James Little at June Kelly Gallery

.
This is what you see when you walk in and face the opposite wall. We'll start here for our tour around the gallery

.

"Gene Davis with points," is how one painter described James Little's new body of work, De-Classified: New Paintings at the June Kelly gallery. He was joking, of course. Davis may be a visual antecedent, along with Barnett Newman and maybe Kenneth Noland, but I'd describe Little's new work as "Geometry with finesse."

Here is an artist who's making hard-edge paintings with a soft material, oil and wax in an encaustic-like mix, and making it work. Over and over again. He has combined lushness of material with preciseness of image. And he's working large. As someone who paints with wax, I can tell you that this combination of hard and soft, in large scale, is no easy achievement.

Continuing around the gallery (I have no info on the first work): Gypsy, 72.5 x 94 inches, and Satchmo's Answer to Truman, 76 x 98 inches; both 2008, oil and wax on canvas

Closer view of both, below

Formally, these resolutely abstract paintings would seem to be about figure and ground, or more precisely about the ambiguity of figure and ground, and thus about the ambiguity of space, and about color and control, flatness and expanse. And certainly about chromatic rhythm. In these paintings, sawtooth elements are placed in side-by-side in discrete segments (occasionally a Davis-like band of stripes changes the visual cadence). As the angles of different colors, sometimes near complementaries, slide into one another, a mirage-like shimmer hovers over the surface. It's in no way Op in the manner of Bridget Riley, but it is retinally invigorating.

Little's paintings are technically virtuosic and visually ravishing . His palette, saturated and opaque, has just a touch of white. It's far from pastel, yet there's an alluring softness to it.

Swoon. .

The show is up at the June Kelly Gallery in SoHo through June 9.

Continuing around from Satchmo's Answer to Truman is Near-Miss, 2008, oil and wax on canvas 72.5 x 94 inches

I was taken by the two framed paintings (not sure of medium) on paper between two larger oil and wax paintings. Beautifully realized, they nevertheless appear to be maquettes or precursors to some of the larger works. I've placed one at the bottom of this post, just under the larger painting it resembles

The Marriage of Western Civilization and the Jungle, with detail below showing the clean lines and luscious surface

We've completed our circuit of the gallery, with the entry at left the the 'V' painting on the right

Below: A small framed painting on paper relates to the large work on the far wall. The large painting is When Aaron Tied Ruth, 2008, oil and wax on canvas, 72.5 x 94 inches

Related reading and looking:
. Ben LaRocco's interview with James in the the current issue of The Brooklyn Rail
. Geoform, an online resource for abstract geometric art.
. Little's own website: www.jameslittleart.com

. Updated 7.14.09: James Kalm's video visit to the gallery followed by a studio visit with the artist

.

State of Grays

Jasper Johns: Gray

At the Metropolitan Museum of Art, through May 5

Medium-dark at the top of the stairs. The Jasper Johns banner gets prime placement over the main portal.

(Image from the Metropolitan Museum of Art website)

Only in New York, I suppose, could you find running concurrently one big museum show on Color and another on Gray.

I weighed in early on Color Chart at MoMA, but I’m coming late to the party at the Met. The reviews have already been written (see selected links at end of post). Not being a critic, I don’t expect to add anything new in the way of criticism, but I do have observations and a thorough understanding of encaustic, so perhaps I can fill in some of the cracks (literal and figurative) in the reportage.

The concept of this show, organized by the Art Institute of Chicago in cooperation with the Met, is splendid: a career retrospective as seen through the thin slice of one color. Who but Johns could have such a show? He has worked grisaille for his entire career, typically side by side with chromatic compositions, a point made right from the first two paintings of the exhibition, False Start and Jubilee.

.

