We continued our tour at DC Moore, which hosted a solo-exhibition of one artist’s work, in this case, of Mark Innerst. A native of Pennsylvania, Innerst was born in the 50s and earned his BFA in 1980. Since, he has had 34 solo shows in both the US and abroad, and his work is in many esteemed museum collections, such as the Brooklyn Museum, the Guggenheim, the Los Angeles County Museum and the Met, to name but a few. When we looked at one of his works, titled All the Above, 2010, my first reaction led me to think about the Art Deco style.
The group learned that this artistic movement originated in Paris at the turn of the 20th century, specifically in the 1920s. Just as Deco pervaded women’s fashion and home appliances, it found its way into fine and decorative arts and architecture. Above all else, it celebrated symmetry and repetition, and is characterized by its unique materials, most notably certain types of metals (for example, aluminum and stainless steel), wood and animal skin. A stylistic trademark of Deco is the stepped back pattern and geometric use of line – chevron patterns, the ziggurat and the sunburst are traditional Deco motifs. Typically, people know Art Deco in terms of architecture. For example, you might think of the Chrysler building. Mark Innerst’s painting struck me as using classic Deco motifs, and also seemed fairly impressionistic – we got the impression of a complete object and scene, but in fact, not every detail was drawn. The artist relied on our eye to complete the picture.We then turned to another painting, titled Where Avenues Meet, also executed in 2010. Like the previous example, the artist employed a bold color palette, which served to define the shapes and objects in the picture. He did not use strict line in order to achieve this. The painting had a lovely texture, which the artist rendered by building up the paint on the canvas through his brushstrokes, which were both small and quick as well as long and elegant. An emphasis was placed on verticality while the artist played with our sense of perspective: the detail in the foreground presented a point of departure for our eye, and as the painting transcended into space, it became more abstract. While a clear sense of the Deco style was present in this picture, I was also reminded of the work of one of my favorite artist’s, which I chose to share with the group: Georgia O’Keefe’s Radiator Building- Night, New York, 1927.
For 1927, O’Keefe’s painting was highly modern. The focus of this painting is on the central structure and on the intricate detail within it. Her highly realistic rendering of the building is rich with specificity – the viewer can actually see individual painted windows. A term I taught the group was atmospheric – the painting exhibits a clear sense of mood, time of day, and weather conditions simply by the artist’s use of color and how she applied the paint to the canvas.
I think we were all forced to question whether Innerst was thinking about O’Keefe’s famous New York cityscape when he made his own work, but we can only speculate that he was surely conscience of it.
The group learned that this artistic movement originated in Paris at the turn of the 20th century, specifically in the 1920s. Just as Deco pervaded women’s fashion and home appliances, it found its way into fine and decorative arts and architecture. Above all else, it celebrated symmetry and repetition, and is characterized by its unique materials, most notably certain types of metals (for example, aluminum and stainless steel), wood and animal skin. A stylistic trademark of Deco is the stepped back pattern and geometric use of line – chevron patterns, the ziggurat and the sunburst are traditional Deco motifs. Typically, people know Art Deco in terms of architecture. For example, you might think of the Chrysler building. Mark Innerst’s painting struck me as using classic Deco motifs, and also seemed fairly impressionistic – we got the impression of a complete object and scene, but in fact, not every detail was drawn. The artist relied on our eye to complete the picture.We then turned to another painting, titled Where Avenues Meet, also executed in 2010. Like the previous example, the artist employed a bold color palette, which served to define the shapes and objects in the picture. He did not use strict line in order to achieve this. The painting had a lovely texture, which the artist rendered by building up the paint on the canvas through his brushstrokes, which were both small and quick as well as long and elegant. An emphasis was placed on verticality while the artist played with our sense of perspective: the detail in the foreground presented a point of departure for our eye, and as the painting transcended into space, it became more abstract. While a clear sense of the Deco style was present in this picture, I was also reminded of the work of one of my favorite artist’s, which I chose to share with the group: Georgia O’Keefe’s Radiator Building- Night, New York, 1927.
For 1927, O’Keefe’s painting was highly modern. The focus of this painting is on the central structure and on the intricate detail within it. Her highly realistic rendering of the building is rich with specificity – the viewer can actually see individual painted windows. A term I taught the group was atmospheric – the painting exhibits a clear sense of mood, time of day, and weather conditions simply by the artist’s use of color and how she applied the paint to the canvas.
I think we were all forced to question whether Innerst was thinking about O’Keefe’s famous New York cityscape when he made his own work, but we can only speculate that he was surely conscience of it.
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