https://www.philipswan.net/curentpaintings daily 0.75 2026-03-06 https://static1.squarespace.com/static/55e9d9e4e4b0821ae7bc59a7/t/69ab0057cf2fdb7a8b6a9636/1744048120347/ 2024 - Untitled 2025 Oil on Canvas Triptych: 48 × 72 inches 2025 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55e9d9e4e4b0821ae7bc59a7/1712621412330-T9MQN55E4MFIWBHZWGYM/image-asset.jpeg 2024 - 2024 A Oil on Canvas 30 x 24 inches 2024 https://static1.squarespace.com/static/55e9d9e4e4b0821ae7bc59a7/55e9faf7e4b09601852a9290/678a9fb5fd78d02dd337a824/1744048120347/untitled2025.jpg 2024 - Untitled 2025 Oil on Canvas Triptych: 48 × 72 inches 2025 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55e9d9e4e4b0821ae7bc59a7/1712622153750-3TU46N6AEW5049Z21NT2/2024F.jpg 2024 - 2024 F Oil on canvas 30 x 24 inches 2024 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55e9d9e4e4b0821ae7bc59a7/1712703532216-XZE0KR8RBNUAJ0RXNUX9/2024I.jpg 2024 - 2024 I Oil on Canvas 30 x 24 inches 2024 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55e9d9e4e4b0821ae7bc59a7/1712622009850-K2ZKR127JO1HG1TMXH9X/2024E.jpg 2024 - 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2016 C Oil on Canvas 16 x 20 inches 2015 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55e9d9e4e4b0821ae7bc59a7/1718768227023-4YDVBWG617UK3K65S0NC/L2024.jpeg 2024 - L 2024 Colored pencil on paper 12 x 9 inches 2024 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55e9d9e4e4b0821ae7bc59a7/1718768046638-ZO58UHNYFEW2W22D3EZ9/O2024.jpeg 2024 - O2024 Colored pencil on paper 12 x 9 inches 2024 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55e9d9e4e4b0821ae7bc59a7/1718767982627-TU2GRGHEU0BIC490SFUV/R2024.jpeg 2024 - R2024 Colored pencil on paper 12 x 9 inches 2024 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55e9d9e4e4b0821ae7bc59a7/1635608150110-3RQWOM57JW9QDCT8IYHB/image-asset.jpeg 2024 - Untitled 2022 Oil on Canvas Diptych 30 x 48 inches 2021 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55e9d9e4e4b0821ae7bc59a7/1718767848794-DGPR06PTUNB5N37Z9CAP/Q2024.jpeg 2024 - Q2024 Colored pencil on paper 12 x 9 inches 2024 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55e9d9e4e4b0821ae7bc59a7/1714139699530-64IHWDG4SP02A1WZ5QY0/image-asset.jpg 2024 - A 2024 2024 Colored pencil on paper 12 x 9 inches https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55e9d9e4e4b0821ae7bc59a7/1523040450722-OD7N38M76424AR2P2HYR/2018G.jpg 2024 - 2018 G Oil on Canvas 20 x 24 inches 2018 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55e9d9e4e4b0821ae7bc59a7/1554752393847-7MTEUQYFZ3B5M9HQQ494/2019+E.jpg 2024 - 2019 E Oil on Linen 30 x 24 inches 2019 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55e9d9e4e4b0821ae7bc59a7/1642969507190-4767V6L1R01VLGIM8F3W/IMG_6142.jpeg 2024 - Untitled 2022 Oil on Canvas 24 x 46 inches 2022 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55e9d9e4e4b0821ae7bc59a7/1537555311661-Z0C10GPBROPDAWFG6RHT/2018P+.jpg 2024 - 2018 P Oil on Canvas 24 x 18 inches 2018 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55e9d9e4e4b0821ae7bc59a7/1548436050482-P4XOCK8WQDOCZZ9ESJY8/2019B.jpg 2024 - 2019 B Oil on Linen 30 x 24 inches 2019 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55e9d9e4e4b0821ae7bc59a7/1586620724165-3G17KM7CY9BRQXNGBEB2/Adjustments.jpeg 2024 - 2019 F Oil on Canvas 30 x24 inches 2019 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55e9d9e4e4b0821ae7bc59a7/1586620066481-FENLW5LUML2LQZ78NFGP/Adjustments.jpeg 2024 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55e9d9e4e4b0821ae7bc59a7/1616253141751-B64EDRX87T9A55QTT4V0/IMG_6978.jpeg 2024 - Untitled 2021 Oil on Linen 30 x 24 inches 2020 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55e9d9e4e4b0821ae7bc59a7/1505497701985-5JUI0PINQL49GHCVCMFA/2017N.jpg 2024 - 2017 N Oil on Canvas 16 x 20 inches 2017 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55e9d9e4e4b0821ae7bc59a7/1623523291790-0S3JFND9LQQO0MPM4MR7/IMG_4507.jpg 2024 - Untitled 2022 Oil on Board Diptych 20 x 32 inches 2021 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55e9d9e4e4b0821ae7bc59a7/1532805949592-PK1DMWXWPJITPILB7UC8/825DAC22-89A0-4983-A355-D137B9AFC3D4.jpeg 2024 - 2019 B Oil on Canvas 30 x 24 inches 2018 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55e9d9e4e4b0821ae7bc59a7/1542404201047-RSG7XK3YHQJ70NYJF8H4/2019+E.jpg 2024 - 2019 E Oil on Canvas 30 x 24 inches 2018 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55e9d9e4e4b0821ae7bc59a7/1542648382827-BDJZT1XWU334SAPN55H7/2019F.jpg 2024 - 2019 F Oil on Canvas 30 x 24 inches 2018 https://www.philipswan.net/philip-swans-blog daily 0.75 2022-10-15 https://www.philipswan.net/philip-swans-blog/https/wwwphilipswannet/blog-page-url/2018/7/6/new-post-title-5 monthly 0.5 2022-10-15 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55e9d9e4e4b0821ae7bc59a7/c3d0a536-56fe-4f9f-b2f0-60c6ae011db1/4B763F42-F045-4973-91A9-FFE42299765B.jpeg Philip Swan’s Blog - Philip Swan: No Innocent Eye - Make it stand out Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55e9d9e4e4b0821ae7bc59a7/be312970-d261-4257-9658-4ce4e55af9fd/099EFB79-BE58-4156-86D0-27152F2F4A67.jpeg Philip Swan’s Blog - Philip Swan: No Innocent Eye - Make it stand out Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55e9d9e4e4b0821ae7bc59a7/ca3d83b1-9555-403a-82e9-549d9a5f7dde/89BC6C8B-8C29-4F8C-B4A6-9810C75C90A3.jpeg Philip Swan’s Blog - Philip Swan: No Innocent Eye - Make it stand out Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55e9d9e4e4b0821ae7bc59a7/e8a2d5f1-557b-4cef-9008-2a45cc702702/54CAD535-EE15-4B85-96FB-3411344E9AA9.jpeg Philip Swan’s Blog - Philip Swan: No Innocent Eye - Make it stand out Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55e9d9e4e4b0821ae7bc59a7/adfbc8ec-176d-4c42-a2db-520c80479c1a/A6B84EEE-8CAF-4E18-9BA0-CF872C5D57DF.jpeg Philip Swan’s Blog - Philip Swan: No Innocent Eye - Make it stand out Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference. https://www.philipswan.net/philip-swans-blog/https/wwwphilipswannet/blog-page-url/2018/7/6/new-post-title-4 monthly 0.5 2022-01-14 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55e9d9e4e4b0821ae7bc59a7/1632968321448-O1DG5S8G1DZHU4GC74RR/IMG_5346.jpg Philip Swan’s Blog - Jasper Johns: Mind/Mirror - Make it stand out Prints Jasper Johns, now 91, is known for artwork about everyday things like maps, targets, flags, light bulbs and beer cans, or, as Johns famously put it, “things the mind already knows.” Johns describes his approach to art as "Take an object. Do something to it. Do something else to it. (Repeat)." Of course, there is much more to this easy to remember formula. There is a distinct sense of poetry in the work of Jasper Johns as he addresses love, heartbreak, nostalgia, and mortality in a kind of internal archaeology where these everyday objects take on a totemic importance that come in recursive refrains. Often this recursive approach comes through mirror images of previous work along with a layering of older motifs alongside newer ones. In a sense, this mirrors the way the mind works as it returns to a categorical inventory, shorthand summaries of life embodied in objects we find personally cogent. What ties all of his work together is the importance of memory in a meaningful life, specifically visual memory. Johns wants us to look at the world more actively, to look at the familiar and to look at it again more carefully as a way of being truly alive. The prints in the first gallery are an excellent overview of this methodology and an unusual way to begin a retrospective like this. Rather than a large wall-spanning painting, the viewer takes in a series of small prints that serve as a preview of his entire career. It is also appropriate because printmaking is central to Johns, who does not see prints as being a lower order in the hierarchy of his work. They are a stunning testimony to his creativity and are so varied that they do not look like the work of one individual. This show is very large, grab a seat if you need to. There is also a lot of talk about symbols and motifs but you can also just enjoy the work aesthetically: Johns is a master of design and texture, his work is beautiful and he actually would prefer that it be appreciated that way with the references unclear and their mystery part of the experience. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55e9d9e4e4b0821ae7bc59a7/1632968396965-S90UJG7S5UGE8J7TSC4A/IMG_5409.jpg Philip Swan’s Blog - Jasper Johns: Mind/Mirror - Make it stand out Target with Four Faces, 1955 Jasper Johns moved to New York in the summer of 1953 after being discharged from the Army in South Carolina. In 1954 Johns destroyed all of his work as a way of reinventing himself, and he decided that repressing emotion as much as possible was more sophisticated, more adult, and also created distance from the work of the Abstract Expressionists. He purposely removed elements from his work that reminded him of work other artists around him were doing. A few months after his arrival in New York he met Robert Rauschenberg who Johns described as “the first person I knew who was a real artist.” Johns and Rauschenberg began a creative and romantic relationship that they shared with another couple, the composer John Cage and his boyfriend, the dancer and choreographer, Merce Cunningham. Cunningham and Cage were both inspired by aesthetic possibilities of chance, which made a profound impression on Johns. Like Johns, Rauschenberg explored work that was very much rooted in themes of the everyday in a way that seemed almost impersonal. Target with Four Faces appropriates a readymade image, a target, and incorporates a row of impassive faces which seem to embody his attempt at policing his own emotions. The plaster faces seem vulnerable but unconcerned, located just above a target, a feeling that is heightened by the fact that they are blinded and unable to anticipate or avoid an errant shot. The faces are not only eyeless, there is also a hinged lid which could hide them and potentially protect them if closed. The vulnerability of the faces speaks to something more personal and psychologically fraught, something more in line with the Abstract Expressionists than art historical tropes would allow for. Johns had planned to put panels on top of the work like piano keys that viewers could press to create sounds, drawing them closer to the work in a multimedia experience. Other early works in the same gallery, many largely gray, speak to the sadness of negation, of impulses concealed and purposeful blotting out as a form of hopelessness. Diver is thought to be an image of suicide related to the poet Hart Crane who jumped off a boat, reportedly after having flirted with a sailor and not having his advances reciprocated. Johns painted Target with Four Faces in 1955, the same miraculous year that he painted the first of his flag paintings, which we will see in the next gallery. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55e9d9e4e4b0821ae7bc59a7/1632968649050-956ADITJI3E5FKD2FMMO/IMG_5411.jpg Philip Swan’s Blog - Jasper Johns: Mind/Mirror - Make it stand out White Flag, 1955 Johns said that one night in 1954 “I dreamed that I painted a large American flag, and the next morning I got up and I went out and bought the materials to begin it. And I did.” Johns has long been drawn to images seen in dreams, things he briefly sees from the window of a speeding car, concrete imagery grasped from fleeting sources. Johns has always insisted there is no political content in the flag paintings, he simply dreamed about painting a flag and set about doing that when he woke up. The idea here is to look at the flag as an object: to really see it, not as a symbol of something else, but to see it for the first time as an object, an aesthetic object, referencing nothing other than itself. You are now looking actively, you are appreciating the proportions of the flag and the geometry and you might even start thinking of how humans invest so much in signs and symbols. When the flag paintings were first shown in 1958, before the dawn of Pop Art, many people did not see it as art. The idea of simply painting a flag or a map required no artistic vision, expression, or talent, it was nothing more than banality disguised as art. Yet this was a significant step away from the tortured brushwork of abstract expressionism as much as it was a rejection of figurative painting meant to use the canvas as a window onto a representational world. The painting of a flag is both a representation of a flag and a flag in its own right, similar to the target in the previous gallery. He created his first flag on a bedsheet, using newspaper as a collage medium, along with enamel paint that he soon replaced with encaustic, a medium consisting of pigment mixed into wax melted on a hot plate which hardens quickly as it cools and records each stroke of the artist’s brush. There is something sensual about encaustic, it seems warm and soft like skin or edible like food. By appropriating a preexisting image, a thing “the mind already knows,” Johns can devote his creative energy to manipulating the known image in a way that makes the viewer see it with fresh eyes. White Flag is composed of three separate canvases that support layers of encaustic, oil paint, newsprint and charcoal. It is the first Jasper Johns painting purchased by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, which surprisingly waited until 1998 to include one of his paintings in their collection. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55e9d9e4e4b0821ae7bc59a7/1633193942743-AROOEKVOEM6PESETW9AV/IMG_5452.jpeg Philip Swan’s Blog - Jasper Johns: Mind/Mirror - Make it stand out Map, 1961 Johns is most well-known for the works in this gallery: by depicting things like flags, numbers, and maps, he utilizes images we think we know so well that they are, in effect invisible, and he asks us to look again and know them anew. Johns is asking us to be more reflective in our seeing, to be more mindful of the world around us, to see the world with the eye of an artist or a poet. Pre-COVID, this show was originally going to open in the fall of 2020 in the midst of the presidential election, and the gallery filled with maps and flags of the United States in color on one side and in black and white on the other was going to comment on how divided the country is. In 1960 Johns painted his first map directly on top of a small mimeographed map of the states used by school children given to him by Robert Rauschenberg. Like a flag, a political map represents aspects of the nation that cannot be seen, they are a visual summation of the idea of a nation, although in this case the boundaries are only suggested and the map could never be of use as such. In a sense this ties into the idea of our internal archaeology of symbols: most Americans can summon up a vague image of the map of the country, but, asked to draw it on a piece of paper, it may well look like this painting. Map 1963 had to be removed by crane from the apartment of a private collector who loaned the work: its large size reflects the ambition of the young artist. Directly opposite is Map 1961, which is a map with the names of states blurred and stripped of not only boundaries but colors suggesting a differentiation between states. The part of the map we will focus on next is South Carolina. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55e9d9e4e4b0821ae7bc59a7/1632968851604-GS7LBZQF55GRZ8HQYCE4/IMG_5412.jpg Philip Swan’s Blog - Jasper Johns: Mind/Mirror - Make it stand out Studio, 1964 Other than New York, the two places that have most influenced Jasper Johns is his native South Carolina, addressed at the Whitney, and Japan, featured at the sister show at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. The South Carolina gallery is divided into works he created at a studio in Edisto Island in the 60s and work created years later in the 90s reflecting on his childhood in 1930s Columbia. He arrived in Edisto Island in the early 60s after breaking up with Rauschenberg, and the work from that time channels the beach as a place of loss and desire. Studio, the first Jasper Johns work purchased by the Whitney, reflects the sun and beach light after years of living in New York City. There is no clear subject matter here as there was in the previous gallery: instead we have the same luscious brushwork along with cans hanging on the canvas that we want to reach out and touch, the same way we might have wanted to touch the faces or lower the lid in the target work or run our fingers over the flag. There are direct impressions on the canvas made by a screen door that was painted with blue paint and pressed against the canvas as well as a palmetto frond from his yard that was painted red and pressed to the canvas along with studio detritus like beer cans used for mixing paint and used paint brushes. Johns probably got the idea of pressing objects onto a canvas from Rauschenberg, who saw it as a quick way to draw to scale in an impersonal way. Johns had thought he would get more work done away from the temptations and pressures of New York, but he actually found life in Edisto to be so relaxing and pleasant that he found himself working less. In 1966 the Edisto studio burned down while Johns was in Japan and he lost everything that was in the house, including his artwork and the artwork he owned by other artists. There are vitrines in the gallery with inventories drawn up for the insurance claims which give you an idea of what Johns had in the house. Johns never rebuilt the studio and returned to the northeast to live permanently: his beach house is now in Saint Martin. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55e9d9e4e4b0821ae7bc59a7/1634173001422-LO7CF65AZETSD484NVK8/IMG_5413.jpeg Philip Swan’s Blog - Jasper Johns: Mind/Mirror - Make it stand out Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55e9d9e4e4b0821ae7bc59a7/1634172834513-XA3YOK0J4YX1PZ4WLNYI/18D61484-5B4F-4CFB-93C7-1BE0C997F6B3.jpeg Philip Swan’s Blog - Jasper Johns: Mind/Mirror - Make it stand out According to What, 1964 Until the early 60s Johns had focused on a single image, whether it be a target, a flag, a map, etc. in which the surface of the work was consistent throughout in terms of materials and palette. Johns considered paintings after this to be less “intellectual” and more focused on the materials and actions used to create them. Inspired by Rauschenberg’s Combines, the new work incorporated multiple pictorial spaces, materials, and styles. Rather than referencing common imagery recognizable to all, Johns began using imagery that had meaning to him personally which meant the meaning of his work necessarily became more enigmatic to viewers. According to What is an example of one of these works in which prior motifs and personal iconography are combined on multiple panels. In this case, the six panels measure seven by sixteen feet and are anchored compositionally and conceptually by the silhouette of Marcel Duchamp in the lower left, a copy of Duchamp’s Self Portrait in Profile. Duchamp’s use of readymades and incorporation of language became a lifelong inspiration for Johns. Johns discovered Duchamp after several reviewers labeled his work neo-Dada because they resembled Duchamp’s Dadaist use of readymades like urinals, snow shovels, and bottle racks. By signing a urinal Duchamp made a radical statement that something could be considered art if it was designated as such by an artist. By naming something as art, the artist emphasized the linguistic nature of naming an object. Johns and Rauschenberg went to Philadelphia to see Duchamp’s work in person in the Arensberg Collection at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Duchamp was also interested in shadows, especially those cast by people, because they are a thing that exists in the world that is related to you, but is separate from you. This picture is full of shadows, including a spoon casting an actual shadow and a hanger casting a shadow that is actually drawn on the canvas by the artist. Johns combines found objects with two dimensional representation: the work includes a cast of a leg bent at the knee and a kitchen chair as well as a twisted coat hanger, metal swinging letters, painted circles of color that are reminiscent of color scales, expressive brushwork, silkscreened newsprint discussing the Kremlin and a hinged canvas with the profile of Marcel Duchamp. To a certain extent, Johns is asking more active participation from the viewer than he was when using an immediately recognizable image like a flag or a target: the viewer needs to interpret the meaning, decipher clues, expend mental effort, and invest time. The idea that a viewer completes the meaning of a work was central to Duchamp and inspired not only Johns but also colleagues in other artistic fields like John Cage and Merce Cunningham. Originally, Johns intended this work to be manipulated directly by the viewer, to move the letters spelling out Red, Yellow, and Blue on their hinges and to open and close the Duchamp silhouette. Johns returned to According to What repeatedly over time, revising the work as he came back to it during multiple viewings, incorporating imagery from previous work, read and painted words, printing, found objects, and abstraction. The work synthesizes previous work and points the way toward future directions. None of this ambition would have been possible without Leo Castelli, who we will discuss in the next gallery. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55e9d9e4e4b0821ae7bc59a7/1632969158313-SA4VP4BXL5JJYYW0K45Z/IMG_5414.jpg Philip Swan’s Blog - Jasper Johns: Mind/Mirror - Make it stand out Harlem Light, 1967 While many artists of his generation saw integrating their work, both thematically and physically, into an architectural space as an integral part of their process, Johns has been more interested in creating work than how it is displayed in subsequent exhibitions. This retrospective was no different: Johns gave the curators the freedom to use whatever works they wanted in whatever way they wanted to display them. On two occasions while at Leo Castelli’s gallery, Johns was more actively involved in the display of his work. One of these shows is recreated at the Whitney, the other at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Castelli’s gallery was located on the second floor of a townhouse at 4 East 77th Street in a relatively compact space measuring 25 x 21 feet with 12 foot ceilings. Shortly after founding his gallery in 1957, Leo Castelli met Johns while visiting Rauchenberg’s adjoining studio. Castelli offered Johns a solo show on the spot, and this sold out show in January of 1958 made him an instant star after previously only showing in small group exhibitions. The gallery at the Whitney reproduces the size and scope of a 1968 show at Castelli where the six works are tied together by the theme of industry and architecture. The dimensions of the gallery are the same as at Castelli’s, the ceiling height of the townhouse is marked off on the wall and the door is located in the same spot. The work in this Castelli show, produced between 1966 and 1968, consists of dark works hung vertically with a barely discernible image of a hanging spoon and fork with written instructions indicating that the fork should be reproduced “7” inches long. In referencing measurements and measuring instruments, Johns is interested in the idea of breaking space up into arbitrary units, seeing it as akin to mapping or creating a flag as a symbol for a country. The dark vertical works are offset by large horizontal works that are lighter and more visually varied with recurring motifs of imprints of a screen door, rulers, and multicolored impasto flagstones inspired by John’s memory of a wall he passed in Harlem while in a taxi on the way to the airport painted as if it were made of stones. When he went back to find the wall he couldn’t find it and concluded that it had been painted over so he recreated it from memory. We will take a break from obscure references to spoon sizes and things seen from speeding cars in a room full of prints displaying a more spontaneous sense of play. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55e9d9e4e4b0821ae7bc59a7/1633125972095-8N02BDZWQZDNT7U41HKZ/IMG_5457.jpeg Philip Swan’s Blog - Jasper Johns: Mind/Mirror - Make it stand out Savarin, 1982 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55e9d9e4e4b0821ae7bc59a7/1633111231460-KF3H7I1NXWETF69X456M/IMG_5460.jpeg Philip Swan’s Blog - Jasper Johns: Mind/Mirror - Make it stand out Spring, 1986 As Johns entered his 50s in the 1980s, he began producing work with highly personal references that allude to memories and nostalgia, intimate domestic spaces like his bathroom, his shadow, as well as personally resonate art history, including the work of Leonardo DaVinci, Matthias Grunewald, pieces Johns owns by Barnett Newman and George Ohr, popular images that play with the perception of the viewer, and a vase commemorating Queen Elizabeth II’s Silver Jubilee. Johns became interested in perceptual puzzles through Marcel Duchamp because they are in keeping with his interest in active looking, perceiving a flag or a map like you have never seen one before is similar to looking at a picture of a rabbit only to realize that it could also be the head of a duck. Johns finds it interesting that your mind doesn’t allow you so see both the rabbit and the duck simultaneously, which echoes the earlier challenge of seeing a painting of a flag and also a flag in and of itself at the same time. Vision consists of sensation and perception, there is the light on your retina but it takes your mind to perceive it and make sense of the image. This accretion of personal items is heightened by images seemingly tacked or taped onto the canvas. Works from this period are also often paired with identical or highly similar works painted with a different palette or with a different medium. Seasons pairs off Summer and Winter and Spring and Fall where the two seasons in question are depicted as closely related variants. The Whitney is showing Spring and Fall, Philadelphia got Summer and Winter. Both paintings feature Johns’ shadow that he had an assistant trace and cut out. Spring includes the shadow of a boy, which, placed below the shadow of the adult Johns, seems to indicate a reflection on childhood and aging. Lines slanting across the canvas suggest springtime rain and growth, as does the rabbit/duck perceptual puzzle familiar from childhood. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55e9d9e4e4b0821ae7bc59a7/1633126017182-K5OUJ39WWBNT6RYJDYHU/IMG_5459.jpeg Philip Swan’s Blog - Jasper Johns: Mind/Mirror - Make it stand out Fall, 1986 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55e9d9e4e4b0821ae7bc59a7/1633111262169-BG0XO4X45BXRWUSJBQXX/IMG_5461.jpeg Philip Swan’s Blog - Jasper Johns: Mind/Mirror - Make it stand out Racing Thoughts, 1983 Johns has always had an interest in presenting multiple versions of the same image, whether in color or in black and white as we saw with the map paintings, using encaustic or oil as with the flags, making a sculpture and using that as the basis of a print, etc. Racing Thoughts is shown here done in a colored encaustic with its attendant buildup of texture and then in a grisaille in a thin layer of oil. As with so many of his works, Racing Thoughts is replete with autobiographical and art historical references with the title suggesting an onrush of mental anxiety or creativity. Johns has described the process of painting as being a conversation with yourself as well as with other painters, and he incorporates the works of others as they come to mind in the creative process both as a way of paying tribute and a means of unsuccessfully exorcising them from his memory. Neuroscience has found that the creative process is closely tied to memory: that to be in the creative flow requires the prefrontal cortex to disengage from active problem solving in the immediate present so that the brain can begin making free floating associations which are inherently based on memories of past experiences. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55e9d9e4e4b0821ae7bc59a7/1633126060057-Y2V7THQGFA5H8URWBYZ7/IMG_5462.jpeg Philip Swan’s Blog - Jasper Johns: Mind/Mirror - Make it stand out Racing Thoughts, 1984 The setting is Johns’ bathtub: we see the running faucet and his clothing hanging on the wall evoking the flayed skin self portrait of Michelangelo in the Last Judgement segment of the Sistine Chapel. The wall has the outlines of an upside down figure from the Isenheim Alterpiece. A laundry hamper serves as a platform for a pot by ceramicist George Ohr and a vase with the profiles of Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip from the Queen’s Silver Jubilee in 1977. There is a jigsaw puzzle of an old passport photo of Leo Castelli owned by Johns, a Barnett Newman lithograph and a reproduction of the Mona Lisa by Leonardo DaVinci, who Johns greatly admires. But as Johns relaxes in the tub reflecting on artists he admires, a man who made his career, and ceramics he enjoys owning, we have the memento mori of a sign warning of falling ice with a skull and crossbones. Daydreaming on the past continues in a more dreamlike way in the next gallery. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55e9d9e4e4b0821ae7bc59a7/1633126229556-QK0158VT3AIW79YVWD7Z/IMG_5463.jpeg Philip Swan’s Blog - Jasper Johns: Mind/Mirror - Make it stand out Montez Singing, 1989 Moving from the crosshatches of the 70s and 80s, Johns began pursuing very different themes in the 80s and 90s that delve into the subconscious and irrational. The whimsy of dreams is represented at the Whitney, while the horror of nightmares, especially around the AIDS epidemic, are being shown in Philadelphia. Works in the “Dreams” gallery at the Whitney often feature a woman’s profile and her disembodied eyes from a Picasso painting, Straw Hat with Blue Leaves. Many works feature the precise outline of a form that has long been mysterious but was recently discovered to be an ancient sculpture called the Green Angel, although Johns refuses to confirm that as the source. In Montez Singing, the eyes and nose from the Picasso along with a pair of lips suggest the elements of a face regarding each other or a surreal landscape with the lips suggesting mountains, the nose a cloud and the eyes celestial orbs. The reference to Picasso is also a reference to perceptual challenges in line with duck/rabbit puzzles and seeing a crosshatch pattern briefly in a passing car. Picasso was exploring the ways we piece together knowledge of a face through the multiple angles in which we view it. Johns takes Picasso’s work and takes a more extreme step, wrenching out features like individual eyeballs and lips and placing them in a way that in no way resembles a human face. Wispy brush strokes along the edge suggest hair and the circles breasts. In the midst of these anatomical shapes Johns includes a simple picture of a sailboat seemingly hanging from a nail and wire. The sailboat and the title of the work, Montez Singing, refers to his step-grandmother who would play the piano and sing “Red Sails in the Sunset” when Johns lived in his grandfather’s house a boy. The large bulbous eyes and cartoon like nail are also a reference to Philip Guston, whose cartoon-like late work appealed to Johns as a mixture of melancholy and comedy. Johns has also expressed his interest in children’s drawings as being the purest origin of art, and the aesthetics of a child’s drawing is clear here. We have the textural, sculptural feel of the encaustic work: we will see actual sculptures in the next gallery. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55e9d9e4e4b0821ae7bc59a7/1633111344066-8ZM8RY644Y2HZTRQG52I/IMG_5465.jpeg Philip Swan’s Blog - Jasper Johns: Mind/Mirror - Make it stand out Numbers, 2007 (cast 2008) This sculpture from 2007 seeks to replicate an older version commissioned by architect Philip Johnson in 1964 for the opening of the New York State Theater at the new Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts. The 1964 sculpture was made at a time when Johns was using number stencils and was created from sculp-metal, a metallic putty that air hardens into solid metal, a process reminiscent of encaustic where liquid wax hardens as it cools. The New York State Theater, now the David H. Koch Theater, is the home of the New York City Ballet and other dance troupes and Johns slyly referenced this by putting an impression of the foot of his friend Merce Cunningham at the upper right because he thought it would be a perfect way to get Cunningham’s foot in the door of the building where the New York City dance world would congregate. In 1999 Lincoln Center was going to sell the sculpture to raise money and Jasper Johns, Philip Johnson, and others protested because the work was made specifically for that space and is the only public work Johns has produced. Lincoln Center yielded to pressure and did not sell the sculpture, but Johns has noted that once they found out it was worth an estimated $15 million they decided to encase it in Plexiglass and cordon it off with ropes despite the fact that Johns purposely made it out of durable metal. With this experience in mind he asked if he could make a cast from the original but the owners refused so he decided to recreate the work from scratch “since I knew how.” Like flags and maps, numbers appeal to Johns as things the mind already knows that can be manipulated and reinterpreted in endless ways. Unlike maps and flags, numbers can be overlaid and naturally lend themselves to the idea of exponential growth and are free of any set scale or color. Once again, we have an example of a stunningly beautiful object with perfect texture and patina that we want to reach out and touch: there is a definite sensuality at play along with a sense of reassuring order as we vaguely perceive the arrangement of the numbers. As with the flag paintings, we are appreciating the aesthetics of numerals devoid of their meaning. Neuroscience has found that the appeal of visual arts is a close tie to the reading of texture: looking and touching, even if we do not have the ability to actually touch (think of the objects in a Dutch still life), we understand what we are seeing partly by understanding what we are seeing feels like as we run our hand over it. The 2007 sculpture was cast in wax and then into aluminum with the numbers going up sequentially starting from the upper left, where the first panel is left blank. For the 2007 edition Johns recast Cunningham’s foot. While a foundry handled the casting Johns added the polishing and patina himself. Johns used the now slightly damaged wax numbers left from the casting process to create the six smaller works in the gallery cast in bronze, aluminum, and silver. They can be displayed on a plinth as you see in the gallery or hung on a wall. There are keys embedded in the silver sculpture, probably a reference to those seeking to decode the myriad references in Johns’ work while the copper piece includes a prominent footprint and a classified ad for sex services and the bronze sculpture has impressions of a screen, echoing earlier work. In the final gallery we will return to works on canvas as Johns contemplates the end of a long life. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55e9d9e4e4b0821ae7bc59a7/1633689268244-26JCYK3SVIEMIOA2WPJE/EAC6BE66-9BA4-438D-8767-40B312CE4300.jpeg Philip Swan’s Blog - Jasper Johns: Mind/Mirror - Make it stand out Catenary (I Call to the Grave), 1998 In 1996-97 the Museum of Modern Art had a Jasper Johns retrospective and the experience of taking stock of his life and career as he approached his 70s seems to have spurred a change from the light hearted dream inspired works to work reflecting on mortality and loss in his Catenary series, named for the curve in strings suspended from two fixed points across the canvases. The paintings are encaustic and collage on canvas and almost entirely gray in tone, similar to works he created four decades earlier seen in the first gallery, but filled with an elegiac dignity instead of a more youthful angry despair. The fragility of the simple unadorned thread as it rises across the field of view suggests the arc of a life and its inherent vulnerability no matter how successful or seemingly secure. The title of Catenary (I Call to the Grave) quotes the Book of Job when the prophet contemplates death and suffering, wondering if the grave is the only end to his troubles. While the quote is from Job, the pronoun suggests Johns, whose signature is prominent on the canvas, calling to the grave himself. Ever since destroying early work he felt was too emotional when young, Johns has maintained an air of reserve, eschewing a celebrity artist life in the mold of his contemporary Andy Warhol. Here Johns expresses a quiet melancholy clouded in gray with barely discernible lettering quoting an obscure biblical passage like a quiet whisper that forces us to listen more carefully than something spoken in a louder tone. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55e9d9e4e4b0821ae7bc59a7/1633111420954-0B4IJJDLSMBLPPD5DNQL/IMG_5468.jpeg Philip Swan’s Blog - Jasper Johns: Mind/Mirror - Make it stand out Slice, 2020 Slice was completed during COVID-19 and is his most recent painting and embodies his penchant for incorporating elements that are designed by others, items that he takes readymade from the world around him and are, in a way he finds creatively compelling, not his. It features a drawing of the anatomy of a knee drawn by a 17 year old boy. The boy had torn his knee playing soccer and gave the drawing, based on an image he found on the internet, to the orthopedic surgeon treating him, who hung it in his office. Johns goes to the same orthopedist and liked the drawing enough to superimpose it on a 1986 star map called “Slice of the Universe” showing the distribution of nearby galazies sent to Johns by the astrophysicist Margaret Geller in 2018. Johns likes the image because the galaxies resemble a stick man in the middle. “Slice of the Universe” and the drawing of the knee are, in turn, superimposed over knot drawings by Leonardo da Vinci. Johns is therefore panning out from the viscera of an aching knee to the structure of the cosmos with knots created by an artist who seemed to balance the human and the cosmic more than any other before or since. Johns has said in recent interviews that over the past few decades he thought he was working on his final projects only to find that that was not the case. At 91 he knows that the final project is inevitably near at hand, but thankfully for all of us he will continue his creative engagement with the world around him until the end. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55e9d9e4e4b0821ae7bc59a7/1633126282822-WBBSB4Y5KZ6FQSXSFH80/IMG_5467.jpeg Philip Swan’s Blog - Jasper Johns: Mind/Mirror - Make it stand out “…the past is beautiful because one never realizes an emotion at the time. It expands later, and thus we don’t have complete emotions about the present, only the past.” -Virginia Woolf https://www.philipswan.net/philip-swans-blog/https/wwwphilipswannet/blog-page-url/2018/7/6/new-post-title-3 monthly 0.5 2021-10-17 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55e9d9e4e4b0821ae7bc59a7/1602857006965-ELY2QLHNETCT73SIDUIF/74C6A32F-94C4-4C27-B80B-DA162FE8F82A.jpeg Philip Swan’s Blog - Philip Swan: Significant Soil 2020 F This is a pre COVID painting: it is balanced, reflective, restful. The line in the middle of the canvas bisects it in an orderly way. All over compositions of oblique, asymmetric chromatic planes. The irregularity of the diagonally interlocking shapes and colors throughout the overall design gives the paintings an organic quality, creating movement and rhythm. Each move the artist makes depends on the moves that came before, like a game of chess: “I think of my process as akin to a game of chess. The works all start out as a blank white canvas, just as every game of chess starts with the pieces laid out in the same way. I begin with thin washes of color, and then work over that layer with more opaque layers of paint. These are my initial moves in the chess game, moving the pawns around to lay an initial groundwork. As I superimpose layers through masking little surprises start to crop up, just as an opponent in chess will make a move you were not anticipating: you had planned an elaborate trap on the right side of the board and your opponent makes a bold move on the left side that throws off your entire plan. The same happens when something in the previous layer gains a prominence it did not have due to overlapping planes of color: you think, ‘you sly devil, I hadn’t noticed that at all.’ When the painting is done it’s always interesting to see what parts of the initial layer have survived, have been given a totally unplanned prominence as the game progressed.” https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55e9d9e4e4b0821ae7bc59a7/1602857300677-B4NGBEO7A79D3Z9TE6T3/C23C8127-B1DB-4059-941B-D1834D7066F1.jpeg Philip Swan’s Blog - Philip Swan: Significant Soil 2021 D The harder it is for the artist to reconstruct the steps the more compelling the process is. The grays in this work were the same for more than one layer, making it even less clear which came first even though there are clearly layers masking other layers. The application of paint is straightforward: directly from the tube. Rough surface textures are important because the artist wants the materials of painting to be in the foreground, affirming the painting as object. Initial layers of oil washes are overlaid with oil stick stripes worked over with a palette knife and then overlaid with a geometric structure. Color and form are inseparable, and the viewer is therefore asked to navigate the ambiguity between foreground and background, trying to unravel how the traces of layers were constructed. The use of grays in the palette and the emphasis on layering owes a debt to Jasper Johns. “Jasper Johns has inspired my emphasis on surface texture and layering, like the flag paintings where when you look carefully you can see the text of the newspaper underneath: it’s those little surprises that I find compelling. I love Diebenkorn and the “Ocean Park” series is an amazing distillation of a place abstracted that I draw on repeatedly. I’m also a big fan of Philip Guston because Guston was a student of history, specifically Classical history in Rome and Greece, and while his work is definitely modern the fact that it draws on artwork and ideas that have transcended millennia is in keeping with what I like about TS Eliot. Be modern in technique but be cognizant of the larger cultural conversations that have come before and shaped how we see things today.” https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55e9d9e4e4b0821ae7bc59a7/1602857401077-2GDO9F4LS6S193EKUG7V/5E453FEE-A98E-45DA-8FD1-33DD6A6A6B46.jpeg Philip Swan’s Blog - Philip Swan: Significant Soil 2021 D The artist is influenced by the work of Richard Diebenkorn in terms of using abstraction to capture a sense of landscape. New York City is a world of straight lines and superimposed forms that change as you move through it. “The surface texture of the work is important, I’m not interested in a polished finished surface, I want people to sense the physical nature of paint, to see brush strokes, to see the dripping nature of oil thinned with solvents. This keeps the work grounded as an everyday thing, it’s not a precious object formed whole on another plane of existence. My work definitely references the urban environment in terms of its geometry: I think of a photo I once took on the elevated platform of the 7 train where I was looking down on the track. You see the receding yellow edges of the platform on either side and then the silver rails below that running parallel to the yellow edged platform and then the cross ties at right angles to the platform and rails and then, through the cross ties, you can see the asphalt below with the yellow lane markers showing through and echoing the yellow of the platform edges. This is one of countless compositions you see all of the time in New York, entirely unplanned, but unique to an urban environment anywhere. How can you ever get sick of these little visual surprises? And all of this, of course, is in dialogue with the natural geography of the place: one obvious example is Central Park where the manhattan schist intrudes upon the orderly geometry of the buildings and streets girding the park.” The geometry of the city is internalized for the artist, snatches of the city in the mind’s eye because it is impossible to see or comprehend it in one view. The internalized landscape becomes abstracted, a map of the world that you negotiate with others is a world you also negotiate within yourself. “When I bring New York to mind I have the street map in my mind, and that is overlaid with the subway map, and then when I think of a specific neighborhood I try to summon up what is on the corner of cross streets. For instance, if you mention the Upper East Side I think of 86th street, I think of the 6 line to get there and where it drops me off, then I think of the corner of say 86th and Lex as opposed to 86th an Park or 86th and 5th, which all call to mind very different buildings and neighborhoods even though they are all on 86th street. As I’m working on a painting I’m not thinking of a specific neighborhood, or street corner, it’s more a consolidation of everything I’ve seen up to that point, or at least in recent memory, along with how I feel at the moment.” https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55e9d9e4e4b0821ae7bc59a7/1602857461747-5AB6ILCLPL4BLEFKAG45/34911306-644F-4D78-BB62-57D9C2A97D5A.jpeg Philip Swan’s Blog - Philip Swan: Significant Soil 2021 F This work was created in April 2020 at the height of the COVID crisis in New York City. “The outbreak of COVID has put the arts in perspective for many people. For artists, there is the question of the relevance of creating art in a public health emergency, there is the need for motivation when there are so many demands on their attention, there is the feeling of speaking to a void with galleries and performance spaces closed, and there is the ever present uncertainty of what kind of art world will be left standing when it ends. Throughout this crisis I have been referring back to the idea of living a life of significant soil, as TS Eliot puts it. Eliot’s work tries to shore up meaning in the wake of the World Wars, and I find inspiration in that sentiment as we try to cobble together a meaningful life in this awful year.” The work created over the course of the pandemic is less orderly and restful, the compositions seem more chaotic. Forms seem to be splintering, collapsing, there is no repose. While the artist uses hard edge geometry it is not about purity of form: it is messy, like life, geometry enmeshed in a burgeoning mess as chromatic planes overlap gestural elements. In this sense, the artist’s work is a transcription of a lived experience in a specific context. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55e9d9e4e4b0821ae7bc59a7/1602857155545-Y5KZ0S0N64PJ5RBJE15E/9C3BFC63-14E2-4727-9654-AC041B676130.jpeg Philip Swan’s Blog - Philip Swan: Significant Soil 2021 B This work is an excellent example of the artist’s use of pentimento: the appearance in a painting of earlier elements subsequently painted over. This is a visual record of the accumulation of ideas, of what is kept and what is lost. There is a line down the middle of this canvas, created during COVID: it bisects the canvas but lends to the feeling of shattering and collapse, it doesn’t lend to a sense of order or reflection. The evolution of absolute control and chance as prior layers come to light relate to each other in almost three dimensional ways. “In my work I like to balance chaos and collapse with order and reflection. I feel a work is complete when these two are balanced because when that balance comes the work can stand on it’s own. Many abstract artists describe works as being done when they have their own presence, a presence independent of their creator, almost like children stepping away from their parents as adults in their own right. It’s obviously arbitrary, but for me it gets back to the chess game: when my opponent surprises me, when I realize there is a logic revealing itself independent from my own, that’s when I know it’s time to stop.” https://www.philipswan.net/philip-swans-blog/https/wwwphilipswannet/blog-page-url/2018/7/6/new-post-title-1 monthly 0.5 2020-02-24 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55e9d9e4e4b0821ae7bc59a7/1582580969283-7UT1SE391BN0E2WKNILR/Phillip2020E+1.jpg Philip Swan’s Blog - Amos Eno Gallery: "The Longest Distance" Philip Swan 2019 E Oil on Linen 30 x 24 inches 2019 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55e9d9e4e4b0821ae7bc59a7/1582581058760-KVFJ5RX6EDIAWJEO5Y54/Phillip+2020F+1.jpg Philip Swan’s Blog - Amos Eno Gallery: "The Longest Distance" Philip Swan 2019 F Oil on Canvas 30 x 24 inches 2019 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55e9d9e4e4b0821ae7bc59a7/1582581135237-NER0VP0RKISZU9FE2O8K/Phillip+2020A+1.jpg Philip Swan’s Blog - Amos Eno Gallery: "The Longest Distance" 2020 A Oil on Canvas 30 x 24 inches 2020 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55e9d9e4e4b0821ae7bc59a7/1582581214464-VFNP4MI7RZJCNMKZB3CB/1+3.jpg Philip Swan’s Blog - Amos Eno Gallery: "The Longest Distance" Installation view: Philip Swan paintings, Malin Abrahamsson PVC sculptures, Irja Bodén ceramics. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55e9d9e4e4b0821ae7bc59a7/1582581382668-HU0R9HMHTKMY3VNUCMT5/2+3.jpg Philip Swan’s Blog - Amos Eno Gallery: "The Longest Distance" Installation view: Philip Swan paintings, Malin Abrahamsson PVC sculptures, Irja Bodén ceramics. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55e9d9e4e4b0821ae7bc59a7/1582581419742-8XNLB6ATWKXRRNCHE8CB/3+1.jpg Philip Swan’s Blog - Amos Eno Gallery: "The Longest Distance" Installation view: Philip Swan paintings, Malin Abrahamsson PVC sculptures, Irja Bodén ceramics. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55e9d9e4e4b0821ae7bc59a7/1582581451010-YRAA9S5YEFLT9BEA24NQ/4+1.jpg Philip Swan’s Blog - Amos Eno Gallery: "The Longest Distance" Installation view: Philip Swan paintings, Malin Abrahamsson PVC sculptures, Irja Bodén ceramics. https://www.philipswan.net/philip-swans-blog/https/wwwphilipswannet/blog-page-url/2018/7/6/new-post-title-2 monthly 0.5 2019-12-07 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55e9d9e4e4b0821ae7bc59a7/1573852386700-X9A8OH5CGDDDTDG5K1KY/E388AA84-DD68-4081-B8E7-3DB1A48B9B7F.jpeg Philip Swan’s Blog - Rachel Harrison: Life Hack Introduction “Rachel Harrison Life Hack” is a chronological mid career survey (artist born in New York, 1966) from 1991 to the present. Harrison graduated from Wesleyan in 1989 and moved to Brooklyn in the early 90s, before it became the art hub it is today. With little money she utilized cheap materials at hand and showed work in alternative spaces and pop up galleries around the city instead of in more traditional galleries. “Life Hack” in this sense refers to her seemingly improvised work, making do with materials immediately at hand rather than materials carefully laid out or gathered beforehand with a plan in mind. These are not the usual materials found in a museum, they seem to be pulled from the aisles of a Home Depot and a Costco, crashing the gates of high culture and presenting themselves as both puzzling and accessible at the same time. Harrison references pop culture as well as art history using everyday, inexpensive materials not normally associated with fine art, with a very “Do It Yourself” aesthetic. The use of such materials undermines the gap between everyday life and art and dismisses the association between art and precious or rare materials. Like Marcel Duchamp and the Dada school a century ago, she also combines a sense of wry humor with her mundane materials, and leaves the meaning of her seemingly absurd works open to interpretation by viewers. There doesn’t seem to be a wrong answer when looking for meaning in her work. For instance, in the murals at the start of the show there is a photograph of a burned bagel called “Are You Sure It’s the Right Baby?” This was a question posed by her mother’s doctor when Rachel was born. There is such a multitude of references in Harrison’s work that it is unlikely that anyone other than Harrison herself can decipher them completely, but the works can still be appreciated without knowing any of these references or even taking the time to learn them. The first thing to note about this show is the doorway leading into it from the elevator. Rachel Harrison draped some streamers across the door to bar the entrance, an entrance that seems the most convenient as you step off the elevator. The streamers don’t look like an actual barrier, so to make sure no one steps over the streamers the Whitney has put up more traditional stanchions. Harrison is very interested in museums and the way art is displayed in these institutions. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55e9d9e4e4b0821ae7bc59a7/1572809297457-U6U8S7N8KXYYZ7SE7Y0B/FD152DD9-3C08-49FE-AEFB-BBF5B41B8DDC.jpeg Philip Swan’s Blog - Rachel Harrison: Life Hack Voyage of the Beagle, 2007 This installation consists of 57 photographs and refers to Darwin’s account of his journey on HMS Beagle published in 1839, which lead to his theory of evolution published in On the Origin of Species in 1859. These photographs record Harrison’s search for the origin of sculpture. She began her voyage in Corsica where she photographed prehistoric menhirs (standing stone) daring from 1500 BC. She continued on around Europe and the United States photographing images of high art and low popular culture and has arranged the photos in a way that shows the relations between the two: another example of the democratization of high art and high culture. She’s also exploring the difficulty of documenting sculpture with photographs: with her own sculpture, she insists on the necessity of walking around it, of seeing it in the round. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55e9d9e4e4b0821ae7bc59a7/1572809347919-IND9ORK2KG9S0E68Z5ZH/2B0C4E29-508C-4B0F-9B45-C6466BCF13F0.jpeg Philip Swan’s Blog - Rachel Harrison: Life Hack Teaching Bo to Count Backwards, 1996-97 This gallery contains Harrison’s work from the nineties when she was starting her career. In the Bo Derek piece there are cans of olives stacked on an inverted gutter with photographs of Bo Derek and her husband John. As you look at the cans from left to right you will notice that the number of olives depicted on the labels gradually decreases while Bo’s expression transforms at the same time. Her husband John’s expression seems aloof while Bo becomes increasingly assertive. Bo Derek is probably most associated with the movie 10 which was her rating as a beauty and also references the manner of counting via the canned olives in an absurd way. Harrison is usually referencing art history in some way, and in this case we can see a relationship to Warhol’s soup cans as well as the Minimalist focus on systems, especially systems of counting or recording and seriality in repetition. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55e9d9e4e4b0821ae7bc59a7/1572809578774-PYPBACYKFZYBHOV58917/1931E0B5-E5F7-42FF-94E2-4A2CAC9B82E8.jpeg Philip Swan’s Blog - Rachel Harrison: Life Hack Untitled (Poles for a Dangerous Art World), 1992 There is a piece on the opposite side of the gallery called Dinner which consists of ten Mason jars which comes from her first Manhattan group show in a restaurant in the East Village. Harrison ordered dinner from the restaurant and put the leftovers in Ziplock bags which she arranged on the wall in a grid, referencing conceptual and minimalist art in a similar vein as the Bo Derek work. After two days there were so many flies around the bags that the owner of the restaurant complained so Harrison put the bags in Mason jars. Looking at them, you can sense allusions to the bodily functions of ingestion, digestion, and excretion. She further explored this idea of storage and accumulation with Poles for a Dangerous Art World. We are tempted to read the labels on the bags to make sense of the piece, but are warded off by the poles on which they hang: broomstick, paint roller extension pole, pool cue, billy club, ski pole, etc., some of which are sharpened like spears. Obviously, storing art in a Ziplock bag is not something that a museum conservator would recommend, and we get back to this idea of the high and low, art and the reality of the day to day. The bags contain the types of things stowed away in a basement and quickly forgotten: potting compound, hair extensions, denim, bread, tuna can, vacuum lint, foam, tape, wire, etc. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55e9d9e4e4b0821ae7bc59a7/1572809680425-SXS63ZTXVG8SURDIYCRB/4537572D-9868-45B3-89CD-E78ECA16BB3C.jpeg Philip Swan’s Blog - Rachel Harrison: Life Hack Main Street Gallery This gallery includes work that Harrison began showing at Greene Nafali from 2004-2007. Looking at her work in the show, you notice that there are no barriers to protect the work, no tape marking off where to stand or stanchions keeping viewers back: the only lines on the floor are in this gallery, which form a map of a town. She wanted to arrange the sculptures in the format of an American town with generic street names like Main Street. As you walk around and look at the works they are like homes and their owners in a small town, odd and sometimes unsettling in a way that undermines the generic sameness of small towns and the people who live in them. Sphinx is a sculpture that you run into as you enter the gallery. You first see a photo of Sister Wendy (a British nun who hosted a BBC art history program in the 1990s) mounted on dry wall, and need to walk around the dry wall to see the sculpture on the other side: appreciating sculpture requires movement. Sister Wendy gave a mass audience access to art history, the ability to appreciate art without the pretentious trappings of the art historical elite. There are photographs on the adjoining wall, titled Perth Amboy, which show an image of the Virgin of Guadeloupe which miraculously appeared in a second story window in a home in Perth Amboy in 2001, attracting pilgrims who waited for hours to see it. Harrison found this touching, and saw it not only as religious devotion but also as devotion to the ideal of the American Dream. While a painting of the Virgin and Child by an artist like Leonardo or Raphael is of great value in the traditional art world, this image of condensation on a window which looks like the Virgin to believers in an immigrant community is of equal or even greater value to them as a direct communication from the Virgin herself. There is a sculpture called Cindy, which features a blond wig and is a reference to Cindy Sherman. Alexander the Great features a mannequin with two faces, with an Abraham Lincoln mask on the back of the mannequin’s head wearing sunglasses. She did a series of works incorporating mannequins she found, along with found materials like FedEx boxes which she coats with a cement like medium. All of these pieces she creates herself, with her own hands, without assistants: real life hacking art. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55e9d9e4e4b0821ae7bc59a7/1572809873078-DJZMITVC0NBGBCOKO7JS/DB643DB3-BBD5-484E-A41D-95500EBAD1CF.jpeg Philip Swan’s Blog - Rachel Harrison: Life Hack https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55e9d9e4e4b0821ae7bc59a7/1572809923589-UFXTSIGIAFWP7KZD3I0I/F48A0335-541D-428E-A511-232D7E43EDC6.jpeg Philip Swan’s Blog - Rachel Harrison: Life Hack Huffy Howler, 2004 This work is a mock equestrian statue, the cliche of the heroic man on horseback. There are sheepskins hung from the back of the bike with an image of Mel Gibson from the movie Braveheart and the front of the bike is weighted down with purses full of stones and brick, perhaps a reference to the love conquests of the leading man which actually weigh him down more than they lighten his load. This is the hero of make believe, of a kid daydreaming that they are riding a charging steed as they peddle across their neighborhood, of actors playing medieval warriors while living a pampered life of privilege once the camera stops rolling and they retire to their catered meals and trailers. The hero riding the bike would not get far since the front tire is flat and the bike itself is impaled on a lavender wall-like form. Gibson was once pulled over for a suspected DUI in Malibu, where he berated the police with an anti-Semitic rant and yelled “Don’t you know who I am? I own this town.” This also introduces the idea of ownership, of conquering, even if it is just a sense of privilege and kingship from conquering the world of entertainment. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55e9d9e4e4b0821ae7bc59a7/1572809987035-XKQDVUNM4NK4G49M88T6/D2F7EA47-CC3F-46D2-AD29-6EE8E01A2ABF.jpeg Philip Swan’s Blog - Rachel Harrison: Life Hack Sunset Series, 2000 Harrison has joked that with this series of photographs she explored travel photography without leaving her studio. She used a found photo of a sunset and challenged herself to create as many photographs as she could using this single photograph as the template. She rephotographed it 31 times, using different kinds of lenses, different amounts of lighting, changing the aperture of the camera, cropping the photo, bending the photo, taking a photo of the photo from an oblique angle, shining light off of the surface, wrapping the photo in plastic wrap, etc. She did all of this without utilizing a dark room, she simply took 35 mm photos. The subject matter is purposely banal, which was part of the challenge: every photograph of a sunset looks basically the same as every other one even though every one of them seeks to capture a “special moment.” “Let’s capture this magic moment in Cancun forever with a photo of the sun going down over a featureless ocean surface which could be any body of water anywhere in the world.” How can you manipulate it to make it different using low tech techniques and not sophisticated Photoshop like software? https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55e9d9e4e4b0821ae7bc59a7/1572810039242-XN6FFKQSBPIT652Y3X72/488350D3-7C05-41DC-821F-A1DBE37A6D06.jpeg Philip Swan’s Blog - Rachel Harrison: Life Hack Springs, 2017 This series of photographs were taken at the Pollock-Krasner House in Springs, New York. These are photographs of the paint cans that were in Pollock’s studio after his fatal car crash in 1956. The brushes are stuck in cans of hardened paint, the fluidity that made his work flow now gone. By shooting them from above, they resemble the holes of a grave. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55e9d9e4e4b0821ae7bc59a7/1572810076728-S639DHV1Y9SUCO9IAHE5/A01F19C8-E0B4-4DF5-8629-DFEE3002866F.jpeg Philip Swan’s Blog - Rachel Harrison: Life Hack Hoarders, 2012 This piece requires you to see it in the round to appreciate it: sculpture requires movement. What looks like a boulder from one side is seen propped up by a metal bucket on the other, while a video plays on a flat screen where a taxi driver she filmed talks about the way the one percent in this country hoard their wealth. The driver mentions the A&E show “Hoarders,” and compares the hoarders on the show with the hoarding of the wealthy. This echoes the hoarding of food in Mason jars and ziplock bags in the previous gallery, the idea of accretion evident in her sculptures, the gathering of stones and bricks in handbags, etc. The piece looks heavy, but the boulder is made of wood, polystyrene, chicken wire, with cement glue and acrylic: it is hollow and actually quite light. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55e9d9e4e4b0821ae7bc59a7/1572810118562-HBU0S5FWUTNR06SIO5WN/3F55783B-CB5B-4F21-AF72-0B31D85158AD.jpeg Philip Swan’s Blog - Rachel Harrison: Life Hack Drawings of Amy Winehouse, 2011-12 Harrison began this series of drawings the year Amy Winehouse died in 2011. There are fifty drawings in all where Winehouse is placed alongside artists who have been long canonized, like Pablo Picasso, Gertrude Stein, Willem de Kooning, Alice Neel and Martin Kippenberg. Is this equating Winehouse’s genius with those of other geniuses, or is it a parody, lumping everyone together in the cult of fame and celebrity, leveling, once again, the idea of high and low art and culture. The drawings depict Winehouse as a caricature, it’s uncertain if they are drawn in sympathy or in mockery. The drawings were done from videos Harrison pulled up online, combing through the endless feed of YouTube. The series also speaks to art school, when the beginning artist learns to draw by looking at images in books and magazines, where things are 2 dimensional and already framed, before commencing with drawings of live models and sculpture. Note that in the drawing featured here the eyes are skewed the same way: Winehouse’s drunken visage is like that of a Picasso. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55e9d9e4e4b0821ae7bc59a7/1572810170393-MAZIFNNA2AF78S2KY87C/52192AAB-8571-40F8-AA70-67A05C1886D4.jpeg Philip Swan’s Blog - Rachel Harrison: Life Hack Installation encircled with chairs The main feature in this gallery is the platform of sculptures surrounded by a circle of chairs. The idea of an assembly of figures, of monuments in a civic space, a forum, a space for democracy and democratic debates, as the diverse sculptures each clamor for recognition, to be heard. Of course the irony is that when a visitor sits in one of the chairs, they have their back to the work, to the assembly, the points being expressed. This is if visitors feel free to sit in the chairs, to transgress the “don’t touch” ethic of the art museum. Harrison is actually bothered by benches in museums, which are now just spots for people to look at their phones instead of the art so here if you want to sit and look at your emails you will not be able to look at the art at the same time: you need to make a choice. I’m with Stupid depicts a child mannequin, which is buried in junk, and wearing a death mask. There’s a sculpture on the opposite side with a syringe in it and a sculpture across from I’m with Stupid with a photograph of Santa Claus being arrested, perhaps during SantaCon (which makes it justified in my opinion). It is better to not see each work in isolation, but to see it as a whole, as an assembly, to run your eye over all of it and take it in in its totality. Again, the idea of accumulation, of hoarding: the sculptures could have been spread out through the large gallery room, there is plenty of space, but they are all crammed together on the platform. Harrison is also commenting on museum culture where you see a cone on the floor, a cone that art handlers put on the floor while they are working. The sculpture near the cone is on the floor, not on the platform behind it, as if the handlers had not finished the installation when the show opened. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55e9d9e4e4b0821ae7bc59a7/1572810263299-8BXQOO1OCRXG8ORWAX0Y/C43A6C6F-6479-4827-8050-031205EB3E80.jpeg Philip Swan’s Blog - Rachel Harrison: Life Hack Full HD, 2019 Harrison made a sculpture entitled “Every Sculpture Needs a Trap Door” that incorporated a print out of an Andrea Fraser essay titled “Why Does Fred Sandback’s Work Make Me Cry?” Presumably Harrison included this essay as a reference to Sandback’s work, which created an illusion of demarcated space using taunt lines of yarn. Full HD seems to reference Sandback in this sense. The minimal nature of this work can be contrasted to the materiality of the works in the previous gallery: it is a stark transition. If you think of the previous gallery as being full of bombast, this is a quiet rejoinder, a self-deprecatingly spare way to close the exhibition. Perhaps the title is an ironic commentary on the low tech nature of the sculpture, including the old video camera that is presumably not filming in HD. In any event, the camera is pointed at the wall of the gallery so any HD filming will be of a blank wall. The title might also be a reference to the fact that what we see with our own eyes, like this sculpture, is full HD without the use of technology. The phrase “Full HD” suggests that we are about to see something amazing that is worthy of the technology, like a school of fish on a coral reef or a drone flyover of the Grand Canyon or Manhattan. Instead, we get a full HD view of a broom, a rug, a branch, and some cords.The broom echoes the mop at the start of the exhibition: these two mundane cleaning objects bring us full circle. Like other sculptures, there are no caution strips, there is no barrier to getting too close to the work. Given how fragile the work is, leaving it exposed in this way is especially risky. https://www.philipswan.net/philip-swans-blog/https/wwwphilipswannet/blog-page-url/2018/7/6/new-post-title monthly 0.5 2019-08-16 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55e9d9e4e4b0821ae7bc59a7/1558721280338-HYB8FH56O30GH3V0D6H6/F12CB321-4FBE-4ADB-ACEE-B04F83CF6FD7.JPG Philip Swan’s Blog - Whitney Biennial 2019 Kota Ezawa (Born 1969 in Cologne, West Germany. Lives in Oakland, CA) National Anthem, 2018 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55e9d9e4e4b0821ae7bc59a7/1558117444480-IERE11PQIMTJZ0JNHQLX/FullSizeRender.jpg Philip Swan’s Blog - Whitney Biennial 2019 Carissa Rodriguez (Born 1970 in New York, NY. Lives in New York, NY) The Maid, 2018 The title of this film comes from a short story by Robert Walser, only a paragraph long, written in 1913, in which a maid is hired to look after the child of a wealthy woman. When the child disappears, the maid spends twenty years looking for her, eventually finding her as a grown woman in a beautiful Parisian garden: the maid is so overcome she dies from joy. Rodriguez seems to see parallels between the children of wealthy families being cared for by nannies and the care of precious works of art by domestic staff in the homes of these same families. The film shows copies of Constantin Brancusi’s Newborn created by artist Sherrie Levine in various institutions and private homes in New York and Los Angeles: the sculpture, like the young girl, now has a life of its own in venues far from its origins. The film addresses how we build relationships caring for people or objects over time and how objects inspired by spiritual feelings eventually become objects of desire and monetary value. Brancusi was inspired by the idea of origins, and created Newborn as the embodiment of that inspiration. Art objects, like children, all have an origin, which shapes who or what they are in the context of where they end up over time. Birth, newborns, and origins will be revisited in the last gallery. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55e9d9e4e4b0821ae7bc59a7/1558715653059-G0QUATQVQ663XLGB634G/FullSizeRender.jpg Philip Swan’s Blog - Whitney Biennial 2019 Pat Phillips (Born 1987 in Lakenheath United Kingdom. Lives in Pineville, LA) Untitled (Don’t Tread on Me), 2019 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55e9d9e4e4b0821ae7bc59a7/1558117696896-9G98NEBRZ933RPSX8UXP/FullSizeRender.jpg Philip Swan’s Blog - Whitney Biennial 2019 Jeanette Mundt (Born 1982 in Princeton, NJ. Lives in Somerset, NJ) Born Athlete American: Simone Biles I, 2017. Jeanette Mundt sources images from social media, film stills, art history, and news outlets as a way of commenting on what we see in the media. In this series of paintings, Mundt worked from composite photographs published by the New York Times of the 2016 United States Gymnastics Team. This format of photography hearkens back to nineteenth century stop-gap photographs of models walking or horses running, frozen frame by frame. It is also suggestive of Marcel Duchamp’s famous Nude Descending a Staircase, combining representation with a form of abstraction. Mundt eliminated some of the sequences published in the newspaper, throwing off the smooth flow of the bodies as they move from frame to frame as a way of controlling time and jarring the viewer who is mentally and visually following the sequence of movement. Interestingly, the sexual abuse scandal surrounding the team physician Larry Nassar came to light after the series was created. Ultimately, Mundt is interested in societal constructs expressed through the replication of popular images, especially as they address gender, sexuality and celebrity. Looking at the gymnasts we see the tension on their faces and in their bodies as they serve to represent both gender stereotypes and their national identity (the flag again in their uniforms), all under the glare of the media. We will see other works addressing media representation in the next gallery. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55e9d9e4e4b0821ae7bc59a7/1558117816664-QR7FEAIJBQH7HP6DAO6K/FullSizeRender.jpg Philip Swan’s Blog - Whitney Biennial 2019 Christine Sun Kim (Born 1980 in Orange County, CA. Lives in Berlin, Germany) Degrees of My Deaf Rage in the Art World, 2018 Christine Sun Kim has been deaf since birth and grew up questioning the privileging of sound as a form of communication. Because of her deafness, she receives information through American Sign Language interpreters, subtitles and other forms of written communication which can serve as a filter in terms of content, and delays the relaying of information both ways. With this in mind, she explores art as a visual language that she is able to utilize through sound, including drawings made via the vibrations of a sub woofer speaker.. Acknowledging that sound is largely accepted as the most direct form of communication, she uses it as a medium in her work, describing a process of “unlearning society’s views and etiquettes around sound.” By “owning” sound, she challenges the authority of the hearing. Her first use of sound art was a collaboration with a musician friend who let her tinker with his subwoofers and would tell her if it was a “good sound” or a “bad sound” she was making. This reminded her of growing up and having her parents tell her that she was being too loud, especially in comparison to her quiet sister: she was being scolded for making noises she could not hear. She describes sound as being like a ghost to her, not in terms of haunting her but as being a presence she cannot access but whose presence she can use to spark reactions in a hearing audience. The works on view in the Biennial explore the degrees of “deaf rage.” While the rage is understandable, Kim alleviates the rage with a tinge of humor. The degrees of deaf rage while traveling range from “Uber driver calls instead of texting” to “getting hit in the head with a bag of peanuts by a flight attendant who tries to get our attention” to “being offered a wheelchair at the arrival gate” and “being given a braille menu at a restaurant.” https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55e9d9e4e4b0821ae7bc59a7/1558117949724-FMEKTWDNVOFFL9LI9UP2/D36C0671-03BC-444B-ADB4-580B91FFFBFB.JPG Philip Swan’s Blog - Whitney Biennial 2019 Jeffrey Gibson (Born 1972 in Colorado Springs, CO. Lives in Germantown, NY) PEOPLE LIKE US, 2019 Jeffrey Gibson’s work addresses being marginalized as both a gay man and a citizen of the Mississippi Band of the Choctaw Indians. In his work, he incorporates geometric abstraction that is inspired by both modernist art and the arts of Native Americans. His work combines materials from traditional arts and crafts with modern mass produced items, as evidenced by the oversized garments hanging from the gallery ceiling which include gourd epaulettes, beadwork, fabric from past projects, and colorful ribbons which also reference queer club culture. Other garments he has made can be worn, the size of these garments make them impractical for that purpose. There is a parallel here between gay dance clubs and Native American dances, which both encourage ritual movement that is a celebration of both the larger community and one’s personal identity. Gibson is interested in how the body is represented by both adornment and performance, especially in the context of the traditional pow-wow, and these garments include metal jingles that are associated with female pow-wow dancers. These specific garments are associated with the Ghost Dance movement, which represented peaceful resistance to European American settlement by wearing ceremonial Ghost Shirts that were thought to be impervious to bullets. Gibson likes the idea of garments that can bestow power and protection on the wearer and wonders why our contemporary society makes it so hard to believe that such an object can be worn and give that kind of protection. The work resembles a banner hanging from the rafters, and Gibson has created an alternate American flag visitors might have seen as they waited to purchase tickets in the main lobby: our third reference to the flag. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55e9d9e4e4b0821ae7bc59a7/1558118008013-HVWS78OHWQYEBMV2S9EJ/446A4D10-00BB-4901-A752-03E86930EF34.JPG Philip Swan’s Blog - Whitney Biennial 2019 Alexandra Bell (Born 1983 in Chicago, IL. Lives in Brooklyn, NY) A selection of works from No Humans Involved: After Sylvia Wynter, 2018-19 Alexandra Bell received a Master’s degree from Columbia’s school of journalism in 2013 and uses her academic training in journalism to critique bias in the media, whether it be the selection of images, the wording of headlines, or the layout of the pages. As part of her course work, she had to read three newspapers a day: The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The Daily News, and this inundation gave her the opportunity to notice the editorial bias of each. Bell marks up the pages in the spirit of a newsroom editor and presents what she calls Counternarratives which include redacted text, rewritten headlines, and alternative photos which focus on what is often missing or buried in the news that we consume. She considers fake news as any news that does not incorporate the views of multiple groups of people in our society. Ultimately, Bell is arguing for all of us to be thoughtful consumers of news, to question what we are reading rather then being passive recipients. In this way, she is similar to Jeannette Mundt and her examination of the photographs of gymnasts seen earlier. Bell’s After Sylvia Wynter (Sylvia Winter is a cultural theorist who discusses the classification of racial violence in language) consists of 20 prints exploring how The New York Daily News covered the Central Park Five case over ten days in 1989, when five black and Hispanic teenagers were mistakenly convicted and imprisoned for raping a white female investment banker who had been jogging in Central Park, serving between six and thirteen years in prison. Twelve years after the conviction, a young man came forward to say that he had actually committed the crime and they were released. Bell blacks out images and text from the paper that focused on the rape victim, leaving visible the text relating to the alleged perpetrators who were also victims. There are twenty pages here, but there were forty pages devoted to this story in the ten days after the attack before there was any trial. The text left visible in each front page reveals the vitriol leveled against the defendants by the press and Bell wants to emphasize the repetitious nature of the language and the accusations. Bell also questions why so much attention was devoted to a white rape victim when at the same time there were so many black and Hispanic women also suffering from rape. She includes a full page advertisement published in every major New York newspaper reading “Bring Back the Death Penalty,” which was paid for by Donald Trump. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55e9d9e4e4b0821ae7bc59a7/1558120523532-3XXMTYYC2NS7CWJRWTTO/FullSizeRender.jpg Philip Swan’s Blog - Whitney Biennial 2019 Paul Mpagi Sepuya (Born 1982 in San Bernardino, CA. Lives in Los Angeles, CA) Studio, 2017-2018 Sepuya was born in Los Angeles in 1982 and returned there after living in New York City for a decade. His work explores the possibilities of mirrors in creating ambiguous daydream space in his photographs. Space, literal and illusionary, is very much a part of his process. He is interested in the physical space between the photographer and the object or person being photographed, as well as the backdrop of the subject and the space between the photographer and the back of the studio itself and how all of this relates to what is made visible by the photographer. Mirrors serve to expand the space and give it depth as well as to juxtapose reflections of bodies and body parts whose relation to the viewer in the space of the photographed environment is unclear. These photos are often a form of visual puzzle that requires careful looking from those who want to puzzle them out. In his photographs he includes friends and fellow artists who are photographed in the act of being both an artist at work and a model, either wittingly or unwittingly which, in turn, examines the way people relate to each other in a physical environment. The camera itself is often visible, reflected in the mirror, which underscores the fact that what we are looking at is a photograph and dissolves any willingness on our part to trick ourselves into thinking we are looking at anything other than a piece of photographic paper hung on a wall: if we see a photograph as a document, as a piece of information, making the camera visible underscores the origin of this information and the inherent fiction in its creation, a represented reality vs. a re-presented photograph. The tension between what our minds tell us, that this is a photograph depicting a pleasurable daydream, and what our imagination wants us to believe, that we are looking in on an actual event, compels our interest. Many critics have noted the sense of the “desiring gaze” in Sepuya’s work. Sepuya thinks of his work as portraying visual gossip, stories that we hear about others in a usually imperfect and often inflammatory way. The interactions between the figures in the photographs seem to anticipate intimacy, the deflected, refracted gazes suggesting flirtation, and meaningful looks exchanged in passing between strangers. It has also been pointed out that Sepuya is part of a younger generation of gay men who have no living memory of the AIDS crisis, and who interact in a way that has shed much of the fear of that era. Sepuya says that he likes to photograph his subjects as past, current, or future lovers. Sepuya initially used a cheap monolight strobe to photograph his figures, which gave the photographs a cool lighting. He usually photographs in the studio, and his more recent photographs use natural light as opposed to the strobe, which makes the images darker, with the sense of being in a bedroom or other intimate, not fully lit space. The association of dark spaces with sexual liaisons, with acts not shared in the light, is of interest to Sepuya. His studio in Los Angeles has a skylight, and he works with the fickleness of the changing natural light that softens the edges and enhances the dreamlike nature of the work. Some of these photos were taken by the subject, muddying the idea of authorship. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55e9d9e4e4b0821ae7bc59a7/1558725598016-TE1C1654K84HMF385NQO/FullSizeRender.jpg Philip Swan’s Blog - Whitney Biennial 2019 Keegan Monaghan (Born 1986 in Evanston, IL. Lives in Brooklyn, NY) Incoming, 2016-2017 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55e9d9e4e4b0821ae7bc59a7/1558118452482-GMELFZX320KS1WSO1ZZW/DE9B2F1B-4D43-41EB-A1CF-7D499BDCA7E0.JPG Philip Swan’s Blog - Whitney Biennial 2019 Simone Leigh (Born 1967 in Chicago, IL. Lives in Brooklyn, NY) Stick, 2019 Simone Leigh is primarily a ceramicist who also works with video and performance to focus on the experience of black women and notions of beauty and agency. Leigh often incorporates references to West African architecture and building materials, including adobe architecture. In Stick she addresses stereotypical depictions of the female body as a vessel, as well as stereotypes about black women depicted as “mammy.” Stick is inspired by a diner called “Mammy’s Cupboard” in Mississippi, constructed in the 1940s and still there today in which patrons enter the diner through an enormous woman’s skirt in a roadside attraction typical of the era. The monumental woman’s face was originally black but today is painted a lighter shade that makes her race ambiguous. The women depicted in her sculptures have soft depressions where their eyes would normally be as a way of resisting being subjected to the other’s gaze and suggesting an inward look. Leigh’s work also concerns itself with medical care for the community. In an exhibition called “The Waiting Room” at the New Museum, Leigh sought to expand the definition of medicine to include traditional herbal remedies, spiritual health practices, holistic care and meditation rooms as a form of social justice as opposed to a luxury alternative for the monied few. This convergence of race and medicine is further explored in Leigh’s most recent video, which creates a new episode of M*A*S*H with an entirely black female cast. Leigh told the New York Times “I feel like we need a comedy now because we’re in such desperate times.” Leigh has work on view until October 27 at the Guggenheim, having won the 2018 Hugo Boss Prize and she has a large sculpture that is currently on the High Line at 30th Street which will be on view through September 2020. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55e9d9e4e4b0821ae7bc59a7/1558118593536-W9DLRSTJB4ZO6FMIUNBZ/FullSizeRender.jpg Philip Swan’s Blog - Whitney Biennial 2019 Heji Shin (Born 1983 in Seoul, South Korea. Lives in New York, NY) Baby, 2016 Heji Shin’s photos depict the moment just after a baby’s head crowns, purple and disembodied, inspired by horror movies and science fiction. Think about Brancusi’s newborn, the ideal and clean abstraction as compared to the messy reality. The babies look gruesome, like aliens, and they also look like they could be dead, which brings together the realties of the life cycle that are often hidden and excluded from public view. She contacted midwives, asking them to put her in touch with pregnant mothers who would agree to be photographed at this particular moment of giving birth in exchange for more flattering photos of the infants after they had been cleaned up and could be safely posted on social media surrounded by butterflies and flowers. Not one mother after meeting with Shin refused to do it. Shin’s photos usually put the viewer in close proximity to normally private moments in people’s lives in a way that questions traditional views of morality, intimacy and voyeurism. She became widely known for an ad campaign for clothing label Eckhaus Latta that depicted young couples actually having sex, with the adult content pixelated out. She has also attracted controversy by doing a series of portraits of Kanye West, who is persona non grata in arts circles for visiting Donald Trump at the White House and proudly wearing a MAGA hat. It’s interesting that these photos or photos of couples having sex are not problematic in the art world, but wearing a MAGA hat is beyond the pale. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55e9d9e4e4b0821ae7bc59a7/1558716041802-QS6OXMPJFDBDQSRRVHNL/F5A983E4-F725-4501-899A-D5FE80BFE8C1.JPG Philip Swan’s Blog - Whitney Biennial 2019 Brendan Fernandes (Born 1979 in Nairobi, Kenya. Lives in Chicago, IL) The Master and Form, 2018. Brendan Fernandes describes himself as a Queer, Kenyan-Indian Canadian. He had planned on becoming a ballet dancer until an injury turned him toward a career as a visual artist. Fernandes sees himself as a visual artist who uses dance, sculpture, and performance as his medium. His work addresses race, queerness, migration, and protest over cultural displacement. In this work five dancers come into the space and interact with one of five sculptures, moving through the five basic ballet positions that are meant to reinforce idealized forms. The sculptures act as both a burdensome restraint and a support in maintaining these positions. At a signal, the dancers leave their restraints and enter the cage like sculpture in the center of the gallery which, while prison-like, is actually a space where the dancers can release their bodies from the restraints they were just interacting with. When not being used by dancers, the sculpture fills the space in an ominous way. The idea of the ideal ballet form is questioned with all that it implies in terms of the ideal body, and Fernandes has also expressed a concern over the lack of racial diversity in ballet. Ballet is also famously demanding on the body of the dancer, and the training regimen consists of both pain and pleasure, a pleasure that often comes from working through the pain. With this in mind, it is no coincidence that the sculptures are reminiscent of S&M restraint devices. When the dancers are not present, visitors can hear the sounds of toe shoe leather stretching and the scuffs and thuds of dance movement played on speakers in the gallery. The curators felt it was important to include live performance since artists in this medium often struggle more than other artists to get their work seen by a larger public. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55e9d9e4e4b0821ae7bc59a7/1559958736878-6ZI243X7L65PXE8GXQV4/B1B1DE31-B3E6-4C5F-B9EB-27CB8B915FD6.jpeg Philip Swan’s Blog - Whitney Biennial 2019 Eric N. Mack (Born 1987 in Columbia, MD. Lives in New York, NY) Proposition: for wet Gee’s Bend Quilts to replace the American flag-Permanently, 2019. While Eric N. Mack identifies as a painter, he rarely uses materials traditionally associated with painting and his work can also be viewed as a form of soft sculpture. His assemblages include used clothing and textiles, moving blankets, quilts, rags and other cloth based ephemera along with what he calls “everyday fragments” like newspapers, his own drawings, ropes, etc. Mack worked in his father’s discount clothing store when he was younger and through this experience gained an appreciation for the relationship between fashion and art, while also considering to what degree textile manufacturing depends on the underpaid labor of a mainly female workforce. In Proposition: for Wet Gee’s Bend quilts to replace the American Flag -Permanently Mack refers to the women of Gee’s Bend, a small black community in rural Alabama, who have created a well-known body of work consisting of quilts that are now exhibited in museums like the Whitney and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Many of the textiles are purposely transparent so that you can see through the work and sense the space beyond it like a fragmented lens. The “76” echoes the “Don’t Tread on Me” in Pat Phillips piece: both reference flags of the American Revolution, which seems pertinent in our charged political atmosphere today, especially in light of the latest controversy over Nike pulling the Betsy Ross shoes. Mack’s work shares a banner like presentation similar to Jefferey Gibson’s, a sense of totemic power. Both are also exploring geometric abstraction using textiles as a celebration of identity. While Gibson is referencing the geometric aesthetics of Native American art, Mack is referencing the brilliant use of geometry utilized by the quilters of Gee’s Bend. This is the fourth reference to the American flag, providing either an alternative to the flag, a reference to historical flags dating from the American Revolution, or a rejection of the flag altogether. Conclusion The focus on identity, oppression, and resistance is typical for Biennials: this is the art we expect from a Biennial, it is a safely orthodox vision of America that is pre-approved by the cultural taste makers. Is this the new academic art? In the past you were not considered a serious artist if you were not depicting Greek mythology or scenes from Classical history. These were worthy topics because they spoke to the learned, people who came to the work knowing the references made by the artist. This is what made the Impressionists revolutionary: they depicted garden parties, haystacks, prostitutes, dance halls, and other subjects that did not require a long treatise to appreciate. They were castigated by the academy because these were not serious subjects that serious artists wrestled with. Does contemporary art have to be similarly serious and didactic to be deemed relevant? Does art have to teach you something? Does art have to “be” about something, can you feel with your eyes without needing a wall text to enlighten you? To paraphrase Paul Cézanne, there are sometimes feelings that you cannot express, it is better to feel them. https://www.philipswan.net/philip-swans-blog/7wl98zcwz88f78f22c7x25hbmaplkm monthly 0.5 2019-02-16 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55e9d9e4e4b0821ae7bc59a7/1543673463499-X3E5ATB3JNZHEJB7PZPE/FullSizeRender.jpg Philip Swan’s Blog - Andy Warhol: From A to B and Back Again https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55e9d9e4e4b0821ae7bc59a7/1543673504276-DOVQD2CEMM4QXOAGBV38/IMG_2050.JPG Philip Swan’s Blog - Andy Warhol: From A to B and Back Again https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55e9d9e4e4b0821ae7bc59a7/1543674396348-UERYDELK6BABPTEDBM54/IMG_2055.JPG Philip Swan’s Blog - Andy Warhol: From A to B and Back Again https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55e9d9e4e4b0821ae7bc59a7/1543674420988-T6GZ8544T50RC72GRDJF/IMG_2073.JPG Philip Swan’s Blog - Andy Warhol: From A to B and Back Again https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55e9d9e4e4b0821ae7bc59a7/1543674644972-BDATHGEK23THAA6FCIO4/FA7835A1-2716-42E5-A58F-934EFE9E8CF5.JPG Philip Swan’s Blog - Andy Warhol: From A to B and Back Again https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55e9d9e4e4b0821ae7bc59a7/1543675011483-HFPR7JG7ZIEYAGGWL2LX/IMG_2054.JPG Philip Swan’s Blog - Andy Warhol: From A to B and Back Again https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55e9d9e4e4b0821ae7bc59a7/1543676383795-CGWTN8U2LYD4H8J96ZEZ/FullSizeRender.jpg Philip Swan’s Blog - Andy Warhol: From A to B and Back Again https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55e9d9e4e4b0821ae7bc59a7/1543675426227-72FCLFSAZQYRM8M13ABC/IMG_2056.JPG