Jo Baer's I Am No Longer An Abstract Artist

FOUND! Or rather (and even better), SENT to me! Jo Baer's October 1983 Art in America essay, I Am No Longer An Abstract Artist -


CliCK HeRe to see it BIG enough to Read.


ClicK HERE to Read.

I hadn't realized this is part of a larger feature on thirteen abstract painters of the sixties... I'm going to do more research.

RELATED: Jo Baer's letter to Artforum, September 1967

Jo Baer review(S)

I'm glad to see that Jo Baer got a good review in the NYTimes. It's amazing how many exhibitions never get mentioned anywhere at all.

UPDATE: Carrie Moyer reviews Jo Baer for the Brooklyn Rail.

Some of the shows I saw on my last trip to NYC have been reviewed in the NYTimes, but I would like to read other views on those, and there were many other shows I saw (and some good ones I missed) that I haven't seen noted anywhere.

Here is a list of some of the shows I was interested in but which I haven't seen enough, or ANY, mentions of. It would be nice if they received more attention/discussion. Let me know of any and I can add the link (if there is a link).

Philip Akkerman - on Jen Bandini
John Beech
John Dilg
Andreas Hofer - I was seduced by the comic books of this one... I'm less into it now. I'll tell you, I have a stat counter, and he has been googled A LOT. - in Village Voice
Lauren Luloff
Mitzi Pederson
Lamar Peterson
Michael Rodriguez
David Shapiro - in Village Voice (scroll down)
Jered Sprecher - on PaintersNYC
Michael St. John - on Jen Bandini
Charles Steffen
Margo Victor - on Heart as Arena

I should wait for the magazines...

Here is a link to all my Chelsea posts, Brooklyn posts. The show at Momenta was very good, but I never posted on it (yet?)... oh, and the woman at Like the Spice was wow, amazingly nice.

It was disappointing to find that Paul Sharpe has closed.

Jo Baer

with Jo Baer!!!

Jo Baer at Alexander Gray - this gallery was closed when I visited, but they let me in to look, and told me to come back later for the opening... which I did and met Jo Baer!!! This was the night that Barnaby wouldn't go out with me... but I had fun anyway!

She was so great telling me about her paintings... she really moves like a dancer.

There are two big unstretched white paintings on opposite ends of the gallery... about which she said it is interesting to hear the different American and European responses - with one painting the Europeans always pick up on the gestapo, with the other painting Americans always pick up on the lynching. Talking about that lynching image, saying (something like) Marlene says why don't you make that stronger, I'd make that stronger... she was talking about her friend Marlene Dumas!

The hanging man is on the far right side of a canvas filled with leaping antelope, flamingo, a ballerina... all of it - aargh I wish I could remember her words - but all stuff of bodies stretching and reaching. She had a better description but I don't remember because my head has only stored the images of her sinking her neck into her collarbone and stretching it back out again... I didn't get it but she was being a flamingo! Her whole body was stretching and like dancing as she explained.

About her famous Artforum letter, in defense of painting... I think she is interested in blogging, or at least in being able to update the textual parts of her site whenever she wants. Someone is working on that with her. Make sure you check out the "book" section of her website....

I need to find and scan in her other famous essay... "I Am No Longer an Abstract Artist."


from left: Joan Jonas, Judith Stein, Jo Baer, unknown, Steve Kaplan, nice gallery staff, Alexander Gray.

The opening was on a rainy weeknight, so not a huge turnout... but I met Joan Jonas and got to thank David Reed for his part in putting together High Times, Hard Times (Baer was in that show).

Best surprise was getting to see Judith Stein again... she is so awesome. Nobody looks at and talks about art like she can... super intense, smart, and focused - but in a kind-of dreamy way. Judith did this very good interview with Baer. It was funny... in that room were two previous thumbs-uppers (Kaplan and Stein), and one previous refusal (Reed).

Wow.. I just found this archive of Stein essays from her Morris Gallery years.

