A Designed Life
2023
Rethinking: Between Maine and New York
2023
Senior Exhibition / Writing Art Criticism
2018Catalog PDF
Not only did we get lost on the way there, but when we arrived, we couldn’t actually get up the
driveway. A tall wooden gate stood at the end of a windy, uneven dirt path. A barn appeared
after we snaked through the small opening, physically contorting to fit between the gates. An
older man with greying hair outfitted in a painter’s suit welcomed us with a warm smile. He
introduced himself as Ben.
Charlie’s parents, who had brought us here and who had met Ben many years ago when they
had owned a house on Block Island, embraced him and introduced us. They were familiar with
his work, owning a few pieces themselves. I wondered if they intended to buy anything on this
trip or just to have a look. I immediately sensed that they had a deep connection with this place,
this art, and with Ben.
Right away, Ben showed us his paintings displayed in the barn, mostly abstract works of art on
off-white canvas, all of various colors and sizes. Each had its one distinct palate and
composition, expressive white or black marks on a colorful backdrop.
The works were special, sure, but the sheer number of them astonished me: stacked up to the
barn’s roof in hundreds. He then led us around for a tour of his property, which, with its two
standalone buildings, felt like it had simultaneously just then fallen out of the sky, perfectly
nestled upon the rugged Block Island cliffside and that it had been here for centuries: it’s worn
sun-soaked shudders and siding, bracing the elements. On the same hillside where the Niantic
hunted deer. What had it seen in all this time, as the island changed, as people came and
claimed? While the grounds, gardens, and the house itself didn’t look large or imposing on the
way in, property wrapped around the hillside, expanding and flowing, revealing a much larger
plot of land than originally imagined.
Ben then led us through a lavishly overgrown and breathtaking garden to what I could tell was
his favorite part of the property. Woven stick huts appeared in what he described as his fairy
forest – small entanglements of twigs, moss, and leaves, like a childhood dream. Since I was
the smallest in the group, Ben invited me to climb inside the stick castle, worming my way
through the small opening and into the clearing.
My sister and I used to play our own game of fairy gardens in our backyard for hours, picking
leaves and grasses and, to her chagrin, digging up my mom’s tulip bulbs to make “medicine”
and food from our vegetal concoctions. I was instantly transformed back to this place of freedom
and enchantment. I was far from the Virginia backyard where I grew up; in my memory, the light
just fell over the large oak tree. It was bright and midday here, but I’d stepped away from the
sun into the forest, into this hut, so the feeling was almost the same. I remembered then that we
had come to see his paintings. Were these thatched huts part of his art, too?
Next, he brought us into his home, the larger of the two buildings, where we entered through his
painting studio. Oil paint tubes lay on a marred wooden bench, half-used and oozing colors onto
the table. Half-done smaller works lay beside near-finished ones. Suddenly, everyone had
moved to the next room, and I was alone in the studio. Large floor-to-ceiling bookcases teemed
with art books that looked like they had been from no earlier than the 1970’s. They seemed to
be the kind that my grandmother had stashed away in her basement from trips to New York City,
compulsively buying the museum exhibition catalog she didn’t need and would never leaf
through again after leaving the show.
Ben’s wife quietly stepped in and pointed my attention to an album of old photographs–Ben’s
original work as a portraiture photographer–the kind that stares back at you from a mantlepiece
in a quaint suburban 80’s home.
We saunter into the living quarters, which consist of a bedroom, a small living room, and a
dining room attached to a small kitchen. There was nothing grand or luxurious about it, but I
eyed the Noguchi lamp and made note of an Eames chair. It had the same quiet presence that
the rest of the compound did – from the barn to the garden.
While I had been around art and design for a long time at this point, completing an
undergraduate degree in art history, working for two years in an arts communications firm, and
currently pursuing design on my own, I had never quite seen art like this. I had been to
countless museums, galleries, and arts collective spaces, but I had never been immersed in art
and design like this, so real and lived in. Art is not only a way of life but a fabric of it, living and
breathing alongside its creators. Where you can’t tell where it begins and ends. While Ben’s wife
wasn’t an artist herself, you could tell she had a hand in all of this. The gardens, the interior
decoration of the home, just being Ben’s partner and artist’s assistant at times, his support.
I felt as if every part of his house was designed, and no doubt it was, but it didn’t feel as
intentional as a diorama of an artist’s home. From end to end, this experience is laced with the
artist’s touch. I had realized on this hot summer afternoon that this is what a designed life could
be. Looking at his art online now, being removed from that place, I can still feel its magic.
