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Donald Baechler: XL + XS
Text by Luca Beatrice, Alan Jones.
With the collage sensibility of Robert Rauschenberg and the colorful brashness of Cy Twombly, American painter Donald Baechler (born 1956) makes works of invigorating vitality, positing boldly symbolic shapes (flowers, skulls, globes), rendered in cartoon-thick black outlines, onto collaged or painted backgrounds, or else confronting marbled, tea-stained grounds with heavy black silhouettes, potato-print style, of plants, rough human forms and other evocative formations. Baechler's newest volume here presents 200 color reproductions of his recent works: seven gargantuan canvases (XL) and hundreds of modestly-scaled drawings (XS), no larger than a legal pad of paper. These could be described as postmodern cave drawings: "I tend to be interested," the artist has said, "in things I find on the street or things drawn on toilet walls or things drawn by someone I meet in a bar, who maybe has never made a drawing since he was five years old."
STATUS: Out of stock indefinitely.
FROM THE BOOK
"Although Baechler denies that any social concern lies behind his choice of icons drawn directly from the real world, he is seduced by the everyday quality of subjects that can either endlessly recur or willingly renew themselves. The stylized image painted in the background only serves as the means of allowing the artist to establish new relations between background and foreground. Perhaps by chance, at the age of thirteen Baechler purchased an Andy Warhol catalogue: this was his first window on contemporary art. While far removed from the conventional understanding of Pop Art, Baechler has chosen iconic repetition as one of his leitmotifs. Yet, in his use of popular and standardized images, the artist never intends to subscribe to any form of 'social' criticism. Baechler invents is own iconographic universe: the subjects he chooses are interpreted through abstract visions such as the globe—a synthetic and merely outlined form, almost a 'skeleton' or, rather, 'the skeleton of the world.'"
FORMAT: Hbk, 9.25 x 11.25 in. / 144 pgs / 200 color / 1 b&w. LIST PRICE: U.S. $45.00 LIST PRICE: CANADA $60 ISBN: 9788836615360 PUBLISHER: Silvana Editoriale AVAILABLE: 7/31/2010 DISTRIBUTION: D.A.P. RETAILER DISC: TRADE PUBLISHING STATUS: Out of stock indefinitely AVAILABILITY: Not available TERRITORY: NA LA ASIA AU/NZ AFR ME
Published by Silvana Editoriale. Text by Luca Beatrice, Alan Jones.
With the collage sensibility of Robert Rauschenberg and the colorful brashness of Cy Twombly, American painter Donald Baechler (born 1956) makes works of invigorating vitality, positing boldly symbolic shapes (flowers, skulls, globes), rendered in cartoon-thick black outlines, onto collaged or painted backgrounds, or else confronting marbled, tea-stained grounds with heavy black silhouettes, potato-print style, of plants, rough human forms and other evocative formations. Baechler's newest volume here presents 200 color reproductions of his recent works: seven gargantuan canvases (XL) and hundreds of modestly-scaled drawings (XS), no larger than a legal pad of paper. These could be described as postmodern cave drawings: "I tend to be interested," the artist has said, "in things I find on the street or things drawn on toilet walls or things drawn by someone I meet in a bar, who maybe has never made a drawing since he was five years old."
