Home Clarion, Red Grooms

Exhibition Label: "Dreams and Portals," Jun-2008, Kris Ercums and Susan Earle Intro Label: This summer display features selections from the Spencer’s permanent collection, including works that may evoke dreams and ideas of place, near and far. The works range in media from painting and watercolor to collage, textile, and video. Some may transport you to other places, such as the lyrical "Blue Door (La Porte Bleue)" by French artist Pierre Lesieur. Reflecting the artist’s travels to North Africa, this painting evokes the sea or an open door in a way that suggests a dream, or a portal. Many works feature abstract imagery, at times suggestive of dreams, or passages to other landscapes, be they of the mind or actual places. Others combine abstraction and figuration, like the William T. Wiley drawing "Feeding Time." Others teeter between realism and abstraction, such as "Foam Chrome II" by Gary Pruner. A portal can be defined as a door or gate or entrance, especially a grand or imposing one. Paintings themselves are like portals. They allow us to enter worlds and spaces like nothing else can. Let your mind wander and see what dreams you might recall, or what new perspectives you might gain. Label: In the 1960s Red Grooms was one of a number of artists who reacted against what they perceived as the high seriousness of Abstract Expressionist painting in the 1950s. Although contemporary with Pop artists including Andy Warhol, Grooms objected to Pop’s cool and disassociated approