lines go all the way across the paper, while others are truncated. And occasionally, where thick lines approach each other and converge, the "squares" of the grid become blacked in. It must have taken enormous concentration and care for Li to produce this work. I am really glad the nature of this project forced me to look more closely at it than I would have otherwise. It amply repays my attention.
The gallery's theme, as a wall placard explains, is "The Landscape of Abstraction." The works are all by contemporary artists (the oldest was born in 1944, the youngest in 1964), and, as the sign notes, many modern-day artists were trained as landscape painters or found the tradition useful as a springboard for their imaginations. The sign goes on to say that the works in the gallery seek to reconcile threads of landscape painting with those of abstraction.
Frankly, I am not sure what this is supposed to mean, since in only one of the works do I discern any elements of landscape at all. (In this work, I also perceive anthropomorphic, sexual elements - buttocks, vulvas - but I readily acknowledge that this may indicate more about me than about the artist's intent!) The other two works seem to me to be purely abstract. Simply because an artist received training in painting landscapes, does this inevitably mean that we should see all of his (or her) works as reflecting that training? That seems wrong to me. I think of Mondrian or Kandinsky. Did they attend art school, I wonder? If so, I imagine that they studied landscape painting. Yet we would not describe their abstract works as incorporating the landscape tradition. Really, I wonder whether the term "landscape of abstraction" has been forced onto the works shown here in order to fit into the larger themes of the exhibition.
The work that, upon closer scrutiny, most appeals to me is the most abstract, and the one that can least be characterized as a landscape. It's a painting in ink on paoer, about six feet long and four feet high, made by Li Huasheng in 1996. At first glance, it looks like a grid made up of hundreds of narrow horizontal and vertical lines all across the surface of the paper. And, in a sense, it is such a grid. But in a moment, you notice that some of the lines are relatively straight, but most are somewhat wavy; some of the lines are thicker and others thinner; most of the lines go all the way across the paper, while others are truncated. And occasionally, where thick lines approach each other and converge, the "squares" of the grid become blacked in. It must have taken enormous concentration and care for Li to produce this work. I am really glad the nature of this project forced me to look more closely at it than I would have otherwise. It amply repays my attention.
I think the artist has painted a canvas upon which the viewer can project his or her own imagination of a landscape. I see a gradually rising horizon outlined by a lighter sky and perhaps some darker sounds to the upper left and perhaps some overhanging trees to the side. Alternatively, perhaps they hung it upside down by mistake ....
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