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| Courtesy of BAUMGARTNER GALLERY | Glaze Painting: Cobalt Violet/Alizarin Crimson
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Optical alchemy
There's more than meets the eye in "Glaze Paintings," a show of seemingly straightforward monochromes by Marcia Hafif.
By DEBORAH GARWOOD
Offoffoff.com
Marcia Hafif elected to focus her practice on
monochromatic painting in 1978, founding a group which
united under the appellation Radical Painting. Her
poetic yet rigorous approach to painting is
deceptively simple and richly nuanced.
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| MARCIA HAFIF |
Exhibition: Glaze Paintings.
Works by: Marcia Hafif.
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| SCHEDULE |
October 15 - November 16, 2005
Gallery: Baumgartner Gallery
522 W. 24th Street
New York NY
Phone: (212) 242-4514
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There are two distinct ways to experience Hafif's
exquisite series of recent oil paintings at
Baumgartner. From a distance, the brightly colored,
small-sized canvases appear to be matte surface
monochromes. Up close to a single painting, however,
delicate skeins of color reveal themselves as not one,
but a pair of colors that creates a third hue. This is
due to optical effects achieved by glazing. Glazing
entails laying down one color upon gessoed ground — the
"body" — followed by painting the "glaze" on top of it.
Glaze consists of a shiny medium mixed with a minimum
of pigment. It is a very old technique in the lexicon of
painting.
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| Courtesy of BAUMGARTNER GALLERY | | Glaze Painting: Flesh Tint/Indian Yellow
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Hafif enhances glazing's optical alchemy by
preparing her gesso grounds in a specific way. The
very strands of brushes she uses for this purpose
create horizontal and vertical striations that are
only visible upon close viewing. In effect, they form
an even grain that plays a role in the viewer's
perception of color combinations. A perfectly planar
surface would not offer quite the same opportunity for
color perception to dance at the back of the eyes. The
viewer can determine exactly how many steps away he or
she must be to lose the sense of two colors and see,
from there, a monochrome painting. And it may not be
the same distance, depending upon the hues which range
from red, yellow, orange, blue, and green to gray.
Titles for these works are resolutely descriptive,
taking their cue almost straight from the
manufacturer. Two very different shades of gray are
achieved by the bluish "Glaze Painting: Cerulean
Blue/Flesh Tint" versus the pinkish "Glaze Painting:
Flesh Tint/Cerulean Blue." The manufacturer's notion
of "Flesh Tint," geared for Caucasian beige, provides
a figurative metaphor that contrasts with the
industrial/scientific nomenclature for oil paint. In
the red spectrum, a base of Alizarin Crimson with a
glaze of Naples Yellow on top gives a cherry red
effect. The same red hue as the glaze over Manganese
Violet produces a reddish purple monochrome, while
Cobalt Violet glaze over an Alizarin Crimson base
yields a deep pink raspberry color.
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| | Delicate skeins of color reveal themselves as not one,
but a pair of colors that creates a third hue. |
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Hafif is a superb technician. There's something
cool and systematic about the series, yet as it
quietly reaches into the viewer's experience of color,
it conjures a rare sense of trust and intimacy. The
glaze/gaze of this artist is at once existential in
its straightforwardness and vast in conception.
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NOVEMBER 16, 2005
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