“A woman was so moved that she
wept in front of my painting.”
Lisa Bradley
The story of the postal
worker and the librarian and their art collection is the stuff of legends. Over
a 50 year period Herb and
Dorothy Vogel amassed an art collection of nearly 5000 works by over
170 artists which they stored and displayed in their one bedroom New York apartment.
Local folklore has it that “When
curators come from Europe they visit the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney and
the Vogel’s' apartment."
Amongst the
artists they collected was the American abstract painter Lisa Bradley. The Boston
University’s Professor of Art History, Carl Chiarenza wrote about Bradley when
she was in her early 20’s "Lisa
Bradley is an exceptional human being. Whatever she encounters she encounters
poetically, creatively, and perhaps more importantly with compassion, patience,
and understanding. She is a gifted, natural artist ... The paintings are about
human existence, the marshaling of forces that are strong and self-sustaining,
and yet humble before a larger dominant power..." Prophetic words indeed
as Bradley’s career has proved with her work being collected by not only the
Vogel’s but by museums across America.
Described as “profound
and evocative” Bradley’s paintings, with a palette restricted to white, blue,
Black and grey, are a balancing act between motion and stillness with her
brushstrokes conducting the performance. About her works the art critic Carter
Ratcliff said “seeing merges with every other aspect of being.” Whilst Bradley has said “When I
paint, everything be[comes] clear . . . at a certain point one goes beyond
emotion – everything fits, each stroke is right, perfect with itself.”
The exhibition Lisa
Bradley: The Fullness of Being is currently on show at New York’s Hollis
Taggart Galleries until the 28th of February.
No comments:
Post a Comment