Frank Bowling: Recent Paintings - Abstract Critical

frank bowling
recent paintings

Cover: mauveblaise 2011 acrylic and mixed media on canvas 42 x 30 in.
Back cover: frank bowling in his london studio, 2012
Photograph by frederik bowling
Published in the United States of America in 2012 by
Spanierman Modern, 53 East 58th Street, New York, NY 10022
Copyright © 2012 Spanierman Modern
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,
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otherwise, without prior permission of the publishers.
isbn 978-1-935617-14-3
Photography: Roz Akin
Design: Amy Pyle, Light Blue Studio
Lithography: Meridian Printing

frank bowling
recent paintings
cavedwellers 2011 acrylic on canvas 39 1 ⁄ 8 x 69 1 ⁄ 4 in.
essay by carl e. hazlewood
march 29 to april 28, 2012
SPANIERMAN MODERN
53 EAST 58TH STREET new york, ny 10022-1617 tel (212) 832-1400
mcambpell@spanierman.com
www.spaniermanmodern.com

matissetreeblaise 2011 acrylic on canvas 49 x 38 1 ⁄ 4 in.

FRANK BOWLING — FINDING SALVATION
© Carl E. Hazlewood
Art, in a sense, is a revolt against everything fleeting and unfinished in the world.
Consequently, its only aim is to give another form to a reality
that it is nevertheless forced to preserve as the source of its emotion.
In this regard we are all realistic, and no one is.
—Albert Camus
1.
Frank Bowling’s life and singular career have encouraged a host of speculations
that engage not only the basics of his actual artistic accomplishment, but almost
demand an inquiry into its sociocultural context and meaning. Born in British
Guyana in 1936, Bowling is the product of speciWc tidal waves of history and world
upheavals, all of which incorporate a residue of postcolonial and racial politics; thus
the details and resolution of his Wnal reception in the arena of modernist art may
seem fair and reasonable territory for such sociological exploration. Bowling, a
man of vigorous intelligence, has on occasion taken up the intellectual and practical
challenges of a dialectical joust with the forces that would deny modernity to
him and those like him simply because of what they look like or where they happen
to be born. While his critical writings in various art journals from the late
1960s through the 70s address some of these issues, he has chosen to leave this
generalized deconstruction of the self (racial, gendered, aZicted in one way or
another) up to the cultural critics and historians. Bowling has never been interested
in taking residence within that ahistorical cul-de-sac reserved for various
“special cases”—the problematized, the romanticized, or any variety of “others.”
For him, the actual revolution is located in the act of art making. Art has provided
Bowling with a useful formal narrative for his work and life with its open possibilities
for a poetical presentness beyond time, place, and polemics. It has become the
site from which to claim a personal and an almost transcendental freedom. He has
moved continually against the grain of expectations. Whatever else may be unstable
in life, art—speciWcally modernist abstraction with its vaunted intellectual clarity,
its visual speciWcity and “truthfulness”—has been his key to survival. As he said in
an interview a few years ago, it’s rather simple—and personal: “I’m trying to Wnd
my own salvation.”
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2.
I was wondering if I could shape this passion
Just as I wanted in solid Wre.
I was wondering if the strange combustion of my days
The tension of the world inside of me
And the strength of my heart were enough.
I was wondering if I could stand as tall
While the tide of the sea rose and fell.
If the sky would recede as I went
Or the earth would emerge as I came
To the door of the morning locked against the sun.
I was wondering if I could make myself
Nothing but Wre, pure and incorruptible.
If the wound of the wind on my face
Would be healed by the work of my life
or the growth of the pain in my sleep
Would be stopped in the strife of my days.
I was wondering if the agony of the years
Could be traced to the seed of an hour.
If the roots that spread out in the swamp
Ran too deep for the issuing Xower.
rachel’sfootfalls 2011
acrylic on canvas
74 1 ⁄ 4 x 32 in.
I was wondering if I could Wnd myself
All that I am in all I could be.
If all the populations of stars
Would be less than the things I could utter
And the challenge of space in my soul
Be Wlled by the shape I become.
—Martin Carter
The poem, “Shape and Motion One,” by Guyana’s great poet/politician, Martin
Carter, encapsulates the doubt, hope, and passion, engendered by the individual
in the drive to transcend limitations, to become more than the sum of what one
believes is possible, to defy all those things that would deWne and hold a person in
