American artist Mary Heilmann has always been ahead of her time. A retrospective of her work,
Looking at Pictures is currently on display at the
White Chapel Gallery in London. I only came to know her paintings a couple of years ago, a surprising fact considering Heilmann has been doing work since the 1970s. She is an artist who combines flat abstraction with illusionistic space; seriousness with play; painting with sculpture. There is always a fresh childlike quality to her work, while at the same time the work is very considered and well-thought-out, as revealed in this
Art 21 interview. Adrian Searle in a recent article in the
Guardian describes Heilmann's work as being "cool and Californian and punky and urban".
Heilmann's work fits in really well with many of the current trends in abstraction, perhaps much more so than with the work of the minimalists such as Donald Judd who first inspired her. This might explain why she has only come to international attention in the last decade or so. An affinity can be seen between Heilmanns' work and contemporary abstraction such as that seen in last year's
Forever Now exhibition at MOMA; more so than with the very formal geometric compositions of early minimalism. Jason Farago addresses Heilmann's underexposure in an article called
"Artist Mary Heilmann: the Californian surfer still making waves in her 70s".
Many artists have claimed to follow
Robert Rauschenberg's motto about making work that blurs the boundaries between art and life, but Heilmann brings this to a new level by making chairs as part of her work so people will spend more time looking at her art (see image to left). A work called
Sunset was recently installed on an outdoor terrace at the new Whitney Museum in New York. This work really does blur the lines as many people sitting on the chairs don't actually realize they are sitting on a work of art.
A 2014 interview with art historian
Jennifer Samet gives a great overview of Heilmann's work from the early 1970s to today:
Mary Heilmann and Jennifer Samet, in conversation at the New York Studio School. Heilmann is a very open and generous in revealing her process and her sources of inspiration; it is fascinating to hear about the connection between her art and her life. A written interview by Jennifer Samet appears in the onlline art magazine
Hyperallergic: Wild, Punk and Slightly Off-Kilter. I love that she says she starts her work by
daydreaming because that seems to be the perfect starting place for any work of art.
There are many monographs on Heilmann's work, the most recent one being from the current retrospective at White Chapel:
Mary Heilmann: Looking at Pictures. Most of the monographs on Heilmann's work are out-of-print and sell for $300-$400 but there are still a couple online for around $50 right now:
Good Vibrations and
Save the Last Dance for Me. Painter
Ross Bleckner has also written a book on Mary Heilmann (long out-of-print); here is an interview he conducted with the artist in 1999:
Mary Heilmann by Ross Bleckner. Heilmann gives an overview of the way her mind works as she answers Bleckner's question.
After looking at Heilmann's work and hearing her speak, you come away with the realization that this artist is filled with a sense of joy about the creative process and that she has a very strong direction for her personal vision and approach to her practice. To quote Bleckner: "Mary Heilmann's paintings contain a joy so contagious one smiles upon seeing them. This is not innocent joy -which is why her viewer does not laugh out loud as at the antics of a child. There is something wry and sophisticated about these seemingly simple abstractions. Perhaps it's their maker's innate knowledge of the paradoxical nature of people and things."
If you would like to explore more about abstraction and its processes we highly recommend John Luna's weeklong workshop:
Abstraction: Three Ways.
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