My taste in art—especially painting and drawing, but also other mediums—tends towards the strange, the mutant, the science fictionesque. This isn’t because I hate nature, but rather because I feel that art should offer something else, a surrogate (as Jackson Pollock once famously said to Hans Hoffman, “I am nature”). This kind of stuff probably isn’t to everybody’s taste, but what the hell.
I’ve been interested in Nava Lubelski’s paintings for something like three years. They seemed a bit lightweight when I first discovered them at Boston’s OHT Gallery. They’ve grown on me since then and I think the pieces themselves have gotten less uneven. Her method is unusual. She stains and splatters her canvases with thin washes of ink and acrylic paint in different colors. She then hand-stitches thread (again in various colors), tracing the outlines of the stains and creating new patterns as well. Some her recent canvases even have holes in them; A Lie About Birds and Bees is an impressive example. The results are reminiscent of abstract expressionism, as well as the post ab-ex tradition of color field painting. They also evoke birds-eye views of landscape or snorkeling—favorite themes of mine. At their best, the canvases are fascinating, intricate things.
In her artist’s statement, Lubelski describes her process in terms foreign to those of the stereotypically masculine world of abstract expressionism. She describes her staining as “spoiling” and her stitching as “mending”. The pieces are meant to suggest a duality of accident or wildness versus care and precision. I’m not a woman, but I do find this approach congenial.
Lubelski is also the author of a book: The Starving Artist’s Way. I haven’t read it, but it appears to be a sort of bohemian do-it-yourself guide. Her website also features several drawings and mixed-media sculptures (my favorite).
Arthur,
I really enjoy your different perspective and the variety of art you introduce us to.
After looking at Lubelski’s work, I have a quite different view of it than her statement suggests she would want a viewer to take. She implies a negative view of the stains (they spoil), but I love them for their colors and gradations and edge shapes (if this is a guy thing, so be it). And I don’t see the emboidery as mending, but rather decorating (a loaded word here the last few days?) or emphasizing the stains. It reminds me a bit of doodling in school as a kid; I would make borders around the edges of the paper and the holes punched in it. I could see it as mending in the sense of containing the stains, fixing in the sense of tying them down. The lace over the actual holes is a repair and an emphasis both; it makes me think of dreamcatchers, which is a fun concept in this setting.
The like the ideas of the 3D work, but I think I like her work on paper best. Although the look is quite different, the play of shapes and patterns is reminiscent of David Palmer’s linoleums. I bet Jay sees the Mandelbrot set. I like most of the titles, but confess I don’t get “A Lie About Birds and Bees.” I look forward to learning more from others’ comments.
A Lie About Birds and Bees is intriguing.
But I wish that I had not read Nava Lubelski’s artist statement because I cannot relate to her interpretation of her approach. It reminds me of June’s comment to a post showing my wall hanging. She said that she liked my work better before I explained what its various shapes symbolized for me.
As an art critic, you have to read the artist’s statements. But perhaps, as a consumer, one should refrain from it?
I like your taste in art. Why didn’t you present works of the big exhibition in Boston about science fiction art earlier this year?
Arthur and Steve:
How, exactly, do these things get genderized? I just came away from looking at Nava’s pieces and found myself swimming in a pond of her aesthetic decisions with nary a thought for female proclivities. The stains are pondered and considered stains and the stitches sometimes take off into unstained territory as though happy not to be sheep dogging all the time.
And if the “mending” of splotches is somehow considered womens’ work, then Helen Frankenthaler must have been completely off the reservation. I would tend merely to take the splotch/mend duality as the objective and accomplished manifestation of something personal until clearly informed otherwise.
There is a fellow in town – Chris Pekoc – who reinforces his imagery with stitches.
I see the Mandelbrot set all the time. There is an iconic photograph taken the day after the first test of the atomic bomb. One sees a smaller splotch where two hundred tons of tnt were exploded to provide a guideline for adjusting instruments and then a big dark splotch where the bomb went off. The two marks represented a hundred-fold difference in power, yet in terms of shape, they look very much alike. A Mandelbrotelish moment.
Congratulations on your new word, Mandelbrotelish. Google confirms. Soon all searches on it will come here. Hope our server is ready for the deluge.
