Robert Fones
Walruses on Meteorit 2000 acrylic on canvas 40 x 40 in
Rebel Angels 2000 acrylic on canvas 40 x 40 in
I stole these images from the CCCA web site, they're bad scans from a dirty slide that I tried to clean up, his work is pristine in the real world. One other problem with the CCCA listings for artists are that they're never updated. New artists are added all the time, but your latest image will be the one you put up when you were initially listed. [edited to add, courtesy of Kate Wilson, Re: the CCCA - it's up to the individual artists to update the site - ]
I've linked his name to Olga Korpers Gallery's web site where you can see more recent work. (but very small images) I am a major fan.
one of the (many, many, many) problems with nasgaards book is his narrative is as tight as a nun's cunt--so (brilliant) work like this refuses to ingratiate itself into a greenbergian sensibility, and is left out.
I corrected your spelling of Nasgaard's name to enhance the googlability of that comment.
Presumptions about tightness are never good, A.
Fones' work is too sculptural, too pop conceptual and historically (late) taking it beyond the scope of Nasgaard's overview. Maybe in part two?
Those paintings remind me of Chanel eyeshadow palettes.
Me too, J, those cosmetic palettes are exquisite things.
Robert Linsley is reviewing APIC in the upcoming CA mag.
thats not true simple jennifer--nasgaard last chapter, which works thru the late 90s to the mid 2000s, his chapter on hard edged abstractions from the west coast, features work that is v. much pop conceptual, esp Michael Morris and Gary Lee-Nova (who should be much better known), and his entry on eli bornstein is really a discussion on where painting begins and where sculpture or installation ends...(though he only likes bornstein because he can talk about formalist paintings, and pretend his work is all about the bow river)
that he refuses to discuss how Morris and Lee-Nova's work interacted with similar work in Los Angeles and Seattle, how that coastal instinct gave birth to a new kind of abstract painting, without the east coast landscape obsessions, esp. how the abstract painting in Vancouver lived together with pop, conceptual, and non objective painting, in a non combative way, and was more then willing to later accept photography and performance, was the exact opposite of the combative east coast and the monastic praries--and is a lesson that i think fones internalises, i was genuinely suprised when i learnt he was from toronto, he seems much more a west coaster.
Anthony,
Actually, Robert Fones was born in London, Ontario which has its own regional baggage.
I haven't read the book so I can't really comment on your interpretation of it. My point was and is, Fones' career isn't a life in painting per se. His work is mediumistic, pluralistic and artists like that tend to get left out of single medium overviews.
Your discussion of "how Morris and Lee-Nova's work interacted with similar work in Los Angeles and Seattle, how that coastal instinct gave birth to a new kind of abstract painting, without the east coast landscape obsessions, esp. how the abstract painting in Vancouver lived together with pop, conceptual, and non objective painting, in a non combative way, and was more then willing to later accept photography and performance, was the exact opposite of the combative east coast and the monastic praries-" sounds like a whole other book. Does Nasgaard REFUSE to go there or is it just beyond the scope of his project? From the outside, I kinda think the latter. Same as I can't really see Fones' work as too concerned about ingratiating the quote unquote 'Greenbergian sensibility'.
Jennifer:
He hints at it, and then escapes it. Nasgaard's seems to want to create an entire monograph of abstract painting in Canada, but he seems only to believe in the Greenberg narrative of said painting. The scope of his project has to be pluralistic, and to discuss the implications of geography, because he set his book up like that, into geographical segments. To avoid talking about Vancouver's history with the west coast, is to negate his stated claims. It is intellectually dishonest.
I don't know much about Fones, and I trust you that London has its own baggage, I may be more comfortable with the west coast...so I apologize for pulling Fones to my comfort level, but he does engage with similar issues to people in the West coast. He isn't ingratiating Greenberg at all, neither was Morris or Lee-Nova, the use of abstraction for other purposes, aside from hard formalism, is something that is still critically adrift, reading the catalog for Extreme Abstraction at the Albright Knocks, or the AGO Colourfield Show, or the last chapter in Nasgard's book, or hearing modernist historians lecture in Edmonton recently, all leave out the conceptual/amaterial patterns and tradtions of Abstractness--which is a shame.
