Big Apple Art

Terry Winters: Printed Works

Looking at a retrospective collection of any artist will often reveal interesting transitions in his or her work, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s exhibition of New York-based artist Terry Winters’s lithographs, etchings, and prints is no exception.

Winters’ early compositions are abstracted yet resonate with organic forms—the intricate simplicity of biological shapes, cells, and embryos. The compositions are balanced and relaxed; the “messy” aspects of the lines, forms and backgrounds add to the sense that nature may not be perfect or symmetrical, but it is nonetheless elegant and beautiful. The exhibition includes etchings of his sketches of nature, “Field Notes” (1992), which neatly demonstrate the link between the reality he observes and the abstracted work he creates. Botanical and zoological forms are sketched, refined to their crucial elements.

Much of Winters’ graphic work is in the form of exquisitely designed portfolios, each exploring a united theme with significant variations. In the 12-etching “Models for Synthetic Pictures” (1994), which is less objective than his earlier biological drawings, Winters explores geometrical shapes with vivid use of color and relaxed, almost childlike forms. A page of text on Winters’ theory on the components of images describes what element is expressed by each subsequent print. The work maintains the intricacy and complex use of patterning of his early prints, and explores a sense of texture in the colored regions. All strokes are individually visible, reminiscent of an area roughly colored with marker. In “Models” 9, a background composed of fragments of muted yellow, red, and blue is overlaid by circles composed of bright variants of the same colors. The pieces resemble the fragments of a mosaic, and the slices are separated by white lines as in a stained glass composition. The work shows the same kind of motion—a swirling sea of energy—of his early biomorphic work.

Winters’ more recent work has tended to the “electronic,” making visible the inorganic topology of networks and “information matter.” In some ways, the interweaving lines of the work may begin to indicate his confrontation of the legacy of Jackson Pollock. However, Winters’ webs, supposedly representative of an boundless and dynamic “space,” do not lend themselves well to the finite space of the prints. They feel constrained and cluttered, lacking the delicate elegance of his earlier prints. Although the subject matter has three dimensions, the representation limits the sense of depth and adds to the sense of clutter. Unlike his work in biological forms, Winters seems perhaps less familiar with the concept of information space than is necessary to represent it. Along the same lines but more successful are his paintings, on view elsewhere in the permanent collection of the Met, which take the same subject matter to a larger, freer plane.

Here is New York: A Democracy of Photographs

“The island of Manhattan is without any doubt the greatest human concentrate on earth, the poem, whose magic is comprehensible to millions of permanent residents but whose full meaning will always remain illusive,” wrote E. B. White in Here is New York. “Manhattan has been compelled to expand skyward because of the absence of any other direction in which to grow. This, more than any other thing, is responsible for its physical majesty.”

In the wake of Sept. 11, a small gallery space opened in SoHo in an effort to provide another venue for the expression of grief, following in the idea of healing through art. The concept of Here is New York is remarkably simple but equally profound: Anyone—from a snapshot-taking tourist to a professional photographer —can contribute images somehow relevant to the attacks; the images are digitally scanned, reprinted and hung. Anyone can order a printed copy of any image for $25, with profits being donated to relief efforts. The layout of the gallery space reflects the grassroots nature of the project, a truly authentic and original response to a tragedy—photos hang from clotheslines around the room, while the back of the one-room gallery serves as “office” and production room, complete with printers and scanners.

The subjects are as diverse as the city itself: the World Trade Center buildings before, during and after the plane crashes from every imaginable angle; firemen, relief workers, politicians, animals; the makeshift memorials around the site. Some of the most poignant photos are of people reacting to the events at hand—images which capture the shock and the horror as well as the heroic solidarity of rescue workers. Images full of human pain and suffering are equaled by images which show human nature at its fullest and most noble.

The show balances on the fine line between art and “current event” photojournalism. Certainly, some of the photos could stand on their own as photography; but overall this is work that must be seen and contemplated within a set context. The images have meaning because they speak to people affected by a great catastrophe. The concept of the show is perhaps itself art, while the individual photos were mostly not conceived by the original photographer as such but instead serve as a testament to the events.

Here is New York has attracted so much attention—for a while the lines were out the door and down the block—that it may move to a more permanent space in midtown Manhattan, and there are traveling exhibitions throughout the U.S. as well as on their website. It is, in two senses, a “democracy of photographs”—a democratic exhibition about a democracy meeting crisis.

“Here is New York” is still temporarily located at 116 Prince St., New York City. For more information, please visit their website at http://www.hereisnewyork.org.

Mark Rothko: The Realist Years

While Mark Rothko ultimately became famous for his luminous abstract paintings of colored fields, his less well-known early realist work—though fundamentally different—shaped and, in hindsight, foreshadowed what was later to come, an evolution clearly visible in the collection of early works curated by Klaus Kertess at the PaceWildenstein Gallery.

Rothko’s subjects in these early pictures are predominantly people, many in interaction with elements of the city—the subway or the street—and some still lifes. Perhaps best known is “Self Portrait” (1936). Bordered by a rich warm brown, decontextualized background composed of relaxed and blotted brush strokes, the face is minimally painted with deep and intense blue around the eyes, and red accents on the lip and the tie. The expression shows neither contentment nor despair but instead reveals confidence or strength balanced with a reluctance to exhibitionism. The portrait lacks details and the blue circles cloud our ability to connect with the eyes while making us more attracted to and curious about them. The obvious light source in the upper-left accentuates the figure and gives it a radiant glow. Hands clasped, the figure is at once expectant and relaxed, yet has a degree of motion or energy accentuated by the angled body which gives the sense that he is turning.

As beautiful and composed as they are, it is difficult to look at Rothko’s realist works in a vacuum without considering his later abstract work. His use of color and brushwork, particularly in the settings, bears a close resemblance to the colored planes to come. In “Untitled (Subway)” (1937), isolated figures—none of them apparently aware of each other’s presence—sit or stand waiting on a train platform. At right, the tracks narrow and fade into the distance; the sense of space and perspective is remarkable throughout. The painting is composed of rich, warm colors, but its overall feel is brooding and reflective. However, it is equally interesting to look at a small component of the painting—the area with the wall and the columns, for instance, or the central wall of another “Subway” (1937)—and to note the textured variety and depth of his solid blocks of color and the sudden contrast but never brutal or indelicate transition between two color areas.

The Pace exhibition is remarkably successful in revealing and exploring in great depth an often neglected aspect of an artist. While certainly it does illuminate his later work, which is so well known that it informs any consideration of the exhibition, the show presents the diversity, quality, and quantity of Rothko’s figurative work, which perhaps could have become a career in itself had it not been overshadowed by his abstract paintings.

The PaceWildenstein Gallery is located at 32 East 57th St., New York City. The Mark Rothko: Realist Years exhibit closes tomorrow.