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| Cinched-in Waist Barbie |
I went to the Jack Bush exhibit at the National Art Gallery yesterday. His abstracts are large with splashes of colour, often just three or four on a neutral background. He worked for many years as a commercial artist and there was a display of some of the magazine illustrations, advertisements and children's books. I was surprised to find I recognized his style. He must have drawn lots of those Little Golden books we read when we were little.
Some of the works on display were not interesting to me. For example, there is a group of flower paintings; I did not like his colours, or ideas even, at all. But there was a painting he called Bonnet. Wow! And there was a series inspired by a woman's dress with a cinched-in waist that he had seen in a shop window. The one above, because of the colour choices, looks like a hallway diminishing to a vanishing point. One, I swear, was Barbie's torso with her back to the viewer and her arms raised. And in the next one I understood his genius. It was the same theme but he restricted the view still further so you could not see one side of the torso. Double wow!
For contrast we also looked at some Escher prints. At the same time that Jack Bush was creating his large scale abstracts, Escher was working on small prints with meticulous attention to detail and with thousand of tiny lines in the etchings.
We left the National Art Gallery when my brain was full. Barbie's was as empty as always.
It always amazes me how a comment from someone else can completely change your viewpoint. I hadn't considered the hallway angle in the painting, but now it's all I see. This Barbie looks like she has spent the holidays sunning herself in the Caribbean!
ReplyDeleteShe did and all the colour beached out of her hair. Go see the exhibit. It was quite something.
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