LIGHT FIELD Anne Blanchet + James Howell

L I G HT F IELD Anne Bl anchet + J ames Howe ll

L I G HT F IELD Anne Bl anchet + J ames Howe ll R AUM SCHR OTH SOEST KUNSTV E R E IN E IS LIN GEN

J A M E S H OW EL L

1935 - 2014

In 2010 Sammlung Schroth presented an exhibition entitled ‘Light and Space’. It was the first time that works by Anne Blanchet and James Howell were presented together in Soest and at the Kloster Wedinghausen in Arnsberg. It was here that the idea of a joint exhibition was conceived.

Sadly, James Howell passed away in 2014. ‘Light Field’ is as much an homage to one of the most generous and talented artists of our time, as it is a testament to an exceptional artistic friendship. The exhibitions in Soest and Eislingen pay tribute to two artists who were living on different continents but shared a deep routed interest in the notion of the sublime.

First of all, I would like to express my gratitude to Anne Blanchet, Joy Howell and the staff & board of the Howell Estate as well as Carl-Jürgen Schroth, Miriam Schroth and fellow board members of the Foundation for Conceptual Art Soest.

Furthermore, I would like to thank Paul Kottmann and team & members of the Kunstverein Eislingen for the opportunity to bring the show to Eislingen.

I would also like to thank the two authors Céline Berchiche and Karen Schiff for their exceptional contribution as well as Amanda Mackenzie for translating the essay by Céline Berchiche.

This exhibition would not have been possible without the kind support of my colleagues Madame Poncet and Monsieur Kilian at Galerie Denise René in Paris.

We hope that the presentation in Soest and Eislingen are only the beginning of a touring exhibition, that will bring the works of these two seminal artists to a wide audience.

Niklas von Bartha

ANNE BLANCHET Installation: Light Drawing Outdoor III, Nuit Blanche, Brussels, Belgium, October 3, 2015

ANNE BLANCHET Installation: Light Drawing Outdoor, CLOUDS, Château du Roeulx, Le Roeulx, Belgium, 2015

ANNE BLANCHET IN THE BEGINNING WAS MOVEMENT C ÉLI NE BERC H I C H E

‘Light Field’ an exhibition of works by Anne Blanchet and James Howell, first presented at the Schroth Art Space in Soest, was organised by Bartha Contemporary in collaboration with Galerie Denise René and features a series of Light Drawings, by the Swiss artist Anne Blanchet.

To set the record straight, Light Drawings, despite their title, are neither drawings nor paintings: they are sculptures of space and light.

“Space, light, movement” could easily be Anne Blanchet’s motto, and in that she is perfectly consistent with the line defended by Bartha Contemporary and the Schroth Collection.

These two institutions have, throughout their existence, set out to foster insight through a precise and challenging artistic programme that defends and promotes concrete, non-objective and post minimal art. Fervent, daring and passionate, they are references 1, as the catalogue of artists they support clearly demonstrates.

For all the ties and relationships discernible in Anne Blanchet’s work, her Light Drawings are quite unlike any other work. When she started out on her artistic career, it was contemporary dance and music that interested her, particularly what was being created across the Atlantic in the 1960s to 1980s. In 1983, as a guest of the Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, she was fascinated to discover the work of minimalist artists such as Donald Judd, Carl André, Robert Ryman, Richard Serra and Walter De Maria.

However, it was James Turrell’s work with space and tangible light that had the most enduring influence on her. In New York in the 1990s, she met the artist James Howell. Despite a certain self-confessed insensitivity to painting - since what really enthused her was space - she was captivated by the subtlety and power of Howell’s work. She recognised the conscious work with light in these works. For her, James Howell was not a painter of effects; he was a painter of light. Their meeting marked the start of a lasting friendship, and it is especially gratifying that their work is being shown together here.

Anne Blanchet is a radical artist, and she makes her position very plain: her core relationship with art is movement. Not “movement as an aesthetic element”, as she puts it 2, but movement as in displacement - appropriating a space, becoming part of it, sounding it, exploring its qualities. For her, light is an agent for revealing the space. Since 1984, Anne Blanchet’s monumental installations and sculptures, created in the open air in both public and private places, are all characterised by her feeling for space, movement and light. Light Drawings, which made their first appearance in 1994, represent a natural continuity in her work.

