I had been curious who did the paintings used on the Mad Men sets for Don Draper's old office and the conference room, and I finally remembered to Google it. I had been wondering if they were by a well known Modern artist who I just could not place, but it turns out they are by someone who did them in the last ten years or so. Her work is often used on film and TV sets.
Abstract hmmm
I'm new here so at the risk of offending abstract art lovers, here's what I think about this style. If I look at it and say to myself "I could fool around and probably paint something like that myself" because it's actually pretty simple or basic experimentation, then I dismiss it as fine art. The supporting point is "It's not just me but a ton of other people could probably experiment and paint something essentially the same as well". Abstract art is vernacular perhaps to the mid century and modern way of thinking. If it doesn't really break new ground it's the same same same ol stuff - modern folk art perhaps, but not fine art.
flat color
Hi there:
Actually the colors are quite vivid, although they are mixed, and not super saturated. The paint application is thick, I was exploring surface texture, and using only palette knife to apply the paint.
I don't know if you based your comments on the image from the post, or went to my site. I sure hope the image on my site appears higher contrast to you. On my monitor, it looks accurate, but we all know how images can differ from one monitor to another.
Ha
Having been to art school I'm always a little wary of non-representational painting. It seems to me that those people who are really GOOD at it could also be very good at representation.
It also seems like people 'fall' into non-rep painting simply because they suck at representation.
A friend who collects 17th -18th century art is fond of joking: "the focus on skill level reached its zenith in the late 19th century...and thats how Abstract Expressionism was born."
I regard the appreciation of ...
I regard the appreciation of Modern Design and Modern/Non-representational Art as being one and the same -- insofar as both are an appreciation of the design elements mentioned by Spanky: Space, Line, Color, Shape, Texture, Form, and Value. If you appreciate Composition and Form for their own sake, why would it be even remotely important for an art work to represent or depict something?
lucifersum
The inverse can be just as true, though---just because someone is good at drawing the human figure doesn't mean he is also an ace at composition.
I find I'm drawn to the same type of composition and color palette whether it's representational or abstract art. Put that in yer pipe an' smoke it!
figurative vs. abstract
Since this discussion occurs under/about my painting I'll throw in my two cents. I attended Queens College during its heyday as a figurative art school. I studied painting with Louis Finkelstien, Gabriel Laderman and Rosemarie Beck,and figurative sculpture with Richard M. Miller. I worked hard, aced my undergrad studies there, and learned more than I can say, and loved painting portraits, landscape and still life. And I still love figurative art, though I tend to gravitate toward the French Intimists and Post Impressionists in what I like to look at. When I started to work in abstraction while working on my MFA, I found it to be equally challenging, maybe even more so, since I had to invent my "motifs" rather than have nature provide them for me. Abstract painting is something I continually work to be better at, it constantly challenges me to analyze, feel, observe and learn.
I hate the argument that abst...
I hate the argument that abstract is easier than figurative. Do anything well is difficult. It may be easier to emulate it and fool an aesthetic illiterate, but that doesn't mean its easy to do masterfully.
As a bass player I get, "Isn't the bass easier than the guitar" all the time. It's irritating. Sure it's easy to play one note root lines. You might even train a monkey to do that. But to play an inspiring original bass line, often on the spot, is a different story. I believe all musical instruments are equal in difficulty if the goal is to be great.
Same.
I think this argument is...
I think this argument is happening just a little to late. Come on people, if you can't appreciate abstraction then shut up and keep it to yourself. If you are interested in modernism in any way and close yourself off to abstraction then what about modernism are you really embracing? In all types of work, there is good and bad and much in between but if one judges the quality of a painting by the visual relationship to it's subject the whats the point anyway? When photography was being developed in the nineteenth century artists were faced with a challenge, come on people, I know you can meet it now.
there is a difference
There is a distinct difference between the funcionalism that pushed modern furniture and the abstraction that pushed modern art. Furniture has a purpose and most of the modernists accepted that it's form was secondary to that purpose. (or at least had to synergize with that purpose)
Sure, Corb and a Mies were interested in pure geometric forms but even they had to cede to the human form in places.
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