If you reflect on artists who paint en plein air and strive to capture the transient effects of color and light, the style of Impressionism might come to mind. Historically the Impressionists were a group of artists painting during the 1880s and dedicated to painting the effects of atmosphere and weather, capturing light as it played on form. A contemporary plein air artist concerned with these same concepts is Ben Whitehouse; whose art currently fills two galleries at the Delaware Center for Contemporary Arts. The fluctuations of light over time direct his paintings. Whitehouse has spent long periods of time outside, noticing the subtle variations in light and the vague and changing atmospheric effects of nature.
Whitehouse was born in England in 1945 and currently lives in the United States. He received his MFA from the University of Chicago where as a student he studied the paintings of Claude Monet. From seeing an exhibit of Monet’s paintings that focused on a repeated architectural or natural form in different daylight conditions such as the series of paintings of Rouen Cathedral, he noted the grouping of these works and wondered about the moments and times that went unmarked.(Isaacs,1) This led to his current work of documenting the nuances of light changing as time passed and the earth rotated. In some instances, every moment in a twenty-four hour day is captured.
One wall of the gallery consists of thirty one 11” x 14” oil paintings of the same site on the shore of Lake Michigan. Called March, Whitehouse painted daily, between 9am and 11am, on the lake near his studio and to emphasize time, installed this series of small oils in the shape of a calendar month. These oils are a meditation on the light and color of the shore of Lake Michigan and emphasize wind direction, cloud formations, the color of water and sky, roughness of the sea, and reflections of light on water and most importantly, push mood more than form. Whitehouse states that these paintings not only record light but act as a “meditation on the fluidity of natural phenomena and the passage of time.” (Isaacs, 2) Some days of the month conjure up a mist slapping us in the face and others the serenity of a calm, warm day. One can stand there amazed at the variation.
In a tighter time frame, Watch Over Central Park, consists of forty eight 5” x 5” panels depicting a single patch of sky looking both east and west. There are two circles of twenty four panels each, one for each direction and each hour in a rotation of the earth. This nonrepresentational collection of paintings has eliminated everything but the color of each hour. Two circles rotating in opposite directions mark both daylight and night colors of peachy dawns, brilliant white noon, crisp blues and deep black nights. Brushstrokes are negligent and any landscape structure eliminated. We are left with a meditation on color and a reminder of cycles and gravity by Whitehouse’s decision to adhere each painting to the wall with magnets which form strong circular structures that stress the force of gravity and rotation of the earth. These are a shift from March and much more sculptural and minimal while still holding the feelings of atmosphere. How much can an artist eliminate and still give the viewer the memory and emotion of a moment in time?
George Santayana in his book, The Sense of Beauty, talks about the landscape and its indeterminacy. “The natural landscape is an indeterminate object; it almost always contains enough diversity to allow the eye a great liberty in selecting, emphasizing, and grouping its elements and it is furthermore rich in suggestion and in vague emotional stimulus.”(133) Most of the canvases for this show express Whitehouse's desire to select a minimal amount of landscape to emphasize the emotional stimuli of images born of an experience. He does so brilliantly. Right away we are aware of the weather he was witnessing depicted by these squares of color and the transition of color from one to another. More visual information was unnecessary.
There are two other video installations that move us from the minimalist paintings to an over detailed landscape. These create the opposite effect of Whitehouse’s paintings by including real visuals in real time and making us work hard to decide what to focus on. Two 65” plasmas screens display his films called Revolution: North Bar Lake, 2006 and Revolution: Central Park, 2006. Each one is filmed for twenty four straight hours and records every moment, light fluctuation, animal or human presence, and natural occurrences. One must slow down and relax for to see the subtle changes. It is left to the viewer now to select what to focus on in each film. We do the work that Santayana is speaking of by selecting from the diversity and focusing on some element in the frame. Whether one is captivated by the wind on the rippled lake or fascinated by the cloud movement over Central Park, we can scan each screen for those same effects laid down in paint in March and Watch Over Central Park. It is as though Whitehouse is telling us to pay attention to the nuances in our own environments. It is also a great way to end ones time in this show because even after walking out the museum doors, you are left wondering what is happening now on North Bar Lake.
Through January 6, 2008, DCCA, 200 S. Madison St., Wilmington DE
Works Cited
Isaacs, J. Susan. Ben Whitehouse: Revolution. Museum catalog. August 17, 2007- January 6, 2008.
