Mamma Anderson
Work
Mamma Andersson's paintings depict domestic interiors, lush landscapes, and genre scenes just welcoming enough to allow their otherworldly air to take hold. Born in Luleå in 1962, and raised amidst forests and art books, her work is imbued with beguiling narrative zest and frequent references to the stage and everyday settings as well as to works by other artists. Both familiar and mysterious, most of Andersson's works include images of recognizable paintings by other artists as peculiarly placed accessories. In Stairway to the Stars, the ladder-like arrangement of canvases that floats upward before swirling mountains and a black sky includes works by Manet, Hopper, Monet, Gauguin, and Peter Doig. Andersson juxtaposes thickly layered paint and loosely washed areas, painting often with skewed perspectives, irreconcilable spaces, and impossible circumstances coexisting.
Inspired by filmic imagery, theater sets, and period interiors, Karin Mamma Andersson‘s compositions are often dreamlike and expressive. While stylistic references include turn-of-the-century Nordic figurative painting, folk art, and local or contemporary vernacular, her evocative use of pictorial space and her juxtapositions of thick paint and textured washes is uniquely her own. Her subject matter revolves around evocative, melancholic landscapes and nondescript, private interiors.
Born 1962 in Luleå, Sweden, Andersson studied at the Royal University College of Fine Arts, Stockholm, from 1986 to 1993. Her work has been represented by David Zwirner since 2004. She has had two solo exhibitions at the gallery, including her United States debut in 2006. Her second gallery show in 2010, titled Who is sleeping on my pillow, marked the first time she exhibited alongside her artist-husband Jockum Nordström in concurrent solo exhibitions.
In 2012, Andersson’s work was the subject of a solo exhibition at the Museum Haus Esters in Krefeld, Germany. She had her first museum solo exhibition in the United States at the Aspen Art Museum, Colorado, in 2010, and her first solo exhibition in Ireland at the Douglas Hyde Gallery, Dublin, in 2009. In 2007, she was the subject of a critically acclaimed, mid-career survey at the Moderna Museet, Stockholm, which traveled to the Kunsthalle Helsinki and the Camden Arts Centre, London.
Work by the artist has been included in a number of recent group exhibitions, including the Scandinavia House, New York (2011); Magasin 3 Stockholm Konsthall (2010); Nationalmuseum, Stockholm (2009); Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; and the Kunstmuseum Thun, Switzerland (both 2008). In 2006, the artist won the Carnegie Art Award, a prestigious prize for Nordic contemporary painting, which received a corresponding exhibition that traveled extensively throughout Europe. Her work was represented in the Nordic Pavilion at the 50th Venice Biennale (2003).
Andersson’s works are included in prominent collections internationally, including the Dallas Museum of Art; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; and the Moderna Museet, Stockholm. She lives and works in Stockholm.
Looters, 2010,acrylic and oil on panel, 48 x 59 inches
Leftovers, 2006, Acrylic and oil on panel, 48 x 62 inches
Snug, 2008, Acrylic and oil on panel, 20 x 48 inches
Kaye Donachie
Every morning our love is reborn, 2004, oil on canvas, 62.5 x 90cm.
Can’t find nothin’ I can put my heart and soul into, 2004, oil on canvas, 50.5 x 60.5 cm
Never learn not to love, 2003, 0il on canvas,50 x 65 cm
Edward Hopper
Hopper’s art
[edit]Personality and vision
Always reluctant to discuss himself and his art, Hopper simply summed up his art by stating, “The whole answer is there on the canvas.”[44] Hopper was stoic and fatalistic—a quiet introverted man with a gentle sense of humor and a frank manner. Conservative in politics and social matters, he accepted things as they were and displayed a lack of idealism. Cultured and sophisticated, he was well-read, and many of his paintings show figures reading.[48] He was generally good company and unperturbed by silences, though sometimes taciturn, grumpy or detached. He was always serious about his art and the art of others, and when asked would return frank opinions.[49]
Hopper's most systematic declaration of his philosophy as an artist was given in a handwritten note, titled "Statement", submitted in 1953 to the journal, Reality:
| “ | Great art is the outward expression of an inner life in the artist, and this inner life will result in his personal vision of the world. No amount of skillful invention can replace the essential element of imagination. One of the weaknesses of much abstract painting is the attempt to substitute the inventions of the human intellect for a private imaginative conception.
