ReadListenLookDec10

Lisa Rawlinson

Read, Listen, Look

December 10, 2018

Featuring

Christopher knight on Hilma af Klint & Abstract art,

Austin Art Talk with Artist Tammie RubiN,

and artist NASIM HANTEHZADEH

a mini list of articles, podcasts, and artists that are worth your time

Read

Hilma af Klint has been a bit of a fascination for me a while. I learned about her work right about the time I began exploring my own connection to and communication with... whatever it is, and realizing that my art-making process was a part of this. I've been a little hungry for examples of how other people have explored this through art, but the pickings are slim out there (my guess is that there are more of us, but it flies under the radar for many reasons). The opening of her first American exhibit, Paintings for the Future, at the Guggenheim has been somewhat of a sensation, and rightly so in my opinion. A trip to New York hasn't been possible as yet, so I've been reading as much as I can about the show instead. But it's been somewhat of a bummer that the vast majority of the press has focused on where her work falls on the art historical timeline of abstraction, with a mere mention of her association to Spiritualism or the fact that she was producing the work in collaboration with an intelligent consciousness that isn't flesh and blood (per her claim, I realize most people will approach this with skepticism or disbelief). But there have been a few outliers, and art critic Christopher Knight of the LA Times addressed the problem of focusing on who did what first in his essay published earlier this week. He makes clean work of exposing why this approach simply doesn't work, pointing out that both Georgiana Houghton and Victor Hugo produced abstract work in a similar vein that preceded af Klint anyhow. And his final paragraph echoed ideas I've tossed around about this time we are living in and had me gunning for a part II.

Read the article here.

Listen

Tammie Rubin had me at, "It's okay to be enthralled with knowledge." In her interview on the podcast Austin Art Talk, hosted by Scott David Gordon in his trademark accessible conversational style, Rubin covers everything from the process behind her intuitive ceramic work, art historical context, teaching, and then some. On the whole, it's a nice glimpse into one of the myriad ways that artists live their lives in ways conducive to producing art and the ideas that percolate before, during, and after that process, though it was her exploratory approach to art making, in the interest of curiosity and "being able to pursue whatever your various interests are," that spoke most to me. At 1 hour and 11 minutes, this makes for great listening while working in the studio. Catch her work currently on exhibit at Women & Their Work in Austin, TX now through January 10, 2019.

Listen to the podcast here.

Look

In this new world order where the ways in which we can access and interact with art is so varied, Instagram is a forum that has unquestionable reach. While I think the experience of standing in front a work of a physical art is still a superior to seeing it on a tiny screen, we can't all be everywhere, and the ability to access art readily form anywhere shouldn't be discounted. Social media forms of delivery are still in their infancy, and they are something I think will define this age in ways that are much more significant that anyone has really given credit for so far. It's through that avenue that I stumbled on the work of LA-based artist Nasim Hantehzadeh and was immediately drawn to it. Clearly derived from an intuitive, inner source, her work spans both two- and three-dimensional forms, but it's her large-scale oil pastel and graphite drawings that I find the most absorbing, even on a tiny screen. Fitting into a current thread of abstract art that's somewhat surreal without regurgitating Surrealism or delving into hokeyness and expressive without replicating Abstract Expressionism, organic shapes defined by controlled scribbley marks begin to come to life, unrecognizable, but suggestive of the things we can see and experience in the outer world. I find them mesmerizing, and look forward to eventually standing in front of them and experiencing them on a whole other level.

Follow her on Instagram here.