In 1994, after studying the action of light on a surface (in the series Émergences), she set out to probe the material itself. She wanted to render light visible. In a translucent environment, light would act without adding colours or graphite. The obvious choice for her was acrylic rather than glass, and so Light Drawings came into being.

Here, in these blocks of Acrylic-glass, the light is reflected along extremely precise incisions. These reflections give rise to shifts in tonality, creating grey or white zones with multiple nuances that change according to whether the light is rising, falling, natural or artificial. The light - an almost lunar light, at times - gives rise to movement, along with a host of visual gems that turn plains into hollows and hollows into plains. In this way, the Light Drawings shift according to the incidence of the light, and are in perpetual movement.

ANNE BLANCHET Light Drawings CLXIII, CLXIV, CLXV 2003 Incised Acrylic-blocks mounted on metal each 45 x 298 x 3 cm

ANNE BLANCHET Light Drawing CCCCI 2014 Incised Acrylic-block mounted on metal 118 x 118 x 3.5 cm

In the beginning was movement. Anne Blanchet represents it as a line, a point of attraction, a high-speed path. Movement, the point zero of her work, is a catalyst, an impulse. For her, movement comes from body and mind. A signal from the mind dictates movement to the body; the body is propelled as a result. Matter and mind come together at a common point, and it is the role of the artist to bring about our awareness of that.

Movement is central to the design of Light Drawings, yet it reveals itself only through another movement, that of the light that skips along the imperceptible incisions. In such way, Anne Blanchet’s work belongs to the realm of the infinitesimal. It is by triggering an internal vibration of matter that she evokes a vibration within us.

Her concept of movement should be understood as non-figurative and non-gestural, internal and abstract. “All my experience of the concrete comes from the world of thought,” she says; “anecdotes don’t interest me.” Her concern is not with the movement of the body, but with a thread in which the flow of thoughts materialises without any recourse to words. It is a common link, something all of us experience as humans, and it is little wonder, perhaps, that this universal language comes naturally to many non-objective and concrete artists.

As a child, Anne Blanchet was filled with wonder by theorems and the development of ideas. For years, she has maintained the fact that sensuality surrounds reason and its deployment. This dynamic includes the movement of series of positions and articulations. It is the thought process, the movement of thoughts in action. Anne Blanchet’s passion for dance probably stems from the fact that it offers her a more intimate confirmation of her research than the visual arts. Finding the articulation between a series of positions means setting free a flow, the flow of life - and that is the essence of reality. As Bergson said, “Once again, reality is not the instant, simple “states of being” we experience during change. Quite the opposite; it is the flow, the continuity of transition, the change itself.

The essence of real time is that it passes; none of its parts are

visible when the next one appears” 3 It is a perspective Anne Blanchet fully embraces when she says, “I’ve never sought to tell a story, but to find the common line, the thread that underpins all stories.”

Stories, time, reality… In the end, it is about life itself.

When asked why she does what she does, the artist replies that for her it’s a way of revealing the magic of life - a life that is both magical and trivial - in which reality itself is a gift. It’s not hard to see why she pays such close attention to selecting her materials.

The Acrylic-glass used in Light Drawings is a case in point, chosen when she realised that the material itself contained light, and that this matte and elusive material rendered an extraordinarily powerful sense of life.

The blurred vision that pervades our experience of the Light Drawings owes as much to the indistinct, opaline material as it does to the effects of the light and their variations. As spectators, our eyes seek to penetrate the material, to see behind it, to grasp it. At the same time as this reflex, we feel the need distance ourselves to a degree, since the Light Drawings also incite us to become aware of the space which we occupy.

In all her works, Anne Blanchet likes to find ways of disrupting vision. Paradoxically, it is often when things are mixed up that the essence of things emerges. Her works have a habit of shortcircuiting our normal intellectual expectations. Even if the world of thought fascinates her, even if she enjoys the skilful development of ideas, she knows that it’s vital to prioritise what lies beyond the intellect, to connect with primary perception. Her works are concrete realities, they are poetic and sensitive, and they demand our penetrating attention. She knows the real, the essential is poised to burst out from behind the appearance of reality: that is why Anne Blanchet is an artist.

