Sigmar Polke

Alibis
retrospective at Tate Modern

Cynicism in relation to materialistic society + ongoing experimentation with materials and processes.

Over the decades (1963 - 2007) the work acquires inner weight and depth. The cynicism becomes relentless probing, the experimentation more extreme.  Comes together in The Watchtower series of 1984-88 - the resonances of the image, the use e.g. of continually deteriorating photographic chemicals which mean the painting becomes more and more obscure.  Often used toxic and banned substances.

Sfumato series shown in 1990 is a form of writing with light - soot from an oil lantern swirled over glass.

Making canvas translucent with resin.

The Illusionist shown in 2007 is covered with gel raked into ridges which acts as a distorting lens, adding to the confusion and complexity of the images beneath. We are forced to question the nature of what we see both in a material sense and in terms of the subject of the painting; the artist as illusionist.

Why 'Alibis'?

Malevich

Exhibition at Tate Modern

In the suprematist paintings:
instability - 'toppling' piles of shapes; the eye being forced to shift focus (what is the focus?); counterpooising of shapes; directionality
depth - shape of planes indicates recession; power of colours in relation to one another; white background - infinite; contrasting areas of dynamic; relative size of shapes

The term suprematism refers to an abstract art based upon “the supremacy of pure artistic feeling” rather than on visual depiction of objects. (M's words in italics)

White planes in dissolution, 1917-18 - the dissolution as he thought then of of himself as painter and of painting itself.

Christopher Wool

Saw a painting of his at ICA's Beware Wet Paint show and responded to the calligraphic like marks and the way they appear to float over the surface.  Discovered that his main work involves stencilled text.  Works like this painting seem to break free from that.

Anselm Kiefer

Retrospective at Royal Academy
What struck me most was his ability to 'hold it all together' - to have immense complexity playing itself out across a canvas, every square centimetre rich in detail, but all resolved into a working whole.

The power of work in vitrines - the extra depth of field, the focus

Also the use of text:

• the casual scrawling across a painting of words, usually a line of poetry, but lost on the viewer unless they understand German and are familiar with its literature
• incorporation of text e.g. into the furrows of Black Flakes.
• the image of the lead book (lead the most mutable of the metals)
• in The Rhine the partial obscuring of text, whitewashing, collaging

An interview with Anselm Kiefer, ahead of his Royal Academy show – Financial Times

Inside Anselm Kiefer's astonishing 200-acre art studio – The Guardian

Anselm Kiefer, Royal Academy, preview: Is he our greatest living artist? – The Independent

Illumination

The Paintings of Georgia O'Keeffe, Agnes Pelton, Agnes Martin and Florence Miller Pierce
Merrell Publishers Ltd 2009

Karen Moss, Art and Life Illuminated: Georgia O'Keeffe and Agnes Pelton, Agnes Martin and Florence Miller Pierce
The influence of the light and forms of the New Mexico desert environment, which AP discovered in 1921 and GO'K in 1929, then in a later generation, AM and FMP. All were to live a large part of their lives in this and other deserts. They had grown up in different locations and each developed their own artistic vocabulary that fused abstract and spiritual concerns with their connection with the natural environment.

AP and GO'K both born in 1880s, raised in Christian families, went to study art in NY where they came under the influence of Arthur Wesley Dow who taught the first generation of american Modernists and drew on Asian art.  AP spent a year studying in Italy and on her return produced work that was a part of the flourishing Symbolist art movement.  Both artists in the 1910s were living and exhibiting in NY.

'My first memory is of the brightness of light - light all around.' GO'K 
1916-18 she was working in Texas where she produced watercolours full of light - sunrises and starry skies - plus small abstract paintings.

AP moved to rural Long Island in 1920 from where she travelled extensively to Middle East, Greece and Hawaii.  Kept journals that included reflections on art and spirituality. Etheric flower studies.

Mid-20s - early 30s both produced landscapes that combine representation and abstraction, often with strong sources of illumination.

AP studied theosophy in which light is a symbol of natural and supernatural phenomena. Painted celestial landscapes in which stars represented enlightenment.
'These pictures are conceptions of light - the essence of fire, not as we see it in the material world, but as the radiance of inner being.' 
Also studied Agni Yoga, an offshoot of theosophy and in 1938 joined the Transcendental Painting Group which promoted abstract art.

