Raymond Saunders Post No Bills at ANDREW KREPS and DAVID ZWIRNER

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Күн бұрын

James Kalm visits an illuminating double show of paintings by the Bay Area artist, Raymond Saunders. This mini-retrospective divided between Andrew Kreps in Tribeca, and David Zwirner in Chelsea presents works from a fifty-year slice of this artist’s oeuvre, and is probably the most extensive showing Saunders’ work in New York to date. Saunders has been a significant presence in West Coast painting culture since the late 1960s. His signature use of black grounds and stressed abject collage elements within an innate formalist vocabulary, reverse the normal readings of color, surface and composition, expressing a rich experience of the urban environment with poignant echoes of the personal. This program was recorded March 1st and 2nd 2024. #jameskalmreport #jameskalmroughcut #lorenmunk

Пікірлер: 30

@mztgood 6 ай бұрын

Best show you've ever covered and absolutely incredible work! Love your comments/stories as well. Bravo!

@chezceleste 6 ай бұрын

Thank Kate. Love this. Will watch again.

@tonsfocus 6 ай бұрын

Thank you James, thank you Kate!

@thirdrockjul2224 6 ай бұрын

Thank you Kate! ❤

@kimwilkie9819 6 ай бұрын

Thank you Kate !

@slipton6493 6 ай бұрын

Such a treat!! Thank you James and Kate!!

@message_service 6 ай бұрын

loved it! much appreciated 🌞👍 Thank you 🎀

@mayormc 6 ай бұрын

Exhilarating work. Really dynamite. Made me sit up straight and take notice.

@stepladder13 6 ай бұрын

Another fantastic artist I've never heard of before. Magnificent show. Is he still alive and working? Thank you, Kate.

@jameskalm 6 ай бұрын

As far as I can tell, he's still kicking, and working, though 89 years old. San Fran Museum of Modern Art did an interview with him in 1994, check it out... kzbin.info/www/bejne/bIK0hqGDodutiqssi=PnrRqpl6TvfhNb3a

@stepladder13 6 ай бұрын

@@jameskalmThanks for the reply and the link, James. Glad to hear that he's still with us. I plan to do some googling to find more examples of his work if I can. If nothing else, this channel keeps me, at least, busy! 😀

@kareymaurice3236 6 ай бұрын

I see this work sharing a similar approach (Assemblage) as Jasper Johns/Rausenburg/and of course JMB especially the !987 pieces. My 2¢ thank you Kate

@Reid_One 5 ай бұрын

Amazing body of work! Every piece a masterpiece (imo). Thank you for taking the time, as you do, to get up close, examine and investigate the details and surfaces of each work. Truly in awe and inspired. 🙏🏼☮

