Sunday, June 02, 2002

The Joy of Abstract (House) Painting

Life imitates art and vice versa aptly describes the polychromatic palette freshly rollered throughout. Pure, uninterrupted color flowing from one room to the next. Why use gessoed canvas when empty walls suffice. Spreading pigment albeit commercial grade acrylic latex reincarnates Romantic notions and Neoexpressionistic passions, turpenoid notwithstanding. Just ask Ellsworth Kelly if painting is antediluvian, rather than dead as contemporary art dictates. Gaylen Gerber certainly made a decent living so far following this strategy.

But a multi-hued house eschews popular notions of interior aesthetics as work of art to assume the white cube itself. The venue metamorphosizes from a exhibit space to a place of exhibitionism. Thus art becomes wedded to decorating within a Duchampian context. Such is the postmodern offspring of Architectural Digest meets Frieze.

And that poor restless soul Mondrian (whose Neoplasticist self propagated how all aspects of design to be a part of daily life and limited to a basic grid structure of horizontal and vertical lines with areas of primary colors to achieve a dynamic balance) just rolled over in his Modernist grave.

Later today the importance of being Oscar Gamble.