The Cups Came in a Rush: An Interview with Margot Bergman

Do cups have souls? If you look at Margot Bergman’s portfolio in our Summer issue, you might be tempted to say yes: the cups she has painted, from various vantage points and in bright colors, seem filled with life. Bergman, who was born in 1934, has been painting for nearly her whole life. She is best known for her series Other Reveries, which features collaborative portraits painted over artworks she has saved from flea markets and thrift stores. Each painting is layered with decisive, bold paint strokes, revealing a face latent with layers of emotions. They are at once beautiful, frightening, humorous, and welcoming. Who knew that cups could contain similarly human emotion? We talked about the joys of painting, the female form, and of course, what drew her to cups in the first place.

—Na Kim 

INTERVIEWER

Much of your work revolves around faces, and especially female figures. When did start painting these?

MARGOT BERGMAN

In the fifties. The artist R. B. Kitaj was painting very flat paintings. I was attracted to his style. I began to paint like that. I still have some of those paintings in the basement of my home, left over from the fifties—a series of flat paintings of naked women. They were very flat, very unsexual, though the women were butt naked, with their backs turned to the viewer. At one point, the city of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, wanted some of my paintings for the hallway of a government building. They were these Kitaj-like paintings of women, all naked, their backs turned, with what look like bits of collage randomly placed in the paintings. There was a controversy, and the paintings made it in to the newspaper in Milwaukee, because some women’s group had demanded for them to be taken down.

INTERVIEWER

What happened?

BERGMAN

They were taken down. It was the fifties. I thought it was so funny. And kind of outrageous, but mostly I thought it was funny. Strange, funny, and uninformed.

INTERVIEWER

These women with their backs turned, were they all the same woman, or different women? Who were they?

BERGMAN

I have no idea. But they did not represent me. They were very planiform. There was no voluptuousness to them. There was no shading. They really revealed form. They had shapes, but no real substance. And they were looking out into a courtyard, and the coloring was a bit Impressionist. They were really not expressionistic in any way. I would say that I was influenced by Pierre Bonnard at this time—that was probably my first true love of an artist’s work.

INTERVIEWER

What about Bonnard was particularly inspiring to you?

BERGMAN

I thought his work was beautiful. I thought it was intimate. Later in life, what I’ve come to know is that there was an intimacy to his work that I was not seeing in the work of other artists. And that’s probably what drew me to him.

INTERVIEWER

What led you to start painting the cups that are featured in our Summer issue?

BERGMAN

I had started another body of work that wasn’t working. I was disappointed in it. It had to do with bricks, both rigid urethane ones and children’s building blocks. They were three-dimensional, and I was trying to do paintings of the bricks so that the works on paper were geometric forms. I just could not make them work. So I tore one of them up. I tore up a piece of paper in my frustration, and then I just made a painting of a cup on one of the scraps. God knows. God knows why.

Perhaps now I can look at it and say that the original work had so much geometry, so many hard lines, that I needed a circle. But that really did not go through my mind. My process is very intuitive. I just found myself making a circular form, and the form that came out was a cup. Then the cups came in a rush—I’ve now done seventy of them. It was one after another, after another, after another, just pouring out of me.

INTERVIEWER

I wanted to talk about another important body of your work—your found collaborative paintings, which are portraits overpainted on paintings you often find in flea markets and thrift stores. There’s something so haunting about them. The faces really stare back at you. Do you ever think of real people when you’re painting them, or are they people who come from your mind?

BERGMAN

No, I do not think of them as real people. But when they come out, they frequently have names. There is something in my subconscious that finds a name. I don’t analyze it. Almost always, after a portrait is done, I know the figure’s name. It’s like the painting itself: it just is.

INTERVIEWER

What led you to begin painting over the works of others?

BERGMAN

Before I started making those paintings, I was embedded in the world of art. I was in the galleries. I had lived in New York. I walked the walk and did the talking, and I realized that I was uninspired by the things I was making and didn’t like what I was seeing on the walls either. These works had no heart for me. And when I would go to a flea market, it was all heart. There were these inexperienced artists who were giving everything to make something that they truly cared about. I was drawn to that, so I would bring their work back to the studio. At first, I felt it was a no-no to paint on them, so I didn’t, but I kept collecting them. And then, one day, I just saw a face in one of them, and I painted it on top. That was very satisfying. For about ten years, I worked on that body of work. I had to go out and hunt down these kinds of paintings, which is not an easy thing to do. And nobody wanted the paintings I did with them. I tried in Chicago to have them be seen. Until John Corbett came along, many years later, nobody would show them. I had pulled myself away from whatever I thought was the art world, and I was making strictly for myself. I love them. I love doing it.

