By Anita Feldman,
“Ed Clark and the Abstract Shaped Canvas: A Memoir”
In Edward Clark: for the Sake of the Search, 1997.
Certain Works command our attention long before they light up our minds. One of those compelling
and puzzling works, for me, was an untitled painting-collage
made in 1956 by Ed Clark. I first saw it at the Brata, an artists' cooperative
gallery on Tenth Street, in a group show that opened late in 1957. The
Brata members had arranged with five or six other downtown cooperatives
to begin their Christmas invitational exhibitions together, and the openings
must have drawn a thousand visitors—mostly artists and their friends—to
Tenth Street that night. At such crowded openings, it's proverbially hard
to see the paintings, but Clark's work was an exception. Facing me as
I entered the gallery (down two wide steps and through a splintery wooden
door), the piece had a decisive energy that dominated the room and the
moment.
The energy emanated, somehow, from the red shape that slanted over the top edge
of the canvas. Because of that shape, thongs and thoughts had changed
places, in a way that seemed inconceivable until that moment and inevitable
afterwards. It was as a voice had cut through the haze of open-night chatter,
as if someone had said in a clear, firm whisper, "Here. Now. Remember this."
...For us, now, Clark's version of shaped canvas draws its strength; its
force and logic from the contrast between two realities, subjective
(or virtual) and material. The subjective or virtual reality of sensation
and emotion is conveyed by traditional mediums and techniques. ...His first
shaped painting showed him, and other artists, how this happens, how an
abstract painting might intensify this effect, and how a work of art that
commands our attention can also light up our minds...
|
