Jo Baer
(1929 - ) |
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Art Work
| Name: |
Jo Baer |
| Gender: |
Female |
| Place of Birth: |
Seattle, Washington, USA |
| Nationality: |
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| Birth: |
1929 |
| Death: |
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| Website: |
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| Past Auctions: |
Click Here |
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Quick Facts
| Known For: |
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| Medium: |
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| Method: |
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| Style: |
Abstract-Expressionism, Minimalism, Hard-edge painting |
| Fine Art Profession(s): |
Painter
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Biography
Baer's work was in sympathy with that of some of the artists she knew, including Sol LeWitt and Donald Judd. Her insistence on the painting's existence as a two-dimensional object, whose characteristics sprang from its own development, was in tune with Minimalist moves to redefine the painted canvas as an object existing on its own terms. Her practice of painting bands around the edges of her canvases emphasized their physical properties Baer was also attentive to each work's interaction with its environment and with her other paintings. Her diptychs and triptychs extended this exploration of inter-relationships. Although Judd was eventually to reject what he saw as the inescapable illusionism of painting, Baer defended a painting's ability to be as self-contained as any three-dimensional object, and argued her case in a letter published in Artforum in September 1970. What she termed her 'radical art' was part of a passionate political agenda; each of her paintings grew out of its own specific internal dynamic, representing her belief in equality and self-determination.
After she moved to Ireland in the mid-1970s Baer began to paint figuratively, disillusioned by the political ineffectiveness of abstract art. In her statement 'I am no longer an abstract artist' {Art in America, October 1983) she wrote: 'At the time the highflying appeared both brave and bold. At this time it seems merely naive.' She stated that she did not want to make work that could be hung in an Esso or Shell boardroom. Mixing text and images. Baer's paintings now spell out blatant messages. The Old Lie: Duke et Decorum Est... Pro Patria Mori (Wilfred Owen) (1997-8) depicts phalluses and missiles, and superimposes the figure of a crying child over long lines of war graves.
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Samples of Work
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