INTERVIEWER

You talked a little bit about the difficulties of being an artist. What would you say were some major roadblocks for you?

BERGMAN

It’s trite to say it, because everybody knows it. But let’s start with being a woman. I had children. I was married. I lived in the suburbs of Chicago in the fifties and I had a husband who could support me. I was attractive. I had no network because I didn’t finish my degree at the Art Institute—I got married when I was twenty-one, and my husband was in service and I followed him. How many things worked against me there? I was not part of anything, and I was different, then. But it didn’t stop me from painting, ever, ever, ever, ever. I worked like hell. I was always working. I think we’re working even when we’re not working. I think when we walk in our space and we sweep the floor, we are working. It is something that’s inexplicable.

INTERVIEWER

What part of the painting process would you say is your favorite, if you have one?

BERGMAN

I like pencils. I like paint. I love paint. I love paint. I love mark-making. I love the end, when one can see something that one could say is complete.

INTERVIEWER

How do you know when a painting is done?

BERGMAN

Sometimes I’ve been right and sometimes I’ve been wrong. I’ve often thought, Can I make it better if I keep going? It’s a well-known fact that artists can leave their studio or workspace, think they have completed a painting and are satisfied with it, and come back the next day and say, “Oh my gosh, that’s not nearly what I thought it was.” So, how do we know? We don’t always.

INTERVIEWER

Is painting intuitive to you? Do you find it difficult?

BERGMAN

I don’t take myself too seriously until I need to be serious. I like playing. I don’t mean that I am not working seriously. I am looking hard, but I’m also having a very good time. Painting is a very joyful process for me. And even though it can have dark undertones, for me, painting is the unearthing of whatever is there for me to find. That’s just intuitive.

INTERVIEWER

Where do you think this curiosity and urge to create comes from?

BERGMAN

When someone comes to me and says, “I just traveled to India, and I did this, and I did that,” I think to myself, I just traveled on my own adventure. I love adventure, and I equate what’s happening to me on the canvas with a journey. My journey has no map.

 

Na Kim is the art director of the Review.

R.I.P. Françoise Gilot

Françoise Gilot died recently, at the age of 101. Françoise Gilot, Artist in the Shadow of Picasso, Is Dead at 101 In remembrance of her many talents, here’s an image from one of her travel sketchbooks, reproduced in facsimile in a limited edition set of books published by Tachen, which I posted about back when … Continue reading R.I.P. Françoise Gilot →

Kennedy Yanko’s Poetic Fusion of Metal and “Paint Skin”

Brooklyn-based artist Kennedy Yanko uses salvaged metal and blanket-like “paint skins” to create incredible artworks that challenge the definition of painting and perfectly balance a range of oppositions. Her current exhibition Humming on Life presents 10 new artworks on view at Jeffery Deitch in New York through April 22^nd.

Metal feels weightless, refuse becomes beautiful, and paint breaks free from canvas. The “paint skins” in Yanko’s work are literally just paint – first created flat and then draped over, between, and within the crushed metal. The fabric-like folds and crushed-metal dents echo each other while both feel organically matched – as if the two elements have somehow grown together.

These new 2023 works add a new layer to her process. On previous works, the color of the paint skins was inspired by an existing color on the found metal: perhaps a lime green from oxidized copper or a burgundy from a small patch of rust. But in these new works, Kennedy has introduced the act of painting onto the metal itself with more colors before pieces are fire-cut and additionally crushed. This process introduces more complex color interactions while maintaining a contrast of time and texture between the elements.

Besides the towering scale (some are over 7 feet wide or 8 feet tall), the play with gravity may be the most surprising element when viewing these in real life. Somehow the large metal chunks feel as if they’re levitating, even the sculptures on the floor feel like they’re about to lift off. Meanwhile the paint skins are fully engaged with gravity, finding their shape through their own weight and scaffolding of the metal. It all contributes a sense of wonder and curiosity.

Kennedy Yanko’s work is a beautiful dance of oppositions: a pairing of past and present, flexible and ridged, color and material, gravity and levitation.

If you want to hear Kennedy’s story in her own words and get a peak at her whole process in her studio, I highly recommend this 7-minute video segment from CBS Mornings. Then run to this current exhibition to be immersed in the magnetism of these works.

What: Kennedy Yanko: Humming on Life
Where: Jeffery Deitch, 18 Wooster Street, NYC
When: March 4 – April 22, 2023

Installation photographs by Genevieve Hanson. Courtesy of the artist and Jeffrey Deitch, New York.
Single artwork photographs by Martin Parsekian.
Detail photographs by author, David Behringer.

