New New Painters
New New Painters are a group of eleven Canadian and American artists who had exhibited together on a case-by-case basis since the late 1980s, after several of them were shown in the trend-setting group exhibition “New Directions in Abstraction” by curator Kenworth Moffett in New York City were involved.
The group name was chosen as an ironic reaction to the exaggerated demands of the art market for the new and the extraordinary, in which the group saw an impairment of the presentation of contemporary works of art. All members of the group were heavily influenced by color field painting , especially Jules Olitski and Larry Poons . It was officially founded in 1990. Two years later, the group's first comprehensive monograph was published on the occasion of an exhibition at the Gerald Piltzer Gallery in Paris.
The design, image concepts and aesthetics of the group members are very different. A significant similarity lies in the use of acrylic paints and acrylic gel , which enabled a plastic, relief-like application of paint without affecting the luminosity of the color.
The members of the group
Lucy Baker's compositions result from the interplay of graphic drippings and areas of color cast onto the canvas. The artist prefers strong color contrasts and also uses mirrored Plexiglas as a picture carrier as well as fluorescent and highly reflective particles and fragments that are added to the color or inserted into the picture like a collage.
Steven Brent uses cardboard rolls and the like for the relief-like structure of the pictures. The paint is often given reflective particles and metallic pigments and then cascaded onto the uneven canvas.
Joseph Drapell works with special painting tools that create fine grooves over large areas, as well as acrylic gel on luminous primers and intense colored surfaces. The spectrum of the changing pictures ranges from fine atmospheric impressions to high-contrast eruptive compositions.
John Gittins first creates a multi-layered monochrome picture background. Then he applies acrylic gel in impasto lines, wound like a meander or with a slightly vibrating hand, crossing one another, sometimes also condensing into heterogeneous tissues, which often trigger biomorphic associations.
Roy Lerner's pictures are characterized by rhythmically modeled surfaces that are reminiscent of tectonic folds . The subtle coloring and the homogeneous all-over structures of the 1980s give way to a more expressive color palette and more aggressive compositions from around 1990.
Technically speaking, Anne Low is in the tradition of Helen Frankenthaler . She pours acrylic paints of varying dilution or viscosity onto the canvas lying on the floor. Compositional accents are set by directing the flow of color and with economical drippings. In contrast to the illusionistic spatial effect of many of Frankenthaler's pictures, the spatiality in Low's works is limited to the plasticity of the applied amount of acrylic paint.
Marjorie Minkin uses transparent Lexan plastic sheets and foils for her color reliefs , which are shaped in relief and then poured or painted with paint in various ways. Light reflections and refractions shape the effect of the torso-like compositions.
Irene Neal pours acrylic paint and gel in many layers over irregularly shaped wooden panels. This creates lava-like streams, eddies and marble-like color structures.
Graham Peacock's artistic breakthrough came in the 1980s when he experimented with layers of acrylic gel cast on canvas. In the course of the drying process, the resulting stresses cause a variety of cracks to form, which reveals the color underneath. Like Olitski and Poons , he also only defines the final image format at the end of all processes - as a “color object in a state of entropy ”, so to speak . The formats of the 1980s are still clearly reminiscent of the Shaped Canvas works by Kenneth Noland . At the beginning of the 1990s, however, the picture forms became much more complex and followed the composition developed from the center of the picture outwards. Forms that are too aggressive are subjected to another machining process later. From around the mid-1990s the color palette became more expressive and the artist also worked with collage elements such as glass beads and small canvas fragments, as well as adding reflective particles.
Bruce Piermarini prefers large canvases on which he first forms reliefs with foam, which are then doused with paint and transformed into marbled compositions with various painting tools.
Jerald Webster's compositions are created on monochrome canvases. Pastose colored bars and spots of bright colors are set in contrapuntal form to geometric surfaces.
Important exhibitions of the group
- 2002 National Gallery Prague
- 2002 Galerie des Arts Contemporain, Montreal, Canada
- 2001 Gallery Anne Lettree, Paris
- 2001 Hôtel de Ville (City Hall), Brussels
- 1999 Museum of Contemporary Art, Denver, CO
- 1999 Gilbert Studios Gallery, New York City
- 1999 Flint Institute for the Arts, Flint, Michigan
- 1998 The Center for the Arts, Vero Beach, Florida, "New Acrylic Painters"
- 1995 Salander O'Reilly Galleries, New York City
- 1993 City Gallery Göppingen (D)
- 1993 Musée des Beaux Arts, Waterloo, Belgium
- 1993 Musée d'Art Modern et d'Art Contemporain, Nice
- 1993 Gallery One, Toronto
- 1993 Tilly Haderek Gallery, Stuttgart
- 1992 Gerald Piltzer Gallery, Paris, "Inaugural New New Painting Exhibition"
- 1990 The Atwood Gallery, Worcester, MA, "New New Painting, with John Gittins and Bruce Piermarini"
literature
- Graham Peacock. A retrospective. Edmonton, Alberta 2008.
- New New Painters. National Gallery Prague, 2002. With essays by Milan Knížák , Natalie Sykorová, Thomas Vicek, Kenworth W. Moffett and David Carrier. Prague 2002.
- Baker, Lucy; Neal, Irene (Ed.): New New Painters at the 69th Regiment Armory, 26th & Lexington Avenues, New York City, May 18 - May 23, 2000. OO 2000.
- Scott, Sue (Ed.): The New New Painters. Flint Institute of the Arts, January 1999. Contribution by David Carrier. Flint, MI 1999.
- New New Painting. Fine Art 2000, Stamford, Connecticut. Introduction by John Henry III, contributions by Donald Kuspit and Arlene Raven, Stamford, Connecticut 1996.
- Meyer, Werner (ed.): New New Painting. Städtische Galerie Göppingen, September 19 - October 24, 1993. Edition Cantz, Ostfildern 1993.
- Moffett, Kenworth: New New Painting. Nouvelles Editiones Françaises & Galerie Gerald Piltzer, Paris 1992.
- New New Painting. Atwood Gallery, Worcester, Massachusetts. John Gittins, Graham Peacock, Bruce Piermarini. Worcester, MA 1990.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ^ Carpenter, Ken: Artist Groups: What's New? In: Art in America, July 1999, pp. 51-53.
- ^ Carpenter, Ken: With Honors in Prague: A Canadian / American Group Test the Limits of Painting. In: Graham Peacock. A retrospective. Edmonton, Alberta 2008, p. 245.
- ^ Moffett, Kenworth: New New Painting. Nouvelles Editiones Françaises & Galerie Gerald Piltzer, Paris 1992.
- ^ Meyer, Werner (ed.): New New Painting. Städtische Galerie Göppingen, September 19 - October 24, 1993. Edition Cantz, Ostfildern 1993, pp. 10–12.
- ↑ Ibid., P. 12