Santayana, George. The Sense of Beauty: Being the Outlines of Aesthetic Theory. New York, Random House, 1955.
Saturday, October 27, 2007
Saturday, September 29, 2007
Mapping with/in
In writing about artists who work with the earth, one finds a variety of ways they are creating mapping structures. Edward Casey, writer, details four different ways of mapping: mapping of, mapping for, mapping with/in, and mapping out as they relate to earthworks. (xx) ‘Mapping of’ is a cartographic way of putting down exact geography and using engineering applications. The ‘mapping for’ approach gets us from place A to place B. In ‘mapping with/in’, the viewer is given only a faint indication of land relationships. There is more of a sensing and psychological feel to the work. In this type of mapping, the artist is bodily present in a kinesthetic and ambulatory way. It is here in the ‘mapping with/in’ that I find two artists of interest and who both have strong ways of ‘mapping out’ or relating their experiences to the viewer. Comparing artists Richard Long and Cecilia Vicuna, both contemporaries of each other, who have been marking the land with lines, describing their experiences with text, documenting with photographs, and creating sculptures of natural materials, and who have strong mapping sensibilities should be an interesting journey in itself.
Richard Long is a British artist who was born in Bristol, England, in 1945. He has been known as an artist who uses walking as his art form. His first ‘walk’ in 1967, was a straight line in a grass field. From there he has been taking walks through many remote places in the world. He wrote about his work in The Real World: Pick Up Sticks,
“My art is about working in the wide
World, wherever, on the surface of the earth…
My work is not urban, not is it romantic.
It is the laying down of modern ideas in
The only practical places to take them.
The natural world sustains the industrial world.”(Kastner 242)
Richard Long has been making art works based on the motion of his body through walking and the marks that he leaves behind without invasive changes to the land. His is an art of physical involvement, but one that only leaves behind the feeling of his presence through the manipulation of natural objects. In Crossing Stones, 1987, he carried a stone from the east coast at Aldenburgh, England to the west coast at Aberystwyth, Wales and left it there only to do the same for the trip back. The stories of these walks are told by words laid out in the shape of the walk or visual line: observations, measurements of distance and duration are another dimension of his experiences. Once the stones trade environments, the walk is complete. The stones are then indeterminately moved by weather, water, and wind. Nothing stays the same and yet we know that these two stones exist somewhere in traded space. Long also used journals, photographs, collections of natural materials to map out this experience, along with actual maps overlaid with drawn lines of the journey. His walking becomes an absorptive mapping. He states, “My work is about my senses, my instinct, my own scale, and my own physical commitment. My work is real, not illusory or conceptual”. (Kastner 242)
“Cecilia Vicuna also works with lines, found objects in the landscape and words in the forms of both poetry and quoted connections. She also looks for the indeterminate and ephemeral in her work. Born in Chile and exiled since the 70’s, she moved to England and then back to Bogota, Columbia. She maps her space in nature with found materials, weavings and poetry. In 1966, she began making small sculptures of natural objects and found rubbish from the land called “precarios. Her first outdoor sculpture called Con-con was a fragile collection of refuse (driftwood, feathers, stones, trash) situated on the beach between a river and the ocean where lots of garbage collected. She has a desire to order things and her discarded, found materials are composed so that each element holds the next one in a balanced, fragile state. She says “Everything is falling apart because of lack of connections. Weaving is the connection that is missing, the connection between people and themselves, people and nature.” (de Zegher, 11) Vicuna has a deep sense of connection to her culture, to the historical traditions of women’s work (specifically weaving) and to her country’s history. She uses found garbage as land sculptures to push forth the idea of giving the rubbish value and refers to the government’s disposal of people during the seventies (the disappeared ones…desaparecidos). Added to these small sculptures was the act of weaving space. In her weaving called Antivero, 1981, she crisscrossed the threads from one rock bank of the river to the other side creating a cradle or nest-like structure producing the form of a protected space. As she quotes Rene Guenon – “the connection protects”.(deZegher, 89) Coming from a country in turmoil, tied to the native culture of the Andes and speaking into a global avant-garde, creates a complex body of work speaking about connecting and protecting.