place. How to Wnd one’s true self amid the quotidian pressures of life. It becomes a
matter of personal discipline to translate those inchoate strivings into a meaningful
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life and a useful form. For an artist such as Bowling, history,
of course, is always personal. We carry around our vulnerable
childhoods just under the skin. The old homestead is there too,
along with family, friends and lovers, old and new passions.
It is something like the ghost of a memory—both good and
bad—that continually shapes us and situates us in time. Painting
insists on its own resolute history. Yet, both as viewer and
practitioner, we cannot avoid bringing our personal baggage
and varied experiences to bear upon whatever is yielding about
its intellectual and practical discipline. Artists such as Bowling
are constantly working the constraints of acceptable practice . . .
always pushing against its boundaries.
The act of imagination is bound up with memory. You know they
straightened the Mississippi River in places, to make room for houses
and livable acreage. Occasionally the river Xoods these places. “Floods”
is the word they use, but in fact it is not Xooding: it is remembering.
Remembering where it used to be. All water has a perfect memory
and is forever trying to get back to where it was. . . . It is emotional
memory—what the nerves and the skin remember as well as how it
appeared. And a rush of imagination is our “Xooding.”
—Toni Morrison, “The Site of Memory”
From the mighty Essequibo River of his childhood home in
Guyana, to his residence near the Thames in Britain, the liquid
energy of rivers has almost always been part of Bowling’s life.
The window of his Brooklyn studio overlooks the East River.
And water provides an apt metaphor for the Xuidity of the artist’s life as a Transatlantic
denizen of the world, constantly transported between various zones of
existence—from the new world to the old, traversing the past, the present, and all
possible futures. This proliferation of socio-historical referents has prompted some
critics to consider Bowling’s black Caribbean body as a political site of complex
postcolonial desire. But he seeks for himself only a private and individual poetic
identity, not an ideological one. The artist’s concerns are more personal and intimate
than that. The titles of paintings, which mention various friends and family,
give a clue to the scale of his interests. We understand names are not meant to
be descriptive, but the combination of title and painting can be evocative in a
poetic sense, as in Rachel’sfootfalls (2011). Tracey’sbouquet (At Swim Two Birds) (2011),
john hoyland’sTie (Emanuel’s gift) 2011
acrylic and mixed media on canvas 74 x 31 1 ⁄ 4 in.
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marvelously articulated in a variety of ways, represents Bowling’s more open-ended
approach to painting now. Paint matter pools and is sparked alive by contrasting
splashes, drips, and sprays of complementary hues; red into green equals what when
bordered on one side with delicate painted lace Somewhat tender in its discrete
tonalities, the painting memorializes Bowling’s aVection for the young British
artist, Tracey Emin, who once sent him a bouquet of Xowers. And, John Hoyland’stie
(Emanuel’s Gift) (2011) becomes an homage to the memory of Bowling’s close
friend, the late British painter, John Hoyland. At the top middle of the vertical,
roughly man-proportioned work we can see an unusual addition—a tiny photograph
of Hoyland himself.
The new paintings, like the marvelously deliquescent blue-green The Waters of
Speech (2011), reveal a subtle new richness of eVect as well as color. And as always,
they are evidence of an imagination seeking a visual high watermark within its
own formal terms. Using a range of rich yet almost indescribable colors, Bowling
structures a seismological rush of paint-matter into vague geometries; it’s all
about touch and light. It has little to do with the harsh sun-struck brilliance of
what we normally consider to be “Caribbean” color. Instead of bright gold we get
viscous paint worked to coppery nuances, or red/green tones struck through with
spots and “sparks” of contrasting color. Wadi√one and Wadi√two (both 2011) are an
intriguing pair of almost square paintings about six feet high. Wadi√one has a collaged
violet canvas rectangle tipped to the right, with a rain of poured hues moving
down its center. This tumbling rectangle threatens to unhinge the greenish gold
color/space but is held in stasis and close to the surface by the skin of casual yet
precisely tuned hues of the “background.” There is no pooling or dripping paint
in this pair of paintings. Aside from the usual collaged canvas elements with edges
