The show’s title comes from the late  abstract expressionist Joan Mitchell, who said

Abstract is not a style. I simply want to make a surface work.

The earliest work was made in 1918 by Liubov Popova, a commanding figure in early Abstract Expressions. She was born in 1889 in Russia, showed with Malevich at the age of 26 and died of scarlet fever in 1924, aged 35. I want, I want, I want.

the latest work in the show was made this year …

by Brazilian artist Adriana Varejão (b. 1964).  Azulejão (Moon) is one of Varejão’s celebrated ‘cracked tile’ works reference the history of Portuguese Azulejo tile work and the disturbing legacy of Brazil’s colonial past.

Every decade gets represented in Surface Work, which takes place across Victoria Miro’s two London galleries.  While bluechip names like Lee Krasner, Helen Frankenthaler, Joan Mitchell, Yayoi Kusama and Agnes Martin are all here – mainly at Miro’s Mayfair gallery – plenty of lesser-known talents, both old and young, get wall space.

Take African-American activist and artist Betty Blayton (1937-2016) who championed the arts in Harlem and was a founding member of the Studio Museum in Harlem (which is currently getting a massive new David Adjaye-designed headquarters).

Alma Thomas’s (1892-1978) untitled painting below was painted in 1971 and inspired by the Apollo moon landings. Thomas was the first African-American woman to receive a solo exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York in 1972.

I love reading the snippets about these artists almost as much as looking at their work.  British abstract artist Sandra Blow (1925-2006) used  things like tea, sawdust and sackcloth in her work. American Howardena Pindell (b. 1943) opted for  glitter, talcum powder and perfume. Japanese-Brazilian Tomie Ohtake  (1913-2015) painted while blindfolded. Bay Area artist Jay DeFeo  (1929-1989) is best known for her painting The Rose, a one-tonne, ten foot tall painting made up of layers and layers of oil paint applied to canvas. It was so heavy that it had to be removed from her apartment by a forklift truck.

Fast forward to now, American superstar Lynda Benglis (b. 1941) transforms chickenwire and glitter into something floating, lovely and slightly puzzling.

Victoria Miro’s Wharf Road space shows the younger, more affordable artists. Run don’t walk to Hoxton as this show closes May 19th and not all of the glorious works are sold, like this exuberant work from relentlessly inventive British painter Fiona Rae (b. 1963)…

Rae is a Professor of Painting at the Royal Academy Schools, one of the first two female professors since the Academy was founded in 1768. Of this work, she says:

I’m inventing characters…  who exist only as abstract paint marks, but who might be wearing crowns, clouds, arrows, dresses, shoes, hats, feathers, stars… I think of these paintings as having a relationship to the way one presents oneself to the world; the way one might use costume and props as bits of language to hang off the body.’

Hungarian-American Rita Ackermann (b. 1968) painted this. I love the whirlpools of pink and red.

As Helen Frankenthaler (1928-2011) once said,

‘A really good picture looks as if it’s happened at once. It’s an immediate image.

 May, 2018

This article also appeared in The Women’s Room Blog and Almost Essential London

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Most of my blogs, I sweat over. But seeing as I have an 8am flight to Portugal and I haven’t packed (or even unpacked from my last jaunt), this blog will be short and sweet. Stop looking so relieved.

If you’re in Manhattan this month, I recommend two exhibits that couldn’t be more different or as enjoyable- from the Lower East Side to the Upper West.

Don’t miss British-Ghanian artist Lynette Yiadom-Boakye’s

thoughtful and soulful paintings at the New Museum. Under Song for a Cypher as the show is lyrically called is a quiet exhibit, 17 new paintings in one room to be enjoyed alone. The show ends September 3rd and then Lynette is going on a sabbatical so now’s your chance.

They look like portraits of real people  but come from Lynette’s imagination. Read my interview in The Women’s Room Blog with Curator Natalie Bell to learn more about how Lynette paints. And while you’re in the New Museum check out the Instagrammable-friendly views from the top floor.

Practically on the other tip of Manhattan just off Central Park and 79th Street is Eloise at the Museum at the New York Historical Society . Who didn’t grow up wishing they could wiz up and down the elevator of the Plaza Hotel with pug Weenie in tow? Eloise had her very own “fawncy” suite and bubbly “bawthroom”. In my next life, I know who I want to come back as.

And the cafe at the museum, while not exactly the Plaza, is charming…

August, 2017

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