#carmenherrera

Equilibrio, Carmen Herrera, 2017, MoMA: Drawings and Prints

Acquired through the generosity of Mary M. and Sash A. Spencer Size: composition and sheet: 37 13/16 × 49 11/16" (96 × 126.2 cm) Medium: Intaglio

Left: Carmen Herrera, A City (1948)

Right: Elba Obregon, Fortune Cookies (2020)

For my final reductive painting, I decided to follow in the style of Carmen Herrera and complete a geometric interpretation of a part of my assemblage. I focused on the three fortune cookies because I was so intrigued by their shape and I wanted to explore what it would look like to reduce them to solely geometric shapes of semi circles and triangles. It almost felt like the skeleton of the fortune cookie which is the concept I decided to run with for my reductive painting.

The painting by Herrera that most inspired my final reductive painting is A City, (1948). What I loved about this painting is that, as someone from New York City, I immediately knew that her image was of a city skyline because it was informed by my own lived experience, and my familiarity with the visual of a city sky line at night. In a similar way, I hoped that my reductive painting would be able to do a similar thing of “ringing a bell” for those of you who already saw my original assemblage, and then could recall the image of the fortune cookies even though this new painting is technically just shapes.

Playing with the idea of memory and how the brain connects shapes to things that are familiar to us was an intriguing experience for me as a painter, and hopefully a unique experience for viewers of my reductive painting. When it comes to art, interpretation is in the eye of the viewer, so it makes sense that when we see something that is not obvious or clear, we try to make sense of it in our brains with things that we do know. (Think: Trying to make shapes of clouds as kids!)

Finally, I want to speak a little more about why I chose the details I did for this piece. First off, the pink background was meant to emulate the pink color of the paper from my original assemblage. I did not want to change this as it was already a solid color that did not draw attention away from the fortune cookies themselves. Secondly, I debated whether or not I wanted to paint the entire semi-circles black or if I wanted to leave areas where the white and pink could be seen. I ultimately decided to do the latter as I wanted the painting to look like the skeletons of fortune cookies (if they had one), to truly reduce it as much as possible. Lastly, I decided to round the edges of the canvas because I wanted the painting to resemble the piece of paper in the original assemblage. This also unexpectedly emulated Carmen Herrera’s A City which also features rounded edges.

Untitled from Verde y Negro, Carmen Herrera, 2017, MoMA: Drawings and Prints

Acquired through the generosity of Mary M. and Sash A. Spencer Size: 21 1/4 × 17 1/2" (54 × 44.5 cm) Medium: One from a portfolio of three lithographs

Untitled from Verde y Amarillo, Carmen Herrera, 2017, MoMA: Drawings and Prints

Acquired through the generosity of Mary M. and Sash A. Spencer Size: composition: 14 15/16 × 12" (38 × 30.5 cm); sheet: 21 5/16 × 17 9/16" (54.1 × 44.6 cm) Medium: One from a portfolio of three lithographs

Untitled from Verde y Amarillo, Carmen Herrera, 2017, MoMA: Drawings and Prints

Acquired through the generosity of Mary M. and Sash A. Spencer Size: composition: 14 15/16 × 12 1/16" (38 × 30.6 cm); sheet: 21 5/16 × 17 1/2" (54.2 × 44.5 cm) Medium: One from a portfolio of three lithographs