raymond jonson at aaron payne

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Publication: Journal Santa Fe Section; Date: Aug 27, 2010; Section: Gallery Guide; Page: S8 SPACE AND LIGHT JONSON PAINTINGS FROM ’30S AND ’40S ARE MODEST IN SCALE BUT LOFTY IN AMBITION Art Issues MALIN WILSON-POWELL For the Journal The paintings of Raymond Jonson (1891-1982) look better and stranger with each passing decade. It is a rare treat to see as many as two dozen Jonson paintings from the 1930s and 1940s now on exhibit at Aaron Payne Fine Art. You usually get to see Jonson paintings one at a time now, and in mixed company. They have entered the pantheon of American modernism, and in major museums across the country a single Jonson is most often included in the obligatory roundup of top American modernist artists, along with Dove, Hartley, Marin and O’Keeffe. The earliest painting on view is the 1932 “Abstraction in Yellow,” an oil on canvas that led to another iteration in his 1934 “Prismatic Figuration.” In addition to a characteristic Jonson composition of transparent, shifting planes of light in three-dimensional space, there is the mosaic-like paint surface. His oil paintings have an activated skin of short, syncopated, directional brushstrokes, all very precise. The artist was a stickler for using the finest materials, and most of the paintings on view look as fresh as the day they were painted. The color palette of these paintings dates most of the work to before World War II. They all came out of private collections and are of modest, domestic scale. Although Jonson worked on monumental trilogies and grand canvases in the 1920s, those were mostly for museums and competitions. Jonson, like so many early American artists, was spiritually oriented, an emphasis largely ignored or denigrated in the establishment of modernist “isms” succeeding each other in official art history. Currently, there seems to be a refreshing interest in revisiting the fervor and centrality of spiritual quests by such modernist mavericks as Jonson. The son of a preacher, who heard God’s voice at the age of 11, Jonson proceeded with the confidence of one anointed in his lifelong Platonic search for perfection. These smaller paintings were made to grace the intimacies of daily life with his lofty goals. Jonson’s paintings bear little resemblance to those of his generation of American modernists. They would hang more comfortably with nonobjective European canvases associated with the Russian Suprematists, the Dutch De Stijl and the Bauhaus. After he began teaching at the University of New Mexico in 1934, Jonson started inviting artists he admired to exhibit there. He arranged for shows by the Bauhaus theorist Josef Albers, who spent much of his life investigating the interactions of colors and their intangible expressive potential. Albers is most prominently remembered for his “Homage to the Square.” Jonson also brought the paintings of Russian-American Ilya Bolotowsky to UNM. Bolotowsky explored the tenets of Neoplasticism, which advocated the possibility of ideal order in the visual arts. Albers, Bolotowsky and Jonson were all artists searching for a universal language of color and composition. While Jonson’s medium was paint, he really is a light and space artist. As a very young man in Chicago, he revolutionized stage lighting and could easily have had an illustrious career in theater, or been a pioneer in the development of what came to be called Visual Music or abstract film. However, for Jonson, easel painting was his pulpit, and he spent a lifetime wrestling with the paradox of dematerializing the physicality of painting, a real object. Jonson was a very self-serious artist whose entire life was organized around his genius and the pursuit of what he called “the absolute,” so it is a delight to see a puckish 1937 oil on canvas titled “Space with White” that doesn’t have a speck of white anywhere. And it is a further pleasure to witness the artist’s liberation from the tedium of this pointilliststyle perfection of paint application. The majority of the pieces on view are post-1938, the year Jonson adopted the airbrush. From this time forward, he used this industrial tool with flourish and panache to produce 10 times as many watercolors as oils. He also abandoned the practice of giving titles or leaving clues to his intentions. He simply began designating his paintings by medium, number and year. However, most of them are related to earlier cycles and trilogies. One of the outstanding pieces in this selection is “Watercolor No. 7” (1938), a variation from his 1936 “Time Cycle” trilogy of the noon panel with central sun image. The theatrically framed position of the sun is also directly related to his “Growth Variant” series of eight oil paintings, 1929-1935. Always industrious and productive, in these airbrush watercolors Jonson was able to play with themes he had developed in his large repertoire of oil painting series and trilogies. Some carry the big, far-reaching titles “Cosmic Theme,” “Continuous Movement” and “Space Cycle.” Others are more particular to musical inspirations like “Arabesque” and “Dissonance.” The eye-popping 1943 “Watercolor #6” is in the lineage of a series he called “Chromatic Contrasts.” The wiggly and vibrant 1948 “Watercolor No. 23” is the joyous spawn of “Variations on a Linear Theme.” 1938 was also the year Jonson and Taos-based Emil Bisttram co-founded the Transcendental Painting Group (TPG) of nine artists. After 15 years of working in relative artistic isolation in New Mexico, Jonson had colleagues in proximity with similar aspirations. At Aaron Payne Fine Art you can also see work by Bisttram and a marvelous painting by Robert Gribbroek, a TPG artist whose canvases are rare. Gribbroek went on to have a career as an animator for Warner Brothers Looney Tunes. For all TPG fans and followers, two other solo exhibitions by TPG artists are currently on view in multiple Santa Fe venues, including the paintings of William Lumpkins at Peyton/Wright and the early work of Florence Towner Pierce at Charlotte Jackson Gallery. If you go WHAT: Raymond Jonson WHERE: Aaron Payne Fine Art, 213 Marcy St. WHEN: Through Sept. 25 HOURS: 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday CONTACT: 505 995-9779 or www.artnet. com/apayne.html SPACE AND LIGHT http://epaper.abqjournal.com/Repository/getFiles.asp?Style=Ol... 1 of 4 4/27/11 12:38 PM

