STEVEN ALEXANDER J O U R N A L: Blinky Palermo

Showing posts with label Blinky Palermo. Show all posts

17.7.11

BLINKY PALERMO: Retrospective
At Dia Beacon & Bard

Blinky Palermo, To the People of New York City (Part XII, Part XI), 1976, acrylic on aluminum

Blinky Palermo, To the People of New York City (Part XIV, Part XIII, Part XII), 1976, acrylic on aluminum

Finally, the Blinky Palermo Retrospective has arrived in the NY area after making it's way from LA via DC. Here the show is divided between two venues, with the metal paintings from his last few years being shown at Dia: Beacon, and the earlier work almost an hour away at Bard College. This is an unfortunate situation, an arbitrary division in the continuum of his work that frustrates the possibility of back-and-forth comparisons and comprehensive viewing. More on that later. I began at Dia, where the Palermos have been conspicuously missing for the duration of this traveling exhibition, leaving a gaping hole in the gestalt of the Beacon collection. It is great to see them back (although now the magnificent Warhol Shadows series has gone missing). The most exciting thing about their return is that Palermo's quintessential last work, the multi-panel To the People of New York City, has been re-installed in a new and much more successful configuration. Previously it occupied a huge shoebox-shaped rectangular space that seemed to distance the viewer from the work and disconnect the groupings of panels from each other. The new "L" shaped space feels much more intimate and fosters the recognition of the work as one whole piece. Suddenly, I am struck with an eery recollection of the moment I first saw this work at Heiner Friedrich's gallery in 1977, and its deep resonance with that moment in time and with the history of painting. I discussed this piece in a previous post: "...For myself and many other painters of my generation, To the People of New York City was a watershed work that almost magically synthesized the impulses of that moment into a new approach to painting. (...) Palermo's genius was creating a pulsating visual poetry that envelops the viewer in a sensate choreography, that has the open-ended improvisation of jazz and the playful directness of the Ramones -- a space in which the highest aspirations of painting are inseparable from its ancient ritual origins." Accompanying this still-vibrant work, a number of other multiple panel pieces from 1975-6 make a convincing case that Palermo had just begun to hit his stride at his death -- that he had tapped into a new clarity, a personal visual poetry that had profound possibilities.

Blinky Palermo, Coney Island, 1975, overall 27.7 x 147 cm, acrylic on 4 aluminum panels

Blinky Palermo, Times of the Day II, 1975, acrylic on 4 aluminum panels

On to Bard, where we see a collection of pieces from 1964 into the early '70s. There are many key works here -- his early geometric paintings on canvas, many of the 2-part hybrid objects, rather dry documentation of the conceptual projects and installations, and of course the cloth pieces. We witness a (rather brief) 10-year span in which Palermo is wildly prolific and experimental, yet methodical in his search for a visual key to his sense of an ineffable resonance. There is a bit of the facile ambitious student, sponging information and mirroring prevailing attitudes, quickly evolving into a more focused and personal poetic vision. I would love to have seen more of the astoundingly beautiful cloth pieces. The few that are included here look surprisingly crisp -- like they were done yesterday -- and the color and textures convey rich presences. Sadly missing from this collection are the wonderful Tuttle-esque drawings and watercolors through which Palermo consistently developed his painterly sensibility and experimented with eccentric configurations. If indeed the key to a great show is to "leave them wanting more", then this exhibition was a success. Certainly, it is a welcome and much anticipated survey of work which has been seminal for so many painters. The show continues through October 31, 2011.

Blinky Palermo, Untitled, 1964, 95 x 80.5 cm, oil on canvas

Blinky Palermo, 4 Prototypes, 1970, screenprints on paper

13.2.10

BLINKY PALERMO: To the People
of New York City -- Revisited

I'm unclear about all the details, but this book was originally published in 2006, then quickly went out of print. Finally, late last year, after much delay it was re-issued by Dia and Richter Verlag. Having failed to acquire a copy of the original printing, I'm not sure if this new version contains any additional information, but I assume the lengthy delay had something to do with editorial revisions. It is indeed an exhaustive analysis from every imaginable angle of Palermo's last and most important work. The essays by Lynne Cooke, Christine Mehring, Anne Rorimer, Pia Gottschaller, and several others, are full of historical, theoretical and contextual information, and deeply scholarly explorations of this enigmatic piece. Also included is a wonderful recollection by David Reed, and most interesting to me, an interview with Joseph Beuys. It is Beuys who most acutely illuminates the character of this work when he refers to Palermo's "porosity".