The inner life of a human being is a vast and varied realm and does not concern itself alone with stimulating arrangements of color, form and design.
The term life used in art is something not to be held in contempt, for it implies all of existence and the province of art is to react to it and not to shun it.
Painting will have to deal more fully and less obliquely with life and nature's phenomena before it can again become great.[50]
| ” |
Though Hopper claimed that he didn’t consciously embed psychological meaning in his paintings, he was deeply interested in Freud and the power of the subconscious mind. He wrote in 1939, “So much of every art is an expression of the subconscious that it seems to me most of all the important qualities are put there unconsciously, and little of importance by the conscious intellect.”[51]
[edit]Methods
Although he is best known for his oil paintings, Hopper initially achieved recognition for his watercolours and he also produced some commercially successful etchings. Additionally, his notebooks contain high-quality pen and pencil sketches, which were never meant for public viewing.
Hopper paid particular attention to geometrical design and the careful placement of human figures in proper balance with their environment. He was a slow and methodical artist; as he wrote, “It takes a long time for an idea to strike. Then I have to think about it for a long time. I don’t start painting until I have it all worked out in my mind. I’m all right when I get to the easel".[52] He often made preparatory sketches to work out his carefully calculated compositions. He and his wife kept a detailed ledger of their works noting such items as “sad face of woman unlit”, “electric light from ceiling”, and “thighs cooler”.[53]
For New York Movie (1939), Hopper demonstrates his thorough preparation with more than 53 sketches of the theater interior and the figure of the pensive usherette.[54]
The effective use of light and shadow to create mood is also central to Hopper’s methods. Bright sunlight (as an emblem of insight or revelation), and the shadows it casts, also play symbolically powerful roles in Hopper paintings such as Early Sunday Morning (1930), Summertime (1943), Seven A.M. (1948), and Sun in an Empty Room (1963). His use of light and shadow effects have been compared to the cinematography of film noir.[55]
Though a realist painter, Hopper’s “soft” realism simplified shapes and details. He used saturated color to heighten contrast and create mood.
[edit]Subjects and themes
Hopper’s seascapes fall into three main groups: pure landscapes of rocks, sea, and beach grass; lighthouses and farmhouses; and sailboats. Sometimes he combined these elements. Most of these paintings depict strong light and fair weather; he showed little interest in snow or rain scenes, or in seasonal color changes. He painted the majority of the pure seascapes in the period between 1916 and 1919 on Monhegan Island.[57] Hopper’s The Long Leg (1935) is a nearly all-blue sailing picture with the simplest of elements, while his Ground Swell (1939) is more complex and depicts a group of youngsters out for a sail, a theme reminiscent of Winslow Homer’s iconic Breezing Up (1876).[58]Hopper derived his subject matter from two primary sources: one, the common features of American life (gas stations, motels, restaurants, theaters, railroads, and street scenes) and its inhabitants; and two, seascapes and rural landscapes. Regarding his style, Hopper defined himself as “an amalgam of many races” and not a member of any school, particularly the “Ashcan School”.[56] Once Hopper achieved his mature style, his art remained consistent and self-contained, in spite of the numerous art trends that came and went during his long career.[56]
Urban architecture and cityscapes were also major subjects for Hopper. He was fascinated with the American urban scene, “our native architecture with its hideous beauty, its fantastic roofs, pseudo-gothic, French Mansard, Colonial, mongrel or what not, with eye-searing color or delicate harmonies of faded paint, shouldering one another along interminable streets that taper off into swamps or dump heaps.”[59]
