More Recent Shaped Canvas Art
Among shaped-canvas artists of more recent generations, Elizabeth Murray (1940–2007) produced playfully "exploding" canvases, in which exuberance of shape and color seems to force itself outside the normative rectangle - or, as a 1981 New York Times review put it: "...the inner shapes blast off from their moorings and cause the whole painting to fly apart."
Singapore's Anthony Poon (1945–2006) continued the tradition of cool, abstract, minimalist geometry associated with the shaped canvas in the 1960s. The analytical poise and undulating repetitions in his work somewhat recall the work of modular constructivist sculptors such as Erwin Hauer and Norman Carlberg.
The globetrotting Filipina artist Pacita Abad (1946–2004) stuffed and stitched her painted canvases for a three-dimensional effect, combining this technique (which she called trapunto, after a kind of quilting technique) with free-wheeling mixed media effects, riotous color, and abstract patterning suggestive of festive homemade textiles, or of party trappings such as streamers, balloons, or confetti. The total effect is joyously extrovert and warm - quite opposed to both the minimalist and pop art versions of "cool".
In reference to the shaped paintings of Jack Reilly (born 1950), Robin Landa emphasizes the power of the shaped canvas to create a sensation of movement: "Many contemporary artists feel that the arena of painting can be greatly extended by the use of shaped canvases. Movement is established in the container (canvas) itself as well as in the internal space of the container." A 1981 review in Artweek stated "These intricately constructed pieces are related to wall sculpture, bridging the gap between painting and sculpture, they have an illusionary sculptural presence." An additional function of the shaped canvas in Reilly's earlier work was to emphasize the ambiguity of pictorial space in abstract art.
Read more about this topic: Shaped Canvas
Famous quotes containing the words shaped, canvas and/or art:
“To rescue from oblivion even a fragment of a language which men have used and which is in danger of being lost—that is to say, one of the elements, whether good or bad, which have shaped and complicated civilization—is to extend the scope of social observation and to serve civilization.”
—Victor Hugo (1802–1885)
“The past is only so heroic as we see it. It is the canvas on which our idea of heroism is painted, and so, in one sense, the dim prospectus of our future field.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“There is no mystery in a looking glass until someone looks into it. Then, though it remains the same glass, it presents a different face to each man who holds it in front of him. The same is true of a work of art. It has no proper existence as art until someone is reflected in it—and no two will ever be reflected in the same way. However much we all see in common in such a work, at the center we behold a fragment of our own soul, and the greater the art the greater the fragment.”
—Harold C. Goddard (1878–1950)