En cours de traduction. Voir la version française.
I have lately been fascinated by the work of the relatively unknown abstract expressionist artist, Norman Lewis. Compared with his contemporaries like Rothko or Pollock, Lewis is not featured in contemporary art exhibits across the world, yet his art speaks with volumes of intensity and power. I first came across Lewis' piece, Multitudes, which was tucked away in a corner of the “Art of the Americas” wing in the Art Institute of Chicago, but I was immediately allured by the layering of jagged lines and angular shapes over beautiful hues of melting color fields. In this work and many others by Lewis, a quasi-optical illusion forms; when attempting to focus on either the hues or the lines, the other is, in fact, drawn out even more. It’s as if the lines are in relief of the shadings and the shadings are in relief of the lines. The title of Lewis’ painting comes from Walt Whitman’s Songs of Myself :
“Do I contradict myself?/Very well then I contradict myself,/(I am large, I contain multitudes).”
In this piece, I drew on both the ideas of contrasting and layering lines and shadows as well as the balance of foreground and background as are both present in my experience of the painting. There are moments of multiple melodic shapes forming both a shadow and a composite melody; articulations against the melodic shape; linear melodies being drawn out into a harmonic field yet activated on the surface; or a focus on the angular melodies while a macro-harmonic motion evolves more slowly in the background. By having sections which draw attention towards certain elements foreground/background and jagged/hues dichotomies of the painting, I attempt to create my own “multitude” of experiences that all stem from one central, connected idea.
Justin Weiss
through depths and shadows continues a recent exploration of mine of the relationship between music and the visual arts. through depths and shadows was inspired by a fascinating and atypical piece by Jackson Pollock, The Deep, which I recently saw at the Pompidou Centre in Paris. Unlike many of his athletic and excited “drip paintings,” this one seemed to have a much more measured and slower energy. The painting seemed to layer large swaths of colors on the canvas—while also maintaining distinct lines, gestures, and shapes—allowing for the various colors to make their presence known or hidden depending on the other colors present. My experience of this piece was very different than what I usually experience with Pollock; rather than having dynamic and vibrant motion across the painting, I felt like I was continually sucked into the painting and attempting to find myself within the layers of the “deep.” Looking at this painting became an experience of continual exploration and uncovering. through depths and shadows is not a literal representation of the painting but an abstraction of both Pollock’s materials—his modes of layering, sporadic drips, and gradual unveiling—and my experience of continually searching within the shadings and underlayers of the painting. through depths and shadows was written with admiration for the incredible virtoisi of the Grossman Ensemble.