Mallory Lake print edition on sale



Signed, limited print edition
Evening Departure
Mallory Lake

This post may be too late. An edition of 50 signed prints of a pastel by Mallory Lake entitled "Evening Departure" went on sale late in August. The print comes from a recent exhibit at the Brattleboro Museum & Art Center (BMAC) of new works based on film noir scenes. (See my earlier post.)

Although the pastel painting has as its focus a train enveloped by billowing clouds of steam, I see the train car to the right in the composition as the true artistic focus. By that, I consider the train car as the height of technical excellence in this particular pastel. Lake's depiction of the reflectivity of the metal surfaces -- the wavering light of the engine's head lamp in the dimples of the metal siding, the car's reflection of the murky ambient light of evening in a train yard -- are spot on. All the more so, because this complex interplay of light and surfaces takes place in a tight, foreshortened space. It's a quiet drama of light and dark, and the attendant metaphors we associate with these qualities.

Here's hoping that Lake keeps exploring this "noirish" subject land. I'm hoping she will stumble across a Raymond Chandler detective novel and show us some of the precarious situations in which Chandler's anti-hero detective, Philip Marlowe, finds himself.
Prints are $245 each, and BMAC members receive a $30 discount. All proceeds support BMAC in its mission "to present art and ideas in ways that inspire, educate, and engage people of all ages." To order, call 802-257-0124, ext. 101 or visit www.brattleboromuseum.org.

Rembrandt the Etcher

Rembrandt the Etcher
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Frances Vrachos Gallery (Gallery 144)
Aug. 10, 2013 - Feb. 17, 2014

Rembrandt etchings on exhibit

Detail from
Christ Crucified between the Two Thieves (“The Three Crosses”)
Rembrandt Harmensz. Van Rijn, 1653. Drypoint.
Credit: Museum of Fine Arts

Rembrandt became my main man after I stopped hanging around with the Impressionists. They started literally fading on me after I saw an exhibit at the MFA, in the early 1970s, of Monet's numerous paintings of water lillies. Although astoundingly beautiful, many of the paintings were actually more like tonal color fields. The lack of representation didn't bother me, but I had some sense that this was the culmination of a movement. What could come after these airy confections?

Maybe I was being too hard on the Impressionists. Actually, my favorite of the bunch was Van Gogh,who wasn't actually an Impressionist at all, although he usually got lumped with them. He was, however, a Dutchman, just like Rembrandt. It was definitely the humanity, the everyday-ness of both painters that attract me. Before seeing the Monet exhibit, I had already started to venture into Northern Europe. Albrecht Durer was of particular interest to me. Not Dutch, but actually of Hungarian descent, he did paintings and engravings of Biblical scenes like Rembrandt, as well as a number of self-portraits. And then there was El Greco, whose paintings I saw at the Met In New York. Actually, the planes of almost solid color that he often used were similar to Van Gogh's method, without, of course, the slabs of paint that he used.

What does all this have to do with Rembrandt? Nothing more than what comes to my mind and the fact that Rembrandt rose above all of them in my estimation. So much has been written of Rembrandt, that I really can think of no more to say. One Christmas, a girlfriend bought me a coffee table book called, I think, Life of Christ. It consisted of paintings, drawings, and etchings by Rembrandt depicting various scenes from Christ's life. This cemented the bond for me. The drama, the subtlety, the pain, the joy, all this and more were more present for me than in the works of any other painter. Or etcher.

The upcoming exhibit, Rembrandt the Etcher, consists of 45 works, most of which come from the MFA’s collection. The show promises to "explore the unprecedented range of subject matter" that Rembrandt treated in the over 300 etchings he made during his life. Speaking of his life, Rembrandt recently celebrated his 407th birthday on July 15. On July 26, Mick Jagger celebrated his 70th birthday. Do you think that 337 years from now, in 2350, the world will remember Mick or the Rolling Stones? Will Rembrandt's 744th birthday be remembered?

Between Dark and Night: New Pastels by Mallory Lake

Brattleboro Museum & Art Center
Brattleboro, Vt.
June 29 - October 20, 2013

　


Mallory Lake
Detail from The Night Train

That colored dust caught in the fibrous terrain of a sheet of paper can evoke power is a testament to the artistic mastery shown by Mallory Lake in her new exhibit at the Brattleboro Museum & Art Center. Her source material, according to chief curator Mara Williams, are stills from film noir movies. Many of the scenes depict classic moments of trains leaving yards and stations at night. In my post on ballpoint pen art, I comment on Jan Fabre's moody scenes as having the feeling that something lurks in the corner. Curator Williams makes the same observation about Lake's new pastels, but I think Lake's new work shows something more internal, and deeper. Something that is, in fact, Freudian -- the unconscious and its movements, all of which are either beyond comprehension, or on the twilight edge of consciousness. The trains and the dramatic lighting and the bursts of steam are all representative of deep psychological drives. One piece (above), entitled The Night Train, even has a blue-eyed eminence prowling, it seems, the border between what we know consciously and what we only sense deep within our selves, like some Cerberus guarding the entry to the Underworld.

Clearly, Lake's pastels are not the kitschy vase of flowers with the errant blossom on the table. Pastels have a long history of portraying landscapes, human figures and portraits, but not much, if anything, that explores a more symbolist world. Perhaps the best know pastel artists are the Impressionist Edgar Degas and American Mary Cassatt, who studied in France with Degas. There were a number of well-known pastel portrait painters in the 18th century as well as the present, including Francesco Clemente, a favorite of mine. I did not realize that Clemente worked in pastels until I started doing research for this post. And, of course, my earlier statement about the scarcity of symbolist pastel artists now needs to be somewhat amended. There is, however, a difference between Lake's and Clemente's versions of symbolism. Lake is much more representational, while Clemente employs a more primitivist style.