Céline Berchiche has a doctorate in the history of art. She wrote her PhD thesis at the University of Sorbonne in 2012 on “The Influence of Auguste Herbin after 1945”.

Specialising in concrete art and geometric abstraction in Europe from 1945 to the present day, she writes on the likes of Auguste Herbin, Olle Baertling, Jean Dewasne, Richard Mortensen, Vasarely and Emmanuel for art galleries and museums in France and Europe, and regularly addresses conferences on the subject.

She is currently preparing an artist’s monograph on Jean Dewasne.

1

Those galleries and foundations which defend concrete and minimal art

are rare in Europe. Alongside Bartha Contemporary in London and the Schroth Collection in Soest, they include the galerie Denise René and the galerie Lahumière in Paris, L’Espace de l’Art Concret in Mouans-Sartoux (France) and the Peter C. Ruppert Collection in Würzburg (Germany).

2

All the artist’s comments quoted in the text are taken from Céline

Berchiche’s interview with Anne Blanchet in Paris on 22 March 2016.

3

Page 51 in Bergson, La pensée et le mouvant, pub. Flammarion, Paris

2014.

ANNE BLANCHET Light Drawing CCLIII 2009 Incised Acrylic-block mounted on Bristol cardboard 120 x 120 x 3 cm

ANNE BLANCHET Light Drawing CCCCLXIV Eloge de l’Ombre 1996 - 2016 Incised Acrylic-block, mounted on metal 240 x 40 x 3 cm

ANNE BLANCHET Installation: XLVII, 6th Bex and Arts Triennale, Bex, Switzerland, 1996

ANNE BLANCHET Installation: Portes 97, visual music, Forum d’Art Contemporain, Sierre, Switzerland, 1997

Choreographed sliding doors

ANNE BLANCHET Light Drawing XVII 1995 Incised Acrylic-blocks mounted on metal 146 x 146 x 3 cm

ANNE BLANCHET Light Drawing CLII 2003 Incised Acrylic-block mounted on Bristol cardboard 22 x 198 x 3 cm

ANNE BLANCHET Light Drawing CXXXVII 2003 Incised Acrylic-block mounted on Bristol cardboard 22 x 170 x 3 cm

ANNE BLANCHET Light Drawing XXV 1996 Incised Acrylic-block mounted on white Acrylic each 71 x 71 x 2.5 cm

ANNE BLANCHET Installation: Light Bridge, visual music, Université Pérolles 2, Fribourg, Switzerland, 2005

Choreographed barriers

JAMES HOWELL Six-Part Progression 69.96 - 82.22 14 OCT 07 2007 Acrylic on canvas each 101.6 x 101.6 cm

JAMES HOWELL Light Stone Veil Five Panels 1992 Acyrlic on aluminium each 25.4 x 25.4 cm

JAMES HOWELL [S 5.9] Set 98.22 12/15/95 1995 Acrylic on canvas 167.64 x 167.64 x 4.45 cm

JAMES HOWELL 97.90 01/23/01 2001 Acrylic on canvas 167.64 x 167.64 x 5.08 cm

A

C A L C U L U S

O F

KAREN S C H I FF

T W I L I G H T

JAMES HOWELL

What is the formula for softness?

How can I write a cloud?

Tentative sunrays glancing off a lake in the cool morning Mists wisping over the water’s surface, in eddies of breezes

In light fog, the shoreline blurs as perspective broadens to include more space and time‌then all of nature until ordinary life seems moot yet also woven into this inconceivable expanse

Entry into such a universe is not through a portal, but by suffusion Foggy vapors gather into moist veils and the body blooms toward them in all directions simultaneously.

Eyes can be widened to admit more shades of gray Skin can be thinned to fine-tune acuity

Whetted senses catch the subtlest shifts in density, brightness, warmth, and wind until you move in the cloud as it l i f t

s

When I began writing these lines, to describe the feeling of spending time with James Howell’s Series 10 paintings, I did not know that the artist had lived for twenty-eight years in homes overlooking the water in the clear climate between Seattle and Vancouver Island. Nor did I know that he often made drawings while sitting in a dinghy, tethered by a line to his 56-foot motored yacht…his small boat swinging with the currents in the wide quiet.

