Essay from the exhibition catalog: “The Avalanche and the Silence”. Carnegie Art Museum, Oxnard California 2017
Some American Painting
by David Pagel
Back in the ’60s, all kinds of Americans did all kinds of things that made the abstract freedoms mentioned in the Constitution a reality for more people than ever before. Sex, drugs and rock-’n’-roll may be the terms most people use to describe that decade, which just had its 50th birthday, but the civil liberties and social changes that took place, especially in relation to the rights of individuals, are its most important legacy, especially today, when some of the principles on which this country was built are under siege by people who do not believe that democracy is for everyone, or that it is ok that life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness look very different when they are not idealized abstractions spoken of solemnly in historical documents but the things people actually do, in their daily lives, to realize those dreams.
That is what happens in Linda Arreola’s abstract paintings. Big, bold and beautiful, but also small, subtle and sensuous, Arreola’s hard-edge abstractions fly in the face of the idea that art is meant to be one thing and one thing only. Multiplicity matters in these profoundly democratic works. The same goes for ambiguity, open-endedness and complexity, not to mention clarity, precision and efficiency, as well as the come-one, come-all generosity of art that requires—and rewards—the active participation of viewers, whatever our backgrounds, perspectives and proclivities. Face-to-face, one-to-one engagement is where it all happens with Arreola’s paintings on canvas and panel and you don’t need to be an expert or a specialist, a professional or an academic, to be on intimate terms with her user-friendly works.
That radical accessibility puts her paintings on a crash course with the dark side of the art world, which is made up of people who believe that contemporary art works best when it divides insiders from outsiders—those in the know and the rest of us, who are unceremoniously left outside of such exclusive circles. Elitist pretense is the modus operandi of such seekers of hierarchy, and it plays an essential role in art that goes out of its way to be difficult, even incomprehensible, its esoteric signs and symbols measuring not the depth of its message but the sense of superiority some people feel when they know that others don’t get it. Rather than generating insights into a world we might share with one another, or creating situations that facilitate communication between and among viewers with different beliefs and feelings, such art drives a wedge between people. Its point and purpose is to distinguishing individuals from others, marking small groups as more refined and sophisticated—even civilized—than others, who are looked down upon with thinly veiled contempt.
In contrast, Arreola’s paintings are welcoming. Some are gregarious, eye grabbing and exciting. Their bright colors, eccentric shapes, dashed lines, overlapping bands and big open areas of nothing but open-ended possibility are easier to read than the instructions that accompany items that require home assembly. Some of Arreola’s geometric compositions even include arrows, which direct our eyes to move in specific directions, where they, slowly or swiftly, pick up other signals and continue moving, sometimes ricocheting, like pinballs, around the picture plane of a particularly complex composition, and at other times rebounding, like basketballs, around a painting whose carefully calibrated combinations of colors push and pull, creating a tug of war between shapes and spaces that makes the whole painting feel as if it is animated, like an abstract cartoon or piece of living and breathing architecture.
Other paintings are still, at least initially. Like small islands of respite, which give pause to the relentless, over-stimulated instantaneousness of modern life, Arreola’s paintings made up of horizontal bands of often soft and always supple colors draw viewers into a world where the confrontational energy that often leads us into conflicts with one another dissipates, to the left and to the right—and then right off the edges of the composition—leaving us, face to face, with a soothing field of tints and tones whose harmonious dispensation makes us feel calm, cool and collected. Rather than painting pictures of things she wants us to think about, or communicating messages about her goals and desires, or striving to express, in paint, her feelings and sentiments, Arreola makes paintings that affect us physically, their impact on our bodies compelling our minds to notice what is going on and to try to make sense of what that might mean, first, naturally, to us as individuals, but then, also, to us as members of larger groups, which we all, like it or not, belong to. That’s where the moral dimension of her art comes to the forefront. Her work is consequential because it is social. It invites us to contemplate the ways we interact with others, from the littlest of everyday incidents to singular events that are big and memorable.
There is nothing more intimate than that. Arreola boils painting down to the naked basics. And once there, she leaves people with more freedom than we are used to, especially in a world filled with responsibilities and the necessity of making a living, not to mention a life that is righteous and satisfying. Unlike the Minimalists, and other artists whose work goes back to the basics because it shares something with fundamentalism, and unlike the Modernists, who zero in on simplicity for is own sake and strive to streamline difference right out of the picture, Arreola embraces multiplicity, not to mention loose ends, idiosyncrasy and unexpected discoveries. The everyday openness of Pop can be seen in her palette, as well as in the crispness of her designs, the sharpness of her graphics and the eye-popping electricity of her paintings, which not only refuse to be embarrassed by their high level of craftsmanship, but are actually proud to celebrate the virtues of workmanship, the elegance of labor and the beauty of a job well done—just because that’s the way they do things.
The optimism of that ethos is palpable in Arreola’s paintings. So is the trust that viewers will see it and feel it and respond to it—howsoever we can, as unpredictably and individualistically as each of us is. At a time when suspicion, paranoia and fear define so much public discourse and public interaction, it’s heartening to come across a painting by Arreola. It’s even more exciting to come across a roomful of her profoundly generous works, which bring our highest ideals down to earth, where we live, right here and right now, like everyone else.
David Pagel is an art critic who writes regularly for the Los Angeles Times. His is also a professor of art theory and history at Claremont Graduate University and an adjunct curator at the Parrish Art Museum in Water Mill, NY. An avid cyclist, he is a five-time winner of the California Triple Crown.