SCRIBBLES AND STAINS

I have a couple of very closed friends who are totally adverse to Jean-Michel Basquiat or Cy Twombly. «Scribbles» they say and laugh at my interest in such artists. However, to be honest when I went to see Christopher Wool yesterday, I felt there was some truth in what they were saying.
These were not scribbles but more like hugh blotches and then every now and again, scribbles. Stains, traces, twisting lines on cavas or paper. 
At the beginning, I really didn’t know what I was looking at. 


I think we must have seen him at the Venice Biennale in 2011 but did we actually look at his work? He’s a contemporary artist - American -. His work is in a large format and when I began to look at it closely, there were no signs of a paintbrush but definitely airbrushes, spray guns, linen, silk screen and then I began to see. He was endlessly repeating what he had created. Recomposing elements. Sometimes in colour but most of the time in black and white or dull ocre shades. 
"Last Year Halloween ...."



One painting I did quite like «Last Year Halloween fell on a weekend» done in 2011.







 As so few of his paintings have a title, they need to be looked at closely to see where the repetition has come from. Consequenlty I went backwards and forwards looking at the 31 paintings closely. It seemed he was improvising on a theme most of the time. 

There is a major retrospective of his work scheduled for 2013 at the Guggenheim in New York. I wont be going.

Commentaires

Lo a dit…
...and neither will we! We did see him at the Biennale in Venice and that was enough!
13/4/12 17:53
Michael Keane a dit…
I prefer Tapies.
20/4/12 12:53
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