Living a Life of Abstraction

Recently I have been reading about the heritage of this art form I’ve been engaged with for the better part of a decade now—abstract art.

The Museum of Modern Art in New York City recently presented its ambitious and powerful show titled, Inventing Abstraction 1910-1925: How a Radical Idea Changed Modern Art. I ordered the catalogue and have been immersed in it ever since it arrived.

In this wonderful book I’ve read that, “Roughly one hundred years ago, a series of precipitous shifts took place in the cultural sphere that in the end amounted to as great a rewriting of the rules of artistic production as had been seen since the Renaissance.”

The show sets out to illustrate those radical shifts with groundbreaking works of art. Further, it makes the case for abstraction having been birthed by many artists around the world simultaneously. In MoMA’s words, “The story of its [abstract art] sudden flourishing may have something to tell us about the nature of innovation itself: abstraction was not the inspiration of a solitary genius but the product of… ideas moving through a nexus of artists and intellectuals working in different media and far-flung places.”

Vasily Kandinsky, along with all of the emerging abstract artists of his day, struggled with the concept of making art that didn’t “picture” anything. In the end, having gone back and forth in his own work, he crystallized abstract’s overriding question, one with which Pablo Picasso disagreed rigidly, “Must we not then renounce the object altogether, throw it to the winds and instead lay bare the purely abstract?” I had never fully appreciated the revolutionary thinking this concept embodied at the time of its inception, but this presentation of works combined with the ideas put forth by its contributing authors, has brought it home to me.

And it has also made clear that the revolution shaking up visual arts of the time was creating profound shifts throughout other art forms. According to MoMA, “The coming of these first abstract pictures was matched by extraordinary developments in other spheres. Sound poetry, non-narrative dance, and atonal music developed in parallel with pictures that no longer pictured; each jettisoned the weight of convention… Inventing Abstraction explores the productive relationships among artists and composers, dancers and poets, in establishing a new modern language for the arts.” Artists of all art forms who would transform and, “… fundamentally shape artistic practice in the century that followed, needed each other and a worldwide network emerged… sweeping across nations and across media.”

It’s been my experience that I can be affected by the ideas of others even when I may not be aware of their influence. One personal example is the profound effect the Russian Avant-Garde has had on my thinking and designs even though, until recently, I’d never heard of them.

In one form or another I’ve been exposed to their work for decades, mostly in advertising and design. And just as have many of the artists in the MoMA show, I believe they have touched my art in profound ways. Working with stripped down shapes and geometrics, the words, “Simplify, simplify, simplify,” are always present in my mind when I paint.

The Russian Avant Garde and several of its artists are prominent in the MoMA show.

Not featured in the show is a group of important abstract artists that have also greatly influenced my work. The Taos Moderns as they were called, didn’t emerge until the early 1940s, well outside the time frame of MoMA’s focus.

According to  The Harwood Museum in Taos, New Mexico,”The 1940s was an important transition period for the Taos art community. A group of modernist artists arrived who would set a new artistic course for a generation. Following World War II, Taos became an important crossroads in contemporary American art, a place where the influences of European and American modernism came together. Artists from New York and San Francisco, the cradles of post-war abstract painting, found in Taos a conducive place to work devoid of the distractions of the big cities. Many of the modernist artists arrived in Taos… as if inexplicably drawn to the town’s inherently creative atmosphere.”

Beatrice Mandelman is one of my favorite Toas Moderns.

She has influenced my work more than I realized, a debt that became clear only recently when I dipped back into a book on her art. In it, she notes that “… the land of New Mexico makes it possible to be an abstractionist,” and I know she is right. I was a committed realist painter until I visited Truchas, New Mexico for the first time—a single trip that shifted my perspective and transformed my art from realism to abstraction forever.

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Mandelman is undoubtedly alluding to more than just the magnificent vistas of New Mexico—its mountains, valleys, barrancas, mesas, and canyons all offered up at once beneath a shimmering light and vast sky. She is also speaking to the land’s intangibles: its power, its energy, and the palpable spirit it embodies. When you mix that essence with the cries of the hawk, the raven, the lark, and the coyote, this place comes alive. It becomes a character in our lives—a friend we walk within and live upon. This profound connection is what allows me to be an abstractionist. If Bea were sitting here with me today, I think she would look at me and say, “Exactly!”

An essential catalyst for art—one that has sustained creators through the ages and fueled the very birth of abstraction—is a dealer who truly believes in the work. This support cannot be minimized. I have often said that Bill Franke, owner of Hand Artes Gallery here in Truchas and my own dealer, loves artists just as much as he loves art. Whenever we bring in new work, he is there, as enthusiastic as a child on Christmas morning. He loves this landscape, its heritage, and its singular beauty so deeply that he always, instinctively, understands what we are endeavoring to honor in our work. He gets it, and he gets us. Bill then practices his own form of art by curating diverse creators—modernist alongside traditional, abstract beside realist—arranging them throughout the many rooms of his gallery in a way that beautifully showcases us all. It is no small feat.

Here is Bill standing in one of the gallery rooms, showcasing my work alongside Kim Moss’s. Side by side, our pieces offer two very different artistic expressions of what it truly means to live on this land.

Here, Bill mixes my older work with the new. He deeply loves to show an artist’s provenance and cringes whenever I talk of painting over an older canvas.

Above the piano, he has hung a recent seven-foot painting, believing it deserves the entire wall to itself.

Here, he displays one of my newer pieces alongside the mysterious and moving work of Sheila Keefe.

I create my paintings under the profound influence of the rich tradition of those who went before me. I understand, now, that these works were only made possible by the sacrifices of cultural revolution—by great artists who courageously broke new ground.

It is almost as though I have breathed in their struggles, and some part of them now dwells within me.

It is almost as though I have breathed in their struggles, and some part of them now dwells within me.

I believe those pioneering artists live on, not only in the masterworks they left behind, but in the creations of those of us who call ourselves abstractionists today. The ground they broke so long ago is still bearing fruit.

Love to you all,

Jeane

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