Jackson Pollock

Paul Jackson Pollock was born January 28, 1912, in Cody, Wyoming. He grew up in Arizona and California and in 1928 began to study painting at the Manual Arts High School, Los Angeles. In the fall of 1930, Pollock moved to New York and studied under Thomas Hart Benton at the Art Students League. Benton encouraged him throughout the succeeding decade. By the early 1930s, Pollock knew and admired the murals of José Clemente Orozco and Diego Rivera. Although he traveled widely throughout the United States during the 1930s, much of Pollock’s time was spent in New York, where he settled permanently in 1934 and worked on the WPA Federal Art Project from 1935 to 1942. In 1936, he worked in David Alfaro Siqueiros’s experimental workshop in New York.
Pollock’s first solo show was held at Peggy Guggenheim’s Art of This Century gallery, New York, in 1943. Guggenheim gave him a contract that lasted through 1947, permitting him to devote all his time to painting. Prior to 1947, Pollock’s work reflected the influence of Pablo Picasso and Surrealism . During the early 1940s, he contributed paintings to several exhibitions of Surrealist and abstract art, including Natural, Insane, Surrealist Art at Art of This Century in 1943, and Abstract and Surrealist Art in America, organized by Sidney Janis at the Mortimer Brandt Gallery, New York, in 1944.
From the fall of 1945, when artist Lee Krasner and Pollock were married, they lived in the Springs, East Hampton, New York. In 1952, Pollock’s first solo show in Paris opened at the Studio Paul Facchetti and his first retrospective was organized by Clement Greenberg at Bennington College, Bennington, Vermont. He was included in many group exhibitions, including the Annuals at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, from 1946 and the Venice Biennale in 1950. Although his work was widely known and exhibited internationally, the artist never traveled outside the United States. He was killed in an automobile accident on August 11, 1956, in the Springs.
Pioneer of ABSTRACT EXPRESSIONISM
He began to study painting in 1929 at the Art Students' League, New York, under the Regionalist painter Thomas Hart Benton. During the 1930s he worked in the manner of the Regionalists, being influenced also by the Mexican muralist painters (Orozco, Rivera, Siqueiros) and by certain aspects of Surrealism.
From 1938 to 1942 he worked for the Federal Art Project. By the mid 1940s he was painting in a completely abstract manner, and the `drip and splash' style for which he is best known emerged with some abruptness in 1947. Instead of using the traditional easel he affixed his canvas to the floor or the wall and poured and dripped his paint from a can; instead of using brushes he manipulated it with `sticks, trowels or knives' (to use his own words), sometimes obtaining a heavy impasto by an admixture of `sand, broken glass or other foreign matter'. This manner of Action painting had in common with Surrealist theories of automatism that it was supposed by artists and critics alike to result in a direct expression or revelation of the unconscious moods of the artist.
Pollock's name is also associated with the introduction of the All-over style of painting which avoids any points of emphasis or identifiable parts within the whole canvas and therefore abandons the traditional idea of composition in terms of relations among parts. The design of his painting had no relation to the shape or size of the canvas -- indeed in the finished work the canvas was sometimes docked or trimmed to suit the image. All these characteristics were important for the new American painting which matured in the late 1940s and early 1950s.
During the 1950s Pollock continued to produce figurative or quasi-figurative black and white works and delicately modulated paintings in rich impasto as well as the paintings in the new all-over style. He was strongly supported by advanced critics, but was also subject to much abuse and sarcasm as the leader of a still little comprehended style; in 1956 Time magazine called him `Jack the Dripper'.
By the 1960s, however, he was generally recognized as the most important figure in the most important movement of this century in American painting, but a movement from which artists were already in reaction (Post-Painterly Abstraction). His unhappy personal life (he was an alcoholic) and his premature death in a car crash contributed to his legendary status. In 1944 Pollock married Lee Krasner (1911-84), who was an Abstract Expressionist painter of some distinction, although it was only after her husband's death that she received serious critical recognition.
Breaking the ice
It was Jackson Pollock who blazed an astonishing trail for other Abstract Expressionist painters to follow. De Kooning said, "He broke the ice", an enigmatic phrase suggesting that Pollock showed what art could become with his 1947 drip paintings.
It has been suggested that Pollock was influenced by Native American sand paintings, made by trickling thin lines of colored sand onto a horizontal surface. It was not until 1947 that Pollock began his "action" paintings, influenced by Surrealist ideas of "psychic automatism" (direct expression of the unconscious). Pollock would fix his canvas to the floor and drip paint from a can using a variety of objects to manipulate the paint.
The Moon-Woman Cuts the Circle (1943; 109.5 x 104 cm (43 x 41 in)) is an early Pollock, but it shows the passionate intensity with which he pursued his personal vision. This painting is based on a North American Indian myth. It connects the moon with the feminine and shows the creative, slashing power of the female psyche. It is not easy to say what we are actually looking at: a face rises before us, vibrant with power, though perhaps the image does not benefit from labored explanations. If we can respond to this art at a fairly primitive level, then we can also respond to a great abstract work such as Lavender Mist. If we cannot, at least we can appreciate the fusion of colors and the Expressionist feeling of urgency that is communicated. Moon-Woman may be a feathered harridan or a great abstract pattern; the point is that it works on both levels.

