by Gregg Chadwick
In response to Tyler Green's response to the Guardian:
Diego Velazquez' "Juan de Pareja" is my favorite painting in America.
Diego Rodríguez de Silva y Velázquez
Juan de Pareja
oil on canvas 1650
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
photo by Gregg Chadwick
This is one the paintings that made me want to become a painter.
Richard Diebenkorn's "Ocean Park #54" is my favorite painting by an American.
Richard Diebenkorn
"Ocean Park 54"
100" x 81" oil on canvas 1972
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
See:Diebenkorn and Kitaj Off Ocean Park
R.B. Kitaj's "If Not, Not" is my favorite painting by a living American artist.
R.B. Kitaj
"If Not, Not"
60" x 60" oil on canvas 1975-76
Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh
can someone please explain ocean park to me? I have to do a project on it, and I have absolutely no idea how to interpret abstract art!
ReplyDeleteAnon in Philly,
ReplyDeleteI wrote more on Diebenkorn and his Ocean Park series at:
http://greggchadwick.blogspot.com/2005/03/diebenkorn-kitaj-off-ocean-park.html
My studio is right off of Ocean Park and I think about Diebenkorn almost daily.
His abstract paintings are first of all things:
a taut canvas on wooden stretcher bars covered with slippery films of luminous color. Diebenkorn layered his paintings and always allowed some of his process or errors to show through. He thinned his oil paints with turpentine or linseed oil and let these semi-transparent layers hover on top of each other. The Ocean Park paintings seem to be inspired by the abstract color field paintings of Rothko.
The light and space of the Southern California coastline may have played a part in his work. I see this when I walk out of my studio.
Hope this helps. Good luck!