@darrinheaton2614 6 ай бұрын

Wow. These are great. When you did a quick scan of the gallery, I assumed these works were just another instantiation of formalist abstraction...a riff on Diebenkorn and Twombly. That's not the case, though. He is using synecdoche in a unique, historically materialist way to evoke a sense of sporadic, or choked lyricism. When I look at these surfaces, I see the walls of dingy inner city apartments, where layer upon layer of commercial paint covers up the detritus left by previous tenants. As a housepainter myself, I used to encounter this sort of thing all the time when I did public housing re-paints. Because municipalities could care less about the people living in these buildings, there was never any money allocated to do a proper job. Known in the trade as 'blow-and-go' painting, I'd go in with my spray gun, tape off the carpets and windows, then blow one coat of shitty enamel paint on baseboards, ceiling and walls. When the paint was wet, I could see all the crap encrusted in previous layers - bugs, stickers, condoms (seriously) tacks, and old scotch tape - like the tape crackling through the upper part of that big, red, vertical painting (at 21:50). I used to get so depressed thinking about the young people and their kids moving into these slum units, hoping for a fresh start, but left to live within a palimpsest of all the signs of struggle and depravation of those who came before them. You just know that these people are not fundamentally better or worse than anyone else, but for whatever reason, they've never really been given a clean slate. Their lives are so full of chaos and abuse from the get-go that they never have the chance to really experience their wholeness. There are moments of potential (everyone has potential) but no breathing room to realize this potential. This is the reason - at least for me - why these paintings hit so hard - because they contain an immanent critique of the class-basis of western abstract art, with its presuppositions of freedom and potentiality written into it at the most basic level of the tabula rasa - the white support. But in these paintings, there are just walls and surfaces, the materiality of which seems oppressive and too-real to allow the painter to ever forget that he's contained within a dreary history from the get-go...and it's not an imaginary history of art, but a real history of the daily struggles of life. I love how, whenever a sense of lyricism enters these pictures, it's always cut off and neutered before it can connect with any of the other surface events. That pallet at the bottom/centre of the red painting at 21:19 looks kind of like an early action painting, but then you realize that it turned out that way as a matter of accident...that the potential painting, for whatever reason, could never be realized, or perhaps was realized, only to be painted over by that ruthlessly concrete reddish enamel. Another great moment happens in the bottom of the black painting at 25:51where Amanda's drawing is stuck in the bottom right corner among other detritus of domestic poverty and ruin. The way this blocked-in corner contrasts with the taped-on reproduction of the still-life from the Kunst Historiche Museum is really great. I'm left thinking about whatever became of this child...if she ever had a chance to develop her talents. There's something interesting going on with the element of time in these works, which is evoked by the various marks and incidents stuck to and imbedded in the painting's surfaces. Most of the marks and incidents happen quickly...they are like one-offs that seem more taxonomized than composed. These moments are contrasted with the beautiful white line drawings of domestic objects. These drawings come from the trained hand of an artist. The figure study at 12:29 is particularly evocative. It's telling that this drawing shows the figure in three different aspects - from the side, front and back...and all of these aspects seem created out of the same meandering line. It's as if he wants to make the connection between feeling (line), time, and the wholeness of the human being. Time - free, unfettered time - is indispensable to the exploration, or even realization, of one's self. In contrast, a life lived in survival mode, where you constantly feel the walls closing in, and are never allowed a breather, is productive of nothing except more pain, more lost potential. I know these paintings could be written about from the perspective of identity politics, but for me, the issue of class is forefront here...After all, the experience of being black and poor is no different than the experience of being poor as a 'priviledged' white dude like me. Poverty shatters the individual, no matter the color of his or her skin. Do I get the longest-comment-under-a-Kalm-Report-award, lol?

@barbarakemler5480 6 ай бұрын

To the person who wrote “ the longest comment under the Kalm report”….. Brilliant !!!

@jameskalm 6 ай бұрын

Yes @darrinheaton2614 I'm impressed with your insightful and almost "poetic" response. I appreciate the thought and effort you took to give the rest of us these poignant views and reminiscences. I always end these programs asking for viewers "comments, criticism, critiques, and suggestions". A work of art is "unfinished" until someone looks at it, reflects on it, and responds, so thanks again for this ample review ...JK

@message_service 6 ай бұрын

Thank you, I enjoyed reading your thought-provoking comment 🌞

@darrinheaton2614 6 ай бұрын

Thank you, James. Yeah. I agree with your last sentence Thanks for all your work on this project. It means more to me than I can easily express. And of course, Thanks Kate!@@jameskalm

@darrinheaton2614 6 ай бұрын

Thanks for reading, Barbara.@@barbarakemler5480

@philosophicalmixedmedia 6 ай бұрын

Saunders ode to a style of teaching with the iconic black board. Although objects of mind (meaning out there) are ostensibly represented there on.

@ag7958 6 ай бұрын

Fantastic showing, thank you Kate! I'm wondering how much Basquiat knew of Saunders (and vice versa, though I'm sure most artists knew of Basquiat in the 80s), I see a lot of similarities in their work and I'm wondering if Basquiat drew inspiration from Saunders at any point. The doors were an especially potent similarity, I remember you covering a Basquiat show that featured a bunch of doors Basquiat had painted. Even then, the crown motif, the broad swathes of color, the liberal use of black...lots to compare!

@jameskalm 6 ай бұрын

Yeah @ag7958 as I stated on the walkthrough, Saunders was already well known on the West Coast in the mid 1970s, at that point, Basquiat was still just a kid. His (Basquiat's) career took off like a rocket in the early 1980s and he did spent time in Las Angeles, so I'm sure Raymond was familiar with the work. The question of influence would be more problematic to unwind...JK

@user-td2lg1fl6h 6 ай бұрын

He taught at CCAC, now called CCA. He took our class to the Hess winery, where they had an art colllection of goldsworthy, rauschenberg and bacon. Also the interior of his house is a bit like his paintings.

@anthonyclegg1511 4 ай бұрын

Good paintings. Is it pop art.?. Thanks. ❤️🎨.

@tilmanscha4285 6 ай бұрын

hey show also the people a little when there is a happening they are somehow also part of artworld the genesis of the art pieces and so on dont you think