How does the artist describe her work?
The visual or literary created as a result is not very different from each other.
JULIE MEHRETU (b. 1970 Ethiopia)
Julie Mehretu makes large-scale, gestural paintings that are built up through layers of acrylic paint on canvas overlaid with mark-making using pencil, pen, ink and thick streams of paint. Mehretu’s work conveys a layering and compression of time, space and place and a collapse of art historical references, from the dynamism of the Italian Futurists and the geometric abstraction of Malevich to the enveloping scale of Abstract Expressionist colour field painting. (White Cube, 2020, online)
It is intriguing to trace the correspondence of physical work to the way the artist describes it.
The similarity of the form, structure and rhythm of the writing and artwork style can be seen, for example, here:
Photo: Tom Powel Imaging, Inc. / Courtesy of Julie Mehretu / Marian Goodman Gallery At: https://www.vogue.com/article/julie-mehretu-sfmoma-howl-commission-harlem (Accessed 02.02.2021)
Words and lines are sharp and abrupt. The artist often uses a lifting platform with which she controls her lines - here there are associations with push and stay. And Mahretu uses specifically these words. And further, she describes the whole process...
This is never Tabula Rasa because the artist used historical references to the landscape. She digitally processed the first layer of the painting, and this is the beginning of the representation of her accumulated knowledge.
She continues to define her actions on the canvas. Flow, play, spit, the hand can throw a bomb.
Julie Mehretu. Drawing for Helen’s Room 2018. Ink on paper. 34 x 24 cm. At: https://drawingroom.org.uk/drawingbiennial2019/drawing/drawing-for-helens-room (Accessed 02.02.2021)
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