Mary Heilmann: Playful Californian Wit

Mary Heilmann (b. 1940) is a contemporary abstract artist based in New York and Long Island. She creates paintings along with sculptures and furniture. Rather than referring to her works as paintings or sculptures, however, she typically refers to her work as “objects”. In recent exhibitions, she has included benches and chairs which guests are encouraged to use. The idea, as Heilmann explains, “is that people will sit down and stay awhile”.

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Mary Heilmann, Geometrics: Waves, Roads, Etc., Installation view: 303 Gallery, 2015

Her light-hearted nature is evident both in her art and her demeanor. In reference to her woven seats, she said, “It’s such a mortal sin to use art as décor. But I love the confusion”.

Born and raised in California, she grew up among beatniks and embraced “surf culture”. For her undergraduate degree, she studied literature and poetry at UC Santa Barbara. For her MFA, she studied sculpture at Berkeley. Between the two degrees, she also received a teaching license. Like many artists, she taught to help finance her art practice.

Mary Heilmann, Horizontal Yellow, Red and Blue, 1976.

She departed from sculpture and took up painting in the 1970’s despite its lack luster popularity (painting was deemed dead at that time).

She calls it “non-verbal math”. She plays with logic by way of juxtaposition and combination.

I love her candor and optimism. She does the work but doesn’t take herself too seriously. Her Art21 interview is the most entertaining and joyful segments in the series to date.

She is playful yet rebellious. In the 1970’s, she made works that referenced minimalism and color field paintings… and used PINK. More recently, she adopted the colors of “The Simpsons”.

Tehachapi #2, Mary Heilman, 1979, Acrylic, 48 x 72 x 2 1/2 in

Lovejoy Jr., Mary Heilman, 2004

(named after the church in The Simpson)

Meditation, looking and walking all have a place in her art practice. Every morning, she wakes before 6AM, drinks coffee and looks at her work for an hour. She then begins to work. At 1PM, she eats and takes care of chores and business. Later in the afternoon, she returns to the studio. By 5pm, she leaves the studio, takes a walk or swims and goes to bed early. Purposeful and idyllic.

Mary Heilmann in her studio, Art21, 2009

I like Mary Heilmann, and I enjoy her work. However, her works feels lopsided. The majority (if not all) of her work is playful and witty. She doesn’t explore sadness or grief in her work. The only pieces that feel the least bit melancholic are Rosebud (1983) and some of her works from the 1970s.

"Rosebud," 1983, Oil on canvas, 60 × 42 inches

"Little 9 x 9," 1973, Acrylic on canvas, 21 7/8 × 21 7/8 inches

Her 1970’s finger paintings were inspired by her teachings with very young children.

Learn more about Mary Heilmann and her work:

•Farago, Jason, “Artist Mary Heilmann: the Californian surfer still making waves in her 70s”, The Guardian, 6 June 2016, https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2016/jun/06/mary-heilmann-unsung-heroine-american-art-david-hockney#img-4

•Hawksley, Rupert, “Mary Heilmann: in the studio”, The Telegraph, 17 June 2016, https://www.telegraph.co.uk/art/artists/mary-heilmann-in-the-studio/

•Samet, Jennifer, “Wild, Punk and Slightly Off-Kilter: An Interview with Mary Heilmann”, Hyperallergic, 12 January 2013, https://hyperallergic.com/63358/wild-punk-and-slightly-off-kilter-an-interview-with-mary-heilmann/

•Sheets, Hilarie M., “Mary Heilmann’s New Dia Show Places Her among the (Male) Icons for Minimalism”, Artsy, 30 June 2017, https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-mary-heilmanns-new-dia-places-male-icons-minimalism

•Spears, Dorothy, “Swimming With the Big Fish at Last”, The New York Times, 3 October 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/05/arts/design/05spea.html

•Yablonsky, Linda, “The Composer: Mary Heilamann’s Rhythmic Abstractions Find Their Place in the Sun”, ARTNews, 8 March 2016, http://www.artnews.com/2016/03/08/the-composer-mary-heilmanns-rhymthic-abstractions-find-their-place-in-the-sun/

Currently reading:

The Last Painting of Sara de Vos, Dominic Smith

90s Bitch: Media, Culture, and the Failed Promise of Gender Equality, Allison Yarrow

Currently listening to:

Alex Talks to an Early Facebook Insider, StartUp

Reducing Traffic Deaths, And A School Dress Code for Parents, Houston Matters

Peter Doig, a Contemporary Romantic

I found Peter Doig’s work oddly lovely and intoxicating, so I began researching his work and incorporating some his style into my own. Doig is a contemporary painter based in Trinidad. He was born in 1959 in Edinburgh, United Kingdom.

Peter Doig

Young Bean Farmer 1991

Oil on canvas

His work is figurative. Since he first started showing his work in the 1980’s, he has painted pictorial scenes. It wasn’t trendy at the turn of the century. Art critics and collectors had declared painting “dead” since the 1970’s. Beginning in 1962 when Clement Greenberg wrote in his essay “After Abstract Expressionism”, “good” art would now be predicated on conception alone. Subject matter and skill were no longer meaningful. Donald Judd, the artist who put Marfa on the map for the artworld, strengthened this belief when he asserted the irrelevance of painting in his essay “Specific Objects” in 1965. By the 1990’s, the works of Damien Hirst and Tracey Emin were popular, while the work of Peter Doig…. not so much. Painting, particularly figurative painting, had been “exhausted”.

The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living

Damien Hirst

1991

2170 x 5420 x 1800 mm | 85.5 x 213.4 x 70.9 in

Glass, painted steel, silicone, monofilament, shark and formaldehyde solution

Peter Doig paid no mind to this. As Catherine Grenier writes in her essay “Melancholy Resistance”, “his painting wastes no time with denials or references to a conceptual background”. I love it. I find that to be incredibly liberating. He didn’t get distracted by the art market or whatever was fashionable at the time.

Peter Doig

Concrete Cabin 1991-2

Oil on canvas

What I most enjoy is the sense of in-betweeness, pause and reflection created by his work. He places you somewhere between the real and the imaginary. He seems to step back from what is happening here & now and look back to try and make sense how we/he got to where we are now. But Doig’s paintings also look forward. It causes me to feel as if I am standing at the edge of what Grenier identifies as a “scheduled disappearance” of the world “undermined by the corrosion of the virtual”. It’s that feeling you get when you first look down the Grand Canyon in person. Everything is quiet and larger than. You feel so little, yet you feel embraced by a great sense of overwhelming opportunity.

Peter Doig

Milky Way 1990

Read more about the so called “death of painting” in Back When Painting Was Dead by John Yau.

To learn more about Peter Doig’s life and artwork, read The Mythical Stories in Peter Doig’s Paintings by Calvin Tomkins.

One of my works in progress. Influenced by the work of Peter Doig.