References:
She’s successful at haunting you even without making eye contact. With this first piece on the ground floor, I’m met with her downcast, far-away look. It’s not only her look, though. The thick, almost cartoonish raindrops and umbrella overhead add to the ominous rawness. It feels as if we’ve zoomed down on someone’s dramatic internal reckoning.
I hate Alex Katz. While that seems harsher than I intend, I find it to be true, and I feel rather guilty about it. And I don’t mean I hate him as a person; I dislike his work. I find it dull and somewhat creepy. Creepy, as in his subject’s eyes follow you around the room even if they’re looking down. His work feels distinctly stuck in the 80s or 90s – a time capsule, two-dimensional and businesslike. Something feels inaccessible about his work, which I know is meant to be accessible.
The Colby College Museum of Art in Waterville, Maine, which fueled my passion for art and design as an undergrad, has a large Alex Katz collection. By large, I mean huge. In 1992, Katz donated over 400 works to the museum. So many that he has a dedicated wing. I’ve always thought that my dislike of him feels disloyal. Yet there is something familiar in his work, like an old friend from middle school you’ve lost touch with but is still lingering in your Instagram feed. When you see them, you almost think to yourself, “Where do I know this person from?”
Walking onto the second floor of Alex Katz: Gathering at the Guggenheim, I already feel a shift. This work is distinctly him, but also, it feels like something I might like. Maybe it’s the bright white, swirling lines of Frank Lloyd Wright’s architecture that are bringing new life to these works, some I’ve seen before and some I haven’t. The ones I haven’t feel markedly different from what I’m familiar with. I’ve never seen him work in abstracted forms, swaths of color that overtake the entire stretched canvas. One room is all muted tones of canvas, floor to ceiling. I’m used to Katz’s characters with their tight, angular bodies and bulging eyes, drawing you in for all the wrong reasons. Here, in the Guggenheim, these forms are still present. Yet they seem different against the backdrop of his expressionist paintings. In a video, “The Immediate Present,” produced by the Guggenheim as part of the show, Katz notes: “Some of the great art experiences I’ve had has been with abstract painting.” I’m drawn to these new, unfamiliar compositions. The shift within myself that I felt stepping onto the second floor continues as I climb higher and higher, immersing myself in Katz’s altered world.
Circling up the ramps, nearing the top, I stop at a cluster of smaller images put together in the salon style. These mini works, all pastel hues of blue and green, show blurred scenes of New England life. Groups of people, boats, and shorelines. Standing with them, I feel a nostalgia for the coastline, the smell of salt and seaweed coming off of the water.
At the Guggenheim, I can feel both Maine and New York in his paintings, which I think you need to see both of to really experience his full body of work. Maybe that’s what’s missing in the pieces that I was so familiar with at the Colby Museum. I never experienced this side of him; I don’t think I ever understood what was so quintessentially Maine about him. With an artist like Marsden Hartley (1877-1943), who had a show titled Marsden Hartley’s Maine at the Colby Museum in 2017, I could feel the raw, wind-swept emotion coming off of his subjects. Their contorted and exaggerated forms matched the rugged coastlines of Maine’s seashores. Being from Maine, Hartley infused his work with his home state in ways you could see and feel. In Gathering, Katz recalls Maine more clearly. Sun-soaked greens, yellows, and pinks, leaves, and woods and sticks. To me, it feels like home. Here is the contrast between busy and still, loud and silent, of Maine and New York. Maybe I needed to see these works in New York, to be able to see Maine more clearly.
Gathering is a fitting name for this exhibition. Katz paints clumps of people sitting outside, walking together, mostly faceless creatures, as well as landscape scenes with formless blobs. When you zoom out, you see his more recognizable, characteristic faces peeking out from the balconies, inviting you into the more abstract. What once repelled me draws me closer to uncovering more of his work, a rediscovery. Katz says, “I like to make an image that is so simple you can’t avoid it, and so complicated you can’t figure it out,” and that seems to be exactly what he achieves with this exhibition. He starts with a quintessential piece, the sad woman with the umbrella, but the plot thickens as you rise through the museum.
His canvases hold a quiet stillness that seems contradictory to the loud cacophony of echos that is the Guggenheim. Though a lovely space to peruse art, the open floor plan makes the viewing very loud. Katz’s work pierces that noise beautifully and makes me reconsider my position on him as an artist.
