Monday, July 10, 2017

Jacquette, Yvonne (1976). Lower Manhattan - Brooklyn Bridge View II [pastel on off-white paper].

This work is a beautiful rendering of the city straddling a river executed through pointillism. This work carves out its own unique position on the abstraction scale. Jacquette’s treatment of the background makes the scene look like it’s snowing. |
The subject is obvious enough; this is a work of pastel on off-white woven paper. It is impressionistic; though the scene is pleasing, one gets a sense of the impurities in the air causing the distance to fade in a haze, and the chilly crispness in the air as it snows. Point is the element used in this work to, through closure, build shapes and inspire impressions. They vary in color and purity, but for the most part lack chroma and stick to the middle/high-key. Space is seamlessly created through changes in detail and atmospheric perspective.
This work strongly favors harmony over disorder. Values do not clash and are analogous, as are colors, not in hue, but where they group up in terms of purity. Shapes are vaguely rigid in the foreground, begin to lose definition as the eye travels upward (to the middle ground), and become more biomorphic in the background. There is graceful contrast between the directional forces of the foreground (vertical) and background (diffuse horizontal). The unexpected oblique and elevated perspective creates some needed tension. 
The skyline creates a jagged rhythm the eye follows from left to right or right to left, followed by the more stable and softer pattern created by the diagonally-slanted rectangular figures resting on the river. The picture frame supports the horizontal “flow” of this work; the picture plane is treated like most two-dimensional works in that it is a sort of glass plane the viewer looks through to the scene. 
Jacquette has acknowledged the influence that Seurat and Van Gogh have had on her works. With a handful of elements (point, implied shape, atmospheric perspective), she has created a truly elegant, unified work that keeps faith with the impressionist style she loves. 


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