Jo Baer's letter to Artforum, September 1967

Jo Baer's 1967 letter to Artforum, in defense of painting. She was pissed because there was so much anti-painting sentiment at the time; she'd been left out of some shows she felt she belonged in, she'd been in an argument with Donald Judd, and then Artforum ran two Summer 1967 articles (one by Michael Fried, the other by Robert Morris) that really set her off -


Click here to see BIGGER.


Click here to see BIGGER.


Click here to see BIGGER.

Judith Stein's interview with Jo Baer is good. This excerpt makes me think of Edna -

Judith Stein: Speaking of being rude....
Jo Baer: It's the only way to be, if you're female. You don't get anywhere otherwise.
Judith Stein: You decided to speak up, and you wrote that letter to Artforum ["Letters," Artforum, Sept. '67, pp. 5-6].

High Times, Hard Times

We went to see Katy Siegel and David Reed's High Times, Hard Times at the Weatherspoon on Friday... it was very much worth the trip from Richmond (about three hours), but if you want to see it soon you better hurry because it closes October 15th. The show travels, so you can see it when it opens back up again in DC November 21 or in NYC opening February 17th.

The first room has Kenneth Showell's Besped, 1967 (pictured above), Dan Christensen's Pavo, 1968, Ralph Humphrey's Untitled, 1969, and Jane Kaufman's 6 p.m., 1971. What a great mood to open the show with... you walk around the corner not knowing what to expect and get hit with all this color and vibrancy and experimentation and fun; it just feels good standing there with those paintings. Good vibes.

Taking photos was prohibited.. so we don't have many and of course the few that I got are with a camera phone and not looking that great.... if you have seen the catalogue and are liking it you will be much happier seeing them in real life, the colors in the catalogue are not very good. Jane Kaufman's 6 p.m. is orange at the center and pink along edges, something that even for real took some time for your eye to register.. in the catalogue you can't see any of that.

We all spent a while experiencing and studying each of these four paintings. The Kenneth Showell is a very big warping grid, and it was nice seeing so many of his pencil lines underneath... I thought of Michael Mewborn.

Hey! I just remembered that Michael Mewborn made those new paintings after a thirty year break from art making... that's another "long break" artist I have thought of since the Jerry Saltz lecture and his advice or whatever that if you don't work for a year, you are maybe a year better, but if you don't work for two maybe you are not an artist (that is not an EXACT quote). Agnes Martin stopped for seven years, Emily Carr stopped for fifteen years... there are many others, I'm sure. Ugh... I don't want to get into the Jerry lecture now, but I really get annoyed by advice on "how to be an artist" from people that aren't artists. Jerry lecture talk, with good comments, is HERE.


Dan Christensen's Pavo, 1968 - this is wonderful.. a little metallic. big unbroken loops of color.


Ralph Humphrey, Untitled, 1969 - that yellow part seems stronger in the photo than I remember. this is not a favorite, i'm not into the edge.. stopping it before the edge.

Matt (looking at the piece) couldn't get off work to come see this show, but he came anyway. Bye, job! Matt and Cindy are my new unpaid interns.

some favorites -

Lee Lozano, Punch, Peek, Feel, 1967-70 - very nice piece.. there is a line of grapefruit-size holes in the canvas that run down it, you can see the stretcher bars. It feels curved but it isn't curved at all, it's a perfect rectangle. The two cuts keep it from being too perfect, thankfully.

She is so fascinating... all of her whacked text pieces, her cartoony tools and guns. Lee Lozano would probably be blogging now, a killer blog.

Jo Baer , V. Speculum, 1970 - I liked the brown and cream palette, and the painted sides angling over.. it seems futuristic, an object, a totem... a futuristic totemic object. This was painted a few years after her infamous letter to Artforum.

Here's a big Jo Baer interview with Thumbs-Upper Judith Stein.

i have too much for one post, more tomorrow (or, i mean, probably later today)...