Madeleine Keesing: by Dr. Julia Bernard, Berlin / Washington
Fabric of Life: While the production of Madeleine Keesing’s art has been compared to the processes of cuisine or the weaving of tapestries, there is no question that, despite their visual abstraction, the impact of these images depends upon connections with elements of the outside world – metaphorically suggested as well as more literally referenced by their structure. This is important because, above all, these paintings seem to be about the nature of experience, a world-view or an attitude: one that emphasizes immersion and participation in the world around us, embedded in everyday life in a fashion akin to the philosopher John Dewey’s approach to art (cf. Art as Experience, 1934).
Aesthetic Meditation: Despite the centrality of such real-world embeddedness, Keesing’s works also conversely prompt an engagement in aesthetic meditation. This is not only because of their abstraction and contrapuntal juxtaposition of layered colors, nor the suggestion of sea or landscape. It is because of the somewhat-painstaking, even compulsive procedure of their construction via gradual buildup of uneven rows of paint droplets. This process of execution implicitly involves the viewer in that his or her response is crucial to completing the “circle of production.”
Post-Minimalism: Art historically speaking, Keesing’s paintings, drawings, prints, and sculpture share a tendency or thread in contemporary artistic production known as Post-Minimalism. The concern with saturated color, undermining of monochromaticism, subtle complexities of multi-chromatic inter-relations, and visual “depth,” place the works firmly within the realm of Post-Minimalist practice. By way of their association with traditionally female media such as cooking, quilting, or weaving, in addition to the historical precedent of feminist-oriented Pattern Painting, these works run parallel to Post-Minimalism’s emphasis on a human element, in contrast to the machine or custom made works of minimalism.
Color-Field: With respect to the “native” geographic or socio-cultural context for this pictorial approach, Washington DC as a mise-en-scene obviously plays an important role. This is true given both the tradition of Washington Color Field painting of the 1960s-70s, and the physical nature of that city: with its large-scale ceremonial spaces, geometrically planned as well as bathed in a particular kind of (if not quite Parisian) silvery light. Additionally, the atmosphere is unpolluted by industrial production due to a largely bureaucratic white-collar service-industry economy. DC is a “power center,” where the numerous public art collections are a significant aspect of a setting that encourages artists’ to be aware of the visual-historical traditions within which they operate.
Dr. Julia Bernard is a trained art historian with a PhD from the University of Chicago. Having taught and published both in Germany and the US, her academic fields of specialization include Modern and Contemporary art in Europe and the United States, and the special relationship between the avant-gardes in both countries since WWII.
