I was walking through the MAM the other day after seeing the Frank Lloyd Wright museum and found myself, as I usually do, in the modern art section of the third floor and too my surprise, they had moved a lot of the work around. I love the old stuff, but it was great to see some of the work that had been in the vault for a while. Included in the pieces I wasn't used to seeing were a few by Hans Hoffman. The German Abstract-Expressionist centered most of his work on the relationship of shape, color and space and and once said about abstract painting The ability to simplify means to eliminate the unnecessary so that the necessary may speak. I was struck by the simplicity of many of his pieces, the space he left virtually untouched, and the relationship his surreal, floating objects had with each other on an undefined plane. In response, after painting this canvas a few times already, I created a new piece in honor of these thoughts. I tried to base the painting around four black "symbols" and create a place where they interact in unusual ways with the things around them. Red spills and flows over unseen hills and valleys and the teal jams itself against the black like a parasite. The organic detail meanders between, around, and below the objects, further stretching the space, almost becoming a web that springs the objects forward, catches them as they fall back and repeats....
Anyway, this is "For the Honor of Hans..." acrylic, ink, and pastel on canvas with collage and found objects.
No comments:
Post a Comment