Art is… by Bev Jackson Cotter

What color is white?

I don’t think that is a silly question.  Let me explain.

The current Albert Lea Art Center exhibit “White on White” is a delightful combination of paintings, sculptures and paint chips.  The items in the displays range from a polar bear in a snow storm to a pearl draped female form.  It’s fun to wander through and contemplate.  When the challenge was given to Art Center members you could see the wheels turning, and the imaginations went wild.

The exhibit complimented the fundraising play sponsored by Albert Lea Art Center at the Marion Ross Performing Arts Center.  It’s all about a  piece of white art.

Now the question arises, “What is art?”  I recently ran across an article saved from a 1986 Christian Science Monitor.  It was written by Marcia Tucker, director of the New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York.  She discusses the differences between art that we all recognize, for example wild life art and portraits, and art that we don’t recognize, such as lines, shapes and colors that don’t make sense.  She talks about the comfort of seeing what we know and the uneasiness, disbelief or humor in art that we don’t understand.  I particularly enjoyed her closing paragraph and believe this is the reason that I kept her article all of these years.  She says, “It (contemporary art) forces us to reach beyond what we know into that arena of possibility, into that forbidding and dangerous place where we have not been, and where, if we’re fortunate, we also can enthusiastically welcome what we don’t understand.”

I love Dutch and Flemish paintings where the fly sitting on the apple in the bowl of fruit is so real that I want to flick it off.  However, I also love to stand in front of an abstract painting and wonder what on earth the artist was thinking about.  It’s fun to come up with my own interpretation.

Have you ever looked at the color white? It wanders all over the place — a tint of yellow or green or pink will affect the color balance in a room and can even affect your mood.  White can be warm or cool, bright or shadowed, shiny or dull.  It’s still white.

Recently we were driving back to Albert Lea in a very heavy rainstorm. Visibility was so bad that we pulled off the highway and onto an old farm site to wait out the worst of the storm.  We were parked next to an old building that had been originally painted white, the siding, shingles, window trim, doors — all white. Now most of the paint was gone, chipped or pealing or faded. Windows were broken and wood was rotting.  Was the building still white?

Yes.

Later on we passed a white pickup sitting by the side of the road.  It was pulling a white trailer. The pavement was a light grey with white stripes and the air was also a hazy light grey.  Did it all look white? Yes, and eerie, too.

Kasimir Malevich was an early 20th century artist who loved abstract design. He worked with circles over squares and angled squares over larger squares. His perspective was that contemporary art could express the sensation of flight, the feeling of fading away, even the feeling of a mystic wave from outer space. Interestingly enough, much of our modern architecture is based on these same designs.  We’ve come a long way from the Romanesque Revival of our original Freeborn County courthouse and the classic National Register properties in Albert Lea’s downtown.

Can you love both the realistic and abstract?  Sure. It’s great to enjoy what we already recognize, and it’s great to step out of that comfort zone occasionally and contemplate.

“White on White” will do that to you. You can understand and be comfortable and be confused and laugh. It’s a fun exhibit. Hope to see you there.

 

Bev Jackson Cotter is a member of the Albert Lea Art Center where the exhibit “White on White” will be on display May 23 through June 11, at 226 West Clark St.