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Bartlett shows her colors: a conceptualist by origin, a painter at heart, and, increasingly, a rollicking storyteller, Jennifer Bartlett has recently received wide attention for work both old and new
Art in America, Jan, 2007 by Vincent Katz
What does hold in Rhapsody is a clearly laid-out storyboard of styles; one after another, styles and techniques of painting that could not have gone together before form a vibrant parade. Like Bartlett's other large-scale plate pieces, Rhapsody is flexible in terms of installation; the 1-foot-square units mean the piece can break whenever necessary to turn a corner. The installation at the Addison was quite effective. The sheer ambition and energy of her project carry viewers along and reward them at any point along the way with the work's myriad details. Recurrent Bartlett symbols are catalogued here--the house, the mountain, the ocean, the tree---and are subjected to illusionistic, schematic and expressionistic treatments. There are dotted sections and sections that are freely brushed. For the first time, Bartlett allowed herself to paint in broad strokes. Her preparation in chromatic studies paid off in Rhapsody, whose dramatic use of color represents a great leap from her earlier work. Here, solid color plates are interrupted by geometric black lines on white backgrounds; photographically inspired images are juxtaposed with loose lines of color. Near the end is a black-and-white suite of plate-size geometric forms that seems like a coded language.
Disparate elements were fluidly combined, and the unit was no longer the single plate but a grid of plates, which would lead Bartlett to pursue larger scale painting on canvas. For me, the most effective part of Rhapsody is a section near the end, a seven-by-seven-plate square that is freely painted in bright colors. From a distance, it seems to depict two trees against a body of water, but there is more to it than that. There is the reclaiming of painterly space. There is the freedom of allowing oneself to paint without the limitation of rules. This drippy, slashy language would characterize Bartlett's next body of work.
The grid did not end for Bartlett with Rhapsody; along with freer forms, she has continued using enameled steel plates intermittently up to the present. During the previous eight years, Bartlett had had the comfort of working with understood ideas and practices. Leaving security behind, she attained prominence. After being shown at Paula Cooper, Rhapsody was exhibited during the years 1976-86 at an additional 14 institutions, marking Bartlett as a significant figure of her time. It was seen again in 1999 at Robert Miller Gallery and in 2006 at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, as part of the Breida collection given to the museum, where it held the cavernous space remarkably well.
In the spring of 2004, Locks Gallery put on a Bartlett exhibition that included three major works: At Sea (1979), composed of 112 steel plates and two oil-on-canvas paintings; Atlantic Ocean (1984), a plate piece made up of 224 panels; and Sea Wall (1985), a huge work that comprises three large oil-on-canvas paintings complemented by sculptural elements of wood, concrete and other mediums.
At Sea is different from Rhapsody in that it is not a compendium of styles but rather a stylistically unified work at the opposite end of the spectrum from the early plate pieces. It is composed of 1-foot-square panels, but each is painted all over and functions as part of a larger, overall composition. Far from the precise, premeditated dotting of the early work, At Sea's brushwork, in dabs and flows and drips, gives the feeling of the spontaneity and flow of water. While not realistic in the traditional sense, the paint itself, applied wet into wet, is a surrogate for water. Two oval-shaped canvases, appended as relief objects, appear to float on the plates. Strangely, as one looks at the piece, it does begin to seem realistic, the darker regions at the center, high-lighted with dabs of yellow, orange and green, indicating the reflection of a landmass with trees and perhaps flowers, while the lighter areas to the left and right could be reflecting the sky.
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