Cooking with Florine Stettheimer

The painter and poet Florine Stettheimer should have been easy to cook from. Her poetry, commercially published for the first time in the 2010 collection Crystal Flowers, has a section devoted to “comestibles”—including airy tributes to ham, bread, and tomatoes with Russian dressing—and her paintings often portray food. She was born to a wealthy German-Jewish family in New York in the late eighteen hundreds, part of a social circle that included Neustadters and Guggenheims, and she held salons that were a Who’s Who of the New York art world. (Marcel Duchamp, Carl Van Vechten, and Leo Stein were regulars.) Stettheimer did not oversee the cooking, but part of her work’s deliberate feminine aesthetic involved recording the parties, personalities, dishes, outfits, interiors, furniture, and floral arrangements that made up her life. On one canvas, Soirée, a plate of salad and pitcher of cocktails adorn a table in the foreground of a drawing-room scene, where assembled luminaries gaze at Stettheimer’s paintings-within-the-painting. These were unorthodox choices for a woman artist of her time—many others made strenuous efforts not to seem too overtly feminine.

Yet perhaps this femininity was also subversive. Today’s art world is reevaluating Stettheimer in the wake of the publication of Crystal Flowers and a 2022 biography by Barbara Bloemink, Florine Stettheimer, published by Hirmer. Bloemink situates Stettheimer as a surprisingly modern figure whose “female” topics—furniture and domestic interiors, flowers and frills, diaphanous fabrics, social events, her family, social narratives—were presented both unapologetically and with a wry, critical distance. Through the witty, effervescent tone of her poems and the originality of her painterly technique, she transformed her subjects into baubles for the artist’s gaze—and in so doing, de-gendered them. The following untitled poem is representative: “Mary Mary of the / Bronx aerie / How does your V garden / Grow? / with beans and potatoes / peas and tomatoes / and shiny bugs all in a / Row” is representative. Stettheimer’s choice of wording and image show the poem to be about making art, not salad. The “V garden” is cheekily abbreviated; its rhyming food is aesthetic and playful.

To cook from Stettheimer’s work, then, would be to acknowledge that her interest in food was not literal. In the section “Comestibles,” rhyming ditties, light as meringue, are entry points into discussions of sex and desire. Stettheimer went about this with a frankness unusual for the time period, and with a dollop of irony as well. A “comestible” is alimentary but not elementary; the fancy and fanciful word removes food from the cupboard and makes it more like art, if a bit unconventionally. In one poem, Stettheimer writes: “You stirred me / You made me giddy / Then you poured oil on my stirred self / I’m mayonnaise.” A frothy crush comes to a gluey and unsexy end in a mere four lines. Another untitled poem runs, “You beat me / I foamed.” In the next lines, its subject is “drowned” in sweetness and “parceled” out. She concludes, “You made me hot – hot – hot / I crisped into ‘kisses.’” Here, Stettheimer puts a lover’s attempts at mastering her into her oven and bakes them into female pleasure.

In order to re-create Stettheimer’s fare, I needed to transform such dishes into something visual and concrete, which seemed beyond the purview of mere food and was complicated by some of the work’s details. Despite Stettheimer’s adulthood in Manhattan, the food her poetry suggests is the stodgy fare of the old world, a reflection of how her family ate. At their homes and country homes, Bloemink wrote in her biography, they consumed elaborate several-course meals, served on fine porcelain. In the “Comestibles” section of Crystal Flowers, there are grandmotherly stuffed peppers and a family staple, the gross-sounding “chaud-froid,” a gelatin sauce made from a reduction of boiled meat. Stettheimer described it as follows: “You are hot / You are cold / Your black beauty spots / Enhance your creamy whiteness.” I considered making dramatic banquet-style versions of these dishes but have not had success in the past with making jellied meat look (or taste) edible. And there were price considerations—I needed veal and crayfish for a salad inspired by the “V garden,” and I couldn’t produce old-world banquet food at new-world prices. The Stettheimers served champagne every night in the family drawing room; I could afford only Crémant d’Alsace, a French sparkling wine produced in the traditional champagne method but in a less expensive region for growing grapes. My spirits consultant Hank Zona found me a good-quality vintage Crémant from Domaine Albert Mann that had a thematically appropriate painting on the label.

