beatrice mandelman selected works from the 1960s

BeatRice Mandelman octobeR 15 – novembeR 13, 2010Selected works from the 1960s

Cover detail,

from left to riGHt:

Birds (green and Black #1402),

c. 1960s, Collage with gouache and

pencil on canvas, 23 1/2" x 16"

circles (FormerlY no. 12)

(60-P04), c. 1960s, Casein on

masonite, 48" x 24"

published on the occasion of

the exhibition, "1960s revisited,"

october 15 - November 13, 2010,

curated by Gary Snyder.

© 2010 david richard Contemporary

iSbN 978-0-9827872-3-6

priCe $20.00

130 lincoln avenue, Suite d, Santa fe, Nm 87501 | p (505) 983-9555 | f (505) 983-1284

www.davidrichardContemporary.com | [email protected]

GalleRy DirectoRs

david eichholtz & richard barger

1960s to the mid 1970s: the poetics and problematics of white

excerpt from Beatrice mandelman: taos modernist, University of New mexico press, 1995.

robert Hobbs, the rhoda thalhimer endowed Chair of american art, vCU and visiting

professor, Yale University. © the mandelman-ribak foundation.

in this decade bea mandelman oscillated

between art as social critique and as a sanc-

tuary from current difficulties. at the begin-

ning and the end of the decade she was

making collages that related to the specific

problems of first race relations and then the

war in vietnam. in these works mandelman's

old social realist attitudes reemerged.

"Collage best represents my concern for the

stresses and the shifting, transitory nature of

human experience," the artist has reflected.

"art can be a powerful mirror of the quali-

ties of life." in the early sixties she also made

a few assemblages of found objects that

may have been inspired by the museum of

modern art exhibition entitled the art of

assemblage. She considers her assemblages

as social statements, and even made the fol-

lowing observations about them: "Without

the social statement there is not art. if there's

any truth, it's in the artist's reaction to man's

reaction to the social situation at any par-

ticular moment."

in the intervening years between her two

series of collages, mandelman created sev-

eral series of constructivist works that she

herself has regarded as either social com-

ment or an escape into the radiance of beau-

tiful and satisfying forms. for example, in an

undated typescript, mandelman wrote:

the work iS hard-edged because the world is

hard-edged now. the artist answers the time,

projects, and makes an emotional statement

about the period. it's not a soft feminine

period. the fiestas are over. the celebrants

have gone home. it is time to face reality.

obviously, she was reacting against her

own works of c. 1959—1960 and was creat-

ing pieces that she believed to be in sync

with the changing temper of the times. but

in 1967 mandelman is quoted as saying "that

the 'calm' of the geometric forms is her reac-

tion against the hostile and disturbing cur-

rents that she finds in the world.” Her vacil-

lation between these two attitudes may be

explained in part by a desire to leave mean-

ing open-ended and to trust the unconscious

to be her guide [...]. in 1977, she explained,

"my art is planted in reality....by allowing my

inner being to be free.” the idea that art is a

form of unconscious or intuitive communica-

tion is a legacy that bea inherited from the

abstract expressionists. like them she has

had problems knowing when a work is fin-

ished. [...] mandelman has stated, "the paint-

ing tells me when it’s got it. most of my work

is unfinished."

although mandelman's collages are intended

to be challenging political works of art as

Why choose murder, civil rights and Vietnam

attest, these pieces also participate in the

artist's proclaimed goal to articulate nega-

tive space. Knowing that she was employing

abstract forms that could easily become mere

decoration, bea avoided obvious designs.

"i don't want to impose patterns," the artist

later noted in her informal journal. "i want my

painting to have not pattern but order and

structure underneath—not on top—not what

you see—hidden, covered—but felt." She has

related that the two artists, in her opinion,

who most clearly understand the power and

subtlety of negative space are José de ribera

and Henri matisse.

Working with negative space required con-

trapuntal thinking. the background with

which an artist begins in this kind of art is nei-

ther neutral nor a void. rather it is an already

established presence that must be considered

in relation to the colors and lines, which punc-

ture, divide, and transform it into an entirely

different kind of surface. the contradictory

qualities of presence and absence elicited by

a blank canvas have intrigued mandelman for

several decades, beginning with her paintings

and collages of the early 1960s. the artist

has noted, "i try to paint silence that speaks."

at another time she asked herself the rhe-

torical question, "are my paintings poems

with absent words?" Similar to matisse,

mandelman recognized that the power of the

blank canvas needed to be respected and if

possible enhanced through the creative act.

matisse stated early in his career, "if upon a

white canvas i jot down some sensations of

blue, of green, of red—every new brush stroke

diminishes the importance of the preceding

ones." [...]

detail: Birds (green and Black #1402),

c. 1960s, Collage with gouache and pencil on canvas,

23 1/2" x 16"

While a preference for white develops natu-

rally from mandelman's work of the late

1950s, her use of it in the 1960s is consistent

with the new emphasis on areas of unprimed

and unpainted canvas in the Color field

painting of Helen frankenthaler, morris louis,

and Kenneth Noland and in the reductive aes-

thetic that became known as minimalism.