Left: False Start, 1959; right: Jubilee, also 1959. Images from The New York Times website; no additional information on medium or size, but I'm pretty sure they were oil on canvas, and at least 60 x 48 inches, maybe larger

From there we leave color behind and enter the shadows. Slipping into this doppenganger oeuvre is strange and kind of wonderful. First of all, like a parallel universe, it's startling that it exists at all. And it's enormous, some 120 works. Here you see richness in ways you might overlook in the chromatic world. There’s the range of materials: graphite, charcoal and ink; Sculpmetal, lead and silver; oil and wax— each holding, releasing, reflecting the light and, more importantly, revealing the effort of the artist’s hand, in its own way. Then there’s the range of texture intrinsic to the materials: the crosshatching of the prints, the velvety lushness of charcoal, the sensuous ooze of dripped wax, the objects embedded and affixed. And, finally, there’s the richness of the repetition. Fifty-plus years of artmaking, fifty-plus years of numbers endlessly traced, of targets limned, of flags painted, incised, cast. Over and over.

To be honest, I find his painted grays leaden, the achromatic version of the Roach Motel—the light goes in but it doesn’t come out. On the other hand, the lead, as rendered in cast flags and numbers, fairly scintillates with light and shadow, warm and cool. That’s one of the surprises of this show. You think you know Johns’s work, and then you get hit with a realization like that.

My favorite grouping is of three small flags, each about 12 x 16 inches, installed in a corner. (I wish I could show you installation shots, but a non-photo policy and hyper-zealous guards put the kibosh on that.) The first is a flag painted in Sculpmetal. (Well, let’s be clear: it’s not actually a flag, of course, and it’s not actually sculptured metal.) Catty corner to it is a relief sculpture in lead sheet, an embossing of that first painting. Next to it is a sterling silver cast of the painting. Three nearly identical objects and each, up close, as different as can be in color, surface and material. And these three are each and all quite different from drawings and prints of the flag, as they, in turn, are different from an ashen version in encaustic. The exhibition could have been called Jasper Johns: Obsessions.

Jasper Johns; The Dutch Wives, 1975, encaustic and collage on canvas (two panels); overall 51 3/4 x 71 inches; collection of the artist. Image from the Metropolitan Museum of Art website

.

I mentioned earlier that I thought Johns’s grays are leaden. There are some wonderful exceptions, and without exception they are paintings in which the unpigmented wax medium acts as a window to the newsprint that lies below the paint. Newsprint being newsprint, it has yellowed over time, so there’s an amber hue—almost a honey color—that warms and lightens the grisaille, illuminating it, really, from within the painting itself. The Dutch Wives—the diptych, above, whose panels hold almost identical crosshatch markings—is the very best example of a collaged newsprint painting that has mellowed this way. .(I wonder what it looked like in 1975 when it was painted.)

Johns is not a guy who lets much out unintentionally, so those little windows into the painting are almost erotic. As for the waxen drips here and elsewhere, well they're metaphoric in their ooziness.

I’ve used the Johns’s images sparingly, as the Met site carries dire non-repro warnings. So go see the show for yourself. And—shameless plug alert—if you want to know more about encaustic, take a look at my book, The Art of Encaustic Painting. There’s even little interview with Jasper in which he talks a bit about his process.

An excerpt:

JM: What is working with encaustic like for you? Is it a struggle or does the wax just flow?

JJ: (Laughs) I wouldn't describe it as either extreme. One proceeds. One watches what happens. Things happen unexpectedly, some that I would be happy to live without. But it has been a pleasure to watch what happens.

I feel pretty much the same way about the show.

.

Coda: If you're going to visit the show in person or on line, make a detour to the Matthew Marks Gallery on 22nd Street to see Jasper Johns: Drawings 1997-2007. It's up through April 12. There's a greater chromatic range here, since the focus is not on gray but on works on paper. I was allowed to shoot in the gallery, and here's one of my favorite pieces from the back gallery. It's not a drawing at all, but a bronze cast from a number painting. I love how you can see the drips of wax paint. This is the ultimate in wax casting, no? The painting itself is sacrificed to the sculpture.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Recent reviews:. Jasper Johns: Smog Alert by R.C. Baker in the Village Voice
. Jasper Johns Shows his True Colors by Roberta Smith in the New York Times (with slide show)
. The Gray Areas of Jasper Johns by Carol Vogel in the New York Times (also with slide show)
. Shades of Gray by Lance Esplund in The New York Sun
. Two Coats of Paint rounds up the reviews

