Artists "Review" Artists: Susan Tolbert on Mary Klein

The Artists "Review" Artists Project was launched on June 30, 2008.  Below is a "review" of Mary Klein's work, A Long-Stemmed Strawberry, written by Susan Tolbert.  Mary provided the second jpeg, an image of Nature Morte; Late Veery, as well as a brief response to Susan's "review."

Mary currently resides in Twin Cities, MN, and Susan lives in Norfolk, VA.

If you would like to participate in this project, please email me at jtkirkland [at] gmail [dot] com.

A Long-Stemmed Strawberry
oil on canvas
10" x 8"
2008

The "Review"

I have always envied abstract artists as it just seems easier than pushing paint around and making it look like what you see.  And you still have to have a compelling abstract composition. For me, it’s like the difference between chess and checkers. And then there’s the problem of what to paint.

If I agree with Jeffry Cudlin and a painting is a conversation, then “A Long-Stemmed Strawberry” mentions the work of Wayne Thiebaud by both the artist’s choice of subject matter and by using Thiebaud’s halation -- the yellow contour on the light side of the strawberry and the blue outline on the shadow side of the fruit.  By using that which is so closely associated with Thiebaud, the artist opens himself/herself to comparison to Thiebaud’s work.

Thiebaud said that he was able to see an entire universe in the object he was painting and this is the problem I have with “A Long–Stemmed Strawberry”—there’s no universe. It’s just a picture of a single fruit suspended by a string on a white background. And there is a lot of white background, probably too much background.

The idea of fruit on a string is poetic, but in the end it’s all about the strawberry and that piece of fruit fails to engage. Though the strawberry is carefully rendered, it lacks a sense of volume and space. There is a blue shadow behind the fruit but there is no sense of how far the strawberry is from the wall behind it.

As far as I know Thiebaud didn’t work from photos, though he did at times work from memory and his knowledge of depicting form with a masterful use of warm and cool colors.  I think the problem with this piece is that the artist was trying to work from a photo and would have been much more successful if they had just put a strawberry on a string with one light source and got immersed in the problem of translating an object in paint.

The artist seems to have been more concerned with rendering rather than painting—that is moving the color around to create a dynamic image. And that is what made Thiebaud’s paintings so visually compelling—his paint seemed to have a life of its own. He was just as concerned with the problems of abstraction as with the formal problems of depicting a believable object.

By Susan Tolbert

Nature Morte; Late Veery
oil on canvas
30" x 24"
2008

The Response

I appreciate the effort Susan took reviewing my piece.

In response, I’d like to make clear that I painted “A Long-Stemmed Strawberry” from life.  The strawberry was backlit by a draped window and also lit from above by a hanging lamp (from which the strawberry in turn hung.)

It was also painted from my life.  I paint simple still lifes – berries, eggs and other ordinary objects hanging by threads - as a reaction to the immense gravity of our times.  This is an abstract idea, to be sure.  Nonetheless, at this particular time, it’s what I need to be painting.

By Mary Klein

Previous "Reviews":
Pam Farrell on Ken Weathersby
Paula McCullough on Aric Calfee
Lee Gainer on Leigh Waldron-Taylor
Aric Calfee on Paula McCullough
Matthew Ballou on Heather Levy
Giovanni Garcia-Fenech on TJ Norris
TJ Norris on Giovanni Garcia-Fenech

Comments

[MOR]

I'd never seen the work of Mary Klein until today - and as soon as I started reading the review, I had a feeling that it was both missing the point of the painting and at the same time somehow proving how successful the painting is. To discuss why, there are three parts of this review that I'm going to address.

1. "but there is no sense of how far the strawberry is from the wall behind it."

I can't imagine how this painting could be read as an attempt to depict qualities such as "how far the strawberry is from the wall." And if it were assumed to be a painting concerned with that kind of photorealistic representation (not an interesting pursuit on it's own anyway), it would be a failure for many reasons long before the question of illusion and depth.

2. "The artist seems to have been more concerned with rendering rather than painting"

The first quote criticized the painters failure to render well enough - and this second quote is criticizing the painter for being concerned with rendering well. There's a bit of conflict here. I think a more correct statement here would have been that the painter was more concerned with making a work of art about an idea than with 'being painterly.' And that's not a bad thing for a work that is about a state, not a depiction of objects.

3. "And there is a lot of white background, probably too much background."

In this statement the reviewer has decided that there is 'too much' background. But, they seem not to have considered the possibility that the painting is ABOUT 'too much background.'

Based on these quotes and this assesment of them, I read this review as a testament to this painting's success. The review reveals the ways in which the painting communicates exactly what the artist described in their response; the immense gravity of our times.