Works
Summer Moon
Pat Steir, Summer Moon, 2005 – Oil on canvas – 278,1 x 348 cm. Courtesy of the artist, Galerie Jaeger Bucher, Paris and Cheim & Read, New York The art of Pat Steir resides in the delicately equilibrated interplay between the force of gravityand the properties of the paint, for its quantity, consistency and substance determine the fragile oscillation between deliberate control and chance occurrence.
With this technique, Pat Steir works with what she calls herself the “nature of painting” and uses her body as a Kyudo arch or as a compass in order to better express the work from a central axis, an internal center from which a lived experience gives birth to spatialisation.
Her work is inspired by a profound interest in Renaissance Painting – some of her canvases recall the dazzling colors or magnificent golds of sublime works by Fra Angelico, Lippi or Giotto. Also she has great knowledge of Abstract Expressionism, Chinese paintings from the Tang & Song Dynasty, as well as skills of “Yi-pin” techniques of “ink-splashing” from the 8th and 9tth century where free-form ink splatterings created abstract forms evocative of freedom and perfect control of the material. The ten recent paintings gathered in the exhibition create a radiant and mystical beauty which evokes a silence close to the Origin, the “zero point” where everything started.
http://www.allartnews.com/solo-show-of-paintings-by-the-american-artist-pat-steir-at-galerie-jaeger-bucher/
With this technique, Pat Steir works with what she calls herself the “nature of painting” and uses her body as a Kyudo arch or as a compass in order to better express the work from a central axis, an internal center from which a lived experience gives birth to spatialisation.
Her work is inspired by a profound interest in Renaissance Painting – some of her canvases recall the dazzling colors or magnificent golds of sublime works by Fra Angelico, Lippi or Giotto. Also she has great knowledge of Abstract Expressionism, Chinese paintings from the Tang & Song Dynasty, as well as skills of “Yi-pin” techniques of “ink-splashing” from the 8th and 9tth century where free-form ink splatterings created abstract forms evocative of freedom and perfect control of the material. The ten recent paintings gathered in the exhibition create a radiant and mystical beauty which evokes a silence close to the Origin, the “zero point” where everything started.
http://www.allartnews.com/solo-show-of-paintings-by-the-american-artist-pat-steir-at-galerie-jaeger-bucher/
WATERFALL OF DREAMS
"After the fall IV" 1991 - 2000
Oil on canvas,
218.4 x 205.7 cm
WATERFALL OF DREAMS - May 31 - September 21 2001
Pat Steir,
American artist born in the New Jersey in 1940, has been a protagonist of the art world for 30 years now. Her works are henceforth part of prestigious public collections such as MOMA and Guggenheim in New York, the Whitney and
Metropolitan Museum of New York, the National Gallery of Washington and the Tate Gallery in London....
Pat Steir will be presenting at PIECE UNIQUE and at PIECE UNIQUE VARIATIONS with the title: Waterfall of Dreams , paintings on canvas realized during the last four years or the last four months : luminous and flat stratifications of humours and memories , silver grey tinted or golden, green, black or white fields on which color flows out in droplets or vertical filaments, synthetic images, refined, simple by choice and appropriation.
The impression of simplicity is the result of a long, tiring work of deepening. I paint waiting for the right moment, the exact instant. she explains. Pollock's dripping, in her works, is combined with the memory of Nature: The relation between the landscape and the Chinese painting of the XI century was very important for me.Like the tiny monk who often appears in these works, I dive in the landscape and then, break away from it in order to meditate it in the distance. What I am interested in is paint its sense, its essence. I learned a lot from this technique. I learnt to know
myself, to support my changes.
The theme of water, recurrent since the mid 80's , underlines this condition of unceasing passage, of transformation.
But there, once more, the artist declares her trouble to define with words a work that is meant as a synthesis of images. She says: There are two kinds of Art: One shows you things you've never seen before, the other one (where my art belongs) makes you see the same things with a different eye.
It is in this particular balance between abstraction and figuration, between mental project and sensual effects where resides the clue to her search
http://www.galeriepieceunique.com/infoframes/steir1.htm
Oil on canvas,
218.4 x 205.7 cm
WATERFALL OF DREAMS - May 31 - September 21 2001
Pat Steir,
American artist born in the New Jersey in 1940, has been a protagonist of the art world for 30 years now. Her works are henceforth part of prestigious public collections such as MOMA and Guggenheim in New York, the Whitney and
Metropolitan Museum of New York, the National Gallery of Washington and the Tate Gallery in London....
Pat Steir will be presenting at PIECE UNIQUE and at PIECE UNIQUE VARIATIONS with the title: Waterfall of Dreams , paintings on canvas realized during the last four years or the last four months : luminous and flat stratifications of humours and memories , silver grey tinted or golden, green, black or white fields on which color flows out in droplets or vertical filaments, synthetic images, refined, simple by choice and appropriation.