For myself and many other painters of my generation, To the People of New York City was a watershed work that almost magically synthesized the impulses of that moment into a new approach to painting. The work was first shown in 1977, shortly after Palermo's death, at Heiner Friedrich's gallery in Soho. Although Palermo had built a strong reputation in Germany, very few people in New York had ever heard of him. I was lucky enough to be working at the time with Alanna Heiss at P.S.1, and one day when I entered her office for a meeting, she just started chanting "Blinky Palermo....Blinky Palermo....go see Blinky Palermo...." -- so of course I did. One of the small disappointments with this new book is that there are no images of that original installation (actually there is one grainy b/w image of one corner of the gallery) -- and at this point, it is very hard to remember specific aspects of the installation, but what is still absolutely vivid is the feeling that it evoked -- the primal hum of that room.

Blinky Palermo, To the People of New York City, 1976, Installation detail, Dia, NYC

Blinky Palermo, To the People of New York City, 1976, Installation detail, Dia, Beacon

Taking a cue from the implications of Newman's Stations of the Cross, and Rothko's Chapel works from the previous decade, Palermo conceived a serial group of objects unified by color and configuration. Responding to the reductive materiality of Ryman, he devised a group of aluminum panels that appear to float in front of the wall, and applied acrylic paint in the most direct manner. From his teacher, Beuys, he understood the notion of creating a ritualized space, and that every material substance is charged with its own energy. Palermo's genius was creating a pulsating visual poetry that envelops the viewer in a sensate choreography, that has the open-ended improvisation of jazz and the playful directness of the Ramones -- a space in which the highest aspirations of painting are inseparable from its ancient ritual origins.

Blinky Palermo, To the People of New York City, 1976, Installation detail

Blinky Palermo, To the People of New York City, 1976, drawing, graphite & marker on paper
All images from the Dia website

26.5.09

Ranking Reverb #1:
MARTIN, MARDEN, PALERMO, TRUITT

When I was a kid, my brother and I used to speculate endlessly about what combination of great musicians would comprise the ultimate dream band. In that spirit, and just for fun, Ranking Reverb is conceived as an occasional series of online exhibitions -- dream shows if you will. So here is the first -- a group of Ranking artists who pioneered primary structures while exploring the nuances of materiality and color.

To quote Louise Fishman, "Agnes Martin is the Buddha". Her paintings are the visual equivalent of breath -- the weave of the canvas, dry pencil line, light wash of translucent color -- silent, still, inclusive -- nothing and everything. They convey an expansive stasis, an ineffable wholeness in the humble and patient frankness of her process.

Brice Marden's early monochromes and color panel paintings were at once conceptually rigorous and deeply sensual. His heavily worked oil and beeswax surfaces were inhabited by rich hybrid or fugitive colors arrived at through a process that was steeped in tradition and buzzing with intelligent intuition. As his configurations became more complex, his color became more adventurous, and impeccably refined -- and always surprising.
In the late 60s, Blinky Palermo arrived at an exquisite integration of color and material with his fabric paintings -- not really paintings, but colored fabric mounted on stretchers. He would continue to develop these concerns, exploring the inherent properties of various materials, shapes and colors, evolving into his last and most important work, To the People of New York City, which was shown at Heiner Friedrich in NY just after the artist's death in 1977. It was a concise group of paintings on aluminum panels with simple paired combinations of red, yellow and black, now permanently installed at Dia Beacon. In it's original setting at the Friedrich Gallery, the installation was a highly charged arrangement of stark and beautiful relations that revealed the mysterious associative power of color and material in an entirely new way.

Anne Truitt was a singular, and often overlooked figure in the world of sculpture, making works that I consider to be 3-dimensional paintings. Though certainly sculptural in their declarative presence, her elemental configurations employ a beautiful integration of color and shape as a source of archetypal resonance.

Ranking Reverb #1