ARNDT-PARTNER

Arndt-Partner

www.arndt-partner.de


Facing the challenge of a continuously developing art scene, Arndt & Partner emphasizes a program free of trends or (formal) standards. The discovery of emerging Berlin artists and the formation of an international program with artists who often have not yet exhibited in Berlin nor Germany, have become the cornerstones of the gallery profile. Parallel to the solo presentation of emerging and established artistic positions, thematic group exhibitions also shape the profile of the gallery.
In 2006, at a time in which commercial galleries are increasingly confronted with growing responsibilities in the field of artistic production and exhibition-making, Arndt & Partner decided to expand and open an additional space right above the main 360sqm Gallery 1st Floor. The 400 sqm Gallery 2nd Floor allows for large-scale, complex and museum-like installations . Along with this spatial expansion, the gallery's artistic program has been redefined and condensed.
Participating at important international art fairs, Arndt & Partner has developed an international network operating from Berlin which is further broadened by its branch in Zurich. Our Swiss gallery shows works by gallery artists which are not yet represented in Switzerland and initiate an extended forum to younger, especially Swiss positions. Furthermore, we opened our New York City office with an project space in 2007.
Please refer to our website for further information or ask for our gallery magazine Checkpoint, which will inform you about the activities of Arndt & Partner, Berlin, New York and Zurich.
Exhibition Program Berlin 2007:
Gallery 1st Floor: Thomas Hirschhorn, Stand-alone, April 28 - July 7Dennis Scholl, für immer faltung im zimmer der tränen, July 17- September 22 (opening July 14) Veronika Brovall, Wurzel-Füllung, July 17- September 22 (opening July 14) Wang Du, October 2 - November 24 (opening September 29)Wei Dong, November 20 - January 12, 2008 (opening November 17)
Gallery 2nd Floor: Franz West, April 3 - May 5The Aggression of Beauty II: Muntean/Rosenblum, Joe Coleman, Wim Delvoye, Natalie Frank, Keith Tyson among others, May 22 - June 17Sweet Bird of Youth, curated by Hedi Slimane, June 26 - August 31 (opening June 23) Aya Uekawa, September 4 - October 20 (opening September 1) Sue de Beer, September 4 - October 20 (opening September 1) Shi Xinning, September 4 - October 20 (opening September 1)Jon Kessler, October 30 - november 24 (opening October 27)
Exhibition Program Zurich 2007:
Karsten Konrad, March 16 - April 21Conceptual Paper: Artschwager, Acconci, Burden, Hadid, Hujar, Kusama, Oppenheim, Thek, Pope.L, April 27- June 3William Cordova, Pachacuti (Stand up next to a mountain), June 11 - July 21Marcus Knupp, August 28 - September 29 (opening August 25) Alexej Meschtschanow, October 5 - November 10 (opening October 4)