The impression of simplicity is the result of a long, tiring work of deepening. I paint waiting for the right moment, the exact instant. she explains. Pollock's dripping, in her works, is combined with the memory of Nature: The relation between the landscape and the Chinese painting of the XI century was very important for me.Like the tiny monk who often appears in these works, I dive in the landscape and then, break away from it in order to meditate it in the distance. What I am interested in is paint its sense, its essence. I learned a lot from this technique. I learnt to know
myself, to support my changes.
The theme of water, recurrent since the mid 80's , underlines this condition of unceasing passage, of transformation.
But there, once more, the artist declares her trouble to define with words a work that is meant as a synthesis of images. She says: There are two kinds of Art: One shows you things you've never seen before, the other one (where my art belongs) makes you see the same things with a different eye.
It is in this particular balance between abstraction and figuration, between mental project and sensual effects where resides the clue to her search
http://www.galeriepieceunique.com/infoframes/steir1.htm
Blue River
In Praise of Painting
If someone were to ask me who the best underrated painter is now, I’d have to
say Pat Steir, who started exhibiting in 1964. Brice Marden is not underrated;
he’s having a show sometimes soon at MoMA. There, when it happens, we will have
to deal with the caesura between his early monochromes (sometimes leaving thin,
spattered strips at their bottom edge, giving the effect of a window shade
almost-but-not-quite pulled to the sill) and his “painterly” paintings we now
celebrate.
Pat Steir, who is yet to have a retrospective at MoMA or the Whitney or
anywhere that I know of, presents a similar Act II. We remember her early grid
paintings, replete with signs and images; but now the paintings we love are
nearly abstract — great waterfalls, of a sort. The “nearly” is their
edge.
For instance, I caught myself writing about Steir as “the best underrated
abstract painter.” Her new show at Cheim & Read (547 W. 25th Street, to May
7) is called “Moon Paintings & a River.” The so-called Moon Paintings have
centrally located gashes (vaginas?) or, in two cases, eloquently awkward
squiggles on or in fields or veils of paint. The river of the exhibition’s title
is the spectacular 26-foot Blue River. Well, she certainly is not a
realist in terms of representation, or even presentation of space. She offers a
lot of paint for the money. Yet who could doubt, with or without “waterfall”
titles, that her veils of running paint, her rivulets and her splashes have
something or another to do with water: thin, liquidy paint = water. Furthermore,
water = blood; water = life. These are paintings you can hear.
Who is there after Morris Louis? Rather, since critic Clement Greenberg
cropped most of the Louis paintings, who comes after Morris
Louis-Greenberg?
Why, Steir, of course. This generational skip-and-jump is an almost perfect
illustration of my braid theory of contemporary art (and of the strands of my
own life; maybe everyone’s, since we live much longer now). Each strand
disappears behind the other strands for awhile, and then comes back.
Art nowadays gets absorbed so fast that, if styles and methods are to
develop, they – and we the voracious consumers – need a rest. After some
breathing space, Pop came back as Jeff Koons and then Damien Hirst. And now.
painterly paintings have reappeared, refreshed and repositioned. It’s all about
reincarnations; if you don’t solve all the problems you are supposed to solve,
then you come back. The history of art is really the history of unfinished
business.
The usual story of so-called totally abstract painting is a kind of
reductive, unicursive march. My version this week is a little different.
Kandinsky turned his fairy-tales upside-down; Mondrian transformed his famous
tree into an aerial view of Dutch farms. No, I’m sure I have the last part
wrong. It was the Manhattan grid, right?
And then in ’50s, when Pollock seemed so much more abstract, and therefore
more intellectual, we were scolded if we kept seeing fields of amber grain in
his drip paintings or, as I have recently deduced (and celebrated in my own
paintings), tangles of seaweed. I remember too that de Kooning once made fun of
his old buddy Barnett Newman’s “zips” by describing to me with his hands a pair
of elevator doors closing down to one narrow crack. And didn’t someone christen
some of those Louis poured paintings “veils” and “unfurleds”? Those fields in
Color Field paintings were actual fields.
The distinction between abstract (non-objective) art and representational art
is theological and not in the least bit cut-and-dry. Sometimes there is
oscillation back and forth, and that is very exciting indeed.
Oh, and did I forget to say that Steir’s paintings are beautiful? And smart?
The critic Tom Hess used to say “dumb like a painter,” in spite of his
friendship with de Kooning and more than nodding acquaintanships with Barnett
Newman and Ad Reinhardt. If Hess were alive, he would have to eat his words.
Again. Even Steir’s prints at Pace Prints (now closed) were worth seeing. Her
drawings at Cook Fine Art (1063 Madison Ave., to May 11) are insouciant splashes
on penciled grids. The five tall drawings in the “Winter Group” are my
favorites.