Series 10 is Howell’s eighteen-year-long project of charting shifting conditions, atmospheric and otherwise. Over time the artist studied ever subtler variations and narrower ranges of tone. The grays in each square painting darken from top to bottom, and each progression of four or six paintings explores a unique effect of light.

Howell insisted on presenting the canvases so they sequentially darken as they get farther from the light source, to offer the most complete, experiential sense of atmosphere. We respond to the gradations as well as to the environment in which they appear.

Howell also developed painting techniques to meet the

challenges of Series 10. He methodically and meticulously mixed gray acrylic paints like a laboratory scientist, according to his preparatory numerical studies and using a digital scale. He calibrated percentages of titanium white, ivory black, and raw umber — this brown keeps the gray from looking too blue — to hundredths of a milligram. Each mixture of clotted fog was stored in an airtight cup.

Howell carefully ruled equidistant horizontal lines along the

canvas — in this “Light Field” exhibition, 10, 28, or 29 lines per painting. He applied paints in slightly overlapping brushstrokes, with each vertical stroke spanning a predetermined number of horizontal bands. His effort was unwavering because with every passing second, evaporation changed the paint’s viscosity. “More farpulets!” he would cry out to his wife Joy, referring to his specially cut paper towels for wiping brushes, and she would swiftly replenish his pile so the work could continue apace. While each band had been mathematically measured, and his work process had a measured or steady effort, the painted result has measures like in music. Regular, consistently measured divisions provide a conceptual and physical skeleton for the hand’s vital pulse.

JAMES HOWELL 61.14 07 APR 01 2001 Acrylic on canvas 63.5 x 63.5 cm

Howell’s preparatory studies — such as the arrays of

“field numbers” showing how much of each paint color should be weighed into the mixtures for each section in the gradation — are sometimes exhibited as artworks themselves. Records of field numbers for each painting are filed and stored in notebooks, and examining them allows viewers to shift back and forth between focusing on discrete data and imagining how they coalesce into a total effect. Howell sometimes translated these numbers into refined, reductive drawings: curves that trace the overall, progressive changes in the three hues. In all of these modes — mathematics, drawing, painting — Howell’s absolute attention to precise detail enabled him to render delicate, organic phenomena.

Howell claimed, during an earlier Series 10 exhibition, that

his paintings were “like a Hiroshi Sugimoto without a horizon line on a cloudy day.” Yet Howell’s analysis of the relations between sky and water is more rational, or cooler, than Sugimoto’s: Howell is determining and constructing a visual field instead of receiving and framing its image. Howell’s paintings are simultaneously warmer, or more humanized, than Sugimoto’s: his hand replaces photographic technology, and he uses that earthy brown.

Several American artists add Western precedents to

Howell’s interest in Eastern aesthetics. Marc Rothko frames dramatic pulses, yet his fields offer no navigational pathways: Rothko proceeds by intuition, not scientific planning and execution.

Ad Reinhardt lets coherence emerge from within dark fields, yet his geometry is hard-edged, and the suffused light is more buried.

Donald Judd’s seriality is also absolutist, and the spatial experience is similarly ambitious, yet his bold palette and machined materials create a sharper, more isolate aesthetic atmosphere. Agnes Martin elicits subtle perceptions via comparably disciplined gray grids, also mixing arithmetical measuring with the hand’s human touch, but their tone is more unabashedly romantic. (Like Martin, Howell was a student of Buddhism, mysticism, and Platonism; both designed and built their own studios.) West coast Light and Space artists James Turrell and Robert Irwin create finely glowing, immersive installations, and Doug Wheeler’s, especially, feature total environments where white lights subtly darken. Howell

achieves a similarly radiant alchemy through the improbable medium of light-absorbing paint.