And so I turned to the artist Heidi Howard to make my Stettheimer-inspired food into something more. Howard’s style of portraiture documents social spaces, as Stettheimer did, and they are interested in depicting the passage of time in painting, as Stettheimer was. Howard explained to me that portraiture opens up “a new painted space” that creates a conversation between the painter and the sitter, and that offers a more flexible way of existing collaboratively. We decided they would paint me in my kitchen, along with the dishes I’d chosen, the cookbook I’d used, and even the Crémant d’Alsace wine. The profusion of these domestic details, down to my Christmas tree in the background, evoked Stettheimer.

Our time together passed quickly. Howard brought a sixty-inch-by-forty-six-inch prepared canvas to my kitchen. While they painted, I made two old-world dishes that were inspired by the Ballets Russes. I took “Black-Swan Effect Stuffed Peppers,” from the cookbook Summer Kitchens by Ukrainian food writer Olia Hercules, a recipe that swaps the usual meat in the filling for vegetarian-friendly apples. The “black swan” in the title is a reference to the ballet Swan Lake, where a small change (in the coloration of a swan from black to white, as with the swap from meat to apples) makes a huge difference. Second, the vegetables in Stettheimer’s untitled poem about Mary in her Bronx aerie, and the mayonnaise from the other poem quoted above, reminded me of the Russian dish salat Olivye. In its modern incarnation this is a depressing Soviet-buffet standby made with beans, tomatoes, peas, cubed potatoes, cubed ham, and plenty of mayo, but it has roots as an elegant czarist concoction with more elevated ingredients, and this was the direction I aimed for.

I took artistic license for dessert. The poem that begins “You beat me / I foamed” and ends “I crisped into ‘kisses’” implies meringue, a material that has some of the glossiness, shine, and plasticity of Stettheimer’s beloved cellophane, which she often wore and painted herself wearing. I made piped-meringue kisses, flavored with freeze-dried raspberry powder and pulverized rosemary. And since the chaud-froid’s hot-and-coldness and mysterious black spots reminded Howard of a Baked Alaska (later revealed to have been a challenge on an episode she’d recently watched of The Great British Bake Off), I made one. In place of the usual sponge-cake base, I used a layer of Russian-style walnut cake.

As I’d suspected, turning Florine Stettheimer’s airy comestibles into food-on-a-plate meant losing something of the artist’s spirit. My stuffed peppers were excellent, but humble. The rosemary-raspberry meringue “kisses” tasted delicious, but after several errors with the piping bag, I wound up with a prudishly small quantity of them, not enough to make anybody “hot – hot – hot.” My salat Olivye was banquet-worthy—I had never made one before, and was surprised at the painstaking demands of its assembly and seasoning. In the end, I forgot ingredients and ran out of time, but the recipe below has been adjusted. An attempt to make my own mayonnaise by hand was an abject failure—I should have known that all the Modernist women bought Hellmann’s.

It was the Baked Alaska that best channeled Stettheimer’s spirit—despite, or perhaps because of, the fact that it was a sticky, flaming, melting mess. Here was a dish, finally, that seemed to transcend mere food and generate a symbolic presence. The painter often depicted herself with huge, vaginal flower bouquets hovering near her genitals, which were simultaneously art-historical in-jokes and a transformation of the vagina’s creative power from vessels for bearing babies to sites of aesthetic production. My dessert was about the same size as the arrangements and had a similar firepower.

To make a Baked Alaska, you line a bowl with plastic wrap, fill it with layers of ice cream, insert a sponge-cake layer as a base, and put it in the freezer to set. Just prior to service, you whip up a pot of sugar and egg whites, decant the frozen Alaska, slather it with the meringue (attractively!), and then set it on fire. The fire is best produced by pouring a ninety-proof alcohol into half an eggshell nestled in the pillowy meringue atop the Alaska, quickly spooning it all over the sides, and then dropping a match into the eggshell. (You could use a kitchen torch instead, but the burnt alcohol imparts a necessary final touch of flavor.)

My Baked Alaska was a giant dome of creamy white, encrusted with sticky little points of wet, uncooked meringue. It was heavy to carry to the table. I had to use more than one match to get it going (messily dropping burnt matches into my meringue), and when it caught fire it flamed aggressively for several minutes, crisping and blackening the final product and truly creating the “beauty spots” of the poem. I thought it stood in well for one of Stettheimer’s blooming vaginal-symbolic arrangements.

When my guests and I cut into it, the following lines about “chaud-froid” applied:

You are delicious

You are a dream

You are full of softness

Full of delicacies

Marvelously blended

I gloat over your perfections

And voluptuously destroy you—

You wonderful hot-cold thing

Russian Salat Olivye, Imperial Style

You stirred me

You made me giddy

Then you poured oil on my stirred self

I’m mayonnaise

—Florine Stettheimer

Mary, Mary of the

Bronx aerie

How does your V garden

Grow

With beans and potatoes

Peas and tomatoes

And shiny bugs all in a

Row

—Florine Stettheimer

 

Adapted from The Russian Tea Room Cookbook by Faith Stewart-Gordon & Nika Hazelton.

