Dan Christensen: The Stain Paintings - Spanierman Modern

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It was works such as this to which the poet and critic John Ashbery referred in a review of an exhibition of Christensen’s art in 1979. In a day when artists had either taken the Minimal into the purely conceptual or had returned to representational forms of image-making, Ashbery found it “sobering and refreshing to turn to a number of artists who are extending the language of modernism in a more traditional and serious way.” He went on to note that “one younger artist who has renewed the tradition [of Color Field painting] honorably is Dan Christensen. His pale, vaporous washes of light are delectable. Often they are loosely organized along a white line which serves as an axis for vague blotches of color to relate to— sometimes like petals on a stem, or laundry on a clothesline, or clouds bisected by a telephone wire, though such comparisons are considered odious in discussions of this kind of work.” Ashbery found Christensen’s color occasionally “smoldering and sensuous,” but observed that the artist was “mainly interested in articulating the nuances separating patches of close-keyed dull pastel tones, and he does it masterfully. He forces the eye to recognize distinctions among areas of color which at Wrst have strong family resemblances and only somewhat later turn out to be mavericks who could just as easily be at odds with each other.” Referencing the universal metaphor of the Tree of Life, Ridge has an iconic quality, yet its freshness and simplicity make this work Wrst and foremost a sensuous optical experience, the product of an artist in love with the interaction of paint and surface and the inWnite ways of exploring their convergence. Lisa N. Peters 1. Notable sources on Christensen include Sharon L. Kennedy, Douglas Drake, and Karen Wilkin, Dan Christensen: Forty Years of Painting, exh. cat. (Kansas City, Mo.: Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, 2009); Dan Christensen: The Plaid Paintings, exh. cat. (including an interview with Elaine Grove) (New York: Spanierman Modern, 2009); and Stephen Westfall, Dan Christensen, exh. cat. (New York: Spanierman Modern, 2007). 2. These paintings were the subject of Dan Christensen: The Plaid Paintings (2009). 3. Grace Glueck, “A Happy New Year?” Art in America 59 (January–February 1971), 27. 4. Cited in Sharon L. Kennedy, “Charting His Course: Dan Christensen’s Early Years,” in Kennedy, Drake, and Wilkin, 2009, 10. 5. Valentin Tatransky, “Dan Christensen,” Arts Magazine (May 1982), 11. 6. Hilton Kramer, “Art: Show of New Works Sets Example at Modern,” New York Times, February 13, 1981. 7. John Ashbery, “Pleasures of Paperwork,” Newsweek, March 16, 1981, 94. 8. John ElderWeld, New Work on Paper 1, exh. cat. (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1981), 12. 9. James Monte, Dan Christensen: The Circular Paintings, exh. cat. (New York: Salander-O’Reilly Galleries, Inc., 1991). 10. James Monte, “A Note on Dan Christensen’s Paintings,” in Dan Christensen: A Survey, 1966–1990, exh. cat. (East Hampton, N.Y.: Vered Gallery, 1990). See also Barbara Rose, Miró in America, exh. cat. (Houston, Tex.: Museum of Fine Arts, 1982). 11. On this term and Greenberg’s conception of it, see Karen Wilkin, “Notes on Color Field Painting,” in Wilkin, Color as Field: American Painting, 1950–1975, exh. cat. (New York: American Federation of Arts in association with Yale University Press, New Haven, Conn., 2007), 11–75. 12. Clement Greenberg’s statement appears in Dan Christensen: A Survey, 1966–1990, exh. cat. (East Hampton, N.Y.: Vered Gallery, 1990). 13. Unpublished typescript, “Interview with Dan Christensen by R. Phillips and W. Hamilton,” November 2, 1974, part 1, 2. 7
8 beulah land, 1978, AcryLic on cAnvAs, 29 1 ⁄ 8 x 68 3 ⁄ 4 in.
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Page 10 and 11: idge, 1976, AcryLic on cAnvAs, 78 x
Page 12 and 13: 12 polarstar, 1978, AcryLic And ges
Page 14 and 15: 14 norseland, 1979, AcryLic And ges
Page 16 and 17: 16 infield seltzer, 1980, AcryLic o
Page 18 and 19: 18 sissystrut, 1980, AcryLic on cAn
Page 20 and 21: 20 coahoma, 1981, AcryLic on cAnvAs
Page 22 and 23: 22 carib cocktail, 1981, AcryLic on
Page 24 and 25: 24 tokyo tattoo, 1981, AcryLic on c
Page 26 and 27: 26 troubadour, 1988, AcryLic on cAn
Page 28 and 29: 28 dAn christensen b. 1942, Cozad,
Page 30 and 31: 30 Marcia Tucker, The Structure of
Page 32: Published in the United States of A

Dan Christensen: The Stain Paintings - Spanierman Modern

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