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<\/a><\/span><\/p>\nLittle Utah vocabulary lesson: <\/span> When I first saw the title for this show, I couldn’t help but think of the exhibition the reality of abstraction,<\/em> which appeared in a number of museums and art centers across the state in 1996-97. That show featured a large selection of works by varying artists all in an abstract \u2014 “nonobjective” or “nonrepresentational” \u2014 style. The works were great, the artists varied. But though I enjoyed the show, I feared a rerun performance at the BDAC.<\/span><\/p>\n Hindsight: A rerun would have been welcome.<\/span><\/p>\n With the talks on abstract art the center has planned for the next month, I get the feeling that this exhibit was an attempt to reach out to the public and explain abstract art. Show how open and sophisticated we can be.\u00a0\u00a0 Rather than demonstrating Utah’s openness, this show only proves our provincialism. <\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n At best, only half the work could be called abstract. To educate the public and to exhibit challenging work is noble, but to present art in such loose, undefined terms, only does harm. Better not to know what abstract art is than to be convinced it is something that it is not.<\/span><\/p>\n It’s not so much the works presented in the show that bug me as it is how they were presented. The message you get is that if a piece does not resemble a photograph it can \u00a0 considered abstract. That abstract art is simply \u00a0 about being nonrealistic, not nonrepresentational. So, most of the art movements of the 20th-century are all lumped into this one generic category \u2014 abstract. It’s like saying that in music there is classical music and there is pop. No need to differentiate between Mozart and Wagner or Mariah Carey and Robert Johnson.<\/span><\/p>\n Some of the works had appeal and showed promise. For example, Linnie L. Brown, a young painter who exhibits at the center for the first time, presented some warm abstract works, filled with scrapings, imprints and camouflage maskings. <\/span><\/p>\n Other works, though they had their own appeal, could only in the vaguest of worlds be called abstract. The flowers of Elizabeth Matthews (also showing at the Atrium Gallery in SLC) were stylized but definitely not what we mean when we say “abstract.” Landscapes of redrock country by Susan Plouzek were by no means abstract. <\/span> Trent Alvey and Stephanie Saint-Thomas both produced what we recognize as “abstract” art.\u00a0\u00a0 These works are “abstract” in the sense of being non-referential not simply nonrealistic. But the structure of the show was so flimsy that even an abstract artist like Alvey slipped in a couple of nudes.
\nTo describe art you have three choices: art is either realistic, impressionistic, or abstract. <\/span>
\nSo, if it doesn’t look like a photograph, and is not a little-landscape-with-pretty- brush strokes, then it must be abstract.<\/span>
\nAt least that’s what I gather from Bountiful Davis Art Center’s exhibition The Nature of Abstraction.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/span>Collage was strong in many of the works. Martin Blundell’s works used series of drawings placed together. Unfortunately, the drawings themselves weren’t terribly interesting and putting them together didn’t improve things. Joanne Smith, however, used collage in a more adept manner. Smith stitches together fabrics to create her canvas where she creates images that join the visual and textual worlds. These works have a definite appeal. Smith has abstracted some elements of the visual world to use in her collages, but these works are closer to Picasso than they are to Kandinsky or Pollock.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/a><\/span>Her pigments were straight from the tube, but bright colors do not an abstract work make. The small watercolors of Andrea Jackman Rosborough, delicately and minutely done, featured insects on an architectural backdrop. They had a definite charm, but abstract? C’mon.<\/span><\/p>\n
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