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SEEING... BLUE - AN EXHIBITION OF FINE AND DECORATIVE ARTS 1326 MADISON AVENUE, SEPTEMBER 20 TO NOVEMBER 30, 2006 Hours: Wednesdays 2-6pm, other times by appointment |
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New York: In her continuing quest to explore the connection between the fine and decorative arts, Deborah Buck, who owns The Gallery at Buck House, located at 1326 Madison Avenue, has once again enlisted the curatorial expertise of Charlie Scheips, to collaborate on their second exhibition called Seeing…Blue. Scheips has selected a wide range of work by some of today's leading contemporary artists who have a demonstrated a particular predilection for the color blue in their work. These works of art will be complemented by design objects and furniture selected by Ms. Buck. Paintings, drawings, photographs and sculpture to be featured include works by Jay Battl, Jack Pierson, Michele Zalopany, Joseph La Piana and over a dozen other artists. The show opens on September 20 and runs through October 30, 2006. "Seeing… Blue" is less cerebral in selection, and of a decidedly more sensual and visual passion," said Scheips whose last exhibition at The Gallery at Buck House was Manhattan: Glamour. It was inspired by Deborah Buck's obsession with turquoise which has informed her aesthetic and design instincts to form a signature palette for Buck House, the sister antiques shop at 1264 Madison Avenue, she opened five years ago," he explained. When
asked why she gravitates so strongly to the color blue, Ms. Buck
theorized that everyone has a color that lives inside themselves
and hers is blue, specifically turquoise. "Every color has
it's own associations, references, history, private and public
meaning," she said. "It is a vehicle for an intellectual
exercise in order to create a cohesive collaboration between fine
art, furniture and objects. By limiting oneself, creative possibilities
emerge. According to Scheips, artists have been drawn to the blue for 4,000 years, when Egyptian artisans first began grinding lapis lazuli--- creating pigments to decorate tombs and sarcophagi of the pharaoh's royal court. "Blue is the color of sky and water-the light of the sun creates what our human eye sees as blue," he said. "Picasso's Blue Period at the turn of the 20th century was an impoverished and melancholy prelude to his majestic and revolutionary cubism. Yves Klein's exuberant modernist minimalism was the ultimate mid-century paean to chemical technology-with Klein even creating and patenting his namesake color. David Hockney's sun-drenched Los Angeles spaces were created largely by his liberal use of a variety of blues for his pools and landscapes of the 1960s and 70s as well as his work in photo-collage and theater design work. Even today, if one looks carefully, one can see an infusion of blue in many of the most interesting contemporary artists." "Blue has many contradictory meanings," continued Scheips. "A blue sky represents optimism while a blue movie is a pornographic film. During the 2000 US elections, the choice of blue to represent the Democratic Party versus the red of the Republicans ushered in a reversal of meaning of the two colors connoting liberalism and conservatism. While aristocrats may have blue blood due to the paleness of the skin-- a blue-collar worker is the bottom of the business work force. The Blues is a music genre with its essential blue notes found between the regular notes of the musical scale. Composers from Johann Strauss to George Gershwin to Joni Mitchell have all written waltzes, rhapsodies and entire suites of songs as odes to blue." |
