Barbara Takenaga

Barbara Takenaga (born 1949 in North Platte, Nebraska) is an abstract painter who is known for her swirling, dot-based paintings that recall cosmic and cellular imagery. She is currently represented by DC Moore Gallery in New York [1] and by Gregory Lind Gallery in San Francisco.[2]

Barbara Takenaga
Born
Barbara Takenaga

1949
North Platte, Nebraska
NationalityAmerican
EducationUniversity of Colorado Boulder
Known forPainting
AwardsEric Isenburger Annual Art Award; New England Foundation for the Arts Fellowship
Websitehttp://www.barbaratakenaga.com/
Barbara Takenaga, Forte, 2011. Acrylic on linen, 54 x 135 inches. Courtesy DC Moore Gallery, New York.

Biography

Takenaga attended the University of Colorado Boulder, earning a BFA in 1972 and a MFA in 1978.[3] She has been the Mary A. & William Wirt Warren Professor of Art at Williams College since 1985.[4] Takenaga also taught briefly at the University of Denver from 1982 to 1984.[3]

She currently lives and works both in Williamstown, MA and in New York, where her studio is located.[1]

Work

Although a printmaker early in her career, Takenaga is primarily known for her oil and acrylic paintings.[5]:4 She has been exhibiting her work since 1993.[6]

Her paintings rely on the repetition of dots in saturated colors to form various patterns and create sweeping or spiraling movements. The center or horizon of these paintings often is lighter, creating a luminous effect. In the last several years, Takenaga's penchant for a neon-bright, even garish palette has changed following the death of her mother in 2002. The muted "twilight palette" of grays and blues reflects Takenaga's mourning.[7]:6 The artist has remarked that "the colors got icier and colder. I think these grey paintings have some sense of fading-- shiny, hazy, shifting." [7]:7

Due to her use of tessellated forms, Takenaga's work is noted for its challenging optical quality. A sense of infinity and boundlessness are associated with the dizzying patterns created in her paintings. Her series Night Paintings, for instance, are based on "recurring childhood dreams about the origins of the universe." [8] Her upbringing in rural Nebraska is connected to this sense of "boundlessness." Art critic Nancy Princenthal suggests that "these paintings evoke the flat farmland of Takenaga's childhood home, in Nebraska [...] There is that sense of limitless, un marked expanses in Takenaga's recent paintings, of matter-of-fact infinitude." [7]:4

The laborious, repetitive process involved to make her paintings suggests the passing of time in her work. Susan Cross writes: "Takenaga has likened her approach to art-making to both soap opera narratives in which essentially nothing happens over long stretches of time and to the myth of Odysseus's wife Penelope, who unraveled her weaving each night for three years to put off her unwanted suitors. In a similar fashion, Takenaga's process both marks time and slows it down, allowing it to move forwards and backwards much like the sense of space in her paintings, which takes us spinning deep into the cosmos or right back to the work's surface, evoking both beginnings and endings." [5]:5–6

Takenaga has been influenced by artists such as Charles Burchfield and Roger Brown (artist), among others.[7]:4

Critical reception

Critics often refer to Takenaga's style as "psychedelic."

In reference to this Carol Diehl writes, "Takenaga’s work has been described as psychedelic, but that implies a loss of control, where these paintings are the result of acute attention. While they no doubt owe much to the precedents of Op art and Pattern and Decoration, Takenaga’s repetitive forms, like Ross Bleckner’s, inspire more mystical interpretation. If her idiosyncratic images can be said to resemble anything, it is van Gogh’s The Starry Night, with its swirls of celestial light updated to the computer age." [6]
A reviewer for The New York Sun commented on the "prejudice" the viewer might have to overcome viewing Takenaga's paintings: "Once the eye adjusts to a sense of gaudy overload, and overcomes the prejudice of feeling you might have seen such imagery on the cover of a molecular chemistry textbook, it becomes clear that she is an image crafter of formidable power." [9]
This opinion—overcoming the sense of "gaudy overload"—is also echoed by a review on artcritical.com. The reviewer writes that "While these transcendental apparitions might be misread as kitsch or imitations of 1960s psychedelia, the artist's skillful handling of her subject matter proves otherwise." [8]

Carol Diehl also praised Takenaga's change to a more horizontal, landscape format. In 2012, she remarked that "The relatively recent addition of the horizon line is a major development for Takenaga [...] Few could have predicted that this normally balanced and stabilizing element would provide the disruption her work needed and a place from which it could expand. Previously her images were beautiful but congested, overshadowed by her painstaking and obsessive methodology. One would simply marvel that anyone could create such fine and intricate work freehand, especially with a material as mundane as acrylic paint. Further, the emphasis was on a kernel-like center that brought the eye from the outside in, whereas now the horizon line allows the nucleus to burst forth in burgeoning whorls that imply galaxies outside the picture plane." [6]

