Darby Bannard
SPIRIT OF PLACE
{{gallery}}
Spirit of Place brings together renowned Miami Master Darby Bannard with three outstanding mid-career Miami artists who have long admired his example while evolving their own distinct, highly individual styles that reflect the nature of their environment. Darby Bannard’s paintings are inspired by the striking endless flat vistas of the Everglades and the lowering sun and flamboyant clouds of the evening sky. This inspiration is also manifested in small mixed-media landscapes named after Florida towns. John Bailly’s work combines gestural brushstrokes with images of humans figures, maps, and urban images, capturing the essence of a place while imaginatively juxtaposing fragments of depicted forms as if they are both emerging from and sinking into their surroundings. Jaqueline Gopie paints large canvases with quick, spontaneous strokes and swirls of bright, often transparent color that evoke moments of delight experienced by children playing in the beaches and surf of her native Jamaica. Kathleen Staples creates dramatic effects which are quirky, lively, startling and full of humor. Implied references to turbulent natural processes like flowing lava, wind-whipped ocean or desiccated earth are tamed by starkly simple geometric forms in eccentric colors, sometimes built out in relief with brightly colored gel or or gritty modeling paste.
[/vc_column_text]
DARBY BANNARD: THE MIAMI YEARS
{{gallery}}Darby Bannard’s recent paintings are direct, visceral and powerful, the same qualities that imbued his work when hestarted his career as a young artist in New York over 50 years ago. Bannard was one of the original Minimalist painters celebrated in the late 1950’s and early 1960’s. He showed in the groundbreaking exhibitions Post Painterly Abstraction at the LA County Museum, and The Responsive Eye and Art of the Realat the Museum of Modern Art in New York alongside the most important artists of the period including Sam Francis, Helen Frankenthaler, Ellsworth Kelly, Morris Louis, Jules Olitski and Frank Stella.
In the late 1960’s his simple minimalist forms dissolved into pale, atmospheric fields of color applied with rollers and paint-soaked rags. By 1970 he had begun to use the new acrylic mediums and his paintings evolved into expanses of richly colored gels and polymers. Ever the innovator, he pioneered the use of new tools and application methods, applying paint with squeegees and commercial floor brooms, practices he continues today. Bannard has had over one hundred solo shows and is represented in the collections of all the major New York museums and most other important museums around the world. The influential New York art critic Clement Greenberg wrote:
“Walter Darby Bannard is one of the best painters working in the world today.”
Currently Bannard is Professor of Painting of the Department of Art and Art History at the University of Miami. The Center is grateful to the artist for his assistance and for providing unfettered access to his studio and archive in organizing and presenting this exhibition.[/vc_column_text]
In the late 1960’s his simple minimalist forms dissolved into pale, atmospheric fields of color applied with rollers and paint-soaked rags. By 1970 he had begun to use the new acrylic mediums and his paintings evolved into expanses of richly colored gels and polymers. Ever the innovator, he pioneered the use of new tools and application methods, applying paint with squeegees and commercial floor brooms, practices he continues today. Bannard has had over one hundred solo shows and is represented in the collections of all the major New York museums and most other important museums around the world. The influential New York art critic Clement Greenberg wrote:
“Walter Darby Bannard is one of the best painters working in the world today.”
Currently Bannard is Professor of Painting of the Department of Art and Art History at the University of Miami. The Center is grateful to the artist for his assistance and for providing unfettered access to his studio and archive in organizing and presenting this exhibition.[/vc_column_text]
Spirit of Place Press Release
Spirit of Place
Miami Master Darby Bannard with John Bailly, Jacqueline Gopie, and Kathleen Staples
MIAMI – We are pleased to premier the exhibition Spirit of Place during Art Basel 2014. The collection brings together renowned Darby Bannard and three outstanding mid-career Miami artists who have long admired his example while evolving their own distinct, highly individual styles that reflect the nature of their environment.
When Darby Bannard moved to Florida 25 years ago he was struck by the endless flat vistas of the Everglades and the lowering sun and flamboyant clouds of the evening sky. These impressions were incorporated into his paintings of the time and also manifested in
small mixed-media landscapes named after Florida towns. Many of these landscape and atmospheric influences persist to this day.
In his semi-abstract paintings and mixed-media works, John Bailly combines gestural brushstrokes with images of human figures, maps, and urban images, capturing the essence of a place while imaginatively juxtaposing fragments of depicted forms as if they are both emerging from and sinking into their surroundings.
Jacqueline Gopie paints large canvases with quick, spontaneous strokes and swirls of bright, often transparent color that evoke moments of delight experienced by children playing in the beaches and surf of her native Jamaica. The pictures take you there with a powerful immediacy that belies their free-wheeling informality.
A pioneer in the innovative use of the new acrylic mediums, Kathleen Staples creates dramatic effects which are quirky, lively, startling and full of humor. Implied references to turbulent natural processes like flowing lava, wind-whipped ocean or desiccated earth are tamed by starkly simple geometric forms in eccentric colors, sometimes built out in relief with brightly colored gel or gritty modeling paste.
Art Basel Hours
Tuesday – Friday 11:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. Saturday and Sunday Noon to 5:00 p.m.
Abstract Miami Press Release
For Immediate Release Contact: Sara Lopez 305 -571-1415
ABSTRACT MIAMI
Internationally Acclaimed Miami Master Leads the Next Major Art Movement
December 2, 2010 – March 8, 2011
The Center for Visual Communication is proud to present an energized exhibition of paintings that heralds an important new movement in contemporary art. The work is Bold, Vibrant, Hot and infused with color – like Miami itself.
Renowned painter and Guggenheim fellow Darby Bannard is charting the course of a new direction in abstract painting. And Miami is the focal point for this exciting development involving not only Bannard but a new generation of highly skilled and intellectually challenging painters.
Consistent in breaking new ground over his career of five decades, Bannard ignited the major art movements of Minimalism in the late 1950’s with Frank Stella and Color Field Painting in the 1960’s with Jules Olitski and Kenneth Noland. Bannard and The Miami School form the next big change in direction he has led.
From the time he was lured to Miami from Princeton to take the post of chair of the University of Miami Art and Art History Department twenty years ago Bannard has been mentor and colleague to a string of talented and committed artists that now form the nexus of a new movement in abstract painting.
This new direction celebrates art which is about beauty, reason, logic, esthetic perception, and the joy of human discourse – a revival of themes common in historically significant paintings which have become the foundations of art history. The artists of the group understand that innovation should lead only to excellence and that good art is very hard to do.
The exhibition features Bannard and six younger painters that form the core of this new group, all of whom have worked in Miami with the benefit of Bannard’s guidance at varying times over the last two decades. All share an understanding that great art learns from the past to innovate in the present.
The paintings, which are abstract, cover a wide variety of styles and methods. They reflect Bannard’s encouragement that each artist seek their own direction by finding their individual voice and their innovate spirit. The works range from the bright geometry of Andy Gambrell to the poured and puddled color of George Bethea. Sean Smith and Kathleen Staples combine hard edges, brilliant color and and richly modelled acrylic mediums while Kerry Ware’s pictures exhibit subtle shifts of color on scrubbed surfaces. David Marsh surprises us with dark tones and ingenious, imaginative combinations of unlikely elements.
The work is infused with the spirit of place – bright, hot and intense with color – just like the city itself. For these artists painting is a source of spiritual nourishment that goes beyond labels, language, gimmicks and glitz. It is a new beginning and it is the real thing – The Miami School.
Exhinbition continues through March 8, 2011