Ree Morton - Post Minimalism Art

Ree Morton (August 3, 1936 – April 30, 1977) was an American visual artist who was closely associated with the postminimalist and feminist art movements of the 1970s.
Ree Morton was born on August 3, 1936 in Ossining, New York. A mother of three and the former wife of a navy officer, Morton lived a relatively nomadic life and began her artistic practice as a hobby through drawing. She decided to become a full-time artist in the late 1960s, receiving a BFA from the University of Rhode Island in 1968 and an MFA from the Tyler School of Art at Temple University in 1970.Morton worked in a variety of mediums including sculpture, drawing and installation.Morton deployed "confrontational innocence," as described by art historian Lucy Lippard, and humor in her sculptures that referenced everyday decorative forms such as curtains, ruffles and swags.Morton herself described her work as "light and ironic on serious subjects without frivolity."Her piece Bake Sale (1974), for instance, was spurred on by a male faculty member at the Philadelphia College of Art who suggested that women on the faculty should stick to bake sales. Formally, Bake Sale (which features a comically low table covered with cakes and pastries against a wall of Celastic bows) typifies the playful interrelationships of objects Morton sought to create in her work. Curator Marcia Tucker describes Morton's work as "unusual in its totality; it incorporates painting, sculpture, real and crafted objects, natural and artificial materials. The work is intelligent without being intellectual, narrative without being literary and ironic without being whimsical. Its multiplicity, contradictory and slightly perverse nature, its response to natural forms and its sources in primitive human phenomena result in a unique sculptural mode." Morton's art frequently combined an interest in poetry, language, and semiotics.Wikipedia

Irving Penn - Artistic Photography

Irving Penn (June 16, 1917 – October 7, 2009)was an American photographer known for his fashion photography, portraits, and still lifes. Penn's career included work at Vogue magazine, and independent advertising work for clients including Issey Miyake and Clinique. His work has been exhibited internationally and continues to inform the art of photography.Penn was among the first photographers to pose subjects against a simple grey or white backdrop and he effectively used this simplicity. Expanding his austere studio surroundings, Penn constructed a set of upright angled backdrops, to form a stark, acute corner. Subjects photographed with this technique included Martha Graham, Marcel Duchamp, Pablo Picasso, Georgia O'Keeffe, W. H. Auden, and Igor Stravinsky.

Photography

Andrzej Szewczyk - Contemporary Polish Art

Andrzej Szewczyk (1950 - 2001) - Polish contemporary artist, who works in painting, sculpture, drawing and creating environments. Szewczyk studied art education at the Silesian University in Cieszyn. He lived and worked for the rest of his life in the nearby village of Kaczyce Górne. In his work he strove for a "neutralization of painting", which he often pursued in extensive cycles with unusual techniques. 

Albert Stadler - Color Field

" Albert Stadler was a leading figure in the rise of color abstraction in the mid-1960s, addressing the nature of the optical experience in art. . In the catalogue for Albert Stadler’s first solo exhibition held at Bennington College in 1962, he stated that he saw his canvases as invitations “for the viewer to participate in events, in the activity of color and the relativity of space.” For Stadler, “space . . . and the “to illuminate and elucidate all parts of a painting,” while allowing viewers the opportunity to find their own way through an image. Creating both hard-edge and more ethereal paintings, Stadler united directions in Color Field and Minimalist art, often bridging the gap between the intellectual and sensual and the conceptual and spiritual......Born in New York City, Stadler attended the University of Pennsylvania and received his BFA from the University of Florida, Gainesville, in 1950. His first solo exhibition was held in 1962 at Bennington College, Vermont; it was among the important shows of modernist art organized at the college by art department director Paul Feeley.."(wsimag.com)

 

Cindy Geraert

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Ralph Hotere - Black Paintings

"Ralph Hotere was an important Maori painter and sculptor. Known for his minimal Black paintings, composed of simple bands or crosses of color laid over dark backgrounds. “There are very few things I can say about my work that are better than saying nothing,” the artist said. Born Hone Papita Rakura Hotere in 1931 in the Northland Region of New Zealand, he was very politically active and used his paintings as a platform for his message. A documentary, called Hotere, about his art and work, was released in 2001. The artist died on February 24, 2013 in Dunedin, New Zealand."(artnet.com)
The themes of the black paintings extended to later works, notably the colossal Black Phoenix (1984–88), constructed out of the burnt remains of a fishing boat. This major installation incorporates the prow of the boat flanked by burnt planks of wood. Other planks form a pathway leading the prow. Each plank has had a strip laid bare to reveal the natural wood underneath beneath. Several of the boards are inscribed with a traditional Maori proverb, Ka hinga atu he tete-kura haramai he tete-kura ("As one fern frond (person) dies - one is born to take its place"). A slight change has been made in the wording of the proverb, replacing haramai (transfer, pass over) to ara mai (the path forward), possibly indicating the cleared pathway of bare wood in front of the boat's burnt prow. The work measures 5m by 13m by 5.5m. Politics were entwined in the subject matter of Hotere's art from an early stage. Alongside the Black Paintings series, which continued until not long before his death. Hotere's political works also continued. When Aramoana, a wetland near his Port Chalmers home, was proposed as the site for an aluminium smelter, Hotere was vocal in his opposition, and produced the Aramoana series of paintings. Similarly, he produced series protesting against a controversial rugby tour by New Zealand of apartheid-era South Africa (Black Union Jack) in 1981, and the sinking of the Greenpeace flagship Rainbow Warrior (Black rainbow) in 1985. More recently, his reactions to Middle-East politics resulted in works such as Jerusalem, Jerusalem and This might be a double cross jack. Wikipedia