Tuesday, March 28, 2000
Painter freshens abstract approach
BY OWEW FINDSEN
The Cincinnati Enquirer
The trick is to make abstract paintings that don't look retro.
These days, when abstract art is practically prehistoric, why would anyone, outside a basic design classroom, paint abstract paintings?
Abstract painting is “a wallflower at the post-modern art party,” wrote New York painter Laurie Fendrich, an unapologetic abstract painter showing at the Linda Schwartz Gallery.
She does small paintings of big colors, rectangles, arcs, suggestive of still lifes but without objects. It's Stuart Davis and Josef Albers morphed into one. Strangely though, the paintings don't appear to be either derivative or dated.
It's an American attribute in the arts to abandon past art or parody it. Artists don't want to learn from the past. They want to break rules they never learned, make a splash, get their 15 minutes of fame, tenure, and spend the rest of their careers acting like an established master.
So what a treat to find an artist who respects the efforts of past masters and who explores paths laid out half a century ago.
Ms. Fendrich understands that although these paths were well trod, no one reached to their ends. The ideas were abandoned rather than exhausted.
Hers are geometric abstract paintings, not related to the abandoned splashing and bold brushing of abstract expressionists. Those brushy productions “have lost their ability to authentically express anything,” she says.
The colors can be strange, an orange next to a light brown and a yellow green. It should be an irritating combination, but it works, and it seems right.
Ms. Fendrich paints shapes that almost suggest objects or products of the art deco era, sometimes humorously. Small egg-shaped disks give the paintings a sense of depth and hint at the sound hole of the guitars in Cubist still lifes. But it's the play of color against color, of simple shapes under and overlaying each other, with slightly unsharp, vibrant edges between, that make the paintings ring.
Imagine a Chinese gong that starts with a loud, attention getting bong and then resonates long before silence returns. Ms. Fendrich's paintings have that immediate punch, with plenty of reserve energy to keep them interesting to look at for a long time.
Laurie Fendrich: New Paintings at Linda Schwartz Gallery, 315 W. Fourth St., downtown. through April 22. 241-4202.
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