Intro Text

Friday, August 17, 2012

context: Albers and Einstein on the Beach at the Morgan

I visited the Albers works on Paper show at the Morgan Museum this week.  His studies in oil on paper were a container for, as he said, "his craziness about color."  They are luscious and memorable.

This is one image from a slide show from GalleristNY


Josef Albers, Color Study for Homage to the Square, not dated



I notice in my painting and artwork that whenever I change one part - it changes the whole.  Like the colors in Alber's studies - each color and shape has it's impact on what's juxtaposed with it.  When I'm almost finished a painting, but it's 'not quite there', I cringe a bit knowing that one more change will set the whole thing in motion again and I may have to sacrifice the parts I may like so far.  It's a sacrifice one has to be prepared to make!  Into the unknown.

Downstairs at the Morgan is a great film called  Einstein on the Beach: the Changing Image of Opera directed by Mark Obenhaus.   It documents the seminal performance work by Philip Glass and Robert Wilson done in 1975.  Einstein on the Beach is on tour again this year and will be at BAM this September.

Perhaps the curators at the Morgan intentionally showed the Albers next to the Obenhaus documentary.   In the documentary Einstein is quoted as saying:  "The most beautiful thing we can experience is mystery." In repeatedly moving into the intuited yet unknown or unmade in my art I enjoy the brush with mystery.