Blue River, like all of her rivulet paintings has great drama, a
kind of theatrical presence not seen since Pollock, Newman and Louis. In terms
of scale, Steir has perfect pitch. Whether or not Blue River signals a new turn
in Steir’s oeuvre; its enormous field (not quite fitting into the gallery room
that attempts to contain it) is breathtaking.
http://www.artsjournal.com/artopia/2005/04/pat_steir_moon_paintings_a_riv.html
If someone were to ask me who the best underrated painter is now, I’d have to
say Pat Steir, who started exhibiting in 1964. Brice Marden is not underrated;
he’s having a show sometimes soon at MoMA. There, when it happens, we will have
to deal with the caesura between his early monochromes (sometimes leaving thin,
spattered strips at their bottom edge, giving the effect of a window shade
almost-but-not-quite pulled to the sill) and his “painterly” paintings we now
celebrate.
Pat Steir, who is yet to have a retrospective at MoMA or the Whitney or
anywhere that I know of, presents a similar Act II. We remember her early grid
paintings, replete with signs and images; but now the paintings we love are
nearly abstract — great waterfalls, of a sort. The “nearly” is their
edge.
For instance, I caught myself writing about Steir as “the best underrated
abstract painter.” Her new show at Cheim & Read (547 W. 25th Street, to May
7) is called “Moon Paintings & a River.” The so-called Moon Paintings have
centrally located gashes (vaginas?) or, in two cases, eloquently awkward
squiggles on or in fields or veils of paint. The river of the exhibition’s title
is the spectacular 26-foot Blue River. Well, she certainly is not a
realist in terms of representation, or even presentation of space. She offers a
lot of paint for the money. Yet who could doubt, with or without “waterfall”
titles, that her veils of running paint, her rivulets and her splashes have
something or another to do with water: thin, liquidy paint = water. Furthermore,
water = blood; water = life. These are paintings you can hear.
Who is there after Morris Louis? Rather, since critic Clement Greenberg
cropped most of the Louis paintings, who comes after Morris
Louis-Greenberg?
Why, Steir, of course. This generational skip-and-jump is an almost perfect
illustration of my braid theory of contemporary art (and of the strands of my
own life; maybe everyone’s, since we live much longer now). Each strand
disappears behind the other strands for awhile, and then comes back.
Art nowadays gets absorbed so fast that, if styles and methods are to
develop, they – and we the voracious consumers – need a rest. After some
breathing space, Pop came back as Jeff Koons and then Damien Hirst. And now.
painterly paintings have reappeared, refreshed and repositioned. It’s all about
reincarnations; if you don’t solve all the problems you are supposed to solve,
then you come back. The history of art is really the history of unfinished
business.
The usual story of so-called totally abstract painting is a kind of
reductive, unicursive march. My version this week is a little different.
Kandinsky turned his fairy-tales upside-down; Mondrian transformed his famous
tree into an aerial view of Dutch farms. No, I’m sure I have the last part
wrong. It was the Manhattan grid, right?
And then in ’50s, when Pollock seemed so much more abstract, and therefore
more intellectual, we were scolded if we kept seeing fields of amber grain in
his drip paintings or, as I have recently deduced (and celebrated in my own
paintings), tangles of seaweed. I remember too that de Kooning once made fun of
his old buddy Barnett Newman’s “zips” by describing to me with his hands a pair
of elevator doors closing down to one narrow crack. And didn’t someone christen
some of those Louis poured paintings “veils” and “unfurleds”? Those fields in
Color Field paintings were actual fields.
The distinction between abstract (non-objective) art and representational art
is theological and not in the least bit cut-and-dry. Sometimes there is
oscillation back and forth, and that is very exciting indeed.
Oh, and did I forget to say that Steir’s paintings are beautiful? And smart?
The critic Tom Hess used to say “dumb like a painter,” in spite of his
friendship with de Kooning and more than nodding acquaintanships with Barnett
Newman and Ad Reinhardt. If Hess were alive, he would have to eat his words.
Again. Even Steir’s prints at Pace Prints (now closed) were worth seeing. Her
drawings at Cook Fine Art (1063 Madison Ave., to May 11) are insouciant splashes
on penciled grids. The five tall drawings in the “Winter Group” are my
favorites.
Blue River, like all of her rivulet paintings has great drama, a
kind of theatrical presence not seen since Pollock, Newman and Louis. In terms
of scale, Steir has perfect pitch. Whether or not Blue River signals a new turn
in Steir’s oeuvre; its enormous field (not quite fitting into the gallery room
that attempts to contain it) is breathtaking.
http://www.artsjournal.com/artopia/2005/04/pat_steir_moon_paintings_a_riv.html