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Photos Jessie Stopnik
By Christian Franzen
I recently visited the Museum of Modern Art in New York City to see the Robert Rauschenberg retrospective “Among Friends”. This huge retrospective boasts over 250 works from the artist that take up an entire floor of the museum. The focus of show is to highlight Rauschenberg’s constant collaboration with other artists and his willingness to work across all forms of medium. Walking through the show I was surprised at the amount of cross disciplinary works spanning across all the different periods of the artist's career. They really have everything from paintings, combines, video, sound, clothing. The whole shabang. I walked through twice because it had so much work and I didn’t want to miss anything. If you find yourself in New York anytime soon I would highly encourage stopping by to see the show. In addition to being loaded with famous pieces you see in all the books, the exhibit covers a fascinating time in art history and a crucial turning point in American Art.
Photos Jessie Stopnik
By Christian Franzen
This last week I visited the Los Angeles County Museum of Contemporary Art to see the Kerry James Marshall retrospective. Marshall was born in Birmingham, Alabama in 1955. Soon after he was born his family made the move to California. Growing up in Watts, Los Angeles throughout the 1960’s and 70’s; scenes of racial inequality, the black power movement, and civil unrest surrounded him throughout his childhood. These experiences became the main subject of Marshall’s unique mural sized paintings in an effort to confront racial stereotypes still existing in modern America.
The exhibit was truly amazing to experience. The paintings were even more impressive in person than I could have ever imagines looking at images of them in a book and the amount of work exhibited was beyond inspiring. I think the show contains over 80 paintings. The official title of the show is Mastery. This collection of Marshall’s work makes it crystal clear that he is a true modern master in the art of painting. I highly recommend it while it’s still up.
Photos Jessie Stopnik
Photos Jessie Stopnik
By Christian Franzen
Earlier this month I visited New York City with ten of my fellow CSULB painting BFA mates and our professor Tom Krumpak. Over the course of the trip we visited all the major museums and hundreds of galleries along the way. We were lucky enough to meet with 8 artists in their studios to discuss their work and how to make “being an artist” a doable thing in contemporary society. The trip was very eye opening to all the different possibilities the art world has to offer young artist. You just have to hustle. 
Here we see artist Benjamin Degen talking with us about his process and inspirations behind his paintings.
This is me in front of Willem de Kooning’s famous work, Attic, which is house at the MET. Was great to see this painting in person. It has always been one of my favorites and seeing it up close really lended to the overall worked appeal that it possesses.
My friend and great painter Andrew Hansen admiring some famous soup cans at the Musuem of Modern Art.
Lastly, here is a great painting by Eric Fischl that they had up for the Whitney Museum's Painting From the 1980’s show. A massive painting depicting two desticitivley different scenarios on the Florida coast and seems to be just as relevant today as when it was painted.
Overall it was a fantastic experience and I can’t wait to make my way back to the city.
PHOTOS THOMAS GREEN
By Christian Franzen
John McLaughlin was a highly influential abstract artist in postwar American art scene. His paintings stream from the Japanese concept of the void and things unknown. Working primarily in Southern California, McLaughlin’s hard edge forms and subject matter laid the footwork for the future Los Angeles based Light and Space movement. This spring, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art hosted a solo exhibition of McLaughlin’s work titled, Total Abstraction. Containing fifty-two his paintings, the exhibition strives to indicate McLaughlin’s leading role in the painting worlds search to achieve total abstraction.
At the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Total Abstraction commanded nearly the entire top floor of the Broad Building. The larger area allowed all the works lots of breathing room from one another. In my opinion, this was one of the shows main strengths because it enabled viewers a greater personal experience with each individual piece. I also enjoyed the placement of chairs throughout the exhibition so that someone might sit down to spend an even longer time engaging with the paintings. As a whole, all of the paintings in the show had a feeling of unity. The works were further divided into groups by division of the rooms in the building; being grouped by similarities in structure and color.
McLaughlin’s paintings are all very geometrically structured. They are made up of hard edge rectangles and squares that seem to have no correlation with anything but themselves. Both shapes are often mimicked throughout the paintings, but vary in scale. The simple structure in these paintings creates an interesting viewing effect. It establishes a reassuring sense of stability for the viewer. Allowing a slower, focused, and more earnest examination of each painting. In some of the works, the structure McLaughlin assembles through scale shifts seems to create depth of space. The illusion of space through scale shifts juxtaposed with McLaughlin’s flatness of form initiates an interesting conversation between the viewers optic sense and the flat plain of the canvas; which for me, is the most engaging aspect of McLaughlin’s work.
During my investigation of the show, I became increasingly enthralled with McLaughlin’s use of muted colors. These colors do not blatantly scream Los Angeles. They are not reminiscent of the city’s bustle. I found familiarity in these colors with my experiences of daily life in a small California beach town. McLaughlin’s choice to isolate himself from Los Angeles and work solely in Dana Point California can be heavily felt in his work. Everything in these works feels intentional. The subdued colors paired with the minimal structure creates a self contained existence behind the work. The painting relies on nothing but itself to function, which is a key concept in achieving total abstraction.
My only criticism to the Los Angeles County Museum of Contemporary Art in regards to the Total Abstraction exhibition is that they did not let me get close enough to the paintings. Besides that minute complaint, I thought that it was a beautiful executed exhibition of McLaughlin’s work. Looking at the show in it entirety really declares McLaughlin’s work as a leader in total abstraction amidst the painting world in the mid 20th century.