#jenanisef

[criticalsuperbeast-blog]

Dumb at Art:  Making sense of Abstraction

Staging Abstraction: Paintings from the Collection, Art Gallery of Hamilton (Gallery Level Two), Hamilton, Ontario. 

By Jen Anisef

Kenneth Lochhead, Colour Jam. Acrylic on canvas, 1965. Art Gallery of Hamilton, Gift of Irving Zucker, 1991. Image courtesy of the AGH.

We all suffer from Imposter Syndrome– even my dad who has been a professor in his field since 1969 admits that he sometimes gets hit with the ‘who me?’ heebie jeebies when invited to speak at conferences and such. But legitimately–despite what appears to be a perception to the contrary– I know very little about art. Many of my friends and acquaintances are artists and curators, and I have even curated a couple of craft-based exhibitions, so I suppose that I understand why people make the assumption that I know more than I do. But I never took a high school art class, let alone an art history course, and I can’t art-speak to save my life.

I decided to encounter my ignorance head on, and asked Melissa Bennett (Curator of Contemporary Art at the Art Gallery of Hamilton), if she’d answer some questions about one of her curated shows in an attempt to move beyond my rudimentary understanding. We met on Gallery Level Two of the AGH to visit Staging Abstraction: Paintings from the Collection– co-curated by Melissa and Hamilton-based painter Daniel Hutchinson. Abstract painting can be alienating for anyone who is insecure about their grasp of “what art means”– I was excited to have Melissa’s help in cracking the code.

I started by asking Melissa to share some points of entry for understanding abstract painting. She admitted that even as a curator, if one doesn’t know anything about the artist’s life and work, nationality or year, it is easy to be stumped by a piece upon first encounter. Her personal approach is to look for a connection to something larger– metaphor or symbolism, or even adventures in technique. Working with Daniel on the show deepened her understanding of abstract painting techniques and the experimentation at play in some of the works, or what happens to the eye when you put a certain combination or a sequence of colours next to each other.   

When guiding visitors through the show, Melissa likes to present questions that arm the visitors with tools that they can use in future abstract art encounters. Her hope is that they will absorb the fact that, “It’s not just the final product, but the learning, experimenting and experience that brought that artist through their years of practice to that place where they were able to achieve something that is actually more complex than it seems.” She points to a piece composed of bright and watery-coloured dabs by Gershon Iskowitz (Uplands K, 1972)– a Holocaust survivor who became an artist after finding safe harbour in Canada. The lively and loose piece– an aerial view of the Prairies– celebrates his intense sense of freedom in flying over his adopted country. Understanding this background makes it easy to feel some sort of connection to the work, and much more difficult to dismiss. As someone who loves textiles and fashion, I engage with abstract painting on the level of colour and form. I may not understand it on an intellectual level, but I can respond to it aesthetically; I experience that pleasure quite strongly. I’ve always judged this to be a real low-budget experience of art. My longstanding (albeit slightly ridiculous) belief about art is that it exists in a separate realm from design or fashion– it hovers above them, beyond them; it’s smarter than them.  

Taking in the paintings in Staging Abstraction (that span from the 1960s to the 1980s), it was clear that that they are so much of their era– the palette and form of Colour Jam (Kenneth Lochhead, 1965) could easily be a mid-sixties silk scarf, and the pastel splatter of Hot Blood (Harold Feist, 1987) is pure 80s corner office.

As with design and fashion, many of the paintings are a response to the cultural context of their time, a product of people relating to the things happening around them.

I left the show feeling buoyed by the fact that there is a common language of aesthetics and design at play in these works and that I actually DO understand more than I thought I did.

The author’s “writing skirt.”

Jen Anisef is a Cultural Projects Specialist with the City of Hamilton, a contemporary craft practice researcher, and founder of community-based initiatives that include the Montreal Church of Craft, City of Craft, and Toronto Craft Alert.

[criticalsuperbeast-blog]

Critical Superbeast 2016 - 2018

Critical Superbeast was an online critical writing forum based in Hamilton, Ontario, from 2016-2018. Through (mostly) weekly posts, various writers covered the works of artists from the local scene and beyond, including exhibition reviews, thoughts on visual culture topics, studio visit musings and more. It was founded by a group of arts workers and artists in Hamilton.

We felt the need for more critical dialogue in this city, which is increasingly enlivened by working artists. An editorial board was struck not to vet content but rather to coordinate the logistics of a rotating group of writers and editors, handle our call for submissions and organize the content for the blog posts. Facebook posts reached anywhere from 150 to 1000 readers. We’re proud of what was accomplished: the attention brought to the art scene and the hard work of artists (who often toil away without much public feedback), plus the encouraging occasion for writers to conceptualize and deliver a piece to be published.

The group has now wound down due to various other commitments on the part of the organizers. Rest assured that the commitments are all still heavily related to art creation and/or criticism. But we are all proud of what was accomplished with Critical Superbeast:

Forty-four essays written, covering the works of emerging and established Hamilton artists, plus a few living further afield.

Writers were all volunteers, and most of them played an administrative role at some point as well. The list includes: Jen Anisef, Gabriel Baribeau, Melissa Bennett, Aimee Burnett, Tara Bursey, Greg Davies, Anthony Easton, Tor Lukasik-Foss, Jeremy Freiburger, John Haney, Daniel Hutchinson, Amanda Jernigan, Emma Lansdowne, Ingrid Mayrhofer, Sally McKay, Sylvia Nickerson, Caitlin Sutherland, Karen Thiessen, Svava Juliusson, Alana Traficante, and Stephanie Vegh, (Apologies for any omissions).

Artists covered in the writings include: Jennifer Angus, Heather Benning, Katinka Bock, Danny Custodio, Robert Davidson, Erika DeFreitas, Levine Flexhaug, Andrea Flockhart, V. Jane Gordon, Laine Groeneweg, John Haney, Joseph Hartman, Catherine Heard, Thaddeus Holownia, Michele Karch-Ackerman, Sean Kenney, Suzy Lake, Elad Lassry, Steven Laurie, Trisha Leigh Lavoie, Claudia Manley and Liss Platt, Nancy Anne McPhee, Martin Messier, Sylvia Nickerson, Hélio Oiticica, Vicky Sabourin, Giancarlo Scaglia, Judith Scott, WhiteFeather, Benita Whyte, and Marlene Yuen; plus more in various group exhibitions such as Art Spin’s first venture in Hamilton.

Rest in peace, ‘Beast.  

[image credit: Andrew McPhail, Sorry, performance and text piece with rubber gloves, 2009-ongoing. Installation view at Artspace Peterborough, 2011. Courtesy of the artist.]