Louise Schatz Ushers in the Spring
Written By: Gil Goldfine
The art world has reached an interim impasse and with a number of trends seeking international acceptance, a sort of visual power vacuum has been created. Environments, earth works, kinetics and sound, conceptual reports and hyper- realism have proven themselves lofty soap boxes for expounding sociological theory and ideology based on our scientific, industrialized way of life, leaving behind old-time favourites of “aesthetics” and personal expression.
The “artist” as director-scientist-engineer has not always satisfied our 20th century appetites, nor has his answer always been easy to live with, even in our highly urbanized, depersonalized existence. Few have chosen to reinstate the creation of visual beauty as a primary act of self-expression and not overburden us with unwelcome reminders of our mechanized way of life. Fortunately some noted painters have from time to time tried to do just this, and the results are both welcome and refreshing.
Louise Schatz, who is certainly not a newcomer to our local scene, happily falls into this category. At her current show of watercolours and collages at the Yodfat Gallery, Tel Aviv, she weaves abstract tapestries of colour and texture that are lucid, delicate and uncompromisingly designed in a casual fashion. Using a limited range of materials (newspaper, canvas, paper) and transparent washes, her irregular polygons and dancing lines are methodically constructed until a patchwork of tender colour jumps and slides in the composition. The many small square collages are just right. They are simple truths based on uncomplicated pictorial content. A square, a torn piece of newspaper, a graceful line that is never vicious, a light touch of overglaze are all elements that form the poetry of Louise Schatz’s paintings. Her work ranges from graphic understatements to epic battles of chromatic passages but all are painted with a contemplative consistency that holds our interest and demands inquiry from frame to frame. She seems to compose with unconscious control, not knowing exactly what will occur but checking and counter-balancing line, shape and colour until the unity of the space begins to fertilize.
The end results speak with visual clarity. Having been greatly infiuenced by Paul Klee, Louise Schatz could be described by something Klee himself said: “The painter, when he is really a painter, forms - or rather: he allows form to arise. He has, no intention, no direct one. He is glad to contribute something to the self-forming work, this or that, adding an accent to accents, directions to direction, in order to strengthen, activate, suppress. He knows a great deal, but he only knows it afterwards.” (Reminiscences of Klee, Edited by Ludwig Grote, Munich 1959.)
This is a thoroughly refreshing show, just what we needed to usher in the spring.
(Yodfat Gallery, 190 Dizengoff St.) Till end of May.
Originally published: 18/05/1973
Louise Schatz Ushers in the Spring
Written By: Gil Goldfine
The art world has reached an interim impasse and with a number of trends seeking international acceptance, a sort of visual power vacuum has been created. Environments, earth works, kinetics and sound, conceptual reports and hyper- realism have proven themselves lofty soap boxes for expounding sociological theory and ideology based on our scientific, industrialized way of life, leaving behind old-time favourites of “aesthetics” and personal expression.
The “artist” as director-scientist-engineer has not always satisfied our 20th century appetites, nor has his answer always been easy to live with, even in our highly urbanized, depersonalized existence. Few have chosen to reinstate the creation of visual beauty as a primary act of self-expression and not overburden us with unwelcome reminders of our mechanized way of life. Fortunately some noted painters have from time to time tried to do just this, and the results are both welcome and refreshing.
Louise Schatz, who is certainly not a newcomer to our local scene, happily falls into this category. At her current show of watercolours and collages at the Yodfat Gallery, Tel Aviv, she weaves abstract tapestries of colour and texture that are lucid, delicate and uncompromisingly designed in a casual fashion. Using a limited range of materials (newspaper, canvas, paper) and transparent washes, her irregular polygons and dancing lines are methodically constructed until a patchwork of tender colour jumps and slides in the composition. The many small square collages are just right. They are simple truths based on uncomplicated pictorial content. A square, a torn piece of newspaper, a graceful line that is never vicious, a light touch of overglaze are all elements that form the poetry of Louise Schatz’s paintings. Her work ranges from graphic understatements to epic battles of chromatic passages but all are painted with a contemplative consistency that holds our interest and demands inquiry from frame to frame. She seems to compose with unconscious control, not knowing exactly what will occur but checking and counter-balancing line, shape and colour until the unity of the space begins to fertilize.
The end results speak with visual clarity. Having been greatly infiuenced by Paul Klee, Louise Schatz could be described by something Klee himself said: “The painter, when he is really a painter, forms - or rather: he allows form to arise. He has, no intention, no direct one. He is glad to contribute something to the self-forming work, this or that, adding an accent to accents, directions to direction, in order to strengthen, activate, suppress. He knows a great deal, but he only knows it afterwards.” (Reminiscences of Klee, Edited by Ludwig Grote, Munich 1959.)
This is a thoroughly refreshing show, just what we needed to usher in the spring.
(Yodfat Gallery, 190 Dizengoff St.) Till end of May.
Originally published: 18/05/1973