Whatever the style, the medium of pastels has a high saturation of color which lends the power to a painting that I spoke of earlier. Pastels are made from the same pigments as oil paints, but the high saturation is the result of decreased refraction which darkens a color. To be a little more technical without going beyond my high school physics, more of the wave lengths are concentrated within a smaller band of the color of the pigment, instead of being spread out over a larger section of the color spectrum. A look at the blue lights on The Night Train is an excellent example of this phenomenon. And, indeed, the intense saturation adds to the psychological effects as well.

To see more of Lake's pastels in this exhibit, click here.

Caleb Charland: From the Basement to the Backyard

Center for Maine Contemporary Art
Rockport, Me.
July 27 - Sept. 22, 2013


Potato Power
The blurb on Caleb Charland's new exhibit at the Center for Maine Contemporary Art declares that his photography "springs from a place of wonder," and that's certainly as I will show later. But first, I think we need to look at the satirical componenet of his work, the part that portrays an image that alternates between the ludicrous and the possible.

Artistotle, I think, said that tragedy shows us the human possibility for noble actions whereas comedy points out our foibles, our many foibles. A photograph at Charland's web site (I'm not sure whether this photo is the show, although similar ones are) called Potato Power is a good starting point for this interplay between the ludicrous and wonderful possibility.

The photo depicts a floor lamp in a potato field with a number of leads going from the lamp's socket to the ground. The leads are actually attached to nails stuck in potatoes that have been uncovered from the surrounding rows. Well, of course, you can get electricity from potatoes by sticking a copper nail and a zinc nail into a potato. The chemical composition of the potato sets up a flow of ions from one nail to the other. In other words, a current. An electrical current.

So, you begin to wonder. Is it possible to power our country on potatoes? But, then you realize that would take a lot of potatoes, and a lot of power expended to grow those potatoes. The net effect would be probably be a loss in power production. And yet, what if we could mechanize and automate potato growing? But, now, we're back to same type of system we live with now, and you just have to laugh at how stupid and smart we are.

And yet, the photo reveals something else. There may be an answer in nature in which energy production is not as ruinous to the environment. Obviously, a time-lapse photo, Potato Power shows in the background sky, arcs of light made by stars. Stars are powered by fusion, which releases energy (and no radiation) while fusing hydrogen into helium. There, in the natural world, is an energy answer, but, to date, our technology has not been able to harness it. Perhaps we can; or perhaps, we will find some other source beneath our feet or above our heads.


Caleb Charland
Wooden Box with Horseshoe Magnet
Courtesy Center for Maine Contemporary Art

One last word on a photo of an object in Charland's show called Wooden Box with Horseshoe Magnet (left). At first look, you think there must be a trick to the nails lined up in midair, but, of course, it's magnetism. The nails are connected to some type of string. I wonder what would happen if the nails were connected by a thin copper wire. Would the opposite poles of the magnet cancel out, making the nails fall to the ground? 




Ballpoint Pen Art Since 1950

The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum
Ridgefield, Conn.
Runs to Aug. 25


Making art with a ballpoint pen, the subject of an exhibition at The Aldrich, brought to mind my own brief career in fifth grade with the medium. Inspired by watching drag races on ABC's Wide World of Sports, I used a ballpoint pen on lined paper to draw dragsters while sitting at my desk in school. Heavily influenced by Ed "Big Daddy" Roth, my dragsters featured exaggerated engines with dual carburetors and huge manifolds, driven by a stick figure with his hands on the steering wheel and a smile on his face. I was famous among the critics, my classmates.

To put on an entire exhibition of ball point pen art, Ballpoint Pen Drawing Since 1950, does not seem unusual to me. From reading curator Richard Klein's essay, I found that I was not the only grade-school, ballpoint pen artist. Russell Crotty drew stick figure surfers riding surfboards on waves of doodle-like swirls. Later in his career, he drew ball-point drawings of astronomical phenomena, taken from observations he made as a serious amateur astronomer. If only I had stuck with my ballpoint. Who knows where I might have progressed from my dragsters?



Jan Fabre Tivoli Castle 1990-2007
Courtesy of Aldrich Museum

The exhibition shows a wide range from the pedestrian ballpoint pen, with skecthy portraits on book covers by Alberto Giacometti to moody inked-over photographs by Belgian artist Jan Fabre who completed hundreds of ballpoint drawings between 1977 and 1992, according to curator Klein. The heavy layering of ballpoint ink gives the works an intriguing chiaroscuro effect. You find yourself looking in every dark corner for something to emerge.
 
One ballpoint "method" that does not seem to be represented is a transfer technique that also uses the heavy layering of ballpoint ink. I'm not quite sure how I "discovered" this technique -- perhaps from my fingers inadvertently picking up blobs of ballpoint ink while writing and depositing the mess a few lines later when my fingers again made contact with the paper. Whatever the genesis, I began heavily inking irregular shapes on a sheet of paper and then turning the paper on to a clean sheet and rubbing the top sheet with a ruler or knife handle or spoon.

The resulting "print" was faint, since the ballpoint ink was not particularly wet. Still, the faintness and varying intensity of the color was part of the fun. So, although curator Klein writes that many thought that the ballpoint was the death of good penmanship, I discovered a small artistic phenomenon from the scratches and smears of my sloppy handwriting. And inexpensive ballpoint pens.