Jennifer Bartlett: At Sea, 2004
26 pages, Softcover
Published by Locks Art Publications
ISBN: 1-879173-64-6
This publication and the accompanying exhibition at Locks Gallery features three monumental works, At Sea (1979), Atlantic Ocean (1984), and Sea Wall (1985) as well as a selection of smaller related works, all devoted to the exploration of water and its visual representation through the act of painting. If Rhapsody (1969) was a milestone, with appropriations of Cezanne and Seurat, At Sea and Atlantic Ocean-each painted on the same unorthodox grid of steel plates as Rhapsody-reveal an artist absorbed in Courbet's wave paintings and Monet's sequential canvases. Sea Wall, typical of the installations combining sculptural objects and painted canvases that Bartlett began producing during the 1980s, is anything but typical in its scale. Stretching over 35 feet in length, Sea Wall is by far the largest of the works on view, and includes three separate large canvases, and an installation of over a dozen sculptural objects. These major works remain an essential part of the New Image movement of the 1980s that heralded a return to subject and imagery in contemporary painting-a movement in which Jennifer Bartlett was a central figure.
