Max Cole at haines and 871 fine arts - San Francisco - Brief Article

How is it that Max Cole's large acrylic paintings manage to look so fresh in the context of four full decades of reductive abstraction? I think the answer lies in the peculiar territory that she stakes out: the almost uninhabited buffer zone between old-school formalism and the au courant school of posthypnotic "fabstraction," to use Dave Hickey's term.

Eschewing the mechanical coldness of the former even as they also steer clear of the excessive spectacularization of the latter, Cole's highly refined works seem to achieve a perfect visual pitch that imbues them with a classical elegance which, in turn, gives way to a quiet drama of eventful subtlety. They prompt viewers to think that their eyes are playing tricks on them without resorting to the obviousness of Op art strategies. For example, in Choctaw (2001), our eyes slowly adjust to discern horizontal bands of tonally similar colors alternating between warm reds and cool grays. In one glance they allude to horizon lines receding into a nocturnal fog, and in the next they remain flat on the work's surface. Straight (2001) and other works give more emphasis to graphic clarity, but even here we can detect hints of atmosphere and slight irregularities of structure that move against the grain of their geometry.

In any given work, the width of the bands changes in precise, rhythmic increments to create a visual sense of respiration, and this effect is enhanced by the varying thickness and crispness of individual bands. Always, the thicker, more sharp-edged applications of paint are reserved for the top layers, which are carefully added over layers of relatively fluid pigment that sometimes reveal the weave of the fine linen beneath.

The consistent allusion to landscape is supported by the fact that the works are always wider than they are tall, but it's also denied to a certain extent by regimented clusters of vertical hairline brushstrokes lining up in formation in many of the horizontal bands. Each seems to have a unique calligraphic identity that is in no way compromised by its position as a component of a larger aggregation. These tiny strokes animate the horizontal bands with a kind of teeming electricity that makes every shade of gray glow bright.

Only Ad Reinhardt, Agnes Martin and John McLaughlin have painted this particular type of work so well. In Cole's case, we invariably see a reserved ebullience that looks particularly good in the context of current abstraction's tendency to shout in shrill colors as an over-compensation for having little to say.

COPYRIGHT 2001 Brant Publications, Inc.
COPYRIGHT 2001 Gale Group