Fones is literally abstracting from his practice: expressing a quality apart from an object (websters)
I follow you all the way till your last line:
"Fones is literally abstracting from his practice: expressing a quality apart from an object (websters)"?
I'm not sure I see these paintings or Fones' work in general as very abstract.
i think these paintings are a distallation of his general practice. i also love them because they look like tetris.
Thanks for clarifying A.
I like them because they have an embossed look like the decorative patterns on the floors and the walls in certain Giotto paintings.
But not as chalky. More plastique.
Writing about Robert Fones in Lola in 1997, Reid Diamond used the the phrase "signifier, schmignifier."
Can haz schmabstraction sans schmignifier?
Holy Tetris FLASHBACK Batman
I'm with everyone on the Tetris reference. Or elongated roofs of Monopoly hotels.
http://esite.chanel.com/chanelpr/COLLECTION-DE-CHANEL2-md.jpg
OK, Chanel eyeshadow palettes, Tetris, floors and walls of Giotto paintings, Tetris, Tetris, roofs of Monopoly hotels, Sally's brain (no, really), Chanel eyeshadow palettes: I will declare this our criteria for good paintings by Robert Fones.
As aways, case by case.
fuck, thats going to be the critera for good paintings, peroid.
|
Robert Fones
Walruses on Meteorit 2000 acrylic on canvas 40 x 40 in
Rebel Angels 2000 acrylic on canvas 40 x 40 in
- L.M. 2-27-2008 8:11 am
I stole these images from the CCCA web site, they're bad scans from a dirty slide that I tried to clean up, his work is pristine in the real world. One other problem with the CCCA listings for artists are that they're never updated. New artists are added all the time, but your latest image will be the one you put up when you were initially listed. [edited to add, courtesy of Kate Wilson, Re: the CCCA - it's up to the individual artists to update the site - ]
I've linked his name to Olga Korpers Gallery's web site where you can see more recent work. (but very small images) I am a major fan.
- L.M. 2-27-2008 8:18 am
one of the (many, many, many) problems with nasgaards book is his narrative is as tight as a nun's cunt--so (brilliant) work like this refuses to ingratiate itself into a greenbergian sensibility, and is left out.
- anthony (guest) 2-27-2008 7:05 pm
I corrected your spelling of Nasgaard's name to enhance the googlability of that comment.
- L.M. 2-27-2008 8:14 pm
Presumptions about tightness are never good, A.
Fones' work is too sculptural, too pop conceptual and historically (late) taking it beyond the scope of Nasgaard's overview. Maybe in part two?
Those paintings remind me of Chanel eyeshadow palettes.
- J@simpleposie (guest) 2-27-2008 8:16 pm
Me too, J, those cosmetic palettes are exquisite things.
- L.M. 2-27-2008 8:20 pm
Robert Linsley is reviewing APIC in the upcoming CA mag.
- J@simpleposie (guest) 2-27-2008 8:21 pm
thats not true simple jennifer--nasgaard last chapter, which works thru the late 90s to the mid 2000s, his chapter on hard edged abstractions from the west coast, features work that is v. much pop conceptual, esp Michael Morris and Gary Lee-Nova (who should be much better known), and his entry on eli bornstein is really a discussion on where painting begins and where sculpture or installation ends...(though he only likes bornstein because he can talk about formalist paintings, and pretend his work is all about the bow river)
that he refuses to discuss how Morris and Lee-Nova's work interacted with similar work in Los Angeles and Seattle, how that coastal instinct gave birth to a new kind of abstract painting, without the east coast landscape obsessions, esp. how the abstract painting in Vancouver lived together with pop, conceptual, and non objective painting, in a non combative way, and was more then willing to later accept photography and performance, was the exact opposite of the combative east coast and the monastic praries--and is a lesson that i think fones internalises, i was genuinely suprised when i learnt he was from toronto, he seems much more a west coaster.
- anthony (guest) 2-27-2008 9:22 pm
Anthony,
Actually, Robert Fones was born in London, Ontario which has its own regional baggage.