Both Cecilia Vicuna and Richard Long design their work to be temporary although their text works and some sculptures have been moved into gallery spaces for shows. The concern for the environment, marking the land gently, and allowing themselves as artists to stand back and allow nature to change these art works are their common ground. Although Long has a stronger sense of imposing geometry on the land with some large rock pieces, whereas Vicuna’s sculptures are asymmetrical and delicate. It is in the mapping out where they diverge the most. Long has imposed order on the landscapes of his choosing. Although human presence is absent from his work, implied presence is felt in the manmade geometric shapes formed in remote environments. He has staged a landscape and one might feel the ‘man subduing the earth’ philosophy and an evoking of Post-colonial thought. Vicuna is about connecting people to the space. She is about the relationships: references and points of departure, about disappearance and concern for the earth. She says “We are made of throwaways and we will be thrown away, says the objects.”(de Zegher 21)
Between these two artists who are both working with the land, with natural materials, with texts and poems, and during the same decades: they are both concerned for the delicate balance between humanity and the environment. Yet one is imposing a geometric order on the land with a strong aesthetic sensibility and only implies human presence and the other is weaving together humanity’s presence with nature, looking for the connection that will protect the earth.
Odd that in the beginning of looking at these two artists, they seemed so close, but after pushing past the surface of materials and processes, one finds a huge difference in the philosophy of their art. In both artists, the mapping with/in is at the core of their similarities, but the mapping out is where the differences lie. What we as viewers take away from seeing either Richard Long’s or Cecilia Vicuna’s work will vary once we spend time with the work: two seemingly similar earth artists, can go in two very different emotional and aesthetic directions but both artists in their own styles, speak of their love for the earth.
Works Cited
Casey, Edward. Earth-Mapping: Artists Reshaping Landscape. MN, University of Minnesota Press, 2005.
Long, Richard. Richard Long: Walking A Line. Thames and Hudson, London, 2002. Essays by Anne Seymour, Paul Moorhouse, Denise Hooker and Richard Long.
De Zegher, M. Catherine, ed. Inside The Visible: an elliptical traverse of 20th century art/ in, of, and from the feminine. Cambridge, MIT Press, exhibition catalog ICA Boston, January 30, 1996-may 12, 1996.
De Zegher, M. Catherine. Cecilia Vicuna’s Ouvrage: Knot a Not, Notes as Knots. The Precarious: The Art and Poetry of Cecilia Vicuna. University Press of New England, Hanover & London. 1997.
Kastner, J. and Brian Wallis. Land and Environmental Art, Phaidon Press Ltd, 1998.
Moorehouse, Paul. The Intricacy of the Skein, The Complexity of the Web: Richard Long’s Art. Richard Long: Walking A Line. Thames and Hudson, London, 2002.
Smith, Roberta. 4 Artists and the Map: Image/Process/Data?Place. Jasper Johns, Nancy Graves, Roger Welch, Richard Long. Exhibition Catalog. Spencer Museum of Art, The University of Kansas, Lawrence. April 5-May 24, 1981.
Richard Long is a British artist who was born in Bristol, England, in 1945. He has been known as an artist who uses walking as his art form. His first ‘walk’ in 1967, was a straight line in a grass field. From there he has been taking walks through many remote places in the world. He wrote about his work in The Real World: Pick Up Sticks,
“My art is about working in the wide
World, wherever, on the surface of the earth…
My work is not urban, not is it romantic.
It is the laying down of modern ideas in
The only practical places to take them.