Notes from the Southwest

A partial view of my solo show at Cervini Haas Gallery in Scottsdale. From left: Quadrate 2, acrylic on canvas, 48 x 48 inches; an installation of nine 12 x 12 inch Silk Road paintings, encaustic on panel; and Uttar 286, also encaustic on panel, 32 x 32 inches

Greetings from Scottsdale. My opening at Cervini Haas Gallery, "It’s Always About Hue, Isn’t It?" just took place, so I’m coming down off a nice little art high. My travel is pretty much always art related. That makes it deductible, and thus affordable. But finances aside, it’s the tasty carrot after the stick of so many days of protracted work in the studio. Did I mention I’m writing this by the pool? (OK, so I’m at the Day’s Inn, but the pool is set into a manicured courtyard aswish with tall palms and shrubby cactus.)

Big Changes in This Desert Town
I get to Scottsdale every couple of years for a show (this is my fourth solo at Cervini Haas), but this time something’s different: There’s construction everywhere. I mean 360-degree views of cranes and other machinery, and buildings—condos, mostly—in various degrees of completion, from skeletal infrastructures to everything’s-in-place-but-the-sod. (I believe the name Scottsdale comes from a Native American word meaning "The irony of green lawns in the desert.") There are some relatively tall buildings, 10 to 12 stories, under construction but the overall impression is one of sweep rather than soar. Even the tallest buildings take up a lot of ground, so horizontal remains the predominant plane, nicely punctuated by tall, skinny palms.

I was just thinking that I needed a quote here about Scottsdale’s building boom, and, no kidding, from a bunch of businessmen sitting at the bar, this phrase wafts over: "They’re calling it the ‘Manhattanization of Scottsdale.’" Blogging is journalism at its most relaxed so I’ll go with that timely comment. Personally wouldn't normally connect the words "Manhattan" and "Scottsdale" unless I'm thinking about how to get from one to the other, but you get the idea: the town is busting up and out.

Scottsdale has long been a second-home community for folks who flock to the desert for the winter. Vast tracts of land are given over to golf courses—see comment above—and new homes. I’m going on about real estate because all those homes need to be filled. The home furnishings companies have already set up shop: Crate and Barrel, Design Within Reach (which, let’s be honest, for most artists, it ain’t) to Ikea. Of course I’m thinking about all those bare walls that need art to humanize their proportions—or maybe just something to go above the sofa.

Cervini Haas Gallery, right, and Cline Fine Art share a long, low U-shaped building that opens onto an inner courtyard

A Visit to the Galleries
Apparently the dealers are thinking about those bare walls, too, because while still small, the number of serious galleries appears to have doubled over the past few years. On North Marshall Way, the 57th Street of Scottsdale, galleries in single-story buildings line the two-block street. Just to orient you, North Marshall Way briefly runs parallel to Scottsdale Road, the main thoroughfare that connects the town to Phoenix.

Once you weed out the cactus-and-cowboy venues--and there are dozens of them--you end up with a good handful of serious contemporary galleries: Bentley, Bridge, Cervini Haas, Cline Fine Art, g2, Hernandez Contemporary, Lisa Sette, Robert Roman, the European-inflected Udinotti Gallery, and around the corner on Main Street, Chiaroscuro.

At Hernandez Contemporary: Momento Rojo, bronze, 43 inches high, by Gustavo Torres; Circe, acrylic on canvas, 66 x 84 inches by Don West

Sette, a longtime gallery owner on Marshall Way, is more sanguine. "We’ve been here 21 years," she says, "and we’ve seen galleries come and go." Still, it’s a critical mass, and the Thursday night Artwalks draw crowds, particularly on the First Thursday openings.

