The Groove 170 - How to Reconcile the Irreconcilable
HOW TO RECONCILE THE IRRECONCILABLE
If you are in business (and yes, being an artist also requires taking care of your practice like a businessperson would), you should have heard many times that you have to find your brand and your style. And to do that over and over again.
To me, such constraints sound confining, almost anathema to the essence of creativity. That's precisely why I staunchly advocate for unbridled experimentation and applaud those audacious souls who revel in the amalgamation of seemingly incongruent elements, birthing something refreshingly new.
When I first encountered the work of Jennifer Bartlett in person in 2011 at MoMA, I was so shocked. Not only because of the sheer magnitude and originality of “Rhapsody,” but also because I couldn’t understand why on earth I didn’t know more about her. But as I got deeper in my business, Bartlett’s paintings, drawings, and prints started popping up in many art fairs, exhibitions and museum shows and she slowly became one of my favorite contemporary artists.
After her passing in 2022, I kept thinking about her work and her way of doing things, and certainly one of her biggest appeals was to be able to reconcile the irreconcilable and to make a successful living out of it. As I read dozens of interviews and articles about her life, here are the three things that consistently marked her career and that anyone could explore in their own:
Blend Structure and Spontaneity
Jennifer Bartlett photographed by Jack Tworkov ca. 1975.
Rigidity feels like the right approach in military academies. Going rogue and impromptu works for comedians even though they put together often well-rehearsed monologues that require thousands of hours of practice before they can get on that stage and make the audience laugh. The truth is that the most interesting things come from someone who can handle both. Alas, I encounter people who operate mostly from one side or the other quite frequently.
But not Jennifer Bartlett. Through "Rhapsody," she redefined the possibilities within the genre of geometric abstraction by seamlessly integrating grids with diverse designs and materials. This innovative blending of structure and spontaneity challenged traditional notions of abstraction and figuration, leaving a lasting impact on the trajectory of contemporary art.
Rhapsody, 1975-1976, enamel on steel, 987 plates. Collection of the Museum of Modern Art, New York.
“Rhapsody” came to be when Bartlett was experimenting with paper and decided it was too fragile, as she had stained it with coffee and by accident stepped on top of some of her drawings in her studio , ruining them. One day she saw the New York subway plates and decided that would be her medium for this new work. “Rhapsody” was born in 1975 from 987 12-inch, square metal plates that had been coated with white enamel and baked in industrial ovens, silkscreened and painted over then carefully placed continuously on all of the walls of the Paula Cooper Gallery.
Some of the plates were monochrome, some had thin brushstrokes; others had rougher ones, some had lines, others had houses or landscapes. Nobody had ever done anything similar before. “Rhapsody” made Bartlett a star in art circles and the massive installation that measured 150 feet in length was purchased in 1976 for $45,000 and gifted to MoMA.
Always Ask Questions
In the Garden, 1980, a site-specific mural that Bartlett made for the University of Pennsylvania.
If you are dealing with many different and disparate things and cannot find a way of putting them together, try to see them from the problem-finder angle. Bartlett worked from that premise.
“I began thinking about pieces not having edges: how do you know when a painting ends? I thought, what if it doesn't end? What if a painting is like a conversation between the elements in the painting? I was thinking of a painting that wouldn't have edges, that would start and stop, change tenses and gears at will. It needed to be big and fill the space in which it was shown. I asked, what can you have in art?”
In the realm of arts and business alike, the pivotal prelude to solving any significant challenge is often overlooked —the critical phase of pinpointing and defining the problem at hand. It might seem deceptively simple, yet it's far from it.
Imagine a world where you can master the skill of articulating and honing in on problems. In this world, entrepreneurs discover more opportunities and strike gold, artists express issues in ways that captivate the world, and employees become indispensable, by noticing what others overlook. The key to unlocking these realms of success lies in the art and precision of framing problems before the journey to solutions begins.
Have an Unshakable Work Ethic
A triptych with one of the many reinterpretations of In the Garden, shown at Locks Gallery in Philadelphia in 2019.
I don’t know if you feel like I do, and I don’t want to sound like my grandmother, but work ethic has quite diminished -to say the least- in the last 10 years. The trap of technology has made people believe that everything is so easy that one can expect great rewards by applying the minimum effort.
But what does this have to do with reconciling the irreconcilable? Everything! If you don’t work hard in your area and keep trying and testing, you will never know what exists and what could be.
Jennifer Bartlett worked at least 8 hours in her studio every day, and in her off hours she was writing novels, designing furniture and sets, and dealing with renovations and contractors. She had a wildly successful professional life and the money followed, so much so that she bought and sold several buildings in Manhattan where she often lived and had her studio. One of them had 12,000 sq.ft. of interior space and 2,500 sq.ft. of gardens and terraces where she even built a pool.
Variations and repetitions of the same theme and being a serial painter became Bartlett’s trademark. She loved being an artist and worked obsessively every time she had an idea. Like when she spent one year in a friend’s villa in Nice. She found the place less than inspiring but regardless of that, still produced 200 drawings of the pool and its surroundings, resulting in her first “In the Garden” series, which was both a critical and commercial success and remains in collectors’ wishlists as her most in-demand work.
Forging an avant-garde tapestry like Bartlett isn't about haphazardly stitching together impractical ideas; it's about orchestrating an audacious fusion. Melding the myriad concepts swirling in her mind required more than contemplation - it demanded immersive action. Bartlett's creative alchemy wasn't a mere pastiche; it was a deliberate, relentless commitment to both ideation and execution.
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