October 11, 2007

The story behind the abstraction
Does NH go for the abstract, and what the heck is it, anyway?
By Heidi Masek hmasek@hippopress.com

When you head into a New Hampshire gallery, pass by a summer art show or wander into a gift shop or café that hangs local work, you might often see likenesses of landscape or seascape — a New England steeple or a winding road. Every now and then, you might happen upon some paint on a canvas without recognizable form and wonder what it is. There’s a documentary in theaters now called My Kid Could Paint That, about a family whose toddler gets caught in the debate of “what is art?”

So what is abstract, and why do examples of it seem to be few and far between in New Hampshire?

Can you dig it?
“I think what makes it attractive is that it is, in and of itself, a conversation piece,” said Tim Glenday at the opening for “Abstract Expressionism in America,” coordinated by Meri Goyette at Hampshire First Bank in Nashua. Goyette, a longtime arts patron, had thought Nashua needed more exposure to the style.

Traditional art might decorate a room but doesn’t usually become a focal point, Glenday said. But an abstract piece hung in your house can get people asking questions. Glenday has helped produce Art Walk Nashua.

The definition of
“The clear definition of what abstraction is, is to take something from reality and make it simpler,” said abstract artist Michael Roundy, a Kimball Jenkins School of Art instructor.

“It’s the question of the ages. You’re asking the question of ‘What is art?’ essentially.”

In the past, art has been defined as representing something well, but the concept evolved to mean almost anything. Roundy pointed to “ready-made” art, like a urinal that Marcel Duchamp signed “R. Mutt” in 1917 and called “Fountain.” It was rejected from an exhibit.

“It’s really in the eye of the beholder, I guess,” Roundy said. Artists place objects in situations that might add to the experience of looking at the object or show it in a different light, he said.

“I think that an abstract, for me, is still required to obey the laws of having good composition, good value and strong colors,” Don Reed said. The Merrimack painter has moved from traditional, representational work to his own “semi-abstract” style, which he calls fragmentalism.

Andy Moerlein, sculptor and art teacher at the Derryfield School, gave a lesson.

“The best, most exact paintings in the world are heartless and soulless if they don’t have [something else] to offer intellectually,” he said.

Abstract art usually has a concept or reason for being, which the viewer can sense or can be told. However, sometimes the work is addressing a problem only the artist knows, and the artist is “oblivious to the viewer,” Moerlein said. The artist usually has explored their subject intellectually before the final creation, he said.

Pablo Picasso spent months on revisions and preparations for “Les Demoiselles d’Avignon” of 1907, which rocked the art world (see moma.org).

Listening to Moerlein, it seems that abstract can be considered fine art if there’s thought and soul and reason behind it.

Transition
Roxanne Labbe created landscape and seascape images for “years and years,” she said.

“First of all, I get bored,” she said about switching from traditional work to new, colorful abstracts.

When she creates an abstract watercolor, augmented with colored pencil, she starts with an idea and expands on it until she’s happy — when it makes sense to her and flows, she said.

“Colors are one of the most important things to me. Otherwise it’s boring,” Labbe said. Labbe’s abstract paintings as well as contemporary colored pencil images are being exhibited at the Wine Studio in Manchester.

Reed’s been painting since he was 12. He had a “very realistic style.” His first real interest in art was in Andrew Wyeth’s work.

“Gradually my work has become less and less detailed. I’ve pretty much abandoned detail altogether,” Reed said. Now, he uses blocks of color and brush stroke to interpret landscape and cityscape.

“It’s really exhilarating for me ... and I think it challenges the viewer,” he said. He said he feels good that he’s broken out of the mold. Sales were good this year, too.

Reed now uses a square tip rather than round brush. He paints upside down using a mirror: “It allows me to pay attention to color, composition and the value instead of what subject is.”

“I really don’t even care what the subject is,” Reed said. He’s working on a series of paintings of the Manchester mills and skyline, and finished a painting of the Margarita’s Restaurant sign in Manchester.

“I like pure abstract, but I still want to focus on subject matter that is recognizable ... I think I’m right on the edge now,” Reed said. He’s interested in nature, as well as how urban landscapes interact with the natural world. “I want to see those things in paintings,” he said. “I think it’s the sense of the real world that stimulates people,” Reed said.

Previte’s oil paintings often show landscapes, sometimes with New England architecture and structures, yet he reports that his style evolved this year.

“Well, I’ve actually come up with a term for it — representational impressionism,” Previte said. He’s added a “more colorful, contemporary flair” to his traditional work.

“Light is really my subject,” Previte said. The “subject” is whatever the light happens to be falling on. “It’s still really going to be all about light. I just love dealing with shadows and contrast,” he said.

“I try not to paint just pretty pictures. I try to paint something that gives the viewer an emotional response,” Previte said.

“I guess it’s just what appeals to me,” Previte said about his choice to paint landscapes, “buildings and barns.” He used to walk through the woods during lunch when he worked at Teradyne.

“You generally paint what you’re drawn to,” Previte said. “Fortunately, what has appealed to me has generally appealed to my buying public.”

Previte said he has seen that New Hampshire audiences are more interested in traditional rather than abstract work. Yet that might be changing a little, as people move to the state.

Pretty pictures
Cynthia Kyriax-Burney, a former English teacher in Nashua, brought up the question of whether New Hampshire is too focused on traditional New England art at the opening for Abstract Expressionism in America. Glenday pointed out that there are abstract artists who live and work here but show in New York. He felt the Currier doesn’t have a focus on abstract, and that the lack of large universities beyond UNH in Durham also means that the state has few long-term exhibits.

Wine Studio owner Maureen Adams showcases a local artist each month, but only one other besides Labbe has shown abstract, she said. She’s heard that area artists send their abstract work to Boston galleries or sometimes Portsmouth.