In 1925, he produced House by the Railroad. This classic work depicts an isolated Victorian wood mansion, partly obscured by the raised embankment of a railroad. It marked Hopper’s artistic maturity. Critic Lloyd Goodrich praised the work as “one of the most poignant and desolating pieces of realism.”[60] The work is the first of a series of stark rural and urban scenes that uses sharp lines and large shapes, played upon by unusual lighting to capture the lonely mood of his subjects. Though critics and viewers interpret meaning and mood in these cityscapes, Hopper insisted “I was more interested in the sunlight on the buildings and on the figures than any symbolism.”[61] As if to prove the point, his late painting Sun in an Empty Room (1963) is a pure study of sunlight.[62]
Most of Hopper's figure paintings focus on the subtle interaction of human beings with their environment—carried out with solo figures, couples, or groups. His primary emotional themes are solitude, loneliness, regret, boredom, and resignation. He expresses the emotions in various environments, including the office, in public places, in apartments, on the road, or on vacation.[63] As if he were creating stills for a movie or tableaux in a play, Hopper positioned his characters as if they were captured just before or just after the climax of a scene.[64]
Hopper’s solitary figures are mostly women—dressed, semi-clad, and nude—often reading or looking out a window, or in the workplace. In the early 1920s, Hopper painted his first such pictures Girl at Sewing Machine (1921), New York Interior (another woman sewing) (1921), and Moonlight Interior (a nude getting into bed) (1923). However, Automat(1927) and Hotel Room (1931) are more representative of his mature style, emphasizing the solitude more overtly.[65]
As Hopper scholar Gail Levin wrote of “Hotel Room”:
| “ | The spare vertical and diagonal bands of color and sharp electric shadows create a concise and intense drama in the night…Combining poignant subject matter with such a powerful formal arrangement, Hopper’s composition is pure enough to approach an almost abstract sensibility, yet layered with a poetic meaning for the observer.[66] | ” |
Hopper’s Room in New York (1932) and Cape Cod Evening (1939) are prime examples of his “couple” paintings. In the first, a young couple appear alienated and uncommunicative—he reading the newspaper while she idles by the piano. The viewer takes on the role of a voyeur, as if looking with a telescope through the window of the apartment to spy on the couple’s lack of intimacy. In the latter painting, an older couple with little to say to each other, are playing with their dog, whose own attention is drawn away from his masters.[67] Hopper takes the couple theme to a more ambitious level with Excursion into Philosophy (1959). A middle-aged man sits dejectedly on the edge of a bed. Beside him lays an open book and a partially clad woman. A shaft of light illuminates the floor in front of him. Jo Hopper noted in their log book, “[T]he open book is Plato, reread too late”.
Levin interprets the painting:
| “ | Plato’s philosopher, in search of the real and the true, must turn away from this transitory realm and contemplate the eternal Forms and Ideas. The pensive man in Hopper’s painting is positioned between the lure of the earthly domain, figured by the woman, and the call of the higher spiritual domain, represented by the ethereal lightfall. The pain of thinking about this choice and its consequences, after reading Plato all night, is evident. He is paralysed by the fervent inner labour of the melancholic.”[68] | ” |
In Office at Night (1940), another “couple” painting, Hopper creates a psychological puzzle. The painting shows a man focusing on his work papers, while nearby his attractive female secretary pulls a file. Several studies for the painting show how Hopper experimented with the positioning of the two figures, perhaps to heighten the eroticism and the tension. Hopper presents the viewer with the possibilities that the man is either truly uninterested in the woman's appeal or that he is working hard to ignore her. Another interesting aspect of the painting is how Hopper employs three light sources,[67] from a desk lamp, through a window and indirect light from above. Hopper went on to make several “office” pictures, but none with a sensual undercurrent.
