center for video and visionary art
MARK BAUM
Elements of the Spirit
January 30-March 12, 2016
This retrospective honors the life and painting of visionary artist MARK
BAUM (1903-1997), whose prescient merging of the algorithmic and the spiritual
has rarely been exhibited and never before on the West Coast.
Baum's work represents a journey toward a universal symbolism, which
simultaneously invokes the mystery and palpability of spiritual awakening.
Baum was born in 1903 in what is now Poland into a conservative Jewish
family. Following World War I and a daring emigration through occupied Europe
to New York City in 1919, he turned to art. Mostly self-taught Baum became a
respected painter of city- and landscapes in the late 1920s through the early
1950s, showing in the top galleries and collected by a number of museums,
including the Whitney and the Frick, as well as the private collection of
Alfred Stieglitz.
But
following World War II, Baum became disillusioned with the representational art
that had become his trademark, and he moved decisively to non-objective
painting, developing a unique abstract "element." This element was
derived from a revelation he had upon re-looking at his 1948 painting, Aspirational
Staircase; specifically he sought to create a singular shape that, like the
staircase, invoked a rhythmical, directional movement. He evolved this
"element" over a decade from a spindly star shape (see Untitled
Blue below), arriving at its final form in the late 1960s (see Adventure
at top). Baum would paint exclusively using this element until his death in
1997.
This change to
abstraction also corresponded with Baum's move out of the New York art scene
and to rural Maine, where he painted in a converted barn and nurtured an
extensive garden. Working in virtual obscurity for almost three decades, Baum
saw his work as a quest to express something larger, more in tune with nature
and the spiritual.
In
the final decade of his life Baum painted his increasingly minimal compositions
on solid black backgrounds, using the subtle fluctuations of the colors of the
elements to invoke movement, emotions, and a sense of communion.
Baum's
algorithmic approach--using a basic, binary system of element/not-element--in
order to manifest entire worlds through various combinations of a single form
demonstrates a prescient understanding of our current, digitally infused world.
But his paintings underscore that this is only a tool by which to seek out
real, profound connections between the human and the divine, a way to sing with
the universe.
"We look at the universe; the vastness of the billions of stars and
space without end--physical aspects--we relate to it continuously with a sense
of awe." -Mark Baum
A documentary �The Changing Light: The Life and Painting of Mark
Baum� has been produced in association with this exhibition. Additionally a
catalogue with more than 35 plates and an essay by art historian and critic Leora Lutz is also available.