In a 2007 article "The New Abstraction" in ARTnews, Barbara A. MacAdam cites Takenaga as well as Chris Martin (artist), Larry Poons, and others, as part of a general return to abstract painting.[10]

Her compositions that use dots to form various waves and patterns have drawn favorable comparisons to the work of Yayoi Kusama. In a review of Takenaga's paintings in The New York Sun, art critic Franklin Einsprunch archly writes: "Think Yayoi Kusama, but with less obsessive-compulsive disorder and more feeling for paint." [11]

Awards and honors
  • 2009 Wauson Fellowship, For-Site Foundation, San Francisco, CA
  • 2008 Eric Isenburger Annual Award, National Academy Museum, New York, NY
  • 2005 Hassam, Speicher, Betts, and Symons Purchase Awards, American Academy of Arts & Letters, NY
  • 2004 Artist's Resource Trust Grant, Berkshire Taconic Community Foundation
  • 1998 Massachusetts Artist Fellowship in Painting, Massachusetts Cultural Council and the New England Foundation for the Arts
  • 1993 Artist's Residency Grant, Art In General, NY State Council on the Arts; Fellowship in painting, New England Foundation for the Arts
  • 1992 Studio Grant, Space Program in New York City, Marie Walsh Sharpe Art Foundation; Asian Women United Grant for collaborative video with Christine Choy; Alice Baber Art Fund Grant, New York, NY[5]

Solo exhibitions

2013

  • Barbara Takenaga, DC Moore Gallery, New York, NY

2012

2011

2010

2009

2008

2007

  • Brattleboro Art Museum, Brattleboro, VT
  • McKenzie Fine Art, New York, NY
  • Museum of Nebraska Art, Kearney, NE
  • Gallery Camino Real, Boca Raton, FL

2006

  • Museum of Outdoor Art, Englewood, CO

2005

  • CU Art Museum, University of Colorado, Boulder, CO

2004

  • McKinney Avenue Contemporary, Dallas, TX

2001

  • James Graham & Sons, New York, NY

1997

  • Franklin & Marshall College, Lancaster, PA

1993

  • Cambridge Multicultural Center, Cambridge, MA
  • College of Wooster Art Museum, Wooster, OH
  • Art In General, New York, NY

1992

  • Mary H. Dana Women Artists Series, Mabel Douglass College, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ

1990

  • Williams College Museum of Art, Williamstown, MA[5]

Public collections
  • The Ackland Art Museum, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC
  • Arkansas Art Center, Little Rock, AR
  • CU Art Museum, University of Colorado, Boulder, CO
  • The De Cordova Museum, Lincoln, MA
  • Dieu Donne Papermill, New York, NY
  • The Fine Art Program at the Federal Reserve Board, Washington, D.C.
  • Frederick R. Weisman Art Foundation, Los Angeles, CA
  • The Henry Art Gallery, University of Washington, Seattle, WA
  • The Hallmark Fine Arts Program, Kansas City, MO
  • The Library of Congress, Washington D.C.
  • Museum of Outdoor Art, Englewood, CO
  • Museum of Texas Tech University, Lubbock, TX
  • Museum of Nebraska Art, Kearney, NE
  • Neuberger Museum, Purchase College SUNY, NY
  • Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art, Philadelphia, PA
  • San Jose Museum of Art, San Jose, CA
  • Sheldon Art Museum, University of Nebraska, Lincoln, NE
  • Smith College Museum of Art, Northampton, MA
  • United States Embassy in Algeria
  • Williams College Museum of Art, Williamstown, MA[5][7][12]

Exhibition catalogs and articles

2012

  • Baker, Kenneth. “Takenaga’s visionary abstraction,” San Francisco Chronicle, May 26, 2012.
  • Berry, Ian. Affininty Atlas. Clinton, NY: Ruth and Elmer Wellin Museum, Hamilton College, 2012.
  • Cozzolino, Robert. The Female Gaze: Women Artists Making Their World. Philadelphia: Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, 2012: pp. 22, 148, 311.
  • Einspruch, Franklin. “Energies Illustrated,” The New York Sun, May 15, 2012.

2011

  • Naves, Mario, “Pioneers in Shadows: Scaling Braque and Takenaga,” CityArts, October 26, 2011.
  • Princenthal, Nancy. Barbara Takenaga, New Paintings. New York, NY: DC Moore Gallery, 2011.
  • Scoates, Christopher, Christopher Miles and George Melrod. Goldmine: From the Collection of Sirje and Michael Gold. Long Beach, CA: University Art Museum, California State University, 2011.
  • Smith, Roberta, “Vivid and Pavers,” The New York Times, January 21, 2011.
  • Yau, John. “ Barbara Takenaga: New Paintings,” Brooklyn Rail, November 2011.

2010

  • Henry, Sarah Lynn. I Am the Cosmos. Trenton, NJ: New Jersey State Museum, 2010.
  • Rubin, David S., Robert C. Morgan, and Daniel Pinchbeck. Psychedelic: Optical and Visionary Art Since the 1960s. Cambridge, MA: San Antonio Museum of Art with The MIT Press, 2010.

2009

  • Cross, Susan. Barbara Takenaga: last blue wheel. New York, NY: DC Moore Gallery, 2009.

2008

  • Henry, Sara Lynn. Midnight Full of Stars. Summit, NJ: Visual Arts Center of New Jersey, 2008.

2007

  • Brown, Brice. Barbara Takenaga. New York, NY: McKenzie Fine Art Inc., 2007.
  • Capasso, Nick. Big Bang! Painting in the 21st Century. Lincoln, MA: DeCordova Museum, 2007.
  • Krug, Margaret. An Artist’s Handbook. New York, NY: Abrams, 2007.
  • MacAdam, Barbara A., “The New Abstraction,” ARTnews, April 2007.
  • Stickney, Dane, “Artist Takenaga Revels in Colorful Circles,” Omaha World-Herald, June 14, 2007.

2006

  • Dantzic, Cynthia. 100 New York Painters. Atglen, PA: Schiffer Books, 2006.
  • MacMillan, Kyle, “Decades of Influence: Colorado 1985 – Present,” The Denver Post, June 8, 2006.

2005

  • Becker, Lisa Tamiris. Micro/Macro: Barbara Takenaga. CU Museum, University of Colorado, Boulder, 2005.
  • Baker, Kenneth, “Radial Gradient,” Art News, February, 2005.
  • Kushner, Robert. Barbara Takenaga. New York, NY: McKenzie Fine Art, 2005.
  • Johnson, Ken, “Good Vibrations,” The New York Times, July 15, 2005.
  • Perry, Vicky. Abstract Painting. New York, NY: Watson-Guptill Publications, 2005.
  • Young, Brian. National Drawing Exhibition. Little Rock, AR: Arkansas Art Center, 2005.

2004

  • Berry, Ian. About Painting. Saratoga Springs, NY: Tang Teaching Museum, 2004.
  • Kushner, Robert, “Barbara Takenaga,” Art in America, February, 2004.
  • Wright, Jimmy and David Sharpe. The Anxious Image. New York, NY: The Painting Center, 2004.
  • Walker, Sarah. Radial Gradient. San Francisco, CA: Gregory Lind Gallery, 2004.

2003

  • Buhman, Stefanie, “Barbara Takenaga,” Artcritical.com, October, 2003.
  • Johnson, Ken, “Obsessive Pleasures,” The New York Times, May 9, 2003.

2001

  • Johnson, Ken, “Barbara Takenaga,” The New York Times, December 28, 2001.

2000

  • Payton, Cydney, Marsha Semmel, Lucy Lippard, and Margo Espenlaub. Elbows and Tea Leaves, Frontrange Women in the Visual Arts. Boulder, CO: Boulder Center for Contemporary Art, 2000.

1998

  • Lien, Fu-Chia-Wen. Contemporary Asian Women Artists. New York, NY: Taipei Gallery, 1998.

1997

  • Pelli, Denis and Ana Maria Torres. Threshold: Limits of Perception. New York, NY: New York University, 1997.
gollark: I think the weights got messed up.
gollark: It dispenses scrapboxes, which is meant to produce random items, but I only get... wooden hoes.
gollark: The Wooden Hoe Generator!
gollark: In extreme hills.
gollark: Stone brick/cobble monster eggs.

References
  1. "Barbara Takenaga Biography". DC Moore Gallery.
  2. "Barbara Takenaga Biography". Gregory Lind Gallery.
  3. "Department of Art & Art History". University of Colorado Boulder.
  4. "Department of Art Faculty". Williams College. Archived from the original on 2013-07-17. Retrieved 2013-06-27.
  5. Cross, Susan (2009). Barbara Takenaga, last blue wheel. New York: DC Moore Gallery.
  6. Diehl, Carol (February 16, 2012). "Barbara Takenaga at DC Moore". Art in America.
  7. Princenthal, Nancy (2011). Barbara Takenaga, New Paintings. New York: DC Moore Gallery.
  8. Buhmann, Stephanie (October 2003). "Barbara Takenaga". artcritical.com.
  9. Cohen, David (November 2005). "Barbara Takenaga at McKenzie Fine Art". The New York Sun. Archived from the original on 2016-03-05. Retrieved 2013-06-27.
  10. MacAdam, Barbara A. (October 2007). "The New Abstraction". ARTnews.
  11. Einsprunch, Franklin (May 15, 2012). "Energies Illustrated". The New York Sun.
  12. Takenaga, Barbara. "Resume". Barbara Takenaga. Archived from the original on 2015-01-12. Retrieved 2013-07-16.
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