His second most recognizable painting after Nighthawks is another urban painting, Early Sunday Morning (originally called Seventh Avenue Shops), which shows an empty street scene in sharp side light, with a fire hydrant and a barber pole as stand-ins for human figures. Originally Hopper intended to put figures in the upstairs windows but left them empty to heighten the feeling of desolation.[72]The best-known of Hopper's paintings, Nighthawks (1942), is one of his paintings of groups. It shows customers sitting at the counter of an all-night diner. The shapes and diagonals are carefully constructed. The viewpoint is cinematic—from the sidewalk, as if the viewer were approaching the restaurant. The diner's harsh electric light sets it apart from the dark night outside, enhancing the mood and subtle emotion.[69] As in many Hopper paintings, the interaction is minimal. The restaurant depicted was inspired by one in Greenwich Village. Both Hopper and his wife posed for the figures, and Jo Hopper gave the painting its title. The inspiration for the picture may have come from Ernest Hemingway’s short story The Killers, which Hopper greatly admired, or from the more philosophical A Clean, Well-Lighted Place.[70] In keeping with the title of his painting, Hopper later said, “Nighthawks” has more to do with the possibility of predators in the night than with loneliness.[71]
Hopper's rural New England scenes, such as Gas (1940), are no less meaningful. "Gas" represents "a different, equally clean, well-lighted refuge.... ke[pt] open for those in need as they navigate the night, traveling their own miles to go before they sleep."[73] The work presents a fusion of several Hopper themes: the solitary figure, the melancholy of dusk, and the lonely road.[74]
Hopper approaches Surrealism with Rooms by the Sea (1951), where an open door gives on to the ocean, without an apparent ladder or steps.[75]
After his student years, Hopper’s nudes were all female. Unlike past artists who painted the female nude to glorify the female form and to highlight female eroticism, Hopper's nudes are solitary women who are psychologically exposed.[76] One audacious exception is Girlie Show (1941), where a red-headed strip-tease queen strides confidently across a stage to the accompaniment of the musicians in the pit. Girlie Show was inspired by Hopper's visit to a burlesque show a few days earlier. Hopper’s wife, as usual, posed for him for the painting, and noted in her diary, “Ed beginning a new canvas—a burlesque queen doing a strip tease—and I posing without a stitch on in front of the stove—nothing but high heels in a lottery dance pose.”[77]
Hopper's portraits and self-portraits were relatively few after his student years.[78] Hopper did produce a commissioned “portrait” of a house, The MacArthurs’ Home (1939), where he faithfully details the Victorian architecture of the home of actress Helen Hayes. She reported later, “I guess I never met a more misanthropic, grumpy individual in my life.” Hopper grumbled throughout the project and never again accepted a commission.[79] Hopper also painted Portrait of Orleans (1950), a “portrait” of the Cape Cod town from its main street.[80]
Though very interested in the American Civil War and Mathew Brady’s battlefield photographs, Hopper made only two historical pictures. Both depicted soldiers on their way to Gettysburg.[81] Also rare among his themes are paintings showing action. The best example of an action painting is Bridle Path (1939), but Hopper’s struggle with the proper anatomy of the horses may have discouraged him from similar attempts.[82]
Hopper’s final oil painting, Two Comedians (1966), painted one year before his death, focuses on his love of the theater. Two French pantomime actors, one male and one female, both dressed in bright white costumes, take their bow in front of a darkened stage. Jo Hopper confirmed that her husband intended the figures to suggest their taking their life's last bows together as husband and wife.[83]
Hopper's paintings have often been seen by others as having a narrative or thematic content that the artist himself may not have intended. Much meaning can be added to a painting by its title, but the titles of Hopper's paintings were sometimes chosen by others, or were selected by Hopper and his wife in a way that makes it unclear whether they have any real connection with the artist's meaning. For example, Hopper once told an interviewer that he was "fond of Early Sunday Morning... but it wasn't necessarily Sunday. That word was tacked on later by someone else."[84]
The tendency to read thematic or narrative content into Hopper's paintings, that Hopper himself had not intended, extended even to his wife. When Jo Hopper commented on the figure in Cape Cod Morning “It’s a woman looking out to see if the weather’s good enough to hang out her wash,” Hopper retorted, “Did I say that? You’re making it Norman Rockwell. From my point of view she’s just looking out the window.”[85]
Nighthawks, 1942, oil on canvas, 30x 60 inches.
Summer evening, 1947, oil on canvas, 30 x 42 inches
Blackhead, Monhegan, 1916-19, oil on wood, 9 x 13 inches.
Daniel Richter
Richter attended Hochschule für bildendende Künste Hamburg from 1991-1995. Between 1992-1996 he studied with Werner Büttner – one of the protagonists, along withMartin Kippenberger, of the revival of expressive trends in painting during the 1980s –, and worked as assistant to Albert Oehlen.[1] Between 2004 and 2006 he served as Professor for Painting at the Universität der Künste, Berlin. Since 2006, he has been teaching at Akademie der bildenden Künste, Vienna. He is married to director Angela Richter.