“Well, I don’t think the state is ... culturally forward, yet,” Adams said. She said she hasn’t seen much push to experiment, except perhaps in BFA work at the NH Institute of Art.

Labbe is currently the only member of the East Colony Fine Art Gallery in Manchester who creates abstract work, her fellow members said.

In some ways, “working in an abstract style can be more difficult in the marketplace,” said Susan Strickler, director of the Currier Museum of Art in Manchester. The museum has been closed for a major expansion, and now that the new building is taking shape, there’s been some negative feedback regarding the modern architectural style of the expansion and the recently installed contemporary outdoor sculpture (including in the Publisher’s Note in the Sept. 27 Hippo). The 35-foot Mark di Suvero piece includes his customary industrial I-beams and will be a focal point of the new entry plaza when the museum reopens in 2008.

“It was intended to be really a beacon to people approaching the building, that this is an art museum,” Strickler said. It is meant to reflect the museum’s mission of bringing work by important artists to the region, she said.

“One can look at the Mark di Suvero piece and say, yes, it’s abstract,” Strickler said. Others may see references to a human or animal figure, she said.

“There are differences of opinion on everything,” Strickler said. The museum spent a lot of time with Ann Beha Architects, planning. Once the final details are finished and landscaping is in, Strickler thinks, the “appearance of the building will coalesce,” and the “ascetic intentions of the architect will be much more apparent.”

The expansion is meant to be an “interesting piece of architecture in its own time period,” Strickler said. “We didn’t want this to be a piece of architecture that was trying to be something that it wasn’t.”

Perhaps the New Hampshire leaning toward landscapes is a holdover from a tactic of painters past.

Guest curators Roger E. Belson and John J. Henderson worked with the Museum of New Hampshire History for three years putting together “Consuming Views: Art and Tourism in the White Mountains, 1850-1900.” The exhibit and accompanying book and online exhibit outline an era when the “natural wonders” of America were attracting artists and tourists. The artists “often interpreted the White Mountains in ways designed to appeal to and attract tourists and to serve as souvenirs of their mountain visits,” they say. 

Belson said he’s seen a continuation of the tradition of using New Hampshire’s natural landscape as a subject. Besides state plein air painters, there’s a group who call themselves the New Luminists, painting “in a style similar to the Hudson River School,” Belson said.

Evolving
“I think we all go through cutesy stage,” Previte said. “Obviously people capitalize on that.... There’s a very big market.”

To go beyond “cute” you need to be involved in art as you progress, he said. You need to go to museums, read.

On the other hand, it can be tough to experiment with your style if you are trying to making a living.

“There’s always that fear of change,” Previte said. Yet he thinks he’s done better this year than ever before. “There’s a certain mood, a certain emotion to it ... I’m just having more fun with it,” he said.

He also has a theory that the people who like to look at realistic paintings are fascinated by just looking at them — and aren’t necessarily interested in buying them.

“Initially, people are wowed by technique,” Previte said. Yet great technicians might not make a connection with the viewer beyond the remark that a painting looks as detailed as a photograph, he said.

It’s the kind of thing you hear music teachers talk about over and over. You can play the notes perfectly, but there has to be something else.

“With my students, I talk about interpretation versus replication,” Previte said. New students want to replicate subjects but he tells them that perfectly replicating an object that is mediocre or trite results in “the best mediocre or trite painting” ever. He pointed to the impressionists. Monet could create a work of art with a haystack as the subject and Previte has seen a great impressionist painting of a dumpster, he said. It’s not the subject that is important, he said.

“For me, if I paint a barn, I want to render that barn in a landscape so that it has very dramatic lighting ... I don’t want to just paint a barn. I want the barn to be secondary,” Previte said.

“My best customer is the kind of customer who does not need a painting. He buys the painting because he has to have it. Because it’s speaking to him,” Previte said.

Pushing Forward
Kimball Jenkins School of Art in Concord is going in a new direction with its galleries this year, said Ryan Linehan, the school’s director of operations and education.

“We are a teaching gallery.... Because we are not working on selling the artwork we can show just about anything,” he said.

In New Hampshire there are already plenty of venues for landscapes and portraits — “There are other galleries that do that fairly exclusively. The more avant-garde art doesn’t have a solid venue in New Hampshire,” Linehan said.

Linehan hopes that showing contemporary, new, thought-provoking work will attract more people to experience art at Kimball Jenkins. It’s free, by the way.

They just closed an exhibit by Ellen Hazara.

“There was nothing for sale. And it was an amazing installation,” Linehan said. “It was something that you don’t see around here very often. It was simple. It included video, sound, stereograph prints. You are forced to look at everything if you wanted to have some comprehension of what’s going on. You had to spend some time with it. It’s not just looking at a painting. You had to work at it,” Linehan said.

Linehan gave his read on Hazara’s “Common Choreographies”: it’s about cultural ties. Anywhere in the world, some things are the same — like opening a door or a window or making a bed, he said.

Installation art is an experience, he explained. The room, environment or gallery is modified for “visual and auditory experience,” he said.

The school’s next exhibit highlights work by Martin Mugar and Jason Travers. Mugar is an adjunct teacher at Kimball Jenkins.

“He started off as a very realistic painter. If you look at the chronology of his work, he just gets more and more abstract,” Linehan said. Now his signature textural paintings involve “bold dots.” Mugar mixes the paint with a wax medium and pulls the dots off the canvas, sometimes by three or four inches.

Travers is an abstract painter who “explores wonders, dreams, and fears that he draws from the world,” Linehan said.

The gallery is open from 9 a.m. until 4 p.m., Monday, Wednesday and Friday and by appointment at 266 N. Main St., 225-3932. It will also be open for a reception to open the new show Friday, Oct. 12, from 5 to 8 p.m. ?