Above: From-the-street view of the Lisa Sette Gallery and Wilde-Meyer Gallery

Chiaroscuro Gallery on Main Street: Facade and interior view of the solo show by Marcia Meyer, showing her fresco paintings

The Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art is a short walk away. Skip the big show of art about celebrities (and, get the barf bag, celebrities who make art) and head into the middle gallery where Willie Birch’s charcoal drawings of pre-Katrina New Orleans capture the African-influenced culture of Chocolate City. "Celebrating Freedom: The Art of Willie Birch" runs through April 29.

Willie Birch, Blind Musician Playing the Piano, 2001,acrylic and charcoal on paper, 66x42 inches. Image courtesy of Arthur Roger Gallery, New Orleans

If you’re in the market to pick up some Native American objects, head over to Faust, on Main Street, for a well-edited selection of jewelry, rugs, pots and other handmade objects. This isn't design within reach, either, but the objects both historic and contemporary are a unique amalgam of art, craft, culture and place.

At Faust Gallery: Jar by Sharon Rustin Garcia, from the Acoma Pueblo

Postscript from Tucson (3.12.07)

On Saturday, I headed 100 miles south to Tucson for the opening of a group show, the "Second Annual Encaustic Invitational", at the Conrad Wilde Gallery. Wendy Haas, owner of Cervini Haas and a good friend, did the driving which gave me the opportunity to be a tourist for 90 minutes. The desert has some stretches of spectacular landscape, especially the saguaro cactus, those big prickly anthropomorphic plants that look like they're doing yoga standing poses ("It takes 100 years for a cactus to sprout an arm," Wendy tells me) and the Dust Devils, mini tornadoes that crank up funnels of dust out in the shrubby landscape. There's no power in these vortexes except the visual; depending on their form, they're like kinetic dimensional drawings or transparent sculptures.

On the way into town we stopped at Graficas Gallery, where my buddies Susan Schwalb and Rainer Gross, New Yorkers both, were in a show together. Normally I wouldn't think to pair these two artists, but the theme of the show was process and materials. Susan works in metalpoint to create luminous paintings that engage the meditative power of the horizontal, while Rainer, working in a technique of his own devising, creates texture-and-color-field abstractions with extraordinary sensuality. Owner Lynnette Hyde Mautner, presides over a small space with a great program.

Above: Neuble, by Rainer Gross; oil and pigments on linen, 21 x 18 inches, 2001.

Left: Atmospheric Disturbances III by Susan Schwalb; silverpoint and acrylic on wood, 24 x 24 x 2 inches, 2005.

Then we headed down the hill to the Conrad Wilde Gallery, owned by Miles Conrad, himself an artist, and his partner Ryan Wilde.

The scene at the Saturday night opening was jumpin'. The national show featured the work of 20 artists, among them Heather Hutchison (New York), Kim Bernard (Berwick, Maine), Catherine Nash (Tucson) and myself, and many of the artists were in attendance. Tucson, with its university students and substantial artist population, turned out in force.

Nautilus, a pedestal sculpture in terra cotta and encaustic, by Kim Bernard; Above, below, by Catherine Nash

A highlight of the evening was a performance piece by Nancy Popp with Adam Overton that consisted of Overton atop a 10-foot ladder pouring honey into the mouth of Popp, who is standing on a square of canvas on the floor below. The performance was equal parts beautiful and terrible, as the honey poured into Popp's mouth and then over her body to pool onto the canvas beneath her feet. I was afraid she'd choke to death on the sticky liquid, but I guess that's the point.

"Popp's projects investigate the fragility of the body as subject and sculptural object and the creative and radical human endeavor of serious play coupled with risk and vulnerability," says the gallery's press release. Just in case you missed it: there's the connection between the beeswax in the artwork and the honey of Popp's performance--though this work is anything but sweet.

Nancy Popp and Adam Overton at Conrad Wilde Gallery. Honeymoon 2, inspired by George Brecht’s Drip Music, addresses conundrums of confinement and commitment, along with the paradoxes of traditional receptive feminine roles that often prevail despite resistance to gender conformity. Photo courtesy of Conrad Wilde Gallery