Like poetry, gemstones, and clouds, Howell’s paintings are condensations. Many hundreds of brushstrokes populate each canvas; though many are visible, each contributes merely a shimmer to the whole. And just as many stones take shape under enormous geological pressures, over long spans of time, Howell’s paintings have resulted from his immensely disciplined and protracted concentrations, both mental and physical. The full compass of the artist’s achievement only dawns over time.

I find it stunning to imagine the singularity of the artistic

drive behind the protracted endeavor of Series 10. I also find it impressive to note the work’s centrality within Howell’s total life project: the poured cement floor of his home/studio, and his similarly gray clothing, helped the artist to think. Small, gray everyday items and animal figurines mesh with the environment.

The Howells’ pet is still a gray cat.

All of these graynesses murmur in a poetic twilight of

simultaneous solidity and insubstantiality: the brushstrokes in Series 10 are both opaque and transparent. In the real twilight, which Joy remembers was “our very special time of day,” manifest details melt into an enveloping, overall atmosphere, and the sparkle of reality is heightened.

Howell called his paintings “chatoyant,” a word that seems

appropriately full of paradox. It refers to an unexpected luminosity from within. Excellent gemstones have this quality, as do certain cuts of polished wood: an angle of vision, accompanied by a specific illumination, can cause the solid material to spring open with transcendent brilliance. The word derives from the French chat, because the phenomenon resembles the fleeting and perplexing shine of a cat’s eyes. Is it from within or behind the eyes? Once you have seen the Series 10 paintings in this way, it becomes hard not to seek that compelling feeling of insight, like looking into a cut gemstone: each angle of vision reveals new facets — or brushstrokes — within.

JAMES HOWELL Odd Pair 68.79 28 AUG 98 + 94.18 28 SEP 98 1998

It is not clear when, where, how, or why Howell’s paintings

start to glow. This liminality is not a theoretical position; Howell has created rock-solid abstractions that seem to vaporize and then lift off. As opaque grays give way to bright space, minuteness and overwhelming immensity become intertwined: the acuteness of Howell’s precision begins to indicate the vast and ultimately unchartable cosmos. Light falls on — and darkness falls in — his paintings, until his capacious vision is illuminated and its scope approaches infinity.

Karen Schiff is an artist and an occasional writer based in New York. In both her visual and verbal work, she often plays with the spaces of language.

JAMES HOWELL Installation: Works on Paper, Deborah Berke Partners, New York, NY, Nov 2012 - Jan 2013

JAMES HOWELL Installation: Studio New York, May 2016

JAMES HOWELL’S TITLES [S 5.9]

Howell documented each stage of a work by date, media, dimensions, gram weight calculations, viscosity, curves and areas.

[S 5.9] refers to Series 5.9 and the percent of raw sienna.

All paint mixtures in [S 5.9] contain a fixed percentage of raw sienna and a varying percent of ivory black and titanium white.

JAMES HOWELL [S 5.9] Set 98.22 12/15/95 1995 Acyrlic on canvas 167.64 x 167.64 x 4.45 cm

Without the [S] series number, a work is part of Howell’s final Series Ten, initiated February 20, 1996 and contains varying amounts of raw umber, ivory black and titanium white, based on free-form curves.

Here the set number is based on the percentage of titanium white in the top line of the painting: the smaller the percentage number, the darker the painting.

A date refers to the day James Howell finished a painting.

In many ways the date is the most important ellement of the title, because the artist often made a number of works within a set number.

JAMES HOWELL’S TITLES Series 10

Titanium white, ivory black, and raw umber were mixed together in precise amounts to create specific shades of grey.

The numbers, 49.16, 53.05, 56.82, 60.48, 64.03 and 67.46, indicate the percentage of titanium white in the paint mix at the top of each painting.

JAMES HOWELL Six-Part Progression 49.16 - 67.46 14 JUN 06 2006 Acrylic on canvas each 63.5 x 63.5 cm

In a progression title, the darkest set number is first, in this instance 49.16 and the lightest set number second, in this work 67.46 .

The date in the title refers to the day the artist finished the last canvas in the progression. Only then does the progression have a title.