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Review of Raymond Jonson paintings at Aaron Payne Fine Art, Santa Fe

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Page 1: Raymond Jonson at Aaron Payne

Publication: Journal Santa Fe Section; Date: Aug 27, 2010; Section: Gallery Guide; Page: S8

SPACE AND LIGHT JONSON PAINTINGS FROM ’30S AND ’40S ARE MODEST IN SCALE BUT LOFTY IN AMBITION Art Issues

MALIN WILSON-POWELL

For the Journal

The paintings of Raymond Jonson (1891-1982) look better and stranger with each passing decade. It is a rare treat to see as many as two dozen Jonsonpaintings from the 1930s and 1940s now on exhibit at Aaron Payne Fine Art. You usually get to see Jonson paintings one at a time now, and in mixed company.They have entered the pantheon of American modernism, and in major museums across the country a single Jonson is most often included in the obligatoryroundup of top American modernist artists, along with Dove, Hartley, Marin and O’Keeffe.

The earliest painting on view is the 1932 “Abstraction in Yellow,” an oil on canvas that led to another iteration in his 1934 “Prismatic Figuration.” In addition to acharacteristic Jonson composition of transparent, shifting planes of light in three-dimensional space, there is the mosaic-like paint surface. His oil paintings havean activated skin of short, syncopated, directional brushstrokes, all very precise. The artist was a stickler for using the finest materials, and most of thepaintings on view look as fresh as the day they were painted. The color palette of these paintings dates most of the work to before World War II. They all cameout of private collections and are of modest, domestic scale. Although Jonson worked on monumental trilogies and grand canvases in the 1920s, those weremostly for museums and competitions.

Jonson, like so many early American artists, was spiritually oriented, an emphasis largely ignored or denigrated in the establishment of modernist “isms”succeeding each other in official art history. Currently, there seems to be a refreshing interest in revisiting the fervor and centrality of spiritual quests by suchmodernist mavericks as Jonson. The son of a preacher, who heard God’s voice at the age of 11, Jonson proceeded with the confidence of one anointed in hislifelong Platonic search for perfection. These smaller paintings were made to grace the intimacies of daily life with his lofty goals.

Jonson’s paintings bear little resemblance to those of his generation of American modernists. They would hang more comfortably with nonobjective Europeancanvases associated with the Russian Suprematists, the Dutch De Stijl and the Bauhaus. After he began teaching at the University of New Mexico in 1934,Jonson started inviting artists he admired to exhibit there. He arranged for shows by the Bauhaus theorist Josef Albers, who spent much of his life investigatingthe interactions of colors and their intangible expressive potential. Albers is most prominently remembered for his “Homage to the Square.”