For the salad:

1/2 cup each of the following items:

crayfish tail, cooked and cubed

veal, cooked, seasoned, and cubed

kidney beans, cooked

potatoes, cooked and cubed

green peas, cooked and cubed

tomatoes, chopped

hard-boiled eggs, cubed

For the dressing:

1/2 cup mayonnaise

1/3 cup sour cream

1 tsp Dijon mustard

2 tbsp pickles, chopped

1 tbsp capers, drained

1 tbsp minced parsley

1 tbsp minced dill

In a large bowl, combine all the elements for the salad. Combine all the elements for the dressing in a small bowl and whisk to combine. Add dressing to taste. Toss, season, and serve.

“Black Swan Effect” Stuffed Peppers

Your sharpness

Brings tears to my eyes

And only

When I have dug through

To your inner softness

I breathe freely once more

—Florine Stettheimer

Adapted from Summer Kitchens by Olia Hercules.

For the filling:

2 tbsp butter with a splash of oil

1/4 of a fennel bulb, grated

1 large carrot, grated

2/3 cup white or brown rice, cooked

2/3 cup corn kernels

1 green apple, cored and diced

1 tbsp thyme leaves

For the sauce:

2 tbsp butter with a splash of oil

1 onion, thinly sliced

3 garlic cloves, minced

2 large ripe tomatoes (or one 14.5-ounce can of diced tomatoes, pureed in the blender)

1/2 cup heavy cream

3/4 cup vegetable stock

Salt

pepper

a little sugar

To assemble:

4 large bell peppers

salt and pepper

chopped parsley and dill to serve

To make the filling, heat the butter and oil in a large frying pan over medium-low heat. Add the fennel and carrot and cook until soft, then stir in the rice, corn, apple, and thyme. Season generously with salt and pepper. The filling should be very well seasoned, almost on the verge of being over-seasoned, as it will also serve as seasoning for the peppers.

To make the sauce, heat the butter and oil in a medium frying pan over medium heat. Add the onion and cook for five minutes, stirring frequently, until it begins to soften. Add the garlic, turn down the heat to low, and cook gently for three more minutes, to mellow the flavor. Grate in the tomatoes, discarding the skins, or add the pureed tomatoes, and cook for fifteen minutes, stirring from time to time. Add the cream and the stock and stir. Season with salt, pepper, and a little sugar if it needs it. The sauce should be silky and luscious.

Preheat the oven to 425 degrees Fahrenheit. Cut the peppers in half, seed them, and stuff with the filling. Pour half the sauce into a baking dish that will snugly hold all the peppers. Arrange the peppers in the dish and pour the rest of the sauce on top of them. Cover the dish tightly with a lid or foil and cook in the oven for thirty minutes. Take off the lid or foil and cook for another ten minutes or until cooked through and golden. Do not overcook. Serve topped with parsley and dill.

Rosemary-Raspberry Meringue Kisses

You beat me

I foamed

Your sweetest sweet you almost drowned me in

You parceled out my whole self

You thrust me into darkness

You made me hot – hot – hot

I crisped into “kisses”

—Florine Stettheimer

 

4 large egg whites, at room temperature

1/2 tsp cream of tartar

1/2 cup plus 1 tbsp superfine sugar

1/4 cup powdered sugar

1/4 cup freeze-dried raspberries, bashed into powder

1 tsp rosemary, very finely chopped

Preheat the oven to 200 degrees Fahrenheit. Line a tray with parchment paper and assemble a piping bag fitted with a large cake tip (I used one with a fifteen-mm round opening).

In a mixing bowl, beat the whites until frothy. Add the cream of tartar and beat at medium speed while gradually adding two tablespoons of the superfine sugar. When soft peaks form, add another tablespoon of superfine sugar and increase the speed to high. When stiff peaks form, gradually add the remaining superfine sugar and beat until stiff and very glossy. Gently fold in the powdered sugar, raspberry powder, and rosemary.

Fill the piping bag with the mixture and pipe into “kisses.” Bake for one hour, then turn off the and leave inside to cool for one hour more.