deckled by the impression of staples, the surfaces seem mostly painted by brush,
perhaps, or with a large palette knife. Pieces of canvas assembled into the ground
and substance for Bowling’s paintings may sometimes bear saw-toothed evidence
of being cut with pinking shears, recalling the artist’s life as a child in Guyana,
watching his seamstress mother make dresses and saris for her clients. The stenciled
patterns of leaves in Wadi√one refer back to his use in the late 1960s and early 70s
of stencils to create the boundaries of those classic map shapes. This time the use
is more delicate and restrained and works as “mark-making” as well as a subtle and
signiWcant reference to nature outside the painting.
This slip-sliding balancing act is repeated in Wadi√two, the companion piece
of roughly similar dimensions. Here we see a more assertive use of paint. Instead
of the absorbent warmth of the Wrst painting, staining into the cotton ground is
left only along the top edges. And this tilted rectangle set against a more obvious
geometric “background” design falls left this time, the opposite direction from its
companion work. This shape manages not to become a box in space or even a
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tipped over painting against another painting. And here again Bowling conjures
an informal balancing act, as the rectangle slides right into/onto the surface and
hovers there, tense and poised with the promise of movement. The color is a richer
“mauve” or plum hue, with a familiar rain of paint color rushing down its center.
The structure of this work is fairly determined by its underlying geometry—not
surprising for someone who once made visual improvisations based on Fibonacci
sequences and whose graduate thesis was written on Mondrian. The background
of Wadi√two is worked with gelled paint, which leaves “brush marks” as evidence
of the passage of the artist’s hand as he activates the various quarters of the painting.
Only the rectangle maintains its unprimed absorbency to paint and colored light.
While most of the recent paintings—many of which date from 2011—are openly,
ravishingly beautiful, others are honest and tough in asking for love. Bowling avoids
the easy, the pretty, and the conventional. The light in many pictures is sometimes
peculiar and personal. Paintings like Mauveblaise, Eye & Ball Blaise, Hansel’shaus, and
MadambutterXy tend to revolve around a daring green/violet axis of secondaries
grounded in reds with deep rich dark tones of hard-to-describe color combinations.
The shapes of some paintings—tall and relatively narrow—often recall classic pieces
from the 1970s but with much more coloristic daring and visual games to play.
Bowling’s new paintings prove that his ongoing modernist enterprise has continued
to develop in relation to his own aims; call it a restrained expressionism—or
Color Field—it does not matter. What is evident is that Bowling has found a way
to make a disciplined and consistent contribution to a particular stream of painterly
abstraction, which remains vital and productive in his hands.
Carl E. Hazlewood, born in Guyana, South America, is a visual artist, writer and curator living in Brooklyn, New
York. He is the co-founder of Aljira, A Center for Contemporary Art in Newark, New Jersey. He is also currently
associate editor for Nka: Journal of Contemporary African Art (Duke University). He has written for many other
periodicals, including Flash Art International, ART PAPERS Magazine, and NY Arts Magazine. Since 1984 he
has organized numerous curatorial projects for Aljira such as Modern Life (co-curated with Okwui Enwezor). His
project on behalf of Aljira, “Current Identities, Recent Painting in the United States,” was the U.S. prize-winning
representation at the Bienal Internacional de Pintura, Cuenca, Ecuador, in 1994. As an independent curator, he has
organized exhibitions for The Nathan Cummings Foundation, New York; Studio Museum in Harlem, New York;
Hallwalls, New York; Artists Space, New York; P. S. 122, New York; among other venues.
NOTES AND REFERENCES
Albert Camus is quoted from Thomas B. Hanna, The Thought and Art of Albert Camus (Chicago: Henry Regnery
Company, 1958).
Frank Bowling is quoted from a video interview for the U.K. Government Art Collection podcast series:
“Artist Frank Bowling R.A. discusses the influences on his painting in the Collection, including the landscape
of Guyana and 1960s Abstract Expressionism.”
The poem, “Shape and Motion One” is from Martin Carter, Poems of Succession (London: New Beacon
Books, 1977).
Toni Morrison, “The Site of Memory,” is from Inventing the Truth, William Zinsser, ed. (New York: Houghton
MiZin Company, 1995).
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girls in the city 1991 acrylic on canvas ( seven panels) 77 x 147 1 ⁄ 2 in.