MAGDA BELLOTTI

Galeria Magda Bellotti

Madrid,Spain

www.magdabellotti.com



La Galería Magda Bellotti se funda en Algeciras (Cádiz) en 1982; en 2001 se traslada a Madrid, donde abre nuevo espacio en el llamado triángulo de oro, entre el Museo Thyssen, el Prado y el Reina Sofía.La nueva galería madrileña consta de cuatro espacios diferenciados; dos salas que se encuentran a nivel de la calle, y otros dos espacios en un semisótano; uno de los espacios llamado Sala Algeciras es un "guest room"; un espacio dedicado a proyectos específicos e intercambios con artistas de otras galerías. Por todo ello, se exhiben dos exposiciones al mismo tiempo.La galería desde su fundación ha querido acercar el arte contemporáneo, fundamentalmente español, al público, y generar un coleccionismo entonces inexistente en España.Desde un primer momento la galería ha prestado un especial interés a los artistas jóvenes, a los que ha promocionado con exposiciones, edición de catálogos, publicidad, así como asistiendo a ferias nacionales e internacionales. Muchos de los artistas que comenzaron a trabajar en la galería son referentes indispensables en el panorama artístico nacional.Los artistas que representa la galería son:Ángeles Agrela, Evaristo Bellotti, Paloma Gámez, Alfredo Igualador, Paco Lara-Barranco, Santiago Mayo, Paloma Peláez, Gabriela Kraviez, Manolo Quejido, Fernando Renes, Antonio Sosa, Chema Cobo, Mercedes Carbonell, Javier Casaseca, Luis Gordillo, Teresa Lanceta, Mario Martín Crespo, Marysol, Fram Ramírez, Laia Solé y Baltazar Torres. Un grupo de artistas que trabajan en distintas disciplinas artísticas: pintura, escultura, dibujo, fotografía y vídeos, instalación y animación; algunos son artistas con una sólida trayectoria artística a sus espaldas y otros son jóvenes artistas.

WEST HOLLYWOOD

Living in...

West Hollywood

West Hollywood, an incorporated city in Los Angeles County, California was founded on 29 November 1984. The total residential population is just over 37,000; however, the nighttime and weekend population swells to between 80,000 and 100,000, with a high of up to 500,000 during major events such as Halloween or the Gay & Lesbian Pride Parade, according to Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department which provides police services for West Hollywood. The city is one of the most notable gay villages in the United States. This area is occasionally referred to as WeHo and BoysTown.
West Hollywood is bordered on the north by the Santa Monica Mountains, on the east by the Hollywood District of Los Angeles, on the west by the city of Beverly Hills and on the south by the Fairfax District of Los Angeles.

History
Although most historical writings about West Hollywood begin in the late 18th century, the land was already inhabited when the Portuguese explorer Cabrillo arrived offshore, claiming the land for Spain. Canoeing out to greet him were some of the 5,000 members of the Tongva tribe, a nation of gentle hunters and gatherers, known for their reverence of dancing and courage. These indigenous people were forcibly acculturated by the ever-encroaching Spanish mission system, and were almost decimated by disease by 1771. To add insult to injury, their tribal name was changed to “Gabrielinos”, a reference to the Mission de San Gabriel that ravaged their culture and overtook their land .
By 1780, the now famous “Sunset Strip” was the major connecting road for el Pueblo de Los Angeles and all ranches westward to the Pacific Ocean. The land went through various owners and names in the next 100 years, with names such as La Brea and Plummer in the historical record. Most of the area was part of the Rancho La Brea, and eventually came under the ownership of the Hancock family.
In the last years of the 19th century the first large development in what would become West Hollywood, the town of Sherman, was established by Moses Sherman and his partners in the Los Angeles and Pacific Railway, an interurban line which would become part of the Pacific Electric Railway system. Sherman was the location of the railroad's main shops, yards and carbarns. Many working class employees of the railroad took up residence in the town. It was during this time that the city began to earn its reputation for being a loosely-regulated, liquor-friendly spot for eccentric folks wary of government interference. The town chose not to incorporate into Los Angeles, and was proud to be called “West Hollywood”, borrowing glamour and celebrity from the new movie colony bursting onto the scene one town to the east.
For many years, the area that is now the City of West Hollywood was an unincorporated area in the midst of the City of Los Angeles, but was under the jurisdiction of Los Angeles County. Because gambling was illegal in the city of Los Angeles, but legal in the county, the 1920s saw the proliferation of many nightclubs and casinos along the section of the Sunset Strip that did not fall within the Los Angeles city limits. As a result, these businesses were immune from the heavy-handed treatment by the LAPD. (The Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department was and still is in charge of policing the area.)
Movie people were attracted to this less restricted county area and a number of architecturally fine apartment houses and apartment hotels were built. Movie fans throughout the world knew that Ciro's the Mocambo, the Trocadero, the Garden of Allah, the Chateau Marmont and the Formosa Cafe on Santa Monica Boulevard were places that movie stars could be seen.
Eventually, the area and its extravagant night spots lost favor with movie people. But the Strip and its restaurants, bars and clubs continued to be an attraction for locals and out-of-town tourists. In the late 1960s, the Strip was transformed again during the hippie movement. Young people from all over the country flocked to West Hollywood clubs such as the Whisky a Go Go and the Troubadour.
In the 1960s, a club called Ciro's held the first gay dance nights on Sundays, known as "Tea Dances" [or "T-Dances"]. Men dancing together was illegal in those days, but as with the casinos and speakeasies that had gone before, the laws were not strictly enforced. This tolerance led to more gay clubs after Ciro's closed, as well as the end of the anti-gay laws that prohibited dancing between two persons of the same gender in Los Angeles County. The building that Ciro's occupied is now the home of The Comedy Store.