in many of bea mandelman's works the power

of white in conjunction with a limited palette

is integral to the completed piece. beginning

in the 1960s she often reduces her palette to

primary colors used in conjunction with black

and white. recalling the discipline of many

painters who were members of the american

abstract artists association established in

New York City in 1936 who held mondrian's art

in high regard, mandelman's rigor implies an

interest in retrieving and expanding aspects

of this vanguard current that she had ignored

two decades earlier. the limitations of color

were also a way to analogize her affinities

with ancient, tribal, and folk art while remain-

ing modern. in addition, these brilliant colors

reflect major changes in tribal and folk art,

which has been intensified in the twentieth

century through the use of aniline dyes and

commercial paints. [...]

to the question "Why does the artist choose

to imply meanings through abstraction rather

than depict them directly?" mandelman has

responded enigmatically, "White memories

...the painting should be more like a dream,

disquieting and concealing....i don't preach at

the observer."

but since modernism has often been con-

ceived as an unforgiving style, the radical

amputation of form from narrative mean-

ings often causes the act of interpretation

to assume the features of a snipe hunt in

which both the artist and the audience are

left holding the bag. as mandelman herself

recognized, forms can assume contradic-

tory meanings in abstract art. [...] "i have a

constant dialogue between opposites.”

poised on ambiguity, mandelman's works

at times rest on watersheds of difference.

meanings trail in different directions, bifurcat-

ing content into polar opposites, making one

a mockery of the other, or at the very least an

inverse mirror. too often we expect modernist

art to resolve contradictions and offer solu-

tions that can be described in a discursive

fashion. but what these works of art do best

is to keep the contradictions in suspension

and allow viewers the opportunity to view

them aesthetically. meaning in modernist art

is not subject to straightforward ratiocination

as in philosophy, but is a poetic construction

of possibilities that can easily devolve into

seeming contradictions of slipping signifiers.

Not just propaganda, this art manifests or

symbolizes a range of feelings and is not sim-

ply a vehicle of persuasion.

art may be most effective as a political tool

when it allows us to come to terms with the

ideological construction of reality. Since ideol-

ogies are special ways of masking contradic-

tions according to the needs and attitudes of

specific groups and since artists may be mar-

ginal to their public, ample opportunities exist

for both subtle and blatant contradictions

between the ideologies of artists and their

public. in mandelman's art this rift is mani-

fested formally in terms of her use of white to

bridge a number of binary oppositions includ-

ing presence/absence and space/wall. the

polarities are indicative of unresolved ten-

sions in modern society—tensions which are

exacerbated in mandelman's work because of

her desire to belong to the fashionable realm

3

4

of the international vanguard in which the

major formalist critic of the 1950s and early

1960s Clement Greenberg was champion-

ing Color field painting for its way of forg-

ing an inextricable bond between painting

and support (such as canvas or linen) and for

permitting this support an eloquent role in

the completed work. at the same time that

she wished to keep abreast of changes in the

art world, mandelman wanted to remain true

to her early liberal upbringing and need to

regard humanity as an extended family. these

contradictions in her art function as artistic

koans—contradictions that allow viewers to

come to terms with the contradictory nature

of reality.

although it is impossible to assign a spe-

cific iconographic meaning to the drips in

mandelman's paintings or to the color white

in her art, one can defend their high import

by pointing to the fact that the modernist

style is an elevated discourse even if a mys-

terious and at times confounding one. While

modernists originally intended to distill a host

of associations into an essence that could

be understood in the then supposed univer-

sal languages of color and form and found

instead that their works were open to a host

of interpretations, the serious and committed

tone of this style indicates its significance,

even if that import cannot be channeled into

one unequivocal meaning. […]

in mandelman's work the poetics of white

depend upon its plethora of references. White

might be associated with clouds, light, snow,

purity, the canvas itself, the void, with begin-

nings and with endings—meaning death—

with mysterious signs painted on rock walls

centuries ago, with the background of many

Native american pots and Hispanic santos,

and with the flesh color of the Christ figures

from arroyo Hondo. White can be a symbol

of the primordial, which is reenacted in art by

the awesome and immutable canvas or sheet

of paper facing an artist before her first mark

is made. [...] mandelman equates white with

the mystery of the unknown, which might be

the yet uncreated force of the universe or its

ultimate end.

after initiating the discourse on the poetics

and problematics of white in her works of

the early 1960s, mandelman began in 1964 to

investigate the formal problem of replacing a

clearly articulated background with oscillating

planes of color. She undertakes this problem

in such works as Blue moon, which appears

on first inspection to be colored forms placed

against a white background, but on pro-

longed examination reveals subtle overlap-

ping shapes that shift between foreground

and background. [...] Given mandelman's

interest in both form and political content,

one might hazard an idealist interpretation to

the effect that the lack of a definite ground

affirms a new sense of doubt pervading the

country in the 1960s when old values and

attitudes were beginning to be seriously

questioned. but the formal characteristics of

these works do not necessarily convey such

a political content. more to the point is the

manner in which mandelman's work partici-

pates in the ideology of progress that in the

1960s affected even the arts, an ideology that

assumed the glamour, the element of sur-

prise, and the planned obsolescence of high

fashion. [...] even though they might take on

the spirited quest for novelty and change of

fashion, mandelman's works do not promote

the values of industry: their assertively hand-

painted edges reinforce the artist's connec-

tions with handmade objects.

