What Made It Beautiful
IN TUNE WITH HER INSTINCTS
CHARLES TR AUB
One of her famous sayings was “Work backwards.” Meaning if you’ve got an idea, figure out what you have to do by working backwards. And that’s what she did all the time—she worked backwards. Sarah wasn’t interested in pattern, and wasn’t associative, but the way she worked was logical. Completely logical. Which seems antithetical to an artist, but it isn’t necessarily. She was very willful and very exacting about getting from A to B to C to D. She had laser focus. M AT T H E W C . L A N G E
Sarah couldn’t create something that wasn’t beautiful, but for her the idea behind it was more important than the beauty. The beauty was in her workmanship. If it’s 30” by 40” and blue, there is a certain expression and certain communicative power in that picture. And if it’s on glossy paper, it says something different than if it’s on matte paper. Sarah had an innate sense of what made it beautiful, but she never did it frivolously—I don’t think she ever said, “It has to be a certain size because that will sell for more or it will look great on a wall.” It was, “If it’s going to be this size it’s going to change its relationship to other pictures or it’s going to communicate in a different way, so it has to be this size. That’s the only size that makes sense.” There are rules that we all follow, whether we like it or not. Sarah was trying to articulate what those rules are and what they mean. They may change and evolve, but we can also use them to different ends. If you look at later series, her saturated red color may be less sexual and violent than in her earlier work but it derives from the same set of rules that govern how we perceive images. She built from a place where we perceive red as a passionate color. She was always bringing in motifs from a set of rules that we actually employ—trying to pick apart the visual language that is already at play. Sarah needed an external logic. But she ultimately operated in tune with her instincts. The result is that despite her great explanatory powers something about her work defies explanation. She was very clear about her operating structure—but then the work had to provide an emotional response for her to accept it as valid. J U DY H U D S O N
The beauty in Sarah’s work was inherent. She was born with it. But she was also staunchly intellectual and pushed that hard. She combined beauty and mind in an alchemical way to produce a metaphysical other-worldly image. It moved me in a spiritual way. S A R A VA N D E R B E E K
Sarah’s works have the quality of a sacred object. Maybe that is because they feel timeless. They are perfect objects—seamless and perfect—but within them she often included a key or an entry point. She made works and exhibitions that were incredibly generous and generative. CHARLES TR AUB
Her work had a kind of presence about it, a kind of finish that transcended even the picture that was being made—that gave it a kind of object beauty that just knocked me out.
126