Pacific Design Center "Big Blue Whale"
Always friendly to creative folks, the design and decorating industry took root in the 1950’s, culminating in the completion of the 750,000 square foot Pacific Design Center in 1975. The 1960’s brought “hippie” culture and a thriving music publishing industry to town. Emboldened by the Stonewall Riots of 1969, gays from all over Los Angeles flocked to West Hollywood, many fleeing from the homophobic harassment of the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD). Still unincorporated, gays and lesbians found refuge here, patrolled by the markedly less brutal Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department. The most recent migration to West Hollywood came about after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, when thousands of Russian Jews immigrated in the 1980’s and early 1990’s.
West Hollywood, therefore, was a community of persecuted and creative citizens, ripe for the political organization which began in earnest in 1984. Still governed by the County of Los Angeles, there arose a great revolt when L.A. began planning to dismantle rent control. This area was a densely-populated area of renters, many of whom would not be able to afford the skyrocketing prices in the rental market of that time. Greatly assisted by the Community for Economic Survival (CES), a tight coalition of seniors, Jews, gays and renters swiftly voted to incorporate as the City of West Hollywood, immediately adopting one of the strongest rent control laws in the nation. The CES continues to hold much favor among the city’s voters, with 20 out of 24 council members (thus far) being CES-endorsed.

Social Services
West Hollywood, with a gay population approaching 40%, has been disproportionately affected by the HIV/AIDS epidemic which has ravaged the gay male population since the early 1980’s. Always in the vanguard of services to its residents, the city funds or subsidizes a vast array of services for those living with HIV or AIDS. AIDS Healthcare Foundation parks a Mobile HIV/STD testing van outside of the city’s busiest nightclubs on Friday and Saturday nights, and again on Sunday afternoons. This outreach attempts to intervene with those young people most at-risk for HIV infection. Another organization receiving city funding is Project Angel Food, which prepares and delivers hundreds of fresh lunches and dinners daily, specially prepared under the supervision of a registered dietician who tailors the meals to meet individual client’s nutritional needs. AIDS Project Los Angeles (APLA) provides assistance to clients navigating the maze of available public benefits, and is a national leader for AIDS policy and advocacy issues. APLA also provides free dental, psychotherapy and pharmaceutical services. AID for AIDS provides direct financial support, assisting clients with paying rent, utility and pharmacy expenses. With the ever-growing arsenal of anti-retroviral therapies, the City also subsidizes agencies that help clients train for a return to the workforce. West Hollywood subsidizes programs for its growing population of children through a partnership with the USDA and local schools. “Healthy Start West Hollywood”, a program of the city’s Social Services division, introduces pre-Kindergarten through High School age kids to the benefits of good nutrition through such activities as collective vegetable gardens and yoga. The special needs of senior citizens are addressed through a variety of programs. The City either funds or subsidizes agencies that offer adult day care, a roommate matching service, and nutritious meals. The West Hollywood Senior Center is not only a place for recreation, excursions and socializing, but also offers counseling and case management as needed. The City of West Hollywood also seeks to address the health needs of residents who might not have adequate insurance by subsidizing the LA Free Clinic and The LA Gay and Lesbian Center. Between these two sites, residents can access free medical, dental, legal and mental health services. The City’s Women’s Advisory Board publishes guides on sexual assault prevention, nightclub safety, and how to access rape services.