References:
driveway. A tall wooden gate stood at the end of a windy, uneven dirt path. A barn appeared
after we snaked through the small opening, physically contorting to fit between the gates. An
older man with greying hair outfitted in a painter’s suit welcomed us with a warm smile. He
introduced himself as Ben.
Charlie’s parents, who had brought us here and who had met Ben many years ago when they
had owned a house on Block Island, embraced him and introduced us. They were familiar with
his work, owning a few pieces themselves. I wondered if they intended to buy anything on this
trip or just to have a look. I immediately sensed that they had a deep connection with this place,
this art, and with Ben.
Right away, Ben showed us his paintings displayed in the barn, mostly abstract works of art on
off-white canvas, all of various colors and sizes. Each had its one distinct palate and
composition, expressive white or black marks on a colorful backdrop.
The works were special, sure, but the sheer number of them astonished me: stacked up to the
barn’s roof in hundreds. He then led us around for a tour of his property, which, with its two
standalone buildings, felt like it had simultaneously just then fallen out of the sky, perfectly
nestled upon the rugged Block Island cliffside and that it had been here for centuries: it’s worn
sun-soaked shudders and siding, bracing the elements. On the same hillside where the Niantic
hunted deer. What had it seen in all this time, as the island changed, as people came and
claimed? While the grounds, gardens, and the house itself didn’t look large or imposing on the
way in, property wrapped around the hillside, expanding and flowing, revealing a much larger
plot of land than originally imagined.
Ben then led us through a lavishly overgrown and breathtaking garden to what I could tell was
his favorite part of the property. Woven stick huts appeared in what he described as his fairy
forest – small entanglements of twigs, moss, and leaves, like a childhood dream. Since I was
the smallest in the group, Ben invited me to climb inside the stick castle, worming my way
through the small opening and into the clearing.
My sister and I used to play our own game of fairy gardens in our backyard for hours, picking
leaves and grasses and, to her chagrin, digging up my mom’s tulip bulbs to make “medicine”
and food from our vegetal concoctions. I was instantly transformed back to this place of freedom
and enchantment. I was far from the Virginia backyard where I grew up; in my memory, the light
just fell over the large oak tree. It was bright and midday here, but I’d stepped away from the
sun into the forest, into this hut, so the feeling was almost the same. I remembered then that we
had come to see his paintings. Were these thatched huts part of his art, too?
Next, he brought us into his home, the larger of the two buildings, where we entered through his
painting studio. Oil paint tubes lay on a marred wooden bench, half-used and oozing colors onto
the table. Half-done smaller works lay beside near-finished ones. Suddenly, everyone had
moved to the next room, and I was alone in the studio. Large floor-to-ceiling bookcases teemed
with art books that looked like they had been from no earlier than the 1970’s. They seemed to
be the kind that my grandmother had stashed away in her basement from trips to New York City,
compulsively buying the museum exhibition catalog she didn’t need and would never leaf
through again after leaving the show.
Ben’s wife quietly stepped in and pointed my attention to an album of old photographs–Ben’s
original work as a portraiture photographer–the kind that stares back at you from a mantlepiece
in a quaint suburban 80’s home.
We saunter into the living quarters, which consist of a bedroom, a small living room, and a
dining room attached to a small kitchen. There was nothing grand or luxurious about it, but I
eyed the Noguchi lamp and made note of an Eames chair. It had the same quiet presence that
the rest of the compound did – from the barn to the garden.
While I had been around art and design for a long time at this point, completing an
undergraduate degree in art history, working for two years in an arts communications firm, and
currently pursuing design on my own, I had never quite seen art like this. I had been to
countless museums, galleries, and arts collective spaces, but I had never been immersed in art
and design like this, so real and lived in. Art is not only a way of life but a fabric of it, living and
breathing alongside its creators. Where you can’t tell where it begins and ends. While Ben’s wife
wasn’t an artist herself, you could tell she had a hand in all of this. The gardens, the interior
decoration of the home, just being Ben’s partner and artist’s assistant at times, his support.
I felt as if every part of his house was designed, and no doubt it was, but it didn’t feel as
intentional as a diorama of an artist’s home. From end to end, this experience is laced with the
artist’s touch. I had realized on this hot summer afternoon that this is what a designed life could
be. Looking at his art online now, being removed from that place, I can still feel its magic.
References:
- http://
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She’s successful at haunting you even without making eye contact. With this first piece on the ground floor, I’m met with her downcast, far-away look. It’s not only her look, though. The thick, almost cartoonish raindrops and umbrella overhead add to the ominous rawness. It feels as if we’ve zoomed down on someone’s dramatic internal reckoning.
