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Crash!


The vessel was swept about for days and days, the kelp forest tugging and pulling the boat along with the currents.  The crew had the worst case of sea sickness you could imagine. They had given up trying to maintain control of the boat and they drifted haplessly at the whim of the sea. The Jenni Dog captain was gacking over the side of the boat (yes they are both breathing under water and sailing on top of the water at the same time—IT'S JUST A STORY) when she was thrown overboard by a violent crash.


The captain awoke to find herself and the boat crumpled on a rocky shore. She shook the water from her fur and trotted over to the boat. Most of the crew survived, but there was another Jenni Dog she didn't recognize. A stowaway? On her ship? Well, she couldn't worry about that at the moment. "Surviving this situation is tantamount!"

She assembled a reconnaissance party while the other Jenni Dogs worked to repair the tears in the ship with lots of Scotch tape. The pack climbed over rocks and enormous slabs of broken concrete. It quickly became apparent that they were not the first dogs to set foot on this land. As they climbed the rubble, evidence of the island's previous inhabitants emerged. Rusty pieces of electronics mingled with broken bits of sculpture and pottery. It seemed oddly familiar, though they had never been here before. At the crest of a mound of rocks they were stopped by an awe inspiring and frightening sight—the largest dog they had ever seen. The beast towered over them like a sphinx, neither moving nor making a sound.


Classic humor

Oh, dear. It looks as if someone sent themselves to the brig, after all. This is the loyal first mate. She and the captain have been the best of friends for ages. Oh, the pranks! One time she put fake dog poop by the captain's desk. Bad captain! What a laugh they had over that one. Stealing the sea charts and throwing them overboard, while hilarious at the time, didn't have the lasting humor she'd hoped for. Now look at their situation. Doomed! I wonder what happened to that scout...


I'm my toughest critic. Wait, no I'm not.

Well, no one volunteered to walk the plank. Darn! Why won't this crew cooperate?! Just as the captain is devising some other form of voluntary self-punishment for the mutinous crew, the ship gets sucked into a massive tangle of sea weed.



Mutinous Mondays!

Uh-oh! The captain found the cache of missing biscuits, overheard the grumbling and noticed the poisonous sideways glances. "Enough! There will be no mutiny on my shipeven if it does happen to be Mutiny Monday! Who wants to walk the plank?" 


Tribute to Maurice Sendak

Sheila Newbery, I/Eye: On Photography, introduced me to Maurice Sendak's book Higglety Pigglety Pop! or There Must be More to Life early this week. Like everyone else, I knew him for Where the Wild Things Are. Very strangely, Maurice passed away just a few hours after Sheila told me about this particular book. Higglety Pigglety Pop! or There Must be More to Life is about a discontented little dog named Jennie who believes that there is more to life than what she already has. She eats everything in her path, and she wants to be the leading lady in a play. However, she must gain experience before she can become the leading lady. After all, there must be more to life than having everything.




Jennie stuffing a baby in a bag. You have to read the book yourself to know why.

 
It's all true, folks.




Look what the Jenni Dog dragged in!

Here's something the Jenni Dogs dregged from the sea floor today. What could it possibly be?


When More is More

Bernard Chaet: When More is More by New American Paintings
Contributor: Jenni Higginbotham 
May 8, 2012, 8:30 am

LewAllen Contemporary’s exhibition of paintings by American artist Bernard Chaet (b. 1924) features work from the 1960’s to the present. Keeping with LewAllen Contemporary’s penchant for expressive painters, this work is very formal and concerned almost exclusively with the materiality of paint on a surface. Known best for his landscape paintings, the subject matter of Chaet’s work at the gallery includes beaches, sea bathers, rocky coves, harbors clogged with boats, stormy horizons and a smattering of still lifes. His work challenges and celebrates the representational power of paint. A gushy slab of burnt sienna is a cloud on the sea’s horizon. Oblong slathers of cadmium orange are rocks on a shore. 

Bernard Chaet | Rocky Shore, 2006, oil on canvas, 32 x 32 inches, Courtesy LewAllen Contemporary

For over 60 years Chaet has pushed the traditional logic of representational painting. He allows himself to smush around too much white—muddy the colors and mix paint directly on the canvas. Some of his recently completed paintings were begun in the 90’s, so conventional wisdom such as “don’t overwork it” have little clout with Chaet. His paintings have a sort of sophisticated clumsiness to them with thick outlines and bloated forms (imagine Philip Guston painting a J.M.W. Turner seascape). Their surfaces are substantially built with gobs of oil paint whipped up like cake batter.

