Between Representation and Abstraction: The Paintings of Andrew Baer
Andrew Baer (b. 1946) paints big, colorful, and abstract canvases. The forms in his art often loom like towering sculptures out of dark and vast spaces. As an undergraduate majoring in English Literature at Trinity College, Baer took sculpture classes in which he made plaster geometric constructions without the help of preparatory sketches. Years later, he has transferred that spontaneous experience into two dimensions in many of his vinyl acrylic paintings, for which he chooses his forms and colors unconsciously. He betrays his literary background through his provocative titles and ability to thoughtfully engage the viewer.
In The Negotiation (2002), a diptych, two multi-colored forms resemble stacked children's blocks, with some of their cubic and rectilinear forms suspended precariously and defying gravity. The title and dual imagery suggest two people in conversation. Like the objects in Paul Cézanne's still lifes, the placement of these forms does not make sense. Neither does the space -- a black background composed of many layers of paint, with blue and green peeking through from underneath.
Baer admires how Giorgio Morandi depicted space in his still lifes. While this Italian painter would arrange numerous ordinary objects side by side on narrow ledges and puzzling spaces in his predominantly earth-toned small canvases, Baer prefers vertical and more abstract compositions depicted on a large scale in bolder colors. The right panel of The Negotiation extends slightly lower than the left one. Baer also conveys a sense of space with the horizon line that continues between both paintings and the shadows cast by the totemic forms. Are we looking at two objects on a stage or are they in a photographer's studio against a dark velvet backdrop? Similarly stacked and crudely delineated box-like forms in Beach (2002) create an isolated doorway that seems to open to a spacious blue sky, recalling the megalithic structures of Stonehenge, the architectural ruins in the Romantic paintings of the German Caspar David Friedrich, and the cartoonish late work of the Abstract Expressionist Philip Guston. Baer's paintings give new meaning to the term "Cubism."
Another diptych, It's All about Sex IV (2002), belongs to a series of paintings featuring orifices and tubular forms, hence the title. One of the two large gaping holes of the overall composition spans both panels. Baer painted this expressionistic canvas primarily in brilliant red with some blue and yellow mixed in, with the yellow glowing around the edges of the right hole. In the thickly applied and gestural brushstrokes and the use of color to convey space, many of Baer's paintings share similarities with those of the German-born New York School artist Hans Hofmann.
While Baer's paintings pay homage to Abstract Expressionism and particularly to Hofmann and Mark Rothko in their brushwork, color and scale, his sculptural forms set him apart. His work has a pulsating dimensionality akin to Guston's late work, yet is more abstract, architectural, and less anthropomorphic. Baer creatively uses unconventional techniques and tools he purchases at hardware stores. For example, in Heart of Darkness IV (2004) which features a large floating Constructivist form, he wielded a wide palette knife intended for spackling a wall or applying putty. In fact, this form looks like a brightly colored 1950s stucco building. Baer wants viewers to be curious about what lurks behind his forms and layers of paint. In Untitled Twosome (2004) he employed another carpenter's tool, a power sander, to tone down the layers of paint. As well, he collaged canvas along the right side.
Baer cites an idea of Morandi as a premise for his own work: "What are you looking at?" It is this question that makes Baer's paintings so intriguing.
Essay copyright © 2005 Deborah A. Goldberg, Ph.D.
Deborah A. Goldberg, Ph.D. is an art historian,
Writer and lecturer based in New York City.