Walnut, Orange, and Pistachio Baked Alaska

You are hot

You are cold

Your black beauty spots

Enhance your creamy whiteness

You are delicious

You are a dream

You are full of softness

Full of delicacies

Marvelously blended

I gloat over your perfections

And voluptuously destroy you—

You wonderful hot-cold thing

—Florine Stettheimer

 

For this recipe you will need an old-fashioned, five-pint metal dessert mold or other deep bowl with a nine-inch round opening.

For the cake layer:

4 large eggs, separated, at room temperature

a pinch of salt

1/8 tsp almond extract

1/2 cup superfine sugar, divided

1/3 cup flour, sifted with 3/4 tsp baking powder

1/2 cup walnuts, toasted and finely chopped

For the meringue:

4 large egg whites, at room temperature

1/2 tsp cream of tartar

1/2 cup plus 1 tbsp superfine sugar

1/2 cup powdered sugar

To assemble:

1 pint orange sherbet, softened

1 pint pistachio ice cream, softened

1 pint vanilla ice cream, softened and mixed with 1/3 cup orange marmalade

2 tbsp rum, vodka, or other alcohol, 90 proof or above

1/2 of an eggshell

To make the cake layer:

For best results, make the cake layer the day before you intend to assemble the Baked Alaska. Set a baking rack in the middle of the oven and preheat to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Line a nine-inch springform pan with wax paper covering the bottom and coming slightly up the sides, and grease the paper.

In a large bowl using a wooden spoon, stir the egg yolks vigorously with a pinch of salt for thirty seconds. Add the almond extract, stir, and reserve. With an electric beater, whip the egg whites at high speed until soft peaks form, add three tablespoons of the sugar and continue to whip at high speed for two minutes. Add two tablespoons more of sugar, whip until stiff peaks form, add the remaining sugar and beat three minutes longer.

Fold the whipped egg whites, flour, and walnuts into the egg yolks as gently as possible, working quickly but in small batches. This process should take about two minutes altogether.  Fill the pan, distributing the batter evenly, and bake for twenty to twenty-four minutes, until the cake turns pale beige and tests done with a skewer. Remove from the oven and let cool.

To make the meringue:

In a mixing bowl, beat the whites until frothy. Add the cream of tartar and beat at medium speed while gradually adding two tablespoons of the superfine sugar. When soft peaks form, add another tablespoon of superfine sugar and increase the speed to high. When stiff peaks form, gradually add the remaining superfine sugar and beat until stiff and very glossy. Gently fold in the powdered sugar.

To assemble:

Line a nine-inch bowl or dessert mold with plastic wrap. Fill with ice cream in three even layers, leaving an inch or two at the top for the sponge cake. Insert the sponge cake and return to the freezer.  When it is time to serve, invert the frozen Alaska over your serving plate and remove the saran wrap. Using a rubber spatula, cover with meringue. Nestle the eggshell on top of the dessert and fill with alcohol. Tableside, just prior to service, quickly spoon the alcohol over the sides of the dessert and drop a match into the eggshell. When the flames have subsided, remove the eggshell, slice, and serve.

 

Valerie Stivers is a writer based in New York. Read earlier installments of Eat Your Words.

Recently Published Book Spotlight: Nussbaum’s Politics of Wonder

Wonder is the mind's excitement and proceeds by getting lost. And that is what democracy calls on us to do together.

Charles Gaines’ Colorful Pixelation of Southern Trees

Artworks can provide an immediate rush of joy on first impression, or slowly build in appreciation over multiple visits. Charles Gaines’ current exhibition at Hauser & Wirth Gallery in New York does both: it is breathtaking from the moment you walk in, and offers new discoveries and deeper fulfillment with every subsequent visit. The artworks are individually brilliant while they also connect to each other in a series that invites you to get closer while extending your peripheral vision.

The exhibition’s title “Southern Trees” references the 150-year-old pecan trees shown in the 17 new works – all photographed on a visit to Boone Hall Plantation in Charleston County, South Carolina, not far from where the artist was born.

On the 2^nd floor, 8 new works contain 3 elements: a black-and-white photograph of a pecan tree, a black silhouette of that tree on gridded paper, and a pixelated watercolor translated from the silhouette.

The exhibition crescendos as each work builds on the last. For example, the first watercolor seen in the gallery is a single tree from start to finish (in blue), followed by the second work in the exhibition that adds a tree (red) to that equation. A new tree is presented in the photograph and silhouette alone, but is added to the first tree in the watercolor. The third work introduces a third tree, and so on. By the time you walk to the 7^th and 8^th work in the room, the forms and colors fuse together in an abstraction that celebrates difference as a whole. 

Even when the layered colors are the exact same within a single square, the final color within each square (a brown or green, etc.) is always different due to the variance of pigment saturation in every application.

A great 10-minute video is linked below, produced by Art21. In it, Gaines talks about a relationship between his artistic system and larger social/political systems:

In a way, I’m trying to suggest that the kind of visual difference that happens in the system [within the artworks] operates the same way that other concepts of difference happen in other domains: politics, gender difference, race difference, class difference. In the drawings we can see that those differences are constructed by the system, and in the social and political domain, the differences that we see are also constructed by a system.

– Charles Gaines

The series of work on the 5^th floor adds complexity, scale, transparency, and sunlight, resulting in some of the most uplifting and captivating works on view now. Each of the 9 works throughout the skylit room follow a similar logic of “adding a tree” as you walk around the room, but now the photographic images are printed on clear Plexiglass boxes that encapsulate each large painting.

Exploring the colorful, painted grid requires a viewer to look through a photographic detail of the branches of the newest tree. And due to the distance between the Plexiglass and painting (almost 6 inches), the images shift as you move, offering a sense of discovery similar to the feeling of peering through real branches to see a distant landscape.

Each painting is a satisfying story, and though you don’t need to connect the dots between them, this is a rare opportunity to see complete sets together and experience those relationships in a single room.

The above 10-minute video features works from the exhibition along with larger, recent musical and interactive works. Well worth watching.

What: Charles Gaines: Southern Trees
Where: Hauser & Wirth New York, 542 W 22^nd St, New York, NY
When: January 26 – April 1, 2023

Images:  Installation Images © Charles Gaines, Courtesy the artist and Hauser & Wirth, Photographed by Sarah Muehlbauer
Artwork Images © Charles Gaines, Courtesy the artist and Hauser & Wirth, Photographed by Fredrik Nilsen

I’m Looking to Jump Ship Sooner Than I Should: A Conversation with Percival Everett

Ayize Jama-Everett interviews Pulitzer Prize finalist and Booker Prize-shortlisted author Percival Everett on what training horses has taught him about writing novels, his rules for writing, and the work schedule that’s helped him produce everything from novels and poetry collections to short stories and paintings over his 40-year artistic career.

What does training horses teach you about writing a novel?

Patience. Not to get stressed out. It never pays to get excited around a half-ton animal. It’s not going to calm the animal down, and it’s not going to do you any good. With novels, it is the same thing. Why get stressed about it? And even after you publish it. What if nobody likes it? What are you going to do? Maybe somebody will enjoy the next one.

Are there any rules that you follow in terms of writing? A road map for success or knowing that the project is going where you want it to go?

No, not really. I try to be honest in terms of my vision. I never think about readers — not to say I don’t want to be read. But there’s no profit in imagining some ideal reader when everyone is different. So, I’m the reader I’m trying to appeal to. Which, sadly, explains my book sales. [Laughs.]

What’s the writing routine, the schedule?

I work all the time but only sometimes. It comes from ranching and training horses. I wake up, feed, fix stuff, write for about 20 minutes, train an animal, fix stuff, and write for 20 minutes. Constitutionally, I’m lucky, because when I sit down, I’m immediately working. I don’t have to clear the deck, and I don’t go online, surf the web, or anything like that. I don’t sleep a lot.

Ella Doran Turns Leftover Household Paint Into a One-Off Art Piece

Artist and surface pattern designer Ella Doran has created a one-off artwork piece called “Paint Drop.” The piece took form during the COVID-19 pandemic, inspired by the idea of using leftover house paint as part of Ella’s on-going commitment and passion for the circular economy. The call to action went out via Instagram – “Waste paint wanted!” – and she created the artwork on a reused canvas without a single brush. “Paint Drop” was exhibited in The Barge House over four days and then sold with 10% of the proceeds going to not-for-profit arts organization Core Arts in Hackney, the area of London Ella has always lived and worked in. The piece has since inspired a range of roller blinds.

Tell me a little bit about your childhood, education, and background in terms of how you first became interested in creativity, design, and sustainability?

I was born in London and spent the first six years of my life moving between various towns and cities because my Dad was at medical school. We then settled in Bristol and I attended a Steiner School until I was 14. Every week we had practical lessons in the arts integrated with our academic work, from needlework to pottery, from woodwork and painting to music – this gave me a very strong foundation and confidence in my own creativity and in making things from a young age. Until I was 18, I mostly lived with my Mum in a community surrounded by creative people. I had the best year of college life on my foundation course and from there I went on to study printed textiles at Middlesex University (then a polytechnic). I quickly learned that I preferred designing for interiors, rather than for fashion and the course focused on developing our own design language. In terms of sustainability in my own business, the size of my company has ebbed and flowed to remain viable, but the values I espouse and the materials I use have not changed – even though the communication and focus of what and how I design has developed over time.