I haven't read the book so I can't really comment on your interpretation of it. My point was and is, Fones' career isn't a life in painting per se. His work is mediumistic, pluralistic and artists like that tend to get left out of single medium overviews.
Your discussion of "how Morris and Lee-Nova's work interacted with similar work in Los Angeles and Seattle, how that coastal instinct gave birth to a new kind of abstract painting, without the east coast landscape obsessions, esp. how the abstract painting in Vancouver lived together with pop, conceptual, and non objective painting, in a non combative way, and was more then willing to later accept photography and performance, was the exact opposite of the combative east coast and the monastic praries-" sounds like a whole other book. Does Nasgaard REFUSE to go there or is it just beyond the scope of his project? From the outside, I kinda think the latter. Same as I can't really see Fones' work as too concerned about ingratiating the quote unquote 'Greenbergian sensibility'.
- J@simpleposie (guest) 2-27-2008 10:47 pm
Jennifer:
He hints at it, and then escapes it. Nasgaard's seems to want to create an entire monograph of abstract painting in Canada, but he seems only to believe in the Greenberg narrative of said painting. The scope of his project has to be pluralistic, and to discuss the implications of geography, because he set his book up like that, into geographical segments. To avoid talking about Vancouver's history with the west coast, is to negate his stated claims. It is intellectually dishonest.
I don't know much about Fones, and I trust you that London has its own baggage, I may be more comfortable with the west coast...so I apologize for pulling Fones to my comfort level, but he does engage with similar issues to people in the West coast. He isn't ingratiating Greenberg at all, neither was Morris or Lee-Nova, the use of abstraction for other purposes, aside from hard formalism, is something that is still critically adrift, reading the catalog for Extreme Abstraction at the Albright Knocks, or the AGO Colourfield Show, or the last chapter in Nasgard's book, or hearing modernist historians lecture in Edmonton recently, all leave out the conceptual/amaterial patterns and tradtions of Abstractness--which is a shame.
Fones is literally abstracting from his practice: expressing a quality apart from an object (websters)
- anthony (guest) 2-27-2008 11:07 pm
I follow you all the way till your last line:
"Fones is literally abstracting from his practice: expressing a quality apart from an object (websters)"?
- J@simpleposie (guest) 2-27-2008 11:27 pm
I'm not sure I see these paintings or Fones' work in general as very abstract.
- J@simpleposie (guest) 2-27-2008 11:47 pm
i think these paintings are a distallation of his general practice. i also love them because they look like tetris.
- anthony (guest) 2-28-2008 9:04 am
Thanks for clarifying A.
I like them because they have an embossed look like the decorative patterns on the floors and the walls in certain Giotto paintings.
- J@simpleposie (guest) 2-28-2008 9:35 am
But not as chalky. More plastique.
- J@simpleposie (guest) 2-28-2008 9:37 am
Writing about Robert Fones in Lola in 1997, Reid Diamond used the the phrase "signifier, schmignifier."
- sally mckay 2-28-2008 6:33 pm
Can haz schmabstraction sans schmignifier?
- J@simpleposie (guest) 2-28-2008 7:19 pm
Holy Tetris FLASHBACK Batman
- MageJB (guest) 2-28-2008 7:58 pm
I'm with everyone on the Tetris reference. Or elongated roofs of Monopoly hotels.
- Gabby Moser (guest) 2-28-2008 8:41 pm
- sally mckay 2-28-2008 9:08 pm
http://esite.chanel.com/chanelpr/COLLECTION-DE-CHANEL2-md.jpg
- J@simpleposie (guest) 2-29-2008 1:51 am
OK, Chanel eyeshadow palettes, Tetris, floors and walls of Giotto paintings, Tetris, Tetris, roofs of Monopoly hotels, Sally's brain (no, really), Chanel eyeshadow palettes: I will declare this our criteria for good paintings by Robert Fones.
As aways, case by case.
- L.M. 2-29-2008 10:04 am
fuck, thats going to be the critera for good paintings, peroid.
- anthony (guest) 2-29-2008 10:18 am