Initially, Richter did abstract paintings, with a cosmos of forms intensely colourful to the point of being psychedelic – somewhere between graffiti and intricate ornamentation. Since 2002 he has painted large-scale scenes filled with figures, often inspired by reproductions from newspapers or history books.[2]
Daniel Richter's Jawohl und Gomorrah possesses an operatic quality. Borrowing themes from both Christianity and German history, Richter constructs his contemporary scene with theatrical flair: his figures are staged in Baroque composition, their outlandish costumes and mask-like faces lend an element of surreal spectacle. The fervent emotion of grand drama is carried through Richter's frenetic style of painting: thick brushwork battles with translucent drizzles and impassioned smears; acid tones are electrified against the sombre ground. Reminiscent of Ensor's nightmarish crowds, Richter infuses this street scene with apocalyptic celebration.
In Those who are here again, highly rendered paintwork provides an ebullient scene: a group of mysterious figures gathered round a fire, an urban residence illuminated in other-worldly glow. It's ambiguous high drama that Richter does best: perhaps a scene of violence, vagrancy or simply a party, his paintings are infused with wonder, enigma and a silently creeping paranoia.
This who are here again, 2002, oil on canvas, 259 x 393cm.
Jawohl und Gommarah, 2001, oil on canvas, 225 x 370cm
Trevelfast, 2004, oil on canvas, 283 x 232cm
Neo Rauch
(born 18 April 1960, in Leipzig, East Germany) is a German artist whose paintings mine the intersection of his personal history with the politics of industrial alienation. His work reflects the influence of socialist realism, and owes a debt toSurrealists Giorgio de Chirico and René Magritte, although Rauch hesitates to align himself with surrealism. He studied at theHochschule für Grafik und Buchkunst Leipzig, and he lives in Markkleeberg near Leipzig, Germany and works as the principal artist of the New Leipzig School.[1] The artist is represented by Galerie EIGEN + ART Leipzig/Berlin and David Zwirner, New York.
Rauch's paintings suggest a narrative intent but, as art historian Charlotte Mullins explains, closer scrutiny immediately presents the viewer with enigmas: "Architectural elements peter out; men in uniform from throughout history intimidate men and women from other centuries; great struggles occur but their reason is never apparent; styles change at a whim."In painting "Characteristic, suggestion and eternity" are important marks of quality.[7]
| “ | I view the process of painting as an extraordinarily natural form of discovering the world, almost natural as breathing. Outwardly it is almost entirely without intention. It is predominantly limited to the process of a concentrated flow. I am deliberately neglecting to contemplate all of the catalytic influences that would have the power to undermine the innocence of this approach because I would like to express a degree of clarity in these lines by way of example. I view myself as a kind of peristaltic filtration system in the river of time ...[8] | ” |
Rauch is considered to be part of the New Leipzig School and his works are characterized by a style that depends on the Social Realism of communism. Especially American critics prefer to recognize in his contemporary style a post communist Surrealism. But more than anyone Rauch is recognized as an East-West painter. Rauch merges the modern myths of both the Warsaw Pact and the Western world. His figures are portrayed in a landscape in which an American Comic-Aestheticism meets the Social Realism of communism. In the art publication „Texte zur Kunst“ (Texts about Art, number 55), he was defined as an example for a new German neo-conservatism.
One of his promoters, Roberta Smith (journalist for the New York Times), caused great enthusiasm in the US for Rauch's works with an article about the "painter, who came from the cold." In 2007, Rauch painted a series of works especially for a solo exhibition in the mezzanine of the modern art wing at the Metropolitan Museum in New York City. This special exhibition was called "Para." Rauch explains that he enjoys the associations the word "para" evokes in his own mind, and says that his works at "Para" have no particular intention, but that they could signify anything to anyone.
| “ | When I first agreed to do the Met exhibition, I thought about a way of working that would be about the nature of a museum. But straight away I realized that I was much more interested in those "visions from the Witches Circle" in my studio than I was in coming up with things in a purely thematic way. Calling them "visions" reflects my personality—they precede inspiration and spring from the moment when internal images appear at the prompting of intellectual decisions. I have no choice but to accept everything that I discover in this way.[1] Das Plateau 2008 Oil on canvas 82 2/3 x 118 1/8 inches (210 x 300 cm)  Die Stickerin 2008 Oil on canvas 118 1/8 x 165 2/5 inches (300 x 420 cm)  Alte Verbindungen 2008 Oil on canvas 98 3/8 x 118 1/8 inches (250 x 300 cm) |
