Review | Ernst’s palette an...

Generated on 2022-11-13 13:03:31

Result #1

Ernst’s palette and use of oil creates the dynamic of chaos and motion that he hoped to share with his audience. The angel does not feature a single main color in its depiction. Instead, Ernst includes colors from across the entire spectrum. These colors range from white and yellow in the creatures head to blues, greens, browns, and reds that compose the rest of the angel’s form. The use of oil to paint the picture hides the brushstrokes which give the figure a more fluid look than if using paint. Ernst also incorporates a mixture of faded and defined lines to obscure the image in some areas, which causes the viewer to observe the painting more carefully in those places. The use of shading and diagonal lines helps to portray the idea of this giant moving clumsily and rapidly across a proverbial European wasteland <|startoftext|>A long time ago, in an era of precious commodities, Ernst demonstrated how a small change in the value of an object can have a very large effect. He was known to be an artist who was as good as any in the 40s. The value of his painting of the 50s, however, is almost entirely the result of the degree to which he uses a formal vocabulary to compose figures with the precision and charisma of a throwback.Ernsts recent show of 32 paintings and a drawing does nothing but repeat the beauty of his earlier work. But rather than evoke the cinematic nostalgia of the 50s, his new pictures present him as a formalist, a Futurist. He reverts to the elementary nesting of rectangular canvases into two-dimensional squares, but does so with only a fragment of the original perspective. He also displays no independent contours of the figures, but substitutes curved canvases for the contours of his figures. In this way, he makes the figures appear as contourless objects, yet one can nonetheless make out the pattern of their heads. Ernsts grand-father Futurist work is mirrored here in a sense.All of the paintings that were shown here are also on view at the Guggenheim Museum in New York. On view there, as in the Guggenheim show, the paintings are grouped in groups of two, four, or six. The artists are all represented by drawings and paintings. However, these works, because of the prominence of the holes in the paintings, are difficult to locate in a gallery or museum. Even though the holes are more than made up for by their inclusion, they create a certain cacophony. It is possible that one is meant to infer from this that the artist has given up his quest for the perfect geometric drawing. The holes are now repeated to make the geometric figure of the ellipsoid the most important element of the composition.

Result #2

These works recall the 60s neo-Expressionist painters in their use of a brushless technique to create an illusion of depth and space. Ernst, too, uses the brush to subvert the illusion of perspective in a way that recalls John Bernhardts early use of a linear perspective. The color is minimal and muted, a kind of internal light. Erst uses a brush, a single brush, to paint the shadows, to develop color into his figures, to create the effect of a physically shifting atmosphere. This is accomplished through a series of painting moves and howling overlays. The sound in some of these paintings is less conventional than the noise of a motorbike. The brushless technique builds up a tight, almost airtight surface in which the paintings reveal their under-painting and overpainting.The paintings are made of pigmented latex and enamel and are overlaid with acrylic, oil paint, and superglue. The latex creates a gloss-like surface that can be easily cleaned with a cloth, peeled away, and reapplied, or brushed with a paintbrush. These acrylic-coated canvases are also covered with gunmetal-blue superglue. The paintbrush acts as a bridge between the paint and the binding and brings the two back together. Although the paints are all pale and waxy in color, the superglue holds the canvas together, and it is the application of this glue that ultimately carries the act of painting.Ernsts paintings are less like the abstractions of George Segal or Haim Steinbach than like James Baldwins doodles. This too is to say that Ernst uses a paintbrush. But Ernst offers no clues to the use of the brush, so it is up to the viewer to discover and to interpret the material.

Result #3

What is actually found in Erns work is an accurate impersonation of painting, as the concept of painting comes from this artwork. The art of painting does not look like what it is, or paint like other things. The works can be read as the paint itself and the painting as the paint itself. Ernst is able to create an image which we can regard as an accurate painting, an image which is capable of being read as painting. It is quite clear that Ernst is able to provide us with an image of reality, which, in our experience, often resembles television and film.The image Ernst creates for us as the artist is in control is at the same time manipulated by Ernst, through the use of paint. Ernst is able to make a single painting act as a figure on a much larger canvas. This is also true of the canvas itself, which Ernst creates as a black square with its surface painted in the bright colors and the outline of a circle painted in one direction. The circle is one element of a picture, and the marks Ernst uses to mark the canvas are also part of a painting. What Ernst appears to be concerned with is the matter of image-making as an allover affair and as a dual process.The fact that Ernst was able to produce images with a spontaneity that he later found for this activity is perhaps the single most important feature of Erns work. But perhaps it is also important to point out that this spontaneity can be experienced in anything we choose to do, that is, to take it in an abstract manner. It cannot be tied to some specific art project, which is a matter of definition. Ernst insists that his images are totally up to us, and we are free to choose from them.