The natural world sustains the industrial world.”(Kastner 242)
Richard Long has been making art works based on the motion of his body through walking and the marks that he leaves behind without invasive changes to the land. His is an art of physical involvement, but one that only leaves behind the feeling of his presence through the manipulation of natural objects. In Crossing Stones, 1987, he carried a stone from the east coast at Aldenburgh, England to the west coast at Aberystwyth, Wales and left it there only to do the same for the trip back. The stories of these walks are told by words laid out in the shape of the walk or visual line: observations, measurements of distance and duration are another dimension of his experiences. Once the stones trade environments, the walk is complete. The stones are then indeterminately moved by weather, water, and wind. Nothing stays the same and yet we know that these two stones exist somewhere in traded space. Long also used journals, photographs, collections of natural materials to map out this experience, along with actual maps overlaid with drawn lines of the journey. His walking becomes an absorptive mapping. He states, “My work is about my senses, my instinct, my own scale, and my own physical commitment. My work is real, not illusory or conceptual”. (Kastner 242)
“Cecilia Vicuna also works with lines, found objects in the landscape and words in the forms of both poetry and quoted connections. She also looks for the indeterminate and ephemeral in her work. Born in Chile and exiled since the 70’s, she moved to England and then back to Bogota, Columbia. She maps her space in nature with found materials, weavings and poetry. In 1966, she began making small sculptures of natural objects and found rubbish from the land called “precarios. Her first outdoor sculpture called Con-con was a fragile collection of refuse (driftwood, feathers, stones, trash) situated on the beach between a river and the ocean where lots of garbage collected. She has a desire to order things and her discarded, found materials are composed so that each element holds the next one in a balanced, fragile state. She says “Everything is falling apart because of lack of connections. Weaving is the connection that is missing, the connection between people and themselves, people and nature.” (de Zegher, 11) Vicuna has a deep sense of connection to her culture, to the historical traditions of women’s work (specifically weaving) and to her country’s history. She uses found garbage as land sculptures to push forth the idea of giving the rubbish value and refers to the government’s disposal of people during the seventies (the disappeared ones…desaparecidos). Added to these small sculptures was the act of weaving space. In her weaving called Antivero, 1981, she crisscrossed the threads from one rock bank of the river to the other side creating a cradle or nest-like structure producing the form of a protected space. As she quotes Rene Guenon – “the connection protects”.(deZegher, 89) Coming from a country in turmoil, tied to the native culture of the Andes and speaking into a global avant-garde, creates a complex body of work speaking about connecting and protecting.
Both Cecilia Vicuna and Richard Long design their work to be temporary although their text works and some sculptures have been moved into gallery spaces for shows. The concern for the environment, marking the land gently, and allowing themselves as artists to stand back and allow nature to change these art works are their common ground. Although Long has a stronger sense of imposing geometry on the land with some large rock pieces, whereas Vicuna’s sculptures are asymmetrical and delicate. It is in the mapping out where they diverge the most. Long has imposed order on the landscapes of his choosing. Although human presence is absent from his work, implied presence is felt in the manmade geometric shapes formed in remote environments. He has staged a landscape and one might feel the ‘man subduing the earth’ philosophy and an evoking of Post-colonial thought. Vicuna is about connecting people to the space. She is about the relationships: references and points of departure, about disappearance and concern for the earth. She says “We are made of throwaways and we will be thrown away, says the objects.”(de Zegher 21)
Between these two artists who are both working with the land, with natural materials, with texts and poems, and during the same decades: they are both concerned for the delicate balance between humanity and the environment. Yet one is imposing a geometric order on the land with a strong aesthetic sensibility and only implies human presence and the other is weaving together humanity’s presence with nature, looking for the connection that will protect the earth.
Odd that in the beginning of looking at these two artists, they seemed so close, but after pushing past the surface of materials and processes, one finds a huge difference in the philosophy of their art. In both artists, the mapping with/in is at the core of their similarities, but the mapping out is where the differences lie. What we as viewers take away from seeing either Richard Long’s or Cecilia Vicuna’s work will vary once we spend time with the work: two seemingly similar earth artists, can go in two very different emotional and aesthetic directions but both artists in their own styles, speak of their love for the earth.
Works Cited
Casey, Edward. Earth-Mapping: Artists Reshaping Landscape. MN, University of Minnesota Press, 2005.
Long, Richard. Richard Long: Walking A Line. Thames and Hudson, London, 2002. Essays by Anne Seymour, Paul Moorhouse, Denise Hooker and Richard Long.
De Zegher, M. Catherine, ed. Inside The Visible: an elliptical traverse of 20th century art/ in, of, and from the feminine. Cambridge, MIT Press, exhibition catalog ICA Boston, January 30, 1996-may 12, 1996.
De Zegher, M. Catherine. Cecilia Vicuna’s Ouvrage: Knot a Not, Notes as Knots. The Precarious: The Art and Poetry of Cecilia Vicuna. University Press of New England, Hanover & London. 1997.
Kastner, J. and Brian Wallis. Land and Environmental Art, Phaidon Press Ltd, 1998.
Moorehouse, Paul. The Intricacy of the Skein, The Complexity of the Web: Richard Long’s Art. Richard Long: Walking A Line. Thames and Hudson, London, 2002.
Smith, Roberta. 4 Artists and the Map: Image/Process/Data?Place. Jasper Johns, Nancy Graves, Roger Welch, Richard Long. Exhibition Catalog. Spencer Museum of Art, The University of Kansas, Lawrence. April 5-May 24, 1981.
Thursday, September 20, 2007
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