Keith Edmier

Keith Edmier
Childhood never leaves us. The particularities of the time and place in which we grow up are branded deep in our psyches, shaping adult desire. Keith Edmier dropped out of art school to work in Hollywood, producing special effects for horror movies. Before that, in his teens, he had a part-time job in a dental lab, where he first came into contact with the pink dental acrylic that has become one of his trademark materials. These facts help to provide a context for the form his work has taken; the content of his uncanny figurative sculptures, however, has its roots deeper in his autobiography, in his early years growing up in the Chicago suburbs in the 1970s. His unsettling sculptures revisit a ’70s suburban America of the mind.Edmier’s work celebrates popular culture’s intrusion into our dreams, the way media images insinuate themselves into our unconscious like uninvited guests. The cast of characters that populate his artwork are drawn from personal history (family members, school friends) and from collective memory (celebrities of the day, victims of newsworthy tragedies, people who might have graced the pages of supermarket tabloids). Edmier explores how, in the media age, ‘real’ people can take on the psychological weight of celebrities while famous faces can be as comforting or as alienating as family.
Like confessional poetry his work proves the adage that the more personal the story the more universal its appeal. His take on memorial statuary, Emil Dobbelstein and Henry J. Drope, 1944 (2000), casts his grandfathers in the role normally reserved for the apocryphal unknown soldier. The two men are flatteringly pictured as they were in their prime, handsome and brave in military uniform. In Edmier’s sculpture it is forever 1944, before Emil committed suicide and Henry grew into the old man his grandson knew. We are invited to put knowingness aside and look at them through the rose-tinted view of a young boy’s admiration.
The novelist Jeffrey Eugenides traces comparably uncynical territory. A fellow child of the American Midwest, Eugenides is similarly brazen about confronting the sentimental. The Virgin Suicides (1993), his languidly charged love letter to lost youth, conjures the fierce passions of early adolescence from the safe distance of middle age. Edmier’s Jill Peters (1997) could be one of the novel’s well-loved, ill-fated Lisbon girls; she even has their golden hair. If Edmier’s grandfathers are bronze heroes, Jill Peters is a hazy waxworks dream girl. As pure and white as the hill of snow on which she stands so awkwardly, Jill is a careworn memory bleached by time. The object of Edmier’s schoolboy affections, she is preserved in virginal white, her eternally blank features ripe for projection. She is not a girl so much as the faded recollection of a girl, the portrait of a crush.It’s easy to see why the young Edmier was smitten: Jill sports a perfect all-American hairstyle, feathered like Farrah Fawcett’s. In Edmier’s youth, Jill and Farrah were both unobtainable objects of desire; as an artist he has managed to suspend time, preserving this early adulation. Keith Edmier and Farrah Fawcett 2000 (2000 – 2002), a collaboration with Fawcett in which he and the erstwhile art student and Charlie’s Angel made full-size classical nude portrait sculptures of each other, is a bizarre and poignant exercise in belated wish-fulfilment. Reclaiming the heroes of his childhood has become a recurring Edmier motif: he has also made work celebrating Evel Knievel, Janis Joplin and John Lennon.
Beverley Edmier, 1967 (1998) conflates personal and collective memory with such casual intensity it takes your breath away. The portrait of the artist’s mother as a young woman depicts her heavily pregnant and tenderly lifting up her blouse to reveal a translucent belly through which the foetal self-portrait of the artist is visible. She is rendered in clear pink plastic acrylic, the sort of material used to make cheap, bright toys. The colour extends to her wardrobe: pink blouse, scarf, gloves, tights and shoes complement her suit, a replica of the pink wool Chanel ensemble worn by Jackie Kennedy on the day of her husband’s assassination. If the reference isn’t immediately obvious, close inspection reveals that the jacket’s buttons feature the Presidential seal. Not content merely to make a self-portrait in utero, Edmier uses the sculpture to comment on one of the most traumatic events in modern American history. Birth, death, maternal and marital devotion, small-scale miracles and large-scale tragedies are all condensed in a sweetly disquieting contemporary take on the Visible Woman, a popular educational toy in the 1970s. The Visible Woman was a Barbie doll for the science geek: a smiling figure sporting transparent plastic skin and a range of removable internal organs. It is just the sort of thing that might have appealed to a boy who went on to make prosthetics for horror films.
The excesses of the plant kingdom provide a similar source of fascination and horror. Victoria Regia (First and Second Night Blooms) (1998) loom large over the viewer. In a potent psychological metaphor the sculptures expose the mysterious flora that lie beneath the surface of nocturnal lily ponds. The flowers perform an act of hermaphrodite transformation while the broad, heavily veined lily pads cast lurid pink shadows on their spectators. The sexual connotations of flowers are not new to art, but in Edmier’s world heady eroticism is tamed by materials that flaunt their deliberate artifice. Keith’s Paphiopedilum (2001) is the acrylic cast of a dying slipper orchid the colour of dried blood. Edmier’s lilies and orchid, as well as his other meticulous casts of flowers such as A Dozen Roses (1998), Snowdrops (1998) and Fireweed (2002 – 2003), are hyperrealist depictions of how flowers loaded with all their cultural and emotional weight might look in a regressive dream.