Jonson also brought the paintings of Russian-American Ilya Bolotowsky to UNM. Bolotowsky explored the tenets of Neoplasticism, which advocated thepossibility of ideal order in the visual arts. Albers, Bolotowsky and Jonson were all artists searching for a universal language of color and composition.

While Jonson’s medium was paint, he really is a light and space artist. As a very young man in Chicago, he revolutionized stage lighting and could easily havehad an illustrious career in theater, or been a pioneer in the development of what came to be called Visual Music or abstract film. However, for Jonson, easelpainting was his pulpit, and he spent a lifetime wrestling with the paradox of dematerializing the physicality of painting, a real object. Jonson was a veryself-serious artist whose entire life was organized around his genius and the pursuit of what he called “the absolute,” so it is a delight to see a puckish 1937 oilon canvas titled “Space with White” that doesn’t have a speck of white anywhere. And it is a further pleasure to witness the artist’s liberation from the tedium ofthis pointilliststyle perfection of paint application.

The majority of the pieces on view are post-1938, the year Jonson adopted the airbrush. From this time forward, he used this industrial tool with flourish andpanache to produce 10 times as many watercolors as oils. He also abandoned the practice of giving titles or leaving clues to his intentions. He simply begandesignating his paintings by medium, number and year. However, most of them are related to earlier cycles and trilogies. One of the outstanding pieces in thisselection is “Watercolor No. 7” (1938), a variation from his 1936 “Time Cycle” trilogy of the noon panel with central sun image. The theatrically framed positionof the sun is also directly related to his “Growth Variant” series of eight oil paintings, 1929-1935.

Always industrious and productive, in these airbrush watercolors Jonson was able to play with themes he had developed in his large repertoire of oil paintingseries and trilogies. Some carry the big, far-reaching titles “Cosmic Theme,” “Continuous Movement” and “Space Cycle.” Others are more particular to musicalinspirations like “Arabesque” and “Dissonance.” The eye-popping 1943 “Watercolor #6” is in the lineage of a series he called “Chromatic Contrasts.” The wigglyand vibrant 1948 “Watercolor No. 23” is the joyous spawn of “Variations on a Linear Theme.”

1938 was also the year Jonson and Taos-based Emil Bisttram co-founded the Transcendental Painting Group (TPG) of nine artists. After 15 years of working inrelative artistic isolation in New Mexico, Jonson had colleagues in proximity with similar aspirations. At Aaron Payne Fine Art you can also see work by Bisttramand a marvelous painting by Robert Gribbroek, a TPG artist whose canvases are rare. Gribbroek went on to have a career as an animator for Warner BrothersLooney Tunes. For all TPG fans and followers, two other solo exhibitions by TPG artists are currently on view in multiple Santa Fe venues, including the paintingsof William Lumpkins at Peyton/Wright and the early work of Florence Towner Pierce at Charlotte Jackson Gallery.

If you go

WHAT: Raymond Jonson WHERE: Aaron Payne Fine Art, 213 Marcy St. WHEN: Through Sept. 25 HOURS: 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday through SaturdayCONTACT: 505 995-9779 or www.artnet. com/apayne.html

SPACE AND LIGHT http://epaper.abqjournal.com/Repository/getFiles.asp?Style=Ol...

1 of 4 4/27/11 12:38 PM

Page 2: Raymond Jonson at Aaron Payne

COURTESY AARON PAYNE FINE ART

“Watercolor No. 23, 1948” is a watercolor on paper by American modernist Raymond Jonson (1891-1982).

SPACE AND LIGHT http://epaper.abqjournal.com/Repository/getFiles.asp?Style=Ol...

2 of 4 4/27/11 12:38 PM

Page 3: Raymond Jonson at Aaron Payne

“Abstraction in Yellow” is a 1932 oil on canvas.

“Oil No. 6, 1942” is an oil on canvas board.

SPACE AND LIGHT http://epaper.abqjournal.com/Repository/getFiles.asp?Style=Ol...

3 of 4 4/27/11 12:38 PM

Page 4: Raymond Jonson at Aaron Payne

“No. 22, 1940” is a watercolor on paper.

SPACE AND LIGHT http://epaper.abqjournal.com/Repository/getFiles.asp?Style=Ol...

4 of 4 4/27/11 12:38 PM