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prized! A fine water color brush is prized by the artist ... it feels right in his hand, it points readily, it springs back, it responds to his every mood and demand - a fine delicate line ... a bold splash of color! Such a brush is WINSOR & NEWTON'S Pure Red Sable Series 9. Surpassed only by WINSOR & NEWTON'S incomparable Series 7, Series 9 are designed for the artist who wants a fine watercolor brush at a lower price. Series 9 brushes are set in cupro-nickel seamless ferrules and mounted in polished walnut handles. Sizes include 000-12, priced from $.65 to $18.50 [[image]] Illustration actual size On sale at leading art material dealers. [[image]] Winsor & Newton Inc. 555 WINSOR DRIVE, SECAUCUS, N.J. 07094 Canadian Agents: The Hughes Owens Co., Ltd., Montreal Californian Dist.: The Schwabacher-Frey Co., San Francisco, Los Angeles Artschwager Continued from page 49 practically anything is possible, often without any direct involvement of the artist in the process. By stressing this point I do not mean to offer any dubious ideas about the intrinsic "superiority" of craft, or work, or the "understanding" of materials. What does result is an extra degree of control, the advantage of changing certain decisions while working, an extreme finesse of detail - and, above all, the fact that his personal involvement with each piece comes through. Each has physical identity, a specific quality of having been invented by an individual. Each aspect of the work seems to have been considered separately. Artschwager is also producing a continuing series of paintings. Some are figurative (derived from photos), some abstract (with laconic, minimal figurations). He uses no color - only a peculiar grisaille technique. (Color is seldom an issue in the sculptures either, except in terms of value contrast.) The paintings, while less consistently successful than his sculptures, are important to his work as a whole. They perpetuate many kinds of complexities which cannot be contained in the structures, and are often a vehicle for bizarre and experimental ideas. Of importance is the presence of various kinds of subject matter, which was so dominant in the furniture forms of his earlier work. Suggestions, implications, various allusive shades of feelings are always present. Even his purest sculpture-objects never lose their references to furniture, strengthened by the familiar immediacy of formica. In them, he is becoming increasingly successful at fusing the referential with the formal. At the other extreme, in the paintings, he deals with highly charged, explicit images ranging from buildings (raising questions about taste, nostalgia, disgust) to patriotic-cliché imagery (ironic or iconic) to sex (occasionally including lurid erotica). Even the abstractions, with their slits or holes, have an insidious, disturbing quality. Also peculiar to Artschwager is the technique which he has invested for his paintings. Images are deliberately mistreated, made gross, blurred, bruised. At first, their vagueness seems to come from some kind of monochrome pointillism, made of small stipples. Yet in fact there is no such sensitized subtlety. The effect - simultaneously somewhat romantic and deliberately "dirty" or "bad" - is the result of an almost completely unselective method. The rough, hairy side of a piece of masonite is underpainted in different densities of white over an initial charcoal drawing. Then a thin coat of black is allowed to run over it, which dries with mottled unevenness in the tiny pockets made by the fibers. Some final touching up may be done on top of this coat, to strengthen certain areas, obliterate others, and adjust the parts. But a certain inevitability is allowed to operate. The process is not only laborious, but indirect, since it necessitates visualizing the final result before it can be seen. The surface thus produced is assertive in its physical materiality. It acts as a screen in two ways - it slows the eye's lateral progress, forcing one to look carefully, and it works against interpreting any images in depth. Yet when applied to abstractions, the result can be curious - such figurations as a slit or an irregular hole take on an apparent trompe-l'œil tactile presence due to the way in which the underpainting is worked. At this point, the surface seems more like a bas-relief. When applied to photographic imagery such as a house or the human figure, there is a dispersing, neutralizing, flattening effect. Whatever dynamism and organic unity persisted in the photo, itself unselective, after the diffusing effects of camera lens and monochrome reproduction, is broken down by the transposing of it, enlarged, to the panel, 58 ART NEWS
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"practically" is completed on previous page as asked for in instructions
