Art Experience Assignment

The assignment was to view an exhibit, and write a paragraph about my response to one artist’s work. Next we were to read background information about the artist. Finally, we were to view the artist’s work after our research, and write another paragraph about our reaction to the art from an informed perspective.

I had to be inventive with viewing an exhibit. I work two jobs and am a student, so free time for this assignment was limited. I chose to view art at the museum on campus. I went home and researched the artist online, and then returned to the museum the next day on lunch break to re-view the painting I chose for this project.

FIRST IMPRESSION:
For my first viewing I walked through the American and Regional Art Gallery and viewed all the paintings and objects on display. The work that I was most impressed by was Bear Coming by artist Rick Bartow. The display card next to the painting reads:

Rick Bartow (b. 1946)
Bear Coming, 1999
Pastel, graphite, ink, watercolor gouache
Mixed media on handmade Japanese paper
Virginia Hasettine Collection of Pacific Northwest art
2007:1.1

I found it strange that no size was given on the display card, but the painting was perhaps six feet tall and four feet wide. The edges of the paper canvas were even on the sides, and were ragged and curled on the top and bottom. The impression of the canvas was of a piece of paper torn from a very large rolled scroll. The canvas itself was thick and firm, looked stiffer than cardboard, yet gave the impression that when pressed or wet the surface would be pliable and easily indented by a sharpened quill or pencil.

A large head dominates the painting, with jagged, uneven shoulder lines and the top half of the chest ending at the bottom of the canvas. The outlines for the head and torso are various lines of bright colors – red, purple, orange, and black. The head itself is recognizably human in shape around the edges, but the center of the face is layers of human and animal features. There is a human nose and an animal snout, and human and animal mouths with teeth barred (the animal’s teeth are much sharper). A search of the eyes revealed human and bear or wolf pairs of eyes. A further search for eyes revealed a falcon hidden in the right cheekbone, and another smaller eye seemingly set alone on the left cheek. While the direction of the figure is vertical and centered, the negative space on the canvas around the figure is filled with brownish spatters of paint much as you would expect in a blood spatter pattern radiating out from the face of the figure.

The main grouping for the painting is the facial features, which adds visual hierarchy through the dominate use of colors (especially reds which to me simulated blood), and the mouths of the human and animal. Given the name of the work – Bear Coming – I could imagine the human mouth screaming in terror, and the animal mouth open in anticipation of an attack. The movement of the painting as a whole felt as if the face were exploding and sending out bloody splotches to the ends of the canvas in all directions. An anomaly would describe the multi-layered human and animal face – a planned distortion of irregular features which overall balanced the face and the canvas as a whole. I loved the brightness of the colors, the sharp lines in bright colors that were visible around distortions, and the idea of wondering what inspired such a painting.

INFORMED IMPRESSION:
Rick Bartow is a Native American Indian with ancestry in the Yukon tribe (npb.com, 2002, ¶ 4). He is also a “decorated Vietnam veteran” (npb.com, 2002, ¶ 2). Bartow’s method of piecing together “fragments, impressions and memories . . . impl[y] an entire unseen world” (npb.com, 2002, ¶ 2).

On my first viewing I thought there was something significant about the bold lines, outlines, and erased or blank impressions on the canvas (where a line might have originally been drawn). frolickgallery.com notes an Expressionist influence to Bartow’s work where “the erasures [are] as important in determining the shapes of his images as the material applied” (2008, ¶ 1). Note: Although Bear Coming is not available for viewing on the internet, a significant collection of Bartow’s works can be viewed on the frolickgallery.com website.

Writing on nonstarvingartists.com, Jwanamaker notes that common themes for Bartow’s works relate to animals on an Indian totem pole – bears, deer, owls, coyotes and crows - all which have symbolic meaning and are “personal symbols to [Bartow’s] life and [his] relationship with art” (2008, ¶ 3). The focus point of Bear Coming is the multi-layered human and animal features blended in a menagerie of expression and anesthetic emotion. I tried without success to decide whether the human or the animal features dominated. I also could not decide if the human was becoming animal, or the animal becoming human. From my research I decided this was the very impression Bartow was after. The key may be that Bartow often fixate on “the symbolism of masks falling away from figures, literally representing the rediscovering of himself beneath his layers” (Jwanamaker, 2008, ¶ 1). I have a better understanding of both the art piece and the artist after my research. My second viewing revealed to me that the life an artist leads influences his work in a myriad of ways. Bartow is an Oregon artist, and I am going to be watching for his exhibits in the future.

Froelick Gallery. (2008). Rick Bartow. Portland, Oregon. Viewed 3 March 2008 at http://www.froelickgallery.com/Artist-Detail.cfm?ArtistsID=227.

National Public Radio. (2002). Rick Bartow. Washington, D.C. Viewed 3 March 2008 at http://www.npr.org/programs/talkingplants/features/2003/bartow/.

Jwanamaker. (8 January 2008, 01:30 AM). The transformation of Rick Bartow. Posted at Nonstarvingartists.com (2008). Viewed 3 March 2008 at http://www.nonstarvingartists.com/Members/jwanamaker/jesse-wanamaker/archive/2008/01/08/the-transformation-of-rick-bartow.

Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. (2008) Expressionism. Viewed 8 March 2008 at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expressionism.