Result #4

Ernst’s palette and use of oil creates the dynamic of chaos and motion that he hoped to share with his audience. The angel does not feature a single main color in its depiction. Instead, Ernst includes colors from across the entire spectrum. These colors range from white and yellow in the creatures head to blues, greens, browns, and reds that compose the rest of the angel’s form. The use of oil to paint the picture hides the brushstrokes which give the figure a more fluid look than if using paint. Ernst also incorporates a mixture of faded and defined lines to obscure the image in some areas, which causes the viewer to observe the painting more carefully in those places. The use of shading and diagonal lines helps to portray the idea of this giant moving clumsily and rapidly across a proverbial European wasteland <|startoftext|>By adding his paintings to the exhibits on display at the same time as his works on paper, Ernesto Neto has made his films seem even more liquid. In the world of Netos photographs, objects such as a Japanese cutout screen, a paper flag, and a row of portraits on a wall seem to move in a way that one might not expect from the images themselves. Neto approaches painting with a passion and directness, and he presents his paintings as pure, ineffable events that are quite moving. In some of the paintings shown here, the image is blurred by the lines of the paper flags, which often disappear at the edges of the canvas, while the images, which are clearly linked to the films, appear to be submerged in the waves of material that fill the space. In one of the most successful paintings in the show, a white wall with a row of portraits, the images dissolve in a hot and bubbling white fluid that results from the blur of Netos brushstrokes.Another painting, a row of 50 cigarette packets, shows the spray can that has been used to paint the frame of the paintings surface, suggesting that, in using spray paint, the photographer is mimicking the process of painting. The torn paper bags on the floor here reveal the path taken by the camera in an attempt to capture the erratic movement of objects that move on the canvas. The spraying of Neto adds a sense of dynamism to these images.Another painting shows the artist himself moving in a direction that is directly related to his photography. His feet, which are painted white, stand on a clear plastic tub that is filled with a spray-can of red paint. The method is reminiscent of the way the camera moves through the woods, which is shown in another painting.

Result #5

Ernst’s palette and use of oil creates the dynamic of chaos and motion that he hoped to share with his audience. The angel does not feature a single main color in its depiction. Instead, Ernst includes colors from across the entire spectrum. These colors range from white and yellow in the creatures head to blues, greens, browns, and reds that compose the rest of the angel’s form. The use of oil to paint the picture hides the brushstrokes which give the figure a more fluid look than if using paint. Ernst also incorporates a mixture of faded and defined lines to obscure the image in some areas, which causes the viewer to observe the painting more carefully in those places. The use of shading and diagonal lines helps to portray the idea of this giant moving clumsily and rapidly across a proverbial European wasteland What if the central figure were white and black, had the skin of her bones been turned blue, and had the skull of her brain joined by a hair that framed her nipple? And what about a man of indolent delight in his garterbelt? Yet, even before we were certain of what these possibilities might be, we could detect a certain fashion in Ernst’s imagery, and it took a while to discover which details were responsible for what. A casual glance reveals that Ernst’s characters have their eyes closed, and that one is forced to see Ernst’s figures from behind, which makes them appear even more startling. Ernst’s notion of the image as a gift from an unknown source is clear. And yet, this fact remains hidden beneath the coloration and formalism of his paintings. It is only when the eye opens up, as in the painting of the bust of Adolf Hitler, that the image becomes evident, as if Ernst’ were confirming his own belief that there are many images which are secret, but which are almost always seen.In the drawing for the painting, a number of black dots are arranged one atop the other, like fingerprints. An iron ring encircling the most sensuous part of the eye lends the rest a slightly familiar quality; we can recognize that the dot is made of clay, while that ring is painted red. The un-redder and seemingly counterintuitive choice of color has always led Ernst’s paintings to seem pre-ritualized, or even hallucinatory; this circumstance is far more evident in the figurative paintings, where the main body of figures looks like a band of marbles in a glass. The lines, as in Ernst’s earlier black paintings, are drawn in charcoal, which lends the figures a sense of texture, while also acting as a kind of proof of the images origin.