Bernard Chaet | The Sun, detail, oil on canvas, 32 x 38 inches
One particularly successful work is Burnt Sienna Sky. It is a simple image of the sea with a billowing burnt sienna and yellow ocher storm cloud at the horizon. A few chunky rocks lend visual weight to the bottom of the canvas. Despite the numerous layers of paint, Burnt Sienna Sky has a sense of immediacy that belies the time taken to produce it. In fact, it took him seven years to finish (1999-2006). Taking a long time to capture a fleeting moment is not unknown to most oil painters, but Chaet might take it to levels seldom reached. We can only guess how he knows when he’s finished a painting.

Bernard Chaet | Burnt Sienna Sky, 1999-06, oil on canvas, 30 x 37.75 inches, Courtesy LewAllen Contemporary

Bernard Chaet | Burnt Sienna Sky, detail, 1999-06, oil on canvas, 30 x 37.75 inches
Another particularly commanding piece is a small oil painting titled 3 Bathers. A testament to Chaet’s long-term love affair with the ocean and its paraphernalia, this painting was made in 1988. This painting is  selective compared to the excess of most of his work. The thickness of paint is fairly insubstantial by comparison. The bathers are awkwardly perched side by side (sardine style) on what appears to be a tilting chunk of concrete, the horizon of the sea just beyond them. The bathers are painted in varying shades of yellow ocher with odd raw sienna and pthalo blue shadows. If you try to bring realistic notions of gravity to the image, the block of concrete appears as if it might slide backward at any moment, taking the poor bathers with it. However, the awkwardness of the composition is as important to the image as the bathers are.

Bernard Chaet | 3 Bathers, 1988, oil on canvas, 14 x 8 inches, Courtesy LewAllen Contemporary
Chaet doesn’t concern himself with representing this world in all its weight and texture. He represents paint through the subject matter. Representation is an excuse to arrange paint in a particular way. The beach scenes and landscapes are appealing in a rather generic way, but the paint quality is irreverent and indulgent. What keeps these paintings from being run-of-the-mill is the earnest and unapologetic way Chaet deviates from the physical reality of his subjects. The subject is the starting point, and the painting becomes increasingly self-referential thereafter.

Bernard Chaet | FROM LEFT: Beach Party, 2006, oil on canvas, 8 x10 inches | Provincetown, 2008, oil on canvas, 8 x10 inches | 3 Bathers, 1988, oil on canvas, 14 x 8 inches | Bather, 1968, oil on canvas, 8 x 10 inches | Bather II, 2004-05, oil on canvas, 8  x 10 inches
View more of Bernard Chaet’s oil paintings here.

Jenni Dogs don't know it's not bacon!

Cap'n! Another ship! The Jenni Dogs sail right up to it only to discover that its crew is a very scary wolf in sheep's clothing. He still obviously looks like a wolf, so they don't know who he thinks he's fooling. The Jenni Dog captain says, "Well, he is a relative. Maybe he'll help us! Excuse me, Captain. Where is land?"

"Yarrrr! I'm nothin' but a sheepish sailor. Baaaaaaaaaaah."

"Okay?"

"Wouldn't you like to come in for some Beggin' Strips?"

"You KNOW I want Beggin' Strips! I don't know it's not bacon! On the other hand, I don't like how you're drooling and staring at my left ear. We'll just be on our way."

Sorry, Jenni Dogs. No luck this time! I bet land is close, though.

For Science!

This inbred-looking Jenni Dog is a scientist—a naturalist, if you will.


She scoops up various objects from the sea with a large net and makes observational drawings from them. Sure, having paws hampers these activities, but Jenni Dogs are nothing if not persistent. Let's look at what she's dragged up today!




I know that smell.

Okay okay, here's a Jenni Dog! You can have a good weekend now! This particular Jenni Dog has been stealing biscuits from the kitchen and covertly selling them to the other scallywags. Since the captain led them into nothingness, rations have been skimpy. I smell mutiny. It smells like biscuits.


