and psychedelic
architectural
landscapes.
oh yeah....
Now, that I am on the UCLA campus three days a week, I'm excited to spend more time at the Hammer Museum. I find this to be one of the most exciting programs happening in Los Angeles at the moment. This upcoming exhibition, opening on October 4, is curated by Robert Gober. This exhibition will feature some of the wallpapers Charles made as a wallpaper designer, in the early 20's, and they will be installed on the walls. So excited!
Heat Waves in a Swamp: The Paintings of Charles Burchfield
Hammer Museum, Los Angeles
Sunflowers (design for M. H. Birge & Sons Company wallpaper), 1921.
Watercolor and graphite on paper mounted on board, 27 1/2 x 20 in.
Heat Waves in a Swamp will be the first major Charles Burchfield exhibition to be mounted on the west coast and the first in New York for more than twenty years. Arranged chronologically, it approaches Burchfield’s work with a new perspective facilitated in part by the curatorial sensibilities of Robert Gober. Working with Hammer coordinating curator Cynthia Burlingham, Gober has augmented a large selection of watercolors with the inclusion of extensive biographical material that continually infuses Burchfield’s own thoughts about his work and artistic practice. An obsessive collector, organizer, and archivist, Burchfield left a treasure trove of well-maintained sketches, notebooks, journals, and doodles spanning his entire career. This material is now part of the Burchfield Penney Art Center at Buffalo State College, which houses more than twenty five thousand objects by this visionary American artist. The exhibition will travel to the Whitney Museum of America Art in New York and the Burchfield Penney Art Center.
Although aware of the art of his time, Charles Burchfield spent his working life immersed in his own local environment in upstate New York, trusting and then challenging his creative instincts, often looking backwards in order to go forward, and steadfast in his belief of “the healthy glamour of everyday life.” His paintings vibrate with color and sound like visual symphonies where the humming of insects, rustling leaves, bells, moonbeams, and vibrating telephone lines are woven together to reveal the beauty and power of the American landscape. Side by side with his journals and notes these paintings explore both physical and psychological terrain. Edward Hopper, fellow artist and close colleague, once said that Burchfield’s work "is most decidedly founded, not on art, but on life, and the life that he knows and loves best.”
taken from Hammer Museum Blog here..