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Jill Nathanson

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Jill Nathanson
File:Jill-nathanson-in-studio.jpg
Born1955 (age 68–69)[1]
NationalityAmerican
EducationBennington College, Hunter College
Known forAbstract art
MovementModernism
Websitejillnathanson.com

Jill Nathanson is an artist in New York City associated with color field painting.

Biography

Jill Nathanson attended Bennington College in Vermont, where she studied with Larry Poons and Kenneth Noland.[2] She received her MFA from Hunter College in 1982.[3] In the 1980s she worked at the Triangle artists workshops at the invitation of Triangle co-founder Anthony Caro.[4]

Work

In addition to her training in abstraction, Nathanson's work is informed by a study of Torah and Jewish mysticism. In the 2000s, Nathanson collaborated with Judaic scholar Arnold Eisen in an interpretation of Exodus Chapter 33.[5] Nathanson painted abstract pictures based on Eisen's analysis of the text, then Eisen wrote commentaries based on her paintings. She explained to the The Forward that she sought to avoid making literal interpretations of the story. "My aesthetic, as a painter, has been to paint the forces, to make the forces and the pressures palpable in the eye through color and structure."[6] Works from that time also cite the Book of Genesis, as documented by critic Joan Waltemath: "Taking Genesis as a point of departure, Nathanson starts by using the debris from her studio floor, allowing her work to emerge from an essential chaos to create a series of freeform, sprawling mixed-media pieces. Nathanson uses gels, decorative paper, and adhesives in combination with poured acrylic paint to create the support structure of her pieces—a formal play that points to the creation of the earth in the text." Other paintings took cues from descriptions of color in the Zohar.[7] The paintings sometimes incorporated phrases written in Hebrew.[8]

Nathanson's paintings since the late 2000s are color field abstractions. She creates small studies made from shapes cut from color gels. She then duplicates the compositions and textures from the studies on large canvases, using acrylic painting mediums optimized for pouring that were developed for her by Golden Artist Colors.[9] Critic Peter Malone described the process: "Completed with five or six overlapping translucent shapes created by pouring a prepared color along a line that has been drawn and masked, each painting reiterates a basic compositional pattern. Large areas of color, poured between a predetermined line and that part of the frame's edge delineated by the line's endpoints, fill the entire frame in a collage-like translucent screen."[10]

Critical reception

James Panero reported in 2011 in The New Criterion that "Nathanson's experiment in studio process and biblical scholarship is both an inspiration and a challenge for a new (old) direction in art."[11]

In The Hudson Review, Karen Wilkin wrote of a 2018 solo exhibition that "Nathanson's painstaking method demands close attention and enormous expertise, yet the resulting images never appear labored or calculated.... Nothing is predictable, yet everything seems right, rather like the assonances and dissonances in a Charles Ives or Igor Stravinsky score."[12] Critic Christina Kee said of the same exhibition, "the works seem to suggest a departure from color as a physically grounded phenomenon towards a powerful, though weightless, force acting upon us."[13]

In an interview with curator Jaime Desimone of the Museum of Contemporary Art Jacksonville, Nathanson articulated her concept of "color desire," in which "heavy, poured colors in my paintings pull the viewer across the painting through the color relationships."[14] Whitehot Magazine critic Cori Hutchinson wrote that this "color desire" "tugs on the viewer as one's gaze travels across each work; the painter is uniquely aware of the somatic effects of art and its relationship to pulse."[15]

Selected museum collections

References

  1. ^ "Jill Nathanson". MutualArt. Retrieved May 28, 2021.
  2. ^ Halasz, Piri (February 6, 2021). "Translucence: Jill Nathanson at Berry Campbell". artcritical.
  3. ^ Rogers, Pat (June 25, 2018). "Artists Converse: Jill Nathanson in Conversation with A.V. Ryan at Berry Campbell". Hamptons Art Hub.
  4. ^ Desimone, Jamie (June 27, 2016). "Jill Nathanson Experiments with the 'Potential of Color'". MoCA Jacksonville Blog.
  5. ^ "Shemot, Exodus, Chapter 33". Chabad.org. Retrieved April 16, 2021.
  6. ^ Sanders, Gabriel (May 26, 2006). "Fast Forward; A Shared Vision". The Forward.
  7. ^ Waltemath, Joan (December 2010). "Jill Nathanson's Quiet Vision". The Brooklyn Rail.
  8. ^ Baigell, Matthew (2013). "Biblical Narratives in Contemporary Jewish American Art". Shofar: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Jewish Studies. 31 (3): 1–24.
  9. ^ Halasz, Piri (June 9, 2015). "Jill Nathanson's Very 21st-Century Gel Paintings at Berry Campbell". New York Observer.
  10. ^ Malone, Peter (June 18, 2018). "Jill Nathanson Explores Deep Commitment to Color Interaction". Hamptons Art Hub.
  11. ^ Panero, James (January 2011). "Gallery chronicle". The New Criterion.
  12. ^ Wilkin, Karen (2018). "At the Galleries". Hudson Review (Autumn 2018).
  13. ^ Kee, Christina (June 27, 2018). "Elucidations: Jill Nathanson at Berry Campbell". artcritical.
  14. ^ Desimone, Jamie (June 27, 2016). "Jill Nathanson Experiments with the 'Potential of Color'". MoCA Jacksonville Blog.
  15. ^ Hutchinson, Cori (February 2021). "Jill Nathanson: Light Phrase at Berry Campbell". Whitehot Magazine.
  16. ^ "Jill Nathanson, collection search, Agnes Etherington Art Centre at Queen's University". Retrieved April 16, 2021.
  17. ^ Reagan, Denise M. (January 25, 2017). "Colorful Additions Expand MoCA's Permanent Collection". Museum of Contemporary Art Jacksonville Blog.
  18. ^ "Jill Nathanson, collection search, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston". Retrieved April 16, 2021.
  19. ^ "Jill Nathanson, Cantabile, 2019, Sheldon Museum of Art". Retrieved April 16, 2021.
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