Saira McLaren, Procession, mixed media on canvas, 60 x 90, 2011

Saira McLaren is on fire in her studio! We had a great studio visit with her, it was awesome to see her new work. Her intense color sense and explorations with bleach and fiber are truly exciting, check out her website on the link page on our homepage. We also discussed the Joan Mitchell book, read one member’s take below. And we selected our next book for our January meeting, The Art of Description: Word into World by Mark Doty. It’s more of an exploration of poetry, but several of us felt it could enrich our own understanding of our work. Check back in January to see what we think!

Joan Mitchell in the studio, photo by Loomis Dean

Okay, let’s be real. I had a little extra pep in my step about selecting this Joan Mitchell biography, because it’s a profile of an artist who also happens to be a woman. I’ve read the De Kooning, the Picasso, what else?  I feel like a lot!

This book had other things going for it though, it just came out last year, it looked definitive (as in over 4oo pages) AND  the book jacket was yellow, just like the Pulitzer Prize-winning De Kooning biography.

Well, I love Joan Mitchell’s paintings, but found this biography of her not on par with her work. Doubtless it takes a lot of work to compile the information and write an account like this but that’s probably the greatest feeling I get from the book, the old critique that it ‘feels like a lot of work.’ Which in the end means it feels like a lot of work to read.

When I sit back and reflect on what I learned about Joan Mitchell as an artist and a person, there is no doubt I have a clearer image of her. In fact, I felt exhausted by Mitchell by the end, as probably many of the people who were subjected to her incisive jibes and inquisitions felt. All the same, I couldn’t help but feeling that as in the case of the therapist who is out-smarted by the patient, Albers was simply not up to the task of writing a compelling memoir of such a complex character.

There are tons of metaphors to describe the difference between doing everything right, and creating something artful, the most appropriate for this book is probably playing all the right notes, without creating a piece that is moving and powerful. Having read the fabulous De Kooning biography, picking up this curiously similar yellow book jacket, I was expecting a read that would be enlightening as well as riveting, as his biography was. Sadly, this was not the case.

But hey, lots of smart people had good things to say about this book, including the reviewers in the New York Times and the New Yorker. However, if you’re interested you should probably see if you can get it at your local library and save yourself the money and shelf space.

-Gina Beavers

The table features zines and editions by Book Club Members. Bottom left is Saira McLaren manning the table and bottom right Carolyn Salas’ concrete bookends.

Amanda B. Friedman

The Art Book Club is excited to announce our participation in the upcoming NY Art Book Fair!

Gina Beavers and Denise Kupfershmidt poster books and t-shirts.

Inna Babaeva’s notebook print.

Stacy Fisher engraved pencils.

Collaborative zines made by Amanda Friedman and Elizabeth Hirsch, and Saira McLaren and Mike Hein.

Fran Holstrom collages.

Saira McLaren posters.

Letha Wilson and Carolyn Salas paperweights.

Unauthorized Artist Biographies by Carrie Pollack, Fran Holstrom and JR Larson, Gina Beavers, Jaime Gecker, Jesse Hamerman, Melissa Brown, Saira McLaren.

We’ve had our eye on this for a while, since it was reviewed in the New York Times. We will meet about it sometime in late October. Not a short book, but it should be interesting. Pick it up and check back with us in October to discuss!

We discussed this book at our July meeting. Our biggest debate was whether Jessica Stockholder is commenting on consumer culture in her work, using as it does, consumer products, sometimes in large quantities. There weren’t too many clues in the text, so the question ultimately became, can an artist’s work comment on something, that the artist may not intentionally be commenting on?

Stockholder touches on it tangentally, when she says, ‘Domesticity is not seen to be as important as work, politics, and intellectual life. We all have domestic lives, men and women. People’s desire to buy and accumulate are tied to domesticity.’ (15)

Other than the issue of consumerism, our discussion hewed pretty close to the text, pointing out interesting excerpts:

She discusses color a lot, discussing David Bachelor’s book ‘Chromophobia:’ how color is associated with the lower class and white with the upper class: ‘Color is not very popular as a place to focus conversation or intellectualize because it’s so difficult to articulate. It’s subjective.’ (19)

She has a lot of interesting ideas about experiencing art and being an artist. She says about an installation where she invited other artists to install works as part of her piece, ‘I think that the way we define success in art requires that the artist be unique, special, different from other people, and for that reason it is difficult to relax and just enjoy the similarities and connections between works of different people.’ (12)

She also asserts, ‘Abstract expressionism was taboo, and it still is even today.’ (13)

On experiencing art, she states, ‘The art (in the white cube) looks beautiful, authoritative, and impressive, but quite separate from you, bigger than a single you.’ (14)

She sums up her process, hinting at something intuitive, ‘…if you come at it from the other direction, insisting that it all makes sense, you miss an opportunity to really take advantage of the bigness of what we are.’ (20)

This is a great book to get more of a handle on her work, which often ‘shifts from picture to object to architectural construction.’ (36)  There are lots of images of work, paired with interesting discussions and interviews. A fast read, but it definitely lays out the body of work clearly and concisely. Not quite a catalog, not quite a biography, it would be great if there were more artist profiles like this.

-Gina Beavers

Artnet

16 Miles of String

Anaba

Art Blog Art Blog

Pictures, L to R by Row:

1. Jonathan Butt

2. Fawn Krieger, Adam Parker Smith, Inna Babaeva

3. Brent Birnbaum

4. Mitchell Wright

5. JJ. Garfinkel

6. Japeth Mennes

7. Matt Miller

8. Jason Hoelscher, audio