5.28.2023 – vibrant but distant

vibrant but distant
world love unpredictable with
equanimity

In the New Yorker (Yorker, May 29, 2023, Issue 14 Volume 99), At the Galleries used this line in a review of two Yvonne Jacquette shows,

… paintings (and drawings and prints) are vibrant but distant, expressing their love of the unpredictable world with equanimity.

According to the Merriam-Webster online dictionary, equanimity means evenness of mind under stress. equanimity suggests a habit of mind that is only rarely disturbed under great strain.

According to the Cambridge online dictionary, equanimity means a calm mental state, especially after a shock or disappointment or in a difficult situation.

According to the Merriam-Webster online dictionary, unpredictable means not predictable, such as not able to be known or declared in advance. 

According to the Cambridge online dictionary, unpredictable means likely to change suddenly and without reason and therefore not able to be predicted.

Put it all together and you get:

… paintings (and drawings and prints) are vibrant but distant, expressing their love of the not predictable, not able to be known or declared in advance, likely to change suddenly and without reason, world, with an evenness of mind and a calm mental state.

Vibrant but distant,

expressing love of the not predictable,

not able to be known

or declared in advance,

likely to change suddenly

and without reason,

world,

with an evenness of mind

and a calm mental state.

Hmmmmmmm.

That’s not bad is it?

A bit of free-verse, imagistic poetry almost maybe worthy to stand by itself.

The complete review reads:

Since the late nineteen-seventies, the name Yvonne Jacquette has been synonymous with aerial landscapes: cities twinkling at night or patchwork rural expanses, seen from the high floors of skyscrapers or from low-flying planes.

These paintings (and drawings and prints) are vibrant but distant, expressing their love of the unpredictable world with equanimity.

Call the images realist if you insist, but their intricate patterns tilt toward abstraction, a reminder that paintbrushes aren’t cameras.

Two wonderful shows at the DC Moore gallery (on view through June 10) present very early and very late works by the American artist, who died in April, at the age of eighty-eight.

Instead of airborne perspectives, the show surprises with domestic vantage points, whether it’s a Maine meadow framed by floral curtains, from 1964, or the back of a billboard seen through the window of Jacquette’s Manhattan studio, from 2020. “Barn Ceiling” (above), from 1969, is a luminous, nearly seven-foot-tall interior that’s also a rigorous study in stripes (and, maybe, a post-and-beam riposte to Minimalism, then in its heyday).

Jacquette planned the exhibitions in recent months with her son (and fellow-painter), Tom Burckhardt.

One of the shows’ most touching moments is a rare still-life, from 2020 — film cannisters stored on shelves, their stacks suggesting miniature towers — that also reads as a portrait of Jacquette’s late husband, the Swiss filmmaker and photographer Rudy Burckhardt.