Preface to Stripe Painting

Preface to Stripe Painting (Frank Stella)

"Art excludes the unnecessary. Frank Stella has found it necessary to paint stripes.
There is nothing else in his painting.
Frank Stella is not interested in expression or sensitivity. He is interested in the necessities of painting.
Symbols are counters passed among people. Frank Stella's painting is not symbolic. His stripes are the paths of brush on canvas. These paths lead only into painting."

Carl Andre from 16 Americans [Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1959]


* cross-posted at The Candystripers

blatant self-promotion #231

no rest for the wicked or the cruel, or so they say. i'd add insane to that list.



this post is specifically for all the sydney folk: tonight you have to skip on down to MOP gallery's annual fundraising show. it's only on for tonight, between 6 and 8pm and all works are $50. $50!! that is hella cheap and i can tell you there'll be some awesome artists in the show.

i happen to have a work in the show (I think it arrived on time??!!) kinda like the work above, but you should go, even if i don't - not only is it a great opportunity to pick up some nifty arty bargains, just in time for christmassy givin's, but also an opportunity to support an ace gallery like MOP and the artists they work with.

deets:
thursday 18th december, 2008 - one night only
opening night: thursday 18th december 6-8pm

at MOP gallery
2/39 abercrombie st,
chippendale, nsw
http://www.mop.org.au

all works $50 - cash and carry (which means you don't have to wait 2 weeks to get your goodies! yay!)

candystripers news

wallpaper 08 at trocadero closed today. tomorrow, we're back there, with our rollers and acrylic paint (not enamel, despite what the lovely boy in the hardware store suggested) to reinstate our bits of the gallery walls back to unstriped-ness. it was a cool little project and it's always a bit sad when it comes to the end of another exhibition.

we love the troc space and are loving their new flickr site. i know i'll be keeping a keen eye on what's happening there from now on.

'but what of the candystripers next?' i hear you asking? never fear lovelies, yesterday we received our clear, ernest and official paperwork for the next stage of the unnamed public art commission. while miss jones is as cool as a cucumber about the whole thing, it was my job to have a bit of a 'eep!' moment. thank goodness there are two of us!





and in unrelated candystripers news, we've decided that each week we're going to have a candystripers meeting, in a different cafe/restaurant/back-alley boudoir each time. and in the interest of maintaining courtesy and good bedside manner, we'll be posting about all the cool places we meet in! yay!

last week we went to the absolutely delightful, old school pizzeria osteria house, run by joe. the gnocchi arrabiata looked so good that we both ordered it, and shared a garlic pizza. it was all absolutely mouthwatering. in fact, we were so stuffed afterwards that we had to walk the length of rathdowne st, just to do up the top button again.


* cross-posted on the candystripers' blog

wallpaper 08

For those who won't get a chance to check out the show at Trocadero, here are a few quick peeps. It finishes next saturday, so pop along if you're nearby.

Paper Architecture:




Candystripers:

shortlisted!

ok, so sometimes being on a short list is not such a great thing. well, actually i can only think of one time - being on a psychopath's list would be pretty bad. and part of a short shit list would kind of suck too. but most times, being on a short list is a fucking fantastic thing - you get somehow 'placed' amongst peers. on monday, my striper-in-crime, miss jones and i found out that we're on a short list for a pretty well-known public art commission in melbourne, which is very damned exciting.

there's a bit of work to do between now and then, but we get paid for the work we do from now on. and just to get to the stage, where a panel of amazing people are interested in a project that isn't a drop-sculpture hanging off the side of a laneway is pretty exciting!

i don't even know if we're allowed to tell anyone yet, so i'm being especially, well, loose in my joy here, but some of you'll probably figure it out anyway. and the rest of you will just have to keep coming back to read the official news later. heh. i think this blog just went viral.

edit: the candystripers now have their own blog. just.

the stripe in art deco

hi. i'm back. things are looking up again. and last week i went to the art deco exhibition with my nanna. we had a lovely time, listening to the cairo jazz band, watching the balancing act (people, balancing on each other, not my work/life schedule) and having yummy food. the show itself was kind of disappointing - lacked a certain rigour that would have produced a fantastic survey. unfortunately, the NGV is starting to make this slap-dash blockbuster approach a bit of a habit, really.

anyway, going through the exhibition, i started to notice how much the stripe featured in the decorative arts from the 20s/30s. especially out of germany/austria, but lots of other works as well.

of course, not being able to take sketching materials and/or cameras, my visual evidence of the supposition is a little, well, light-on. but trust me, once you start to see it - it's there. a lot of the collection from the NGV itself (as opposed to the V&A, which the rest of the show is from) has furniture designed in vienna, all featuring detailed striped inlay edges and stripes across handles. other stripe to be seen:








ok, so i may have a stripe obsession at the moment, thanks to the candystripers stuff i've been working in with miss jones, but it's still interesting to think about. especially in terms of what the stripe has meant in fashion/civic life.

the stripe is a particular mark because of its balance between space and non-space; colour and non-colour. i think derrida would like the stripe (it might reflect his hauntology). which is even more interesting in terms of political times of art deco - post/pre-war, depending on what country you're in and a time of economic flux. the relationship of the stripe to prisoners of war is also looking a bit sinister, in relation to the art deco period.

i'm not sure how purposeful or considered the stripe was as a motif in decorative arts of the early 20th century, but now that i'm starting to see them everywhere, i have a feeling i'm about to find out.

stripes

‘Striped surfaces are rarely found in nature. When man encounters them, he... sometimes fears them (... in the Middle Ages), sometimes admires them (...our contemporary attitude).


‘Everywhere red and white stripes abound, warning of danger, recommending caution, forbidding this of that access. Caution, workers! Slow, detour, stop, obey: in the street and on the road, thse ar the kinds of direct and indirect messages all red and white striped signs send us. The combination of these two colours, that of interdiction and that of tolerance brings out fully here the stripes’ ambivalence: it is guide and obstacle at once, filter and gate.

In certain cases, it is possible to pass, respecting various constraints; in others, it is imperative to stop. That is so at lowered grade crossings, border posts, or when coming upon a police barricade. All are indicated by a profusion of red and white stripes, which not only can be seen from far off- probably, today, what can be seen from the very farthest off – but also provoke a certain agitation, indeed even a real fear. Behind this kind of stripe, danger always lurks. And, along with danger, authority – danger of another sort – embodies by the police, the state patrol, or the customes office. A stripe often leads to a uniform, and the uniform to a penalty.

Thus most of these red and white stripes used on traffice signs function as screens. They are some sort of shorthand image for a doorway or fence that can only be crossed under certain conditions. A imple red adn white striped horizontal line placed across the road (which sometimes embodies a grade crossing) has the same effect as a huge gate, which could be striped with the same colours and located in the same place. Here we can discern an essential feature of how the stripe functions: metonymically.

The stripe is a structure that infinitely repeats. Whether it appears on a tiny surface or one of great dimensions, its properties remain the same. The part is as good as the whole, the structure takes precendence over the form. From which we get the extraordinary plasticity of the uses for the stripe and, over the course of the centureis, its continual employment as mark, sign, insignia, emblem, attribute, whatever the medium, technique, or context.’


from the devil's cloth: michel pastoureau, ©1991
university of columbia press, new york
2001 translation by jody gladding