In 1932 AP had moved to a California desert town where she lived for the next 30 years in relative isolation.  GO'K settled in New Mexico.  The desert and its light entered their paintings. Right into their late work they fused landscape/nature with inner vision, animated by light.

____________________________

Agnes Martin and Florence Miller Pierce were a generation later, born in the 1910s into Christian families.  Both trained in the east but gravitated to Taos.

FMP joined the TPG with Pelton in1938.

AM's early work was abstract but referred to nature.  Gradually became purely abstract, geometric.  She reduced her vocabulary specifically to express light.
'My paintings have neither object nor space nor line nor anything - no forms. . . They are light, lightness, about merging, about formlessness, breaking down forms.'
Greatly influenced by Ad Reinhardt and his interest in Eastern art and philosophy; had attended DT Suzuki's lectures in NY in 1950s.  Often wrote of trying to express a blissful, egoless state in her art.

AP in the late 60s had a happy accident, spilling liquid resin onto aluminium creating a shimmering, luminous effect.  Began to work with resin on mirrors to create free-form abstractions, 'lucamorphs' (= light body).  Interested in Zen and Tantric Buddhism.
'My works are contemplative.  They're about stilling the mind.'

Both working into their 80s, light becoming more and more predominant, works emanating light.  Light was the basis of their abstract art rather than form.  

For both the desert made possible a particular appreciation of light and also a purer state of consciousness.  Light communicates something about the ineffable quality of nature and the mind.

United Visual Artists

Vanishing Point
Exhibition at Towner Gallery, Eastbourne

UVA is a multi-disciplinary collective that combines sculpure, installation, performance and architecture.  They reference Alberti, da Vinci and Durer.  They experiment with technologies and materials to take themselves in fresh artistic directions, and explore the tension between real and artificially created experiences.  The gallery literature says of them:  'A fascination with the physical presence of light is embedded in their work and they explore different ways of creating a structure from light by employing perspective as both a tool and visual outcome to reshape, redefine and represent a space.'

3 works showing in this exhibition of increasing immateriality:

Vanishing Point 3

A series of 5 screenprints of abutting and overlaid geometrical shapes (greys, blues, yellow white that suggest interior spaces - but most of them are impossible ones.

Vanishing Point 1

Projection on to the wall of lines and shapes, fading in and out.  They begin to describe an architectural space but at the point where this becomes an impossible one, things fade and reconfigure.

Vanishing Point 2

The viewer enters a dark room where light is being projected from a vanishing point - which seems much more distant than it can possibly be. The beams create changing lines and walls of light which the viewer can stand between or interrupt.  
I found it disconcerting to have the light coming from the vanishing point when it 'should' disappear there.
The piece evoked for me my own confusion finding my way round buildings, and areas not looking as I remembered when I return to them. The lack of colour made it dreamlike, as did not knowing what I was really looking at in terms of size.  An eery and perfect precision.

Yuko Takada Keller

Tracing paper artist
From the home page of her website - http://www.yukotakada.com/ - she has so many interesting things to say about this material.  I also love how poetic she is.