67.46

64.03

60.48

56.82

53.05

49.16

JAMES HOWELL 48.17 06 FEB 04 2004 Acrylic on canvas 101.5 x 101.5 cm

JAMES HOWELL Areas and Field Numbers 48.17 06 FEB 04 2004 Archival print on paper each 45.5 x 45.5 cm

JAMES HOWELL Areas 48.17 06 FEB 04 2004 Archival print on paper 45.5 x 45.5 cm

JAMES HOWELL Field Numbers 48.17 06 FEB 04 2004 Archival print on paper 45.5 x 45.5 cm

JAMES HOWELL Installation: The Natalie and Irving Forman Collection, Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, NY, 2005

First published on the occasion of an exhibition at RAUM SCHROTH im Museum Wilhelm Morgner, Soest September 24 2016 - January 4 2017 Kunstverein Eislingen, Eislingen February 11 2017 - March 12 2017

Exhibition organised by Bartha Contemporary Ltd. London with the kind support of Galerie Denise René Paris and the James Howell Estate New York, Foundation for Conceptual Art Soest + Kunstverein Eislingen.

We would like to thank Sammlung Schroth and Collection MM Gevena for agreeing to loan works for this series of exhibitions.

JAMES HOWELL Page 2

San Juan Island Studio Scaffold Light Stone Veil Five Panels 1992 Acyrlic on aluminium each 25.4 x 25.4 cm

San Juan Island Studio Wall

Page 50

Odd Pair 68.79 28 AUG 98 + 94.18 28 SEP 98 1998 Acrylic on canvas 101.5 x 101.5 cm + 63.5 x 63.5 cm

Page 52

Horizontal Line C 03 MAY 94 1994 Powdered graphite on Aches Aquarelle 140lb HP paper 56 x 56 cm

Horzitonal Line B 02 MAY 94 1994 Powdered graphite on Aches Aquarelle 140lb HP paper 56 x 56 cm

Horizontal Line C 01 MAY 94 1994 Powdered graphite on Aches Aquarelle 140lb HP paper 56 x 56 cm

Glint MAY 92 1992 Etching on Rivers BKF hwt paper Edition 2 of 10 56 x 56 cm

Page 53

Limit Drawing 92.58 29 MAY 97 1997

Aquatint Dec 90 1990 Aquatint on Rivres BFK hwt paper Edition 7 of 10 56 x 56 cm

Nine-part Array

Page 54

Four-Part Progression 66.89 - 91.14 07 APR 00 2000 Acrylic on canvas each 39.4 x 39.4 cm

[S 5.9] Set 98.22 12/15/95 1995 Acyrlic on canvas 167.64 x 167.64 x 4.45 cm

70.03 09 AUG 97 1997 Acrylic on canvas 56 x 56 cm

Page 65

[S 6.4] Set 93.02 1995 Acrylic on canvas 152.4 x 152.4 cm

Light Stone Veil 1992 Acrylic on aluminium 121.9 x 121.9 cm

Diptych Suan Juan Series No. 6 + No. 7 1992 Acrylic on aluminium each 45.7 x 45.7 cm

Light Veil 11 01 MAY 92 1992 Acrylic on aluminum each

68.6 x 68.6 cm

Acrylic on Arches Aquarelle 300lb HP 56 x 56 cm

(8.9 - 1.9 Rs) 31 MAY 95 1995 Acrylic on Lanaquarelle 300lb hp paper 56 x 76 cm

© Copyright Anne Blanchet, James Howell Estate New York, the authors Photo credits: Page 2

D Joy Drury

Page 6, 8

Anne Blanchet

Page 10, 13, 14, 19, 21, 27, 28, 29, 31 Gérald Friedli Page 22

Magali Koenig

Page 24

Robert Hofer

Page 32

Georg Rehsteiner

Page 37

Christoph Meinschäfer

Page 39, 41, 46, 57

Caitlin Biggers

Page 34, 45, 49, 54, 68

Zeph Colombatto

Page 52, 53

Tom Warren

Page 60, 61, 62, 63

Sebastian Kempa

Page 65

James Howell

Translation

Amanda MacKenzie

First Edition

500 Copies

Printed in Germany

Publisher

Bartha Contemporary Ltd. London

ISBN 978-0-9933621-2-5

kunstverein eislingen

978-0-9933621-2-5 BARTHA CONTEMPORARY