occasionally during this period, mandelman

undertakes a critique of other artists' work.

an example of this vying with tradition is

her Black cross, which reconstitutes George

o'Keeffe's paintings of crosses by placing

one in a rigorously geometric format. While

mandelman's painting might appear to reject

the religious overtones of o'Keeffe's art, it in

fact serves as a rosetta stone for her inter-

ests in New mexican religious art, the auster-

ity of the landscape, and the intensity of the

light in the Southwest. more than most of her

abstract paintings, this work underscores the

way that mandelman has abstracted from

nature rather than rejected it. even in such

a seemingly nonobjective piece as Birds, the

artist indicates a desire to perpetuate a dia-

logue with nature.

in addition to nature, memories of russian Con-

structivist utopianism pervade mandelman's

collages. an excellent example is Vietnam, a

descendent of the elegant abstracted post-

ers undertaken by several russian artists who

had exceedingly high expectations for the

intellectual curiosity and openness to change

of an unimpeded proletariat. Unlike russian

Constructivists who thought their work

would be as suitable for posters as for paint-

ing, mandelman's work does not become an

effective forum for political persuasion. [...]

rather than turning art into propaganda,

mandelman transforms the raw material of

life into art. the result is a collage that is more

satisfactory as art than information because

the reference to current events have become

highly aestheticized. Vietnam indicates a

major problem for political art, which can

become a means for dignifying conflicts and

aggrandizing war rather than undermining it.

detail: morning (70-sUn05),

c. 1960s acrylic on canvas, 32" x 40"

6

arrangement #2 (60-Col07),

c. 1960s, Collage with cut paper,

pencil drawing, sand and gouache

on mat board, 19 3/4" x 15 3/4"

Birds (green and Black

#1402), c. 1960s, Collage with

gouache and pencil on canvas,

23 1/2" x 16"

circles (FormerlY no. 12)

(60-P04), c. 1960s, Casein on

masonite, 48" x 24"

7

collage no. 9 (60-Pr17),

c. 1960s, mixed media collage

on mat board, 15 7/8" x 19 5/8"

homage to homer (60-Pr12),

c. 1960s, acrylic with mixed media

collage on masonite, 48" x 35 1/2"

morning (70-sUn05), c. 1960s,

acrylic on canvas, 32" x 40"

8

sPace series Vi (60-sP 1-09),

c. 1960s, Collage on cardboard,

24" x 17 7/8"

sPace series #20 (60-sP 1-01),

c. 1960s, mixed media with collage

on matboard, 19 3/4" x 15 3/4"


c. 1960s, Collage and acrylic on mat

board, 15 5/8" x 19 5/8"

9

sPace series #39, (60-sP 5-18),


board, 19 5/8" x 15 5/8"


c. 1960s, Gouache on paper mounted

on illustration board, 16" x 11 3/4"


c. 1960s, acrylic, collage on mat

board, 13 1/2" x 13"

10



board, 19 5/8" x 19 5/8"


c. 1960s, acrylic on cardboard,

19 7/8" x 15 7/8"


c. 1960s, mixed media with sand and

collage on mat board, 19 3/4" x 15 3/4"

11

Untitled (60-P44), c. 1960s,

acrylic on canvas, 47 1/4" x 31 1/2"

Untitled (60-col 3-05),

c. 1960s, acrylic and collage on

canvas paper, 11 7/8" x 15 7/8"

Untitled (60-col 3-08), c. 1960s,

acrylic and collage on canvas paper,

19 7/8" x 16"

12

Untitled (60-sP 1-12),


19 7/8" x 15 7/8"



15 7/8" x 19 7/8"


c. 1960s, Collage on mat board,

19 7/8" x 15 7/8"

13


c. 1960s, Collage and acrylic

on paper, 9 1/2" x 11 3/4"

Untitled (60-g 2-15), c. 1960s,

Gouache on paper, 27 1/2" x 39 1/2"

Untitled (60-col 3-04),

c. 1960s, ink and collage on canvas

paper, 19 7/8" x 16"

14

Untitled (eYe to eYe)

(60-col 1-01), c. 1960s, mixed

media with collage on paper,

12 1/2" x 17"

Untitled (Freaks)

(60-col 1-05), c. 1960s,

mixed media collage on paper,

19 7/16" x 12 3/16"

White no. 1 (60-Pr15),

c. 1960s, acrylic with mixed media

collage on paper, 11" x 9"

130 lincoln avenue, Suite d, Santa fe, Nm 87501 | p (505) 983-9555 | f (505) 983-1284

www.davidrichardContemporary.com | [email protected]

GalleRy DirectoRs

david eichholtz & richard barger

beatRice Mandelman octobeR 15 – novembeR 13, 2010Selected works from the 1960s

beatrice mandelman selected works from the 1960s

Documents

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