Steve:
An alternative could be Mandelbrothelish. But that would be his cousin “Soupy” who dishes out his famous Red Light Special.
“How, exactly, do these things get genderized?”
Sorry, Jay, sewing is still a traditionally female activity. We’ve come a long way baby, but we are not far enough from the 50’s to escape that cultural reference. And artists like Miriam Schapiro, who sort of reclaimed “women’s work” in her work, are actually still alive and making work, if that tells you how new elevating traditional domestic activities really is.
Having said all that, I too see a disjuncture between my experience of looking at the art and her statement. I love looking at them and would love to see them in person. Like Steve, I experience the stitching as more decorative, and as a wonderful addition to the visual texture of the piece. The amorphous blobs don’t read as stains to me because they are so vivid and purposeful. Stains are accidents (her marks just don’t seem random) and have definite negative connotations. These are much more celebratory than seeming to refer to healing or mending as she implies. The wonderful thing about stitiching is that is gives you a new experience looking at the piece close up – you get a lot out of being intimate with the piece.
For someone who uses stitching in a more conceptual way, how about Ghada Amer:
http://www.gagosian.com/artists/ghada-amer/exhibitions/
Leslie:
I remember Miriam Shapiro. She was oft quoted on this very issue.
Can it be a matter of selective attention given? you may be aware of Lee Bontecou. To this day she cuts and stitches with her original means having been heavy canvas and metal wire on bent steel framework. Terms like “decorative” or “feminine” simply cannot be appended to her output. Even when she goes into a kind of dainty mode, as it appears she is now doing, it refers more to the nature and appearance of things -some of them dangeroues – than to cuddly.
Your last comment was well said.
Lubelski’s statement is bombastic and exaggerates the political significance of her work. Thats why I chose not to quote it directly. But I also think that the kinds of cultural associations she mentions—as well as some of the alternative ones that have been suggested here—are relevant. For me at least, they compliment the more purely aesthetic concerns that are undoubtedly being put into play.
She implies a negative view of the stains (they spoil), but I love them for their colors and gradations and edge shapes (if this is a guy thing, so be it). And I don’t see the emboidery as mending, but rather decorating (a loaded word here the last few days?) or emphasizing the stains.
I think of these interpretations as being complementary rather than opposed to Lubelski’s own. Stains can be be shameful or immoral and at the same time be beautiful. This might be a contradiction of sorts, but not one that can’t be contained in a work of art. And there are connections between decoration and mending too. In addition to their associations with “women’s work”, they are both possible responses to imperfections or damage. If there is an unsightly spot on the floor, you might put a rug there.
Original work. Some of the staining is very well executed. Looks like she also cut off some of the canvas (there seems to be a huge hole in A Lie About Birds and Bees and some of the stretchers seem to show throug – or is it an artifact of her stains) and then stitched them back together.. Not my kind of art but it is original and visually appealing.
Jay,
I was fortunate to see a Bontecou exhibit a few years ago. You are right – these are not tender, delicate or domestic stitches she is using. And that is part of her work’s power – she takes this vernacular, familiar in one context, and transforms it into something else. The ones with the deep dark holes are frighteningly powerful!
Arthur,
Bombastic is kind of a harsh way to categorize her statment, but it does feel like she reached for significance where she could have left it alone. It is hard not to be self conscious about the use of certain materials.
Leslie,
I enjoyed seeing the Amer works, thanks for the link! She seems to be in full command of her materials, but I wish I could see them up close. Probably a good thing I don’t live in New York, though, I’d never get anything else done.
Arthur,
I agree, mending and decoration are not incompatible. But it does leave the “feminine” needlework celebrating (Leslie’s word) or emphasizing (mine) the “masculine” spoiling and destruction, which seems problematic. There’s no requirement that this be resolved, but the statement seems not to address it. Unless this is “flirting” (Lubelski’s word) with the “predominantly male.”
The needlework contains and pretties the stains up as well as emphasizing them. At least with the pieces I’ve seen in person, the stains would not be visually compelling enough by themselves to sustain attention. I agree though that the paintings are much more complicated the statement lets on.
But I suppose I mainly just think they look cool.
Everything else being background.