Customer Reviews

Susan Rothenberg

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This book is undoubtedly the best available on Susan Rothenberg, even though it is far from perfect and stops at the year 1990. The text is a detailed appraisal of her career, with focuses on the critical reception, on her working process and on her sources of inspiration. Overall, this introduction is a high-quality text obviously written by a critic who knows and loves the work. However, the many illustrations (most of them in color) are at best average. A few fold-outs (for the horse paintings of the mid seventies) do stand out, but the book is devoid of any close-ups and therefore the reader does not get a chance to appreciate the artist's brushwork and the texture of the paintings. Slightly disappointing in this respect, maybe because the book was published 17 years ago and has not been updated since.

SUSAN ROTHENBERG's animals are recognizable and simply drawn on flat but energetically worked surfaces to capture movement and spirit: they in particular link the impulsively figurative Abstract Expressionism of Willem de Kooning and Jackson Pollock with the geometrical Minimalism of Barnett Newman and Ad Reinhardt. In fact, she sees art as needing a maker to change a familiar object into something other than itself: her horse paintings call up the direct, subtle imagery and tonality of cave paintings on abstractly lush surfaces; "Mukuhara" shows a sprightly single bound in midair and midfield with a hinted vertical divide in the overall sienna surface, and "Flanders" barely details black figure and ground within white outlines. But when she starts talking about landscapes and portraits, it means that she is putting a stop to serializing her images: bikers; dancers "Holding the floor" by firmly grounding an arabesque and countering with a sweeping arm gesture, jugglers, spinners, and vaulters "Vaulting" in the one continuously steady step-by-step movement of Marcel Duchamp's "Nude descending a staircase"; hands and heads; horses; and U-turns. Her "Grandmother" portrait is the first time that she has two separate figures relating to each other in her art. Her daughter "Maggie's cartwheel" portrait is one of my favorites, partly because it makes me think of the artist's hoop performance in a beach piece by friend Joan Jones. Her "Mondrian" charcoal on paper portrait is the first time that she brings an art-historical figure into her work and that she paints after drawing instead of her usual turning a drawing into a painting. I particularly like the work that she does in blue: "The blue chair," which author Joan Simon describes as Matisse-wise in the sitter giving off comfort, composure and containment while looking toward the unknown; my two favorite landscapes, "Blue frontal," with upturned white horse legs framing a blue-black field with a blue horse, and "Foxes on a hill," with the asymmetrically symmetrical composition on a deep blue with black field; and "Blue woman," "Buddha with bamboo," and "Folded Buddha" in Giotto-style blue. The book's beautiful illustrations and clear text do justice to the artist and her work: it leaves no doubt about how she fits it with THE IMPACT OF MODERN PAINTS by Jo Crook and Tom Learner, MATISSE, by Lawrence Gowing, LEE KRASNER by Robert Hobbs, and PIET MONDRIAN by Hans Ludwig C. Jaffe.

This is a great book for an artist....HEAVY on the images, LIGHT on the words. Reproductions are wonderful both in color and in size. If you're a painter, I absolutely recommend this book!