How would you describe your project/product?

It’s an artwork piece called “Paint Drop” measuring just over 24 square feet made using waste paint collected from a call out to the public for their leftover paint!

What inspired this project/product?

It was during lockdown in early 2021 when I was still able to work in my studio as no one else was there. I was searching for a new project and I had already set myself the challenge that anything I created had to be working with old materials that I already owned, or that might be lying around waiting to be reused that I could get from others.

What waste (and other) materials are you using, how did you select those particular materials, and how do you source them?

I had a large dismantled wooden canvas frame in my studio, along with its original promotional canvas that I’d had made for a trade show. It had been collecting dust for more than 5 years, so I built it, primed it, and then rather spontaneously I put a call out on Instagram “Waste Paint wanted!” The response was immediate! Donations ranged from small pots of paint to much larger surpluses – the amount and variety of colors and types of paint handed over, from matte and gloss to vinyls and emulsions, was  overwhelming!

When did you first become interested in using waste as raw material and what motivated this decision?

I’ve been an advocate of the circular economy since I first heard the phrase, but when I look back, I have been passionate about working with materials to give them new form my whole life. I have worked on several projects – notably a live exhibition at the V&A in collaboration with the upholstery brand Galapagos and The Great Recovery Project.  We ran live workshops during the design festival back in 2014, inviting the public to engage with making, and to see with their own eyes and make a connection with the materials that go in and come out of the chairs in the process of renewal. I have since run many workshops and live events around furniture pieces: one Design Milk featured before the Clean Up Camo Chair.

The phrase “take, make, use, lose” coined by one of my circular economy heroes, Kate Raworth author of the Doughnut Economics rings true. We are indeed all losers if we stick to the linear economic model, we need to be reminded every day that we are living in a climate emergency!

What processes do the materials have to undergo to become the finished product?

The process in my case has been creativity and – the most precious commodity that we all have – time. I gave myself one rule… no brushes! And during lockdown I would just lose myself in the highly organic process of applying the paint by pouring, scraping, and dripping, a kind of meditation in motion.

What happens to your products at the end of their life – can they go back into the circular economy?

This is an interesting question; I’d like to hope this stays as one artwork for a long time. The canvas could be cut up into new smaller pieces or stretched onto new smaller frames, a smaller section could go under a glass-topped table. The possibilities are endless. The wooden frame is of good quality so in its present form it could be reused, again and again, if someone tires of the art.

How did you feel the first time you saw the transformation from waste material to product/prototype?

It’s taken over a year to evolve in between my teaching and interiors projects, it was a highly meditative and healing process for me, particularly during the lockdown months. I’ve gone through many emotions throughout its creation, questioning whether I should stop at certain times… then I’d drop another color and knock it all out, which meant waiting a good few days or sometimes weeks for me to change my mood, and pick up a new color and slowly bring back the balance. I knew a week or so before I finished that I was getting close … so my color decisions became even more poignant and finite until finally, the piece told me it was done.

How have people reacted to this project?

I’ve been thrilled with the reaction – in order to install it at the Material Matters Fair here in London during the London Design Festival, I had to dismantle it just to get it out of the door of my studio, and remount on site. And there is serendipity in the painting being here at the Oxo tower, as I had collected a lot of waste paint from some designer friends of mine, who had literally left it in a doorway under the Bargehouse for me to collect over a year and a half ago!

How do you feel opinions towards waste as a raw material are changing?

We are at such a critical time in history, with the climate, social and economic crises, with finite materials running out. It’s important for us all to feel part of the change that is required, to feel connected. And to do all we can in the re-use and value of our materials, through repair and restoration, with the last resort being to recycle. There is a much greater awareness now, a regenerative mindset is spreading, and new models are emerging. I’m personally excited about the momentum I’m witnessing from the Ellen MacArthur Foundation to the 15-minute city concept and local initiatives like ReLondon and etsaW here in London.

What do you think the future holds for waste as a raw material?

It’s a necessity… and I think it will grow and grow – collaboration will be key for example,  biochemists and anthropologists with the artists and designers to push the boundaries of possibilities – talking of which I see myself as a “Possibilist,” coined by Sarah Ichioka and Michael Pawlyn in their brilliant book Flourish, where they give a whole chapter to what it is to be a possibilist. If there is one book, I would recommend for every designer of any stripe to read right now, it’s theirs – Flourish – Design Paradigms for our Planetary Emergency.

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