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Lot Essay
Reintroducing the figure back into Minimal, Conceptual and Abstract art, Susan Rothenberg was the leading figure of what would be termed New Image Painting at the end of the 1970s. She is credited with renewing and reinvigorating the figurative subject in postmodern art through her highly expressive, gestural paintings. Red Blush is a significant work that has been widely-exhibited during the artist’s life. Painted between 1984 and 1985, it comes at a crucial stage in the artist’s career. This pivotal moment marked a transition in Rothenberg’s oeuvre in which she moved away from the emblematic horse imagery that dominated her earlier paintings of the 1970s toward the richly-textured, highly-expressive paintings of the human figure, often deeply rooted in the artist’s personal memories and experiences: "Of all the recent paintings, Red Blush is the only directly autobiographical one. Again the artist chose a specific moment in time to convey her subject, an affair of the previous summer. … As in so many of the recent works, the artist invites the viewer to share an intimate experience" (E. Rathbone, "Susan Rothenberg," Susan Rothenberg, exh. cat. The Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C., 1985, p. 26).
The two figures that Rothenberg depicts in Red Blush are highly symbolic, their expressive forms rendered in thick, gestural strokes with a warmth that differentiates them from the cool, grey tones of the painting’s background. The painting is related to another important work from this era, Red Man, 1985-86, which Rothenberg described as “an affectionate goodbye to a former boyfriend" (S. Rothenberg, quoted in J. Simon, Susan Rothenberg, New York, 1991, p. 138), and it has been suggested that both works reference Rothenberg’s relationship with the sculptor George Trakas, with whom she had divorced in 1979.
In Red Blush, the two human figures that Rothenberg depicts have become submerged within the thickly-painted world of their surroundings. Lively daubs of the brush enervate the canvas in varying shades of grey, black and white. In a palette that typifies her style at this time, Rothenberg wields an energetic brush that is loaded with pigment and vigorously applied in stabs and jabs. She creates an enigmatic rendering that moves beyond mere representation into something more universal—a powerful allegory for the human condition. Upon reviewing the painting when it was exhibited at the Willard Gallery in 1985, the critic Nancy Grimes remarked, "The latest paintings represent yet another step into the void. The characteristic profusion of strokes, which previously had only stood for space, now warps the surface plane into vigorous, illusionistic passages. The simplified, delineated forms of the past swell into modeled volumes that dissolve into thickets of painted atmosphere; splashes of local color enliven the monochromatic palette. Much of the subject matter suggests fantasy or narrative...in Red Blush (1985) two people engage in an obscure activity that involves one holding the other’s foot. … Now stroke functions neatly as air, mass and movement; value and color suggest volume and depth. A new emphasis on structure supplants the psychologically disturbing effect of earlier work” (N. Grimes, “Susan Rothenberg: Willard,” ArtNews, October 1985, p. 127).
Red Blush conveys the expressive, emotional power of the human figure through Rothenberg’s highly gestural style. The painting has featured in several exhibitions of Rothenberg’s work, including the traveling retrospective that originated at the Albright-Knox Gallery in 1992 and the 1985 exhibition at The Phillips Collection in Washington, D.C. A review by New York Times critic Michael Brenson aptly described the effect of Rothenberg’s recent paintings at the time. “The changes are dramatic. While Ms. Rothenberg's earlier works were largely monochromatic and still, the new series of 11 paintings, representing two years of work, are filled with color and movement. …the forms vibrate, as they might in successive frames of a film. The colors may be as dark as a Norwegian night by Edvard Munch, or as sweet as a Provencal interior by Pierre Bonnard. As Ms. Rothenberg enters more deeply in figurative territory, she is being introduced to ghosts of European art that may have haunted her painting all along…Basic aspects of her work remain the same. The space is almost liquid; all the figures seem to be under water…There continues to be a hallucinatory quality to Ms. Rothenberg's imagery…And brushwork is more persistent than ever, covering the paintings, leaving no area of the canvas without sound. …a tough, heart-of-darkness quality—as if these individual and collective rhythms were pounding inside us” (M. Brenson, “Art: A New Direction for Susan Rothenberg,” New York Times, October 23, 1987).
The two figures that Rothenberg depicts in Red Blush are highly symbolic, their expressive forms rendered in thick, gestural strokes with a warmth that differentiates them from the cool, grey tones of the painting’s background. The painting is related to another important work from this era, Red Man, 1985-86, which Rothenberg described as “an affectionate goodbye to a former boyfriend" (S. Rothenberg, quoted in J. Simon, Susan Rothenberg, New York, 1991, p. 138), and it has been suggested that both works reference Rothenberg’s relationship with the sculptor George Trakas, with whom she had divorced in 1979.
In Red Blush, the two human figures that Rothenberg depicts have become submerged within the thickly-painted world of their surroundings. Lively daubs of the brush enervate the canvas in varying shades of grey, black and white. In a palette that typifies her style at this time, Rothenberg wields an energetic brush that is loaded with pigment and vigorously applied in stabs and jabs. She creates an enigmatic rendering that moves beyond mere representation into something more universal—a powerful allegory for the human condition. Upon reviewing the painting when it was exhibited at the Willard Gallery in 1985, the critic Nancy Grimes remarked, "The latest paintings represent yet another step into the void. The characteristic profusion of strokes, which previously had only stood for space, now warps the surface plane into vigorous, illusionistic passages. The simplified, delineated forms of the past swell into modeled volumes that dissolve into thickets of painted atmosphere; splashes of local color enliven the monochromatic palette. Much of the subject matter suggests fantasy or narrative...in Red Blush (1985) two people engage in an obscure activity that involves one holding the other’s foot. … Now stroke functions neatly as air, mass and movement; value and color suggest volume and depth. A new emphasis on structure supplants the psychologically disturbing effect of earlier work” (N. Grimes, “Susan Rothenberg: Willard,” ArtNews, October 1985, p. 127).
Red Blush conveys the expressive, emotional power of the human figure through Rothenberg’s highly gestural style. The painting has featured in several exhibitions of Rothenberg’s work, including the traveling retrospective that originated at the Albright-Knox Gallery in 1992 and the 1985 exhibition at The Phillips Collection in Washington, D.C. A review by New York Times critic Michael Brenson aptly described the effect of Rothenberg’s recent paintings at the time. “The changes are dramatic. While Ms. Rothenberg's earlier works were largely monochromatic and still, the new series of 11 paintings, representing two years of work, are filled with color and movement. …the forms vibrate, as they might in successive frames of a film. The colors may be as dark as a Norwegian night by Edvard Munch, or as sweet as a Provencal interior by Pierre Bonnard. As Ms. Rothenberg enters more deeply in figurative territory, she is being introduced to ghosts of European art that may have haunted her painting all along…Basic aspects of her work remain the same. The space is almost liquid; all the figures seem to be under water…There continues to be a hallucinatory quality to Ms. Rothenberg's imagery…And brushwork is more persistent than ever, covering the paintings, leaving no area of the canvas without sound. …a tough, heart-of-darkness quality—as if these individual and collective rhythms were pounding inside us” (M. Brenson, “Art: A New Direction for Susan Rothenberg,” New York Times, October 23, 1987).