10
wadi√one 2011 acrylic on canvas 74 1 ⁄ 4 x 71 1 ⁄ 2 in.

wadi√two 2011 acrylic on canvas 71 1 ⁄ 4 x 74 1 ⁄ 4 in.
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julie mcgee’s flowers 2011 acrylic and Mixed media on canvas 48 1 ⁄ 4 x 31 in.

eye & ball blaise 2011 acrylic on canvas 36 x 46 in.
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midwinter bramble ( You Are My Sunshine) 2011 acrylic on canvas 39 1 ⁄ 4 x 29 5 ⁄ 8 in.

tracey’sbouquet ( At Swim Two Birds) 2011 acrylic on canvas 52 1 ⁄ 4 x 40 1 ⁄ 8 in.
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Frank Bowling, whose vibrant, color-
Wlled abstract canvases earned him a place
as the Wrst black Royal Academician, was
born in British Guyana, South America, in
1936, and moved to England in 1950. He
graduated from the Royal College of Art in
1962, alongside David Hockney, Ron Kitij,
and Allen Jones, having been awarded a
Silver Medal in Painting and a scholarship
that allowed him to travel to South America
and the Caribbean.
Bowling Wrst visited New York City
in 1961. DissatisWed at the time with his
career in London, he established a residence
in New York in 1966. He soon discovered
that the raw vitality of the creative-cultural
scene in New York suited his temperament
and stimulated his art. Although his Wrst
one-man exhibition in New York, held the
year of his arrival, consisted of autobiographical
Wgurative paintings typical of his early
work, the new work the artist was producing
by this time already gave evidence of the
increasingly abstract work he would create
in the years that followed. In fact, by the
1970s, color became (and would remain) an
integral part of Bowling’s paintings, the
earthy hues he had been using becoming
monochromatic color and his canvases
increasingly non-Wgurative. While working
within the Color Field idiom of Morris
Louis, Jules Olitski, and Helen Frankenthaler,
he also drew from Mark Rothko’s shifting
and resonant color, the dynamism of Jackson
Pollock’s surfaces, the powerful art of Francis
Bacon, and older sources such as the radiant
light in the paintings of J. M. W. Turner
and the sensuous qualities in the art of John
Constable. In 1971, the same year the
Whitney Museum held a one-man exhibition
for the artist, Bowling met the noted critic
Clement Greenberg. Over the years to
come, Greenberg encouraged Bowling in
his commitment to modernism.
From 1969 to 1972, Bowling worked as
a contributing editor to Arts magazine,
reviewing exhibitions in New York and
London. He also wrote a series of essays on
modernism and the contributions of black
artists. His numerous honors include two
Guggenheim fellowships, in 1967 and 1973.
In 2008 he was awarded the order of the
British Empire (O.B.E.) for his service to art.
Bowling has also made signiWcant contributions
to the art world in terms of change
for black artists. In 1987 the Tate Gallery in
London purchased Bowling’s Spread Out Ron
Kitaj, which was the Wrst work by a living
black British artist ever to be acquired by the
museum, and in 2005 Bowling became the
Wrst black Royal Academician.
In 2011, the monograph, Frank Bowling,
by professor, art writer, critic, and curator,
Mel Gooding, was published by the Royal
Academy of Arts, London. While addressing
Bowling’s life, methods, and the poetic nature
of his art, the book also attests to Bowling’s
stature as one of the Wnest artists to emerge
from the art circles of New York and London
in recent decades.
In 2012 Frank Bowling’s work will be
featured in several important group exhibitions
in London, including Migrations: Journeys
into British Art, at the Tate Britain, and British
Design 1948–2012, Innovation in the Modern
Age, at the Victoria and Albert Museum.
Bowling’s pour series will be shown in a
solo display at the Tate Britain, curated by
Courtney J. Martin.
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SELECTED PUBLIC AND CORPORATE COLLECTIONS
American Telephone and Telegraph Corporation, New York
Arts Council of Great Britain
Boca Raton Museum, Florida
Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, Lisbon
Chase Manhattan Bank, New York
Chelsea & Westminster Hospital, London
Crawford Municipal Art Gallery, Cork, Ireland
Currier Museum of Art, Manchester, New Hampshire
Guyana National Collection, Castellani House, Georgetown
Herbert Art Gallery and Museum, Coventry, England
Herbert F. Johnson Museum, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York
John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, New York
Kresge Art Center, Michigan State University, East Lansing
Lloyds of London
London Borough of Southwark
Menil Foundation, Houston, Texas
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Providence
Museum of Modern Art, New York
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
National Gallery of Jamaica, Kingston, West Indies
Neuberger Museum of Art, Purchase College, State University of New York
New Jersey State Museum, Trenton
Owens-Corning Fiberglass Corporation, Toledo, Ohio
Phillips Museum of Art, Franklin & Marshall College, Lancaster, Pennsylvania
Port Authority of New York, World Trade Center
Royal Academy of Arts, London
Royal College of Art, London
Tate Gallery, London
University Museums, University of Delaware, Newark
University of Liverpool
Victoria and Albert Museum, London
Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool, England
Westinghouse Corporation
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York

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