A Very Belated Tribute to Leonora Carrington


Leonora Carrington, an intriguing and often under-appreciated Surrealist artist, passed away in Mexico City last year at the age of 94. When she died I found out that she was also a novelist.  Who knew?!  I picked up her books at the library, and they certainly maintain their Surrealist roots.  With illustrations by Carrington and Max Ernst, The House of Fear is reminiscent of The Dream Life of Balso Snell by Nathanael West, except that Carrington puts significantly less emphasis on the anus of a giant horse—"0 Anus Mirabilis!"








Close-hauled


Rebecca Shore at Eight Modern

Here is my first blog post for New American Paintings. I'm excited to write reviews for them—they are a fantastic publication. The original post is here!

ALL IN ONE: PAINTINGS BY REBECCA SHORE
by New American Paintings
 

In conjunction with an exhibition at Corbett vs. Dempsey in Chicago, Eight Modern Gallery (Santa Fe, New Mexico), will show the paintings of Rebecca Shore (NAP #41) until May 5. This two-gallery exhibit, titled All in One, features about 50 paintings, 23 of which are at Eight Modern.

Installation shot

All in One can be viewed as two bodies of work. One group of paintings features arrangements of absurd silhouettes and shapes on a flat ground color. Her color combinations are mostly neutrals and hues within a single color family with an occasional primary red or celadon green shape to break up the regularity of the composition. The shapes are evenly spaced with an inch or so between each object. They are arranged formally the way one might organize a collection of seashells or butterflies. The viewer is meant to consider each shape and its formal relationship to the other images in the painting. Each shape, whether it be a figure from Chinoise wallpaper or an uninterpretable blob traced from a TV screen-shot, has to meet the painting’s organizational standard. The game is to figure out what the organizing principle might be.

Rebecca Shore | 2011-01, 2011, oil on canvas on panel, 11 x 14 inches, Photo courtesy of Eight Modern Gallery

Rebecca Shore | 2010-10, 2010, oil on canvas, 30 x 45 inches, Photo courtesy of Eight Modern Gallery
In the interview section of the exhibition catalog, Shore says, “I try to make an arrangement where things relate to one another in a way that allows you to experience them without being confused[...] You’re urged to make relationships through form, but your questions about identity are often not answered.”

Rebecca Shore | 2011-16, 2011, distemper on panel, 31 x 25 inches, Photo courtesy of Eight Modern Gallery
The other paintings in the exhibition are evocative of maps, networks or alien motherboards—some sort of navigational or technological device. Once again, Shore relies on found and manipulated imagery to create these paintings. They are almost entirely linear and abstract geometric shapes, although the occasional representational image finds its way into the work. There is a similar level of absurdity to these paintings. On one hand, the work invites the viewer to interpret the formal relationships and fit the pieces into neat categories. However, the seemingly random imagery resists identification, toying with our general acceptance of organizational standards. Before standardization occurs, the process of organization is personal and meaningful. Sometimes, it is quite arbitrary.

Rebecca Shore | 2009-20-G, detail, 2009, gouache on paper, 14 x 10 inches
Shore’s process is rooted in an intellectual framework, but the paintings are also traditionally beautiful objects. A nuanced handling of the materials is apparent in the subtle brushwork and delicate variations of paint transparency. These works are made with a variety of media: gouache, oil, distemper (a paint using rabbit skin glue as the binder), acrylic, and egg tempera with casein. These subtleties are appealing, but her technique is not so lush that it detracts from the conceptual push/pull of the imagery. Shore manages to balance cool and detached humor with a genuine fondness for the formal qualities of painting. She clearly loves sifting through a variety reference materials until she finds a combination that intuitively make sense to her. This work is worth seeing and spending some time with. View more of the work online at http://www.eightmodern.net/ and http://www.corbettvsdempsey.com/.

Rebecca Shore | 2011-15, detail, 2011, distemper on panel, 31 x 25 inches

Stowaway

This poor stowaway sure is regretting her decisions. Stuck below deck, she can't even experience the sweet ocean breeze. She just misses her own bed and getting to stick her head out of the car window. Hopefully that silly captain will find the lost sea chart and they can be on their way.





Something a little bit more serious

Here is a drawing I finished a few months ago. This image sets the stage for the rest of my work in the Out of Place show.


Tempest
Graphite and white charcoal on panel
9 x 12 inches