Charline von Heyl (born 1960) is a German artist best known for her abstract painting. She also works with drawing, printmaking, and collage. She lives and works in New York and Marfa, Texas, together with her husband and fellow painter Christopher Wool.
“Art is not to be understood by the mind but by the heart. If we go back to its origin, painting is expressed in color and form by the heart, and it should never be limited to a world of reflected forms captured by visual sense. Therefore, expression of the heart through color and forms separated from color and form in the real world is that true realm of painting. I will for the time call this type of work the ‘lyrique’.” -Koshiro Onchi
His many influences there helped direct his course of study and his career path. Founder Lazlo-Nagy had just stepped down and the new director, Serge Chermayeff, recognized something special in this new student and committed to his education as an architect. Krises met famed artist Mondrian and developed friendships with Gyorgy Kepes, who founded the Center for Advanced Visual Studies at MIT; Martin Rosenzweig, noted graphic designer; and Harold Cohen the distinguished designer and architect.
Continue reading HAROLD KRISEL, MID-CENTURY HARD-EDGE ABSTRACTION
Richter 858 is an album by Bill Frisell of improvised music inspired by the paintings of German artist Gerhard Richter and performed by Frisell, Eyvind Kang, Jenny Scheinman and Hank Roberts. The album was originally released as part of a limited-edition volume of Gerhard Richter’s paintings which also contained poetry and essays by Dave Hickey and Klaus Kertess inspired by the artist’s work. The album was rereleased in 2005 on the Songlines label with a CD-ROM with MP3 music to accompany a slide show of the paintings, which can also be found reproduced in the booklet. Continue reading RICHTER 858, A Slideshow, Bill Frisell,composer/Gerhard Richter, artist
Another chapter of the great AB EX NY series of short videos discussing the painting techniques of key NY Abstract Expressionist artists. Produced for the MoMA exhibition: Abstract Expressionist New York, October 3, 2010–April 11, 2011
Filmed by Plowshares Media
Images courtesy of the Estate of Ad Reinhardt/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York; and The Museum of Modern Art, New York
Photos by John Loengard/Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images
Music by Chris Parrello
Chris Parrello, Ian Young, Kevin Thomas, Ziv Ravitz
Ellsworth Kelly’s earliest works of art were created in service to the United States, as part of a special camouflage unit in France during World War II. Kelly and his fellow artist-soldiers were tasked with fooling the Germans—using rubber and wood to construct fake tanks and trucks—into thinking the multitudes of Allied troops on the battlefield were much larger than reality. While this seems an unconventional early training for an artist, it proved a fitting one for Kelly.
“He was able to understand that there were these realities that for most of us are camouflaged,” says Virginia Mecklenburg, chief curator at the Smithsonian American Art Museum. “He would evoke those realities—a distinct feel of gravity, or the physics of weight and momentum that we rarely think about in tangible terms. He was able to get that across.” Continue reading ELLSWORTH KELLY, hard edge art legend
Alex Couwenberg’s images reflect the cultural trappings of his Southern California roots;
“From Los Angeles, Couwenberg’s work references and suggests the aesthetic associated with mid-century modernism, car culture, skateboards, and surfboards. Not to leave out, paying homage to the historical styles of post-war art making associated with Los Angeles and southern California throughout the 1950’s, 60’s, and 70’s. Couwenberg’s paintings give a nod towards the Hard-edge abstractionists, the finish fetish, and the light and space artists. Not content to replicate, he uses the sensibility of Eames-era design and hard-edge geometric abstraction as points of departure for creating paintings. His process, an additive and reductive series of moves and passes, creates multilayered environments that are deep and sensual. He harnesses these ideas into harmonious results, reflecting the visual landscape of his environment.” -bio from mana, the film’s website
At The Claremont Graduate School, Couwenberg was mentored by hard-edge abstraction legend Karl Benjamin whose influence is apparent, albeit as a point-of-departure. Couwenberg has built an dense and extensive vocabulary on the bedrock of the clean, pure and reductive geometric language that Benjamin and his peers utilized during their mid-century era.
Morris Louis Bernstein was one of the earliest exponents of what became known as Color Field painting in the 1950s. While he was living in Washington D.C. he, along with Kenneth Noland, Gene Davis, Tom Downing, Howard Mehring Anne Truitt and Hilda Thorpe and others, formed an art movement that is known today as the Washington Color School. Ultimately Morris would become one of the leading figures of Color Field painting along with his peers Kenneth Noland and Helen Frankenthaler and Jules Olitski. Continue reading MORRIS LOUIS, Washington Color School Abstraction/Color Field Painting, Pt2
Frederick Hammersley was perhaps the most critically acclaimed of the first generation west coast hard-edge painters. Having been one of the four participants in the landmark Four Abstract Classicists exhibition in 1959, his place within the history of the art movement was firmly established. The show’s organizer, Jules Langsner coined the term “hard edge” in his essay for the catalogue: Continue reading Frederick Hammersley: West Coast Hard Edge Abstraction, Pt3
The Incubator 