DIARY: Jackie Saccoccio | Portrait
With the buzz already audible regarding the October opening of Krasner and Pollock: Past Continuous at The Met, a major exhibition on two mid-century titans that also promises to bring new perspective on the ways in which outstanding woman artists have been disappeared by the art world at large, this is a good time to focus on a painter who will likely become better known following her untimely death than she was in life. Above: The artist in 2019 in her studio in Connecticut. Credit: Charles Benton/Van Doren Waxter, New York
Van Doren Waxter gallery, which represents the estates of numerous 20th century giants, also handles the work of Jackie Saccoccio (1963-2020), a vital if under-sung presence both here and abroad. Next Thursday, March 12, the gallery opens an exhibition of her late works. It features two of the large-scape Portraits (below) together with a selection of smaller works on paper.
Excerpt from an article in Brooklyn Rail by Barbara A. MacAdam
Layers of texture and materials—paint, oil pastel, and mica—supported by pattern upon pattern in shaky thin lines set the foundation for Jackie Saccocio’s forceful, physically and emotionally self-reflective paintings….
The paintings are remarkably dependent on scale. They project the seductive power of Gustave Courbet’s forests as well as the dripping grandeur of French Romantic painter Gustave Moreau’s dramatic mystical paintings marked by forceful veils of color. Left and detail above: Portrait (Invisible 21), ca. 2019-20, 22-1/2 x 21-1/2 inches
Throughout, there’s a tension between all manner of opposites—masculine and feminine, city and country, nature and the manmade, accident and intention….The artist refers to her paintings as portraits of a sort, and while they are decidedly abstract, with no clearly defined human figure or even attitude detectable, they do contain fragments of shapes—a faint shadow of human head, struggling to emerge, the curve of an ear, perhaps, the outline of a partially bald pate.
Excerpt from a 2013 interview with Ridley Howard
Q: I love how unabashedly beautiful your work is, especially at a time when so much young abstraction deals in the language of the abject. It feels so joyous. The opulence delivers. I know you’ve used words like ‘rapture’ in recent titles. I’m curious about your thoughts on transcendence in painting, either visual or spiritual. It seems to go further than a play with painting traditions.
A: Great questions, and interesting that you ask these together. I love these naughty issues of beauty, opulence and transcendence. Like the young painters that you mention, I went through great pains to eliminate traces of beauty in my painting, so as not to obfuscate the ‘serious’ nature of my work, or so I thought… Right: Portrait (Untitled), 2020, 30 x 24 inches
The result was that I sent all the wrong messages, and the response was disheartening. Now, as I’m more accepting of this beauty thing seeping into the paintings, it’s not only not an issue, but viewers are more likely to bring up transcendence or ephemeral references, which has been my aim. The odd thing is, in those early years, I was making paintings with literal references to these. Now, in these portraits, with their mass and weight, they elicit ideas about impermanence.
Q: It’s really interesting that your work engages Ab-Ex romanticism and post-mark ideas about material/drips as image and emblem….—you cross a lot of wires.
A: I sway more towards Polke than Richter, but Lichtenstein and Turner…YES! Crossing wires does make for strange and delightful bedfellows. I think I’ve learned the most about Ab-Ex mark-making by studying [Jasper] Johns’ Green Target, and Hudson River School painting through Pollack and Charles Burchfield. It sounds generic when I list a lot of artists whose work influences, but it’s like mixing up some disparate—you never know what can happen—nothing or everything. Last month it was Laurie Simmons and Ghirlandaio. Next week, Courbet and Rosemarie Trockel? All images courtesy of Van Doren Waxter gallery
Thursday, March 12, 6-8 pm: Jackie Soccoccio Portraits at Van Doren Waxter, 23 East 73rd Street, New York, NY Info
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