Welcome to my Home Page. I am Yuko Takada Keller, living in Helsinge, Denmark since 1997. I am a Japanese Artist and showing my work not only in Denmark but also in some other European countries as well as Japan. I also curate some exhibitions to intoduce Japanese artists in Denmark. I use tracing paper for my art.
About myself and my work
I'm interested in using tracing paper, because it creates a sense of transparency and etherealness in my work. But when I was inUniversity, I majored in weaving. Then I wove woolen tapestries for some years. Before I entered University, I was impressed by the Northern European tapestries that I saw in a museum in Kyoto. This led me to major in weaving at University. However, while weaving the tapestries, I gradually wanted to express something different in my work. Then I took a trip to Northern Europe to see the tapestries there. Of course, I was very impressed by them, but I was more impressed by the magnificent scenery. I had never had that kind of feeling before in Japan. After this trip, I started to make my work using paper. At first, I used Japanese paper "washi". But I couldn't represent a sense of transparency with this paper. I tried to use various materials to represent a sense of transparency. Then I ran into tracing paper. "The Spread" is the first work where I used tracing paper. I colored the paper with acrylic color, then tore it into many pieces, and sewed them together. It gave me a feeling of transparency. I realized some possibilities using tracing paper. Because, while each piece has its own rhythm and direction taken in its entirety it seems to become something other than simple tracing paper. While making 2-dimensional works with tracing paper, I wanted to make pieces that were more 3-dimensional. I wanted to install my work in a space, not only hanging on a wall. "Prismatic" is the second work that I installed 3-dimensionally. It is one of my favorite works. It is composed of 7,500 pyramids. The theme of "Prismatic" is a shower of light that I felt in nature. "Prismatic" was traveling in U.K. in 1991 and in Canada from 1993 to 1995. When I was making "Hazy forest", I began to be conscious that tracing paper has not only a transparency but also an untransparency. I feel there is something like a skin membrane between a transparency and an untransparency. I glue small pieces which were torn in plane, then I install it in a space. Using this technique, I have been making some works. They have been getting larger or the parts themselves have been 3-dimensional. "Water fort" is one of the larger works. I made it from an image I saw in a dream. The story is like this: I was flying in the sky. It was above the water. I had no idea if the water was the sea or a lake or somewhere else. But it was really beautiful water. When I landed on the water, suddenly, the water stood up like a wall. Then I could walk through the water. I often have such strange dreams. After I've had this kind of dream, I don't understand if the dream is true or not. Sometimes I'm confused whether something is my dream or my memories, or maybe it's true. In 1993, I traveled in Tanzania. It was a harsh world. I experienced the life of no water. It made me feel strongly how important water is not only for a human being but also for all lives in the world. Of course, I knew that intellectually. But it was the chance to consider life itself. After this trip, I made "Water roots". The water is the source of our life. I imagined there is incalculable energy under the ground as the "Water roots". In 1995, I got into a small slump. It wasn't so serious. But at that time, I was thinking about the skin membrane in my mind. The skin membrane in our mind sometimes tempt and control human's desire. According to the Buddhist thought, there are 108Bonnou in our mind. Bonnou means desire. "Pleats of a mind" consisted of 108 pieces, because they symbolically represent human desire in this work. This work was exhibited at the event "Container 96", a part of the celebration of Copenhagen as European Cultural Capital 1996.
From 1996, I have been using tiny small triangle pieces in my work. It symbolizes something like a molecule. A molecule of water or light or air. I would like to draw like a pointillism with this small piece as a molecule. "Between the Air" represents something like this feeling. When I am conscious of a skin membrane in the air, I can feel invisible things. It's something we have already forgotten or we don't try to see. But we have to remember, and we have to try to see. There is a value in this invisible world. "Expectation" is the last work I made before moving to Denmark in 1997. There are so many pieces combined with thin wire. It makes me feel the light is shining upon us, or rising up to our dream. Spring of 1997, my life in Denmark started, and I gave birth to my son in the end of this year at 39 years of age. I had a chance to reconsider about life itself. In the same time, I started to make my work to represent how respectable things we can make by our own hands. While considering the past of my life, I wanted to inform about that to the next generation like my son, because the new waves flushed away tons of information, and people will forget about the analogue way and so on. “C of Infornmation” came from that kind of idea. It represents the human who are floating on the discarded CD-ROMs which has already been thrown away, because there is no more useful (new) information there. That's why, I also use Origami-Technique as a typical analogue way. After, I moved to Denmark, I had my first solo exhibition at Gjethuset in Frederiksvaerk in 1999.   “Life of the Blue” which I showed at my second solo exhibition at Portalen in Greve in January 2000 is my masterpiece in these 10 years. In the spring of 1999, my mother died and I get another opportunity to reconsider about humans life and my appreciation to my mother. There are about 50,000 tiny small triangle pieces in this work, and each single pieces has life even if you can't find the life. There are many important things (life) around us, but we can't find them, because we haven't tried to see carefully. So, at the beginning of using tracing paper, I hoped my works would remind the viewer of something pure and natural in this world. Of course, I love and cherish the natural world, but I was interested in only the pure or beautiful world in nature. When I began to be conscious of a skin membrane in the tracing paper, I wanted to represent something more, not only pure or natural, in this world. It's sometimes in our mind. Yuko Takada Keller
Tracing paper has a transparency and an untransparency. I'm interested in how tracing paper is like a skin membrane. The skin membrane lies between dream and reality. The skin membrane lies between consciousness and behavior. The skin membrane is there when life is born. The skin membrane is part of a human being. I want to represent the space that people are aware of The skin membrane is unconsciousness.