I hate Alex Katz. While that seems harsher than I intend, I find it to be true, and I feel rather guilty about it. And I don’t mean I hate him as a person; I dislike his work. I find it dull and somewhat creepy. Creepy, as in his subject’s eyes follow you around the room even if they’re looking down. His work feels distinctly stuck in the 80s or 90s – a time capsule, two-dimensional and businesslike. Something feels inaccessible about his work, which I know is meant to be accessible.
The Colby College Museum of Art in Waterville, Maine, which fueled my passion for art and design as an undergrad, has a large Alex Katz collection. By large, I mean huge. In 1992, Katz donated over 400 works to the museum. So many that he has a dedicated wing. I’ve always thought that my dislike of him feels disloyal. Yet there is something familiar in his work, like an old friend from middle school you’ve lost touch with but is still lingering in your Instagram feed. When you see them, you almost think to yourself, “Where do I know this person from?”
Walking onto the second floor of Alex Katz: Gathering at the Guggenheim, I already feel a shift. This work is distinctly him, but also, it feels like something I might like. Maybe it’s the bright white, swirling lines of Frank Lloyd Wright’s architecture that are bringing new life to these works, some I’ve seen before and some I haven’t. The ones I haven’t feel markedly different from what I’m familiar with. I’ve never seen him work in abstracted forms, swaths of color that overtake the entire stretched canvas. One room is all muted tones of canvas, floor to ceiling. I’m used to Katz’s characters with their tight, angular bodies and bulging eyes, drawing you in for all the wrong reasons. Here, in the Guggenheim, these forms are still present. Yet they seem different against the backdrop of his expressionist paintings. In a video, “The Immediate Present,” produced by the Guggenheim as part of the show, Katz notes: “Some of the great art experiences I’ve had has been with abstract painting.” I’m drawn to these new, unfamiliar compositions. The shift within myself that I felt stepping onto the second floor continues as I climb higher and higher, immersing myself in Katz’s altered world.
Circling up the ramps, nearing the top, I stop at a cluster of smaller images put together in the salon style. These mini works, all pastel hues of blue and green, show blurred scenes of New England life. Groups of people, boats, and shorelines. Standing with them, I feel a nostalgia for the coastline, the smell of salt and seaweed coming off of the water.
At the Guggenheim, I can feel both Maine and New York in his paintings, which I think you need to see both of to really experience his full body of work. Maybe that’s what’s missing in the pieces that I was so familiar with at the Colby Museum. I never experienced this side of him; I don’t think I ever understood what was so quintessentially Maine about him. With an artist like Marsden Hartley (1877-1943), who had a show titled Marsden Hartley’s Maine at the Colby Museum in 2017, I could feel the raw, wind-swept emotion coming off of his subjects. Their contorted and exaggerated forms matched the rugged coastlines of Maine’s seashores. Being from Maine, Hartley infused his work with his home state in ways you could see and feel. In Gathering, Katz recalls Maine more clearly. Sun-soaked greens, yellows, and pinks, leaves, and woods and sticks. To me, it feels like home. Here is the contrast between busy and still, loud and silent, of Maine and New York. Maybe I needed to see these works in New York, to be able to see Maine more clearly.
Gathering is a fitting name for this exhibition. Katz paints clumps of people sitting outside, walking together, mostly faceless creatures, as well as landscape scenes with formless blobs. When you zoom out, you see his more recognizable, characteristic faces peeking out from the balconies, inviting you into the more abstract. What once repelled me draws me closer to uncovering more of his work, a rediscovery. Katz says, “I like to make an image that is so simple you can’t avoid it, and so complicated you can’t figure it out,” and that seems to be exactly what he achieves with this exhibition. He starts with a quintessential piece, the sad woman with the umbrella, but the plot thickens as you rise through the museum.
His canvases hold a quiet stillness that seems contradictory to the loud cacophony of echos that is the Guggenheim. Though a lovely space to peruse art, the open floor plan makes the viewing very loud. Katz’s work pierces that noise beautifully and makes me reconsider my position on him as an artist.
References:
- https://museum.colby.edu/a-conversation-with-alex-katz/
- https://www.guggenheim.org/exhibition/alex-katz-gathering
- https://www.metmuseum.org/exhibitions/listings/2017/marsden-hartley
- https://www.guggenheim.org/video/the-immediate-present-with-alex-katz