Excerpt from Womanhood Abstracted through the Lens of Gechtoff and DeFeo (2018)
REBECCA MELMAN
The Palette Knife and the Pencil
Abstract Expressionism was a genre of art in which the artists ventured into new techniques for painting, discarding traditional notions and applications of the medium. Jackson Pollock is the best known figure in this context. To many, a turning point in the Ab-Ex movement was when, in 1947, he developed his “drip” technique, a process in which the artist stood above his massive canvases and dripped, splattered and poured house paint, rather than oil or acrylic, to create his images. He, along with other Ab-Ex artists, were interested in the materiality of paint. They looked to different mechanisms of applying paint as a means of finding authenticity and immediacy in expression.
Gechtoff, who worked primarily with paint and graphite pencil, began her career as an Abstract artist with a more conventional approach - she used a paintbrush and directly applied her broad, lively, and frequently colorful and bright strokes upon her canvas. As Gechtoff developed her own language of gestural articulation, she discovered the power of the palette knife. A tool normally used for loading paint and mixing colors on the palette, the artist began to use this tool as a replacement for her brush. Heavily loading it with several colors at a time, she pressed, dragged and traced the knife across her large canvases. Having matured into her own hand, she maintained her vivid language, accentuated by the addition of the palette knife into her toolbox. Gechtoff’s dreamlike signature style has a laid-back California feel paired with a vibrant sensuality. (There is a bit of irony in this - DeFeo, in an interview, stated that Gechtoff was very “New York” in her attitude and work ethic).[1] In the 50’s, a great deal of Gechtoff’s oil paintings, including The Queen (1958), The Map (1959), and The Widow (1958), consisted of grayscale backgrounds with a central form bursting with substantial marks of colors, such as red, blue, white, blips of green and orange, and many shades in between. This harmonious centrality is also present in paintings like The Beginning (1960) and The Angel (1953-55), in which the entire canvas is filled with bright, rich, sweeping color. There is a kaleidoscopic quality to her work - the colors melt and swirl into one another, yet each pigment is strong and solidified into its place. Throughout her career, she also used graphite pencil to investigate her artistic voice. Unlike oil paint, a pencil requires more interaction between the hand and the canvas. Her peers turned to ink as an alternative to paint due to its bold effect. Ink, however, is similar to paint, in that they are both liquid and malleable in their viscosity and texture. Ink and paint have the potential of authority - sometimes the two mediums take a life of their own, dripping, running, smudging, and mixing. Pencil, in its nature, is softer and more restricted. For an abstract artist, this can be intimidating, as it does not express the same strength and intensity as paint and ink do. Gechtoff took the challenge and translated her language of painting into an individualized language of pencil. Her drawings are diverse in their composition; in some images, we are reminded of an angry or overly excited child scribbling a No. 2 pencil on printer paper, where zealous, bellicose and fierce jolts of line are paired with quivering and undulating scrawls, while in others, her art school-trained handling is visible through soft shapes, patterns and shadows. Gechtoff’s style is punctuated by her ability to use her skilled hand to test, and go beyond, the limitations of her mediums of choice, as well as releasing inhibitions to push the boundaries of her ideas and concepts.
It is difficult to categorize DeFeo’s art into a particular material, as her toolkit included paint, sculpture, photography, graphite pencil and more. After her formal studies, fellowship in Europe and brief stint as a children’s art teacher, she began to make and sell jewelry. Perhaps her time making jewelry made her appreciate the quality of three dimensionality. In 1954, when she began to focus her efforts on drawing and painting, she preserved this awareness of depth. DeFeo and Gechtoff shared the same social circle of Beat poets and writers, intellectuals and thinkers, jazz musicians, and both established artists and up and coming artists. The two women were involved in the same exhibitions and shows, and both lived on Fillmore Street. In an interview conducted by Paul Karlstrom in 1975, DeFeo described an internal door that connected Gechtoff’s studio to that of her own. This proximity made interaction between the two artists impossible to avoid. Gechtoff and DeFeo did not have an easy relationship (there was a lot of tension between the two, due to personal differences and creative similarities), nonetheless, DeFeo was influenced by Gechtoff’s toolbox. DeFeo began to explore applying paint with a palette knife, and also worked on drawings. While they often used the same tools, DeFeo had her own distinct style that was much different than that of Gechtoff, as DeFeo’s oil paintings, heavy, earthy and three-dimensional, are reminiscent of rock formations and geology. With her palette knife, she thickly slabs on shades of grey and dark, dirty green, and occasionally chunky white and cream to create textured pieces with titles such as Incision (1958-60), Origin (1956), and Untitled (Everest) (1955). In her drawings from the late 50’s, she used many materials. Some of her more abstract pieces, such as Untitled (1957), are just made from graphite on paper, while others, such as Daphne (1958), are made from oil, pencil and charcoal on paper and mounted on a canvas. DeFeo explored negative and positive space through texture. As opposed to Gechtoff, who used color and shadow to create dimension, DeFeo took advantage of the limitations of a monochromatic palette to achieve variation of depth by layering the material or materials she used. It is difficult to define DeFeo’s genre, given the diversity of mediums she used. However, the consistency in her art is striking. From photo-collage to drawing to painting, DeFeo’s voice remains dark, grungy, and somewhat mysterious, yet sensual, organic and strong.
Hybrid Expressionism
The main concept that arose from New York School of Abstract Expression and Action painting is that Abstract Action painting is a result of the artist wrestling with their subconcious, in order to emote, convey ideas and abstract form through the action of painting. A drip painting by Pollock has no focal object, despite one’s greatest efforts to find them. Given San Francisco’s minimal art network and lack of established art society, the artists of the early 50’s had the freedom to draw inspiration from all genres and movements of art and apply it into their own practice. While the two have been compared to one another since the mid 50’s, Gechtoff and DeFeo have remarkably different voices. What the two did share in common, besides their social circle and usage of palette knife, was that neither artist abandoned their narrative voice, nor did they entirely disregard form and reference of objects and images. Ab-Ex artists strongly rejected the traditional notions of composition, decoration and representation that existed in the movements prior. This is what makes Gechtoff and DeFeo stand apart from many of their contemporaries. Neither Gechtoff, nor DeFeo abided by the rules of Abstract Expressionism. Instead, they each developed their own means of expression. It is the formal elements present in both of the artists’ respective languages that define their individual statements of self; Gechtoff and DeFeo demonstrate their female identities through navigating the lines between abstraction and figuration.
As Getchoff developed her technical prowess in San Francisco and moved away from her Social Realist position, she traversed into abstraction, but did not discard the descriptive nature of Social Realism entirely. Inspired by her intellectual network, especially the poets and writers, she used the emphatic power of color, thickness of oil paint, and gestural brushstrokes to tell a story. To cultivate her own language, she took to the Action painters’ approach. Action painters believed that the purest form of expression occurs when the artists let go of their inhibitions and familiar forms to spontaneously, gesturally, and emotionally portray a genuine feeling or experience. Thus, a philosophical question is raised - does the materialization of the subconscious, as released onto a canvas via the artist’s hand, lack representation and familiarity? Gechtoff plays with this notion in her oil paintings.
Standing at six feet tall and more than five and a half feet wide, The Angel (1953-55), is an overwhelming piece. Painted with her signature palette knife, it is charged with color, movement and allusion. When hoisted up on a gallery or museum wall, the viewer’s eye should hit the center of the piece. The image, an effusion of vibrancy and dynamism, suggests a central figure, with yellow and black arms or wings that spread across the plane. At the top center of the painting, Gechtoff paints a circle that resembles a head or rose. The Angel has a sense of familiarity within the image while also existing as an abstract composition. This kind of symbolism is common within many paintings created by Gechtoff. The Queen (1958) is an enormous oil painting that could also potentially carry symbolic meaning. Similarly to The Angel, the viewer’s eye is drawn to the center of the composition, yet the tone is intense and almost ominous, in comparison to The Angel’s hopeful and joyous nature. The perimeter of the canvas is a jagged border made up of quick and energetic slabs of heavy black paint. The viewer sees the drags of Gechtoff’s palette knife, loaded with white, portraying an aggressive halo around the central figure. The focal point of The Queen is an audacious collection of red markings, touched with bits of blue and green, that make up an organic form, strongly alluding to “the origin of life”: the vagina. At the top of this triangular shape, is what appears to be a clitoris. As a whole, The Queen is violent, dark, bold, and demands the viewer’s attention, yet, the red gash at the center is exploding with abundance, with its colors spilling out into its white and grey confines. Her early works, created in the 50’s and 60’s, contain a circular motion in which the center figure grows out from the middle of the composition. Later in her life, Gechtoff pointed out that she was not a feminist artist, however, she did suggest that her attempts at self-portraits were expressions of “the female mythic figure.”
Gechtoff began working on her pencil drawings in 1955. Aptly referred to as “hair drawings,” these images carry a circular motion, much like her oil paintings. The earlier drawings are wispy, curvaceous lines that resemble long, flowing hair. Untitled Drawing No. 4 (1958) is a rhythmic, orb-like form that appears to be suspended in air, with frenetic, heavy lines orbiting around a central point. Gechtoff kept her sensual touch, explosive voice and storytelling ability in her drawings; her personalized perspective is visible in all of her work. (...)
As she experimented with different mediums, DeFeo kept her voice and grisaille palette, while also questioning vision and perception. As an individual, DeFeo perceives the world in her own way, as a woman artist, the world perceives her in their own way. This tension and anxiety is prevalent in much of her work.