Philip Swan’s Blog - Andy Warhol: From A to B and Back Again https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55e9d9e4e4b0821ae7bc59a7/1543675677978-QKMD7978QX208CDBKHHD/IMG_2081.JPG Philip Swan’s Blog - Andy Warhol: From A to B and Back Again https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55e9d9e4e4b0821ae7bc59a7/1543691601402-ES2VB1QWP2XROSAA8SDA/FullSizeRender.jpg Philip Swan’s Blog - Andy Warhol: From A to B and Back Again https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55e9d9e4e4b0821ae7bc59a7/1543691494917-LPF2QIYWTLVO3LMVO5JZ/IMG_2094.JPG Philip Swan’s Blog - Andy Warhol: From A to B and Back Again https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55e9d9e4e4b0821ae7bc59a7/1543692278016-7TZ1GB1SXQKK6SN8G2KH/FullSizeRender.jpg Philip Swan’s Blog - Andy Warhol: From A to B and Back Again https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55e9d9e4e4b0821ae7bc59a7/1543692391702-BJQQ2S2K32EWMIMONP7V/IMG_2061.JPG Philip Swan’s Blog - Andy Warhol: From A to B and Back Again Lavender Disaster (1963): https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55e9d9e4e4b0821ae7bc59a7/1543692822083-05NK5VSAPZFBOUEV8J0S/FullSizeRender.jpg Philip Swan’s Blog - Andy Warhol: From A to B and Back Again 1970s https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55e9d9e4e4b0821ae7bc59a7/1543692891809-BBRDJ0Q4ZLIC4GY4L96P/IMG_2065.JPG Philip Swan’s Blog - Andy Warhol: From A to B and Back Again Mao (1972): https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55e9d9e4e4b0821ae7bc59a7/1543693025461-STD11E7OD1XOLC2CFF5F/IMG_2066.JPG Philip Swan’s Blog - Andy Warhol: From A to B and Back Again Paramount and Third Eye (1984-1985): https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55e9d9e4e4b0821ae7bc59a7/1545485542201-0FKDK4Y69ZDK87R0H54J/IMG_2162.JPG Philip Swan’s Blog - 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2023 K Oil on Canvas 34 x 26 inches 2022 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55e9d9e4e4b0821ae7bc59a7/1712619667794-DFJ7067O8HMOIUJ2UO9Y/IMG_0151.jpeg 2023 - 2023 K Oil on Canvas 34 x 26 inches 2022 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55e9d9e4e4b0821ae7bc59a7/1712619668684-CI3DBY7XCS82J0TTCV84/IMG_0714.jpeg 2023 - 2023 H Oil on Canvas 34 x 26 inches 2022 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55e9d9e4e4b0821ae7bc59a7/1712619665716-JE6IAVB1IC7D58DAZ2GF/IMG_0126.jpeg 2023 - 2023 I Oil on Canvas 34 x 26 inches 2022 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55e9d9e4e4b0821ae7bc59a7/1712619666682-OAATUTXH4HE8WZTOL1A4/IMG_0127.jpeg 2023 - 2023 J Oil on Canvas 26 x 34 inches 2022 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55e9d9e4e4b0821ae7bc59a7/1712619670902-A7TJTVC18ECYEKK70WDQ/IMG_4683.jpeg 2023 - 2023 F Oil on Canvas 30 x 20 inches 2023 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55e9d9e4e4b0821ae7bc59a7/1712619664510-WBVQGAS1H710W4ZEY2OY/IMG_4680.jpeg 2023 - 2023 C Oil on Linen 30 x 24 inches 2023 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55e9d9e4e4b0821ae7bc59a7/1712619662059-XDEDISE8U26K44IS41I2/IMG_4681.jpeg 2023 - 2023 D Oil on Canvas 30 x 24 inches 2023 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55e9d9e4e4b0821ae7bc59a7/1712619663330-KNPO7Z9SPXWKXX2E6X6X/IMG_4685.jpeg 2023 - 2023 L Oil on Canvas 30 x 24 inches 2023 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55e9d9e4e4b0821ae7bc59a7/1712621028126-NXOGW6ZIO8AIOOVLU0P9/IMG_4682.jpeg 2023 - 2023 E Oil on Canvas 30 x 20 inches 2023 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55e9d9e4e4b0821ae7bc59a7/1702050763932-71Y1721EPTCKNEFCA45I/B.jpg 2023 - B 2023 2023 Colored pencil on paper 12 x 9 inches https://www.philipswan.net/current-paintings-philip-swan-geometric-abstraction-oil-canvas daily 1.0 2026-03-20 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55e9d9e4e4b0821ae7bc59a7/1769187048368-PM25S63TUV5VWTASKFC8/IMG_8076.jpeg Current Work Philip Swan - Cadence 1 Mixed media on panel 20 x 16 inches 2026 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55e9d9e4e4b0821ae7bc59a7/1769187048368-PM25S63TUV5VWTASKFC8/IMG_8076.jpeg Current Work Philip Swan - Cadence 1 Mixed media on panel 20 x 16 inches 2026 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55e9d9e4e4b0821ae7bc59a7/1773323135721-YNYYM219YBB7HYMFMZ2I/N2025.jpg Current Work Philip Swan - N 2025 Colored pencil on paper 12 × 9 inches 2026 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55e9d9e4e4b0821ae7bc59a7/1772225730456-KNCSKP9I06VT1AV5Q5SU/IMG_8306.jpeg Current Work Philip Swan - L 2025 Colored pencil on paper 14 × 11 inches 2026 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55e9d9e4e4b0821ae7bc59a7/1774036806910-DXETPKITC9TX2H7B6PV8/Image1.jpg Current Work Philip Swan - Cadence 3 Mixed media on panel 14 × 14 inches 2026 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55e9d9e4e4b0821ae7bc59a7/1772229078561-HB3FRBFAYUJARLA0LKWG/IMG_8305.jpeg Current Work Philip Swan - M 2025 Colored pencil on paper 12 × 9 inches 2026 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55e9d9e4e4b0821ae7bc59a7/1764608161736-3HY0YHLRKL39ZLLLZA08/image-asset.jpeg Current Work Philip Swan - G 2025 Colored pencil on paper 30 × 22 inches 2025 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55e9d9e4e4b0821ae7bc59a7/1772228186649-KUR3MACC5CG37HW5GXRE/image-asset.jpeg Current Work Philip Swan - B 2025 Colored pencil on paper 12 x 9 inches 2025 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55e9d9e4e4b0821ae7bc59a7/1772549416043-27Q9RQUY5KMPKWBRSYU4/Cadence2.jpg Current Work Philip Swan - Cadence 2 Mixed media on panel 14 x 14 inches 2026 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55e9d9e4e4b0821ae7bc59a7/1772229381063-52N8D60EB869UEI5LWMD/IMG_8011.jpeg Current Work Philip Swan - E 2025 Colored pencil on paper 12 x 9 inches 2025 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55e9d9e4e4b0821ae7bc59a7/1772229446913-YB1UKPNAPAYB9IWV5O37/IMG_8012.jpeg Current Work Philip Swan - H 2025 Colored pencil on paper 12 x 9 inches 2025 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55e9d9e4e4b0821ae7bc59a7/1768575720525-09BA2XM7J1O4B0KSP9ZT/IMG_8010.jpeg Current Work Philip Swan - Cadence Mixed media on panel 10 x 10 inches 2025 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55e9d9e4e4b0821ae7bc59a7/1772229659330-GAXM6JJWKKQV8SJZWTVQ/IMG_8018.jpeg Current Work Philip Swan - C 2025 Colored pencil on paper 12 x 9 inches 2025 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55e9d9e4e4b0821ae7bc59a7/1744048555046-S7OHDNG9WW81R74143PY/2025D.jpg Current Work Philip Swan - 2025 D Oil on Canvas 72 × 48 inches 2025 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55e9d9e4e4b0821ae7bc59a7/1772229315554-DUPXQOQ4A7HBUGARWXRD/IMG_8019.jpeg Current Work Philip Swan - F 2025 Colored pencil on paper 14 x 11 inches 2025 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55e9d9e4e4b0821ae7bc59a7/1772229584344-86CIY56TV169HB6FRRJ7/IMG_8017.jpeg Current Work Philip Swan - D 2025 Colored pencil on paper 12 x 9 inches 2025 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55e9d9e4e4b0821ae7bc59a7/1772229519576-ZJGLOTFWN4ZXRXA87ZW6/IMG_8014.jpeg Current Work Philip Swan - K 2025 Colored pencil on paper 12 x 9 inches 2025 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55e9d9e4e4b0821ae7bc59a7/1772229753662-IS6PK5MNUU6SEG1GLSFS/IMG_8015.jpeg Current Work Philip Swan - I 2025 Colored pencil on paper 12 x 9 inches 2025 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55e9d9e4e4b0821ae7bc59a7/1769782846927-LB4UZJ85NJGRLDZTUBSE/IMG_5435.jpeg Current Work Philip Swan - J 2025 Colored pencil on paper 12 x 9 inches 2026 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55e9d9e4e4b0821ae7bc59a7/1768576586099-MXR3PFBCEPGB3E6O3ZX7/IMG_8016.jpeg Current Work Philip Swan - A 2025 Colored pencil on paper 12 x 9 inches 2025 https://www.philipswan.net/2025 daily 0.75 2026-04-02 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55e9d9e4e4b0821ae7bc59a7/1769187469458-CTQ48OAJZCO71DFI4R2G/2025D.jpeg 2025 - 2025 D Oil on canvas 48 x 72 inches 2025 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55e9d9e4e4b0821ae7bc59a7/1769187469458-CTQ48OAJZCO71DFI4R2G/2025D.jpeg 2025 - 2025 D Oil on canvas 48 x 72 inches 2025 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55e9d9e4e4b0821ae7bc59a7/1772813684740-GMF8I6I1IIQ4JAUNCVUP/H2024.jpeg 2025 - H2024 Colored pencil on paper 12 × 9 inches 2024 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55e9d9e4e4b0821ae7bc59a7/1756479592474-YHD3D3W39KZDQQS3TWZZ/Star.jpg 2025 - Star Acrylic on Boaard 6 × 6 inches 2025 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55e9d9e4e4b0821ae7bc59a7/1772812739714-7BBUNXQQB368AFPEULD3/2025E.jpg 2025 - 2025 E Oil on Canvas 30 × 24 inches 2025 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55e9d9e4e4b0821ae7bc59a7/1772813686065-Q7RA7XNBR91DQUQ1WMNO/D2024.jpeg 2025 - D2024 Colored pencil on paper 12 × 9 inches 2024 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55e9d9e4e4b0821ae7bc59a7/1756479679539-LNIL63X5KT2HUCQNJFVE/Nebula.jpg 2025 - Nebula Acrylic on Boaard 6 × 6 inches 2025 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55e9d9e4e4b0821ae7bc59a7/1744048396023-7A5H4GITHKAYVYEJ8IBW/2025T.jpg 2025 - 2025 T Oil on Canvas 24 × 18 inches 2025 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55e9d9e4e4b0821ae7bc59a7/1772813688540-9JLGQH49G4DCLNK46POM/F2024.jpeg 2025 - F2024 Colored pencil on paper 12 × 9 inches 2024 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55e9d9e4e4b0821ae7bc59a7/1762525847783-8CKXYHR4Z4A8DTTV47ZD/2026+A.jpg 2025 - 2026 A Acrylic on Panel 14 × 14 inches 2025 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55e9d9e4e4b0821ae7bc59a7/1744048387034-ZOMB98TZWJVUFCXG5UNL/2025G.jpg 2025 - 2025 G Oil on Canvas 30 × 20 inches 2025 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55e9d9e4e4b0821ae7bc59a7/1772813700534-KBGQN4HLULSGHMN4ELKO/I2024.jpeg 2025 - I 2024 Colored pencil on paper 12 × 9 inches 2024 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55e9d9e4e4b0821ae7bc59a7/1750007608759-6MW4H63ZJNL1ZDU1J8A7/AverillPark.jpg 2025 - Averill Park Acrylic on Board Diptych 10 X 20 inches 2025 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55e9d9e4e4b0821ae7bc59a7/1744048332638-YWMK20Q8HL678012Z4XN/2025B.jpg 2025 - 2025 B Oil on Canvas 30 × 24 inches 2025 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55e9d9e4e4b0821ae7bc59a7/1772813702076-HKIIAL4XSQPCMZ0DAZJE/G2024.jpeg 2025 - G 2024 Colored pencil on paper 12 × 9 inches 2024 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55e9d9e4e4b0821ae7bc59a7/1772813703589-1VMV0DNTUHDIXJM1YJZG/C2024.jpeg 2025 - C 2024 Colored pencil on paper 12 × 9 inches 2024 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55e9d9e4e4b0821ae7bc59a7/1772813689727-EO7VY7UN820W8EV1ASG5/P2024.jpeg 2025 - P2024 Colored pencil on paper 12 × 9 inches 2024 https://www.philipswan.net/home daily 0.75 2015-09-04 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55e9d9e4e4b0821ae7bc59a7/1441389229333-D5I96NZK32M48MMZCXPR/2014+E.jpg Home https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55e9d9e4e4b0821ae7bc59a7/1441389537155-E3736TKU3IV57BDTZJUX/2015+E.jpg Home https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55e9d9e4e4b0821ae7bc59a7/1441389594764-KJDO0TO4JZBJC4HSKZAZ/2015+B.jpg Home https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55e9d9e4e4b0821ae7bc59a7/1441389729909-I8LXDLYZEI7VISS52FS6/2015+H.jpg Home https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55e9d9e4e4b0821ae7bc59a7/1441389756649-44D5XNPZVKUL9FZ5WKP0/2015+A.jpg Home https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55e9d9e4e4b0821ae7bc59a7/1441390883437-S13H68SAZQX3QMFERX55/2013B+copy.jpg Home https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55e9d9e4e4b0821ae7bc59a7/1441390469902-L0XJLW3QAIJK96UYC76Z/cat-mens.jpg Home https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5252fc28e4b0ec71254bc248/1382723247206-8GNV9CFDMFGEDH0KX4L7/cat-women.jpg Home https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5252fc28e4b0ec71254bc248/1382723268941-750ZIY9PB0B8KPBDXPW0/cat-lifestyle.jpg Home https://www.philipswan.net/read-me daily 0.75 2026-03-12 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55e9d9e4e4b0821ae7bc59a7/1581255886143-SRDN225WL466B6X34SY3/IMG_6031.jpeg Artist Statement https://www.philipswan.net/contact-1 daily 0.75 2015-08-27 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/4f9adbe124ac5df956fdf900/1344631508108-G0OV9L9CBWL9T9BYPG3O/download.jpeg Contact https://www.philipswan.net/contact daily 0.75 2017-04-14 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55e9d9e4e4b0821ae7bc59a7/1492187303124-W260VUETD6IBEM8V0LQ8/download.jpeg Contact https://www.philipswan.net/read-me-1 daily 0.75 2013-09-10 https://static1.squarespace.com/static/55e9d9e4e4b0821ae7bc59a7/55f33c16e4b044a1a33bcbd2/55f33c16e4b044a1a33bcbd4/1377531925998/Don+Flood+Photography+%2820130826%29.jpg Read Me https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/4f9adbe124ac5df956fdf900/1377532324708-EROF9ACEN1S3PQS09EBO/J+O+S+E+G+O+N+Z+A+L+E+Z+%2820130826%29.jpg Read Me https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/4f9adbe124ac5df956fdf900/1377532278651-FL68CC4FNDMRUASHC4I7/Screen+Shot+2013-08-26+at+11.50.45+AM.jpg Read Me https://www.philipswan.net/new-page daily 0.75 2025-08-29 https://www.philipswan.net/artist-bio daily 0.75 2024-01-19 https://www.philipswan.net/resident-information daily 0.75 2024-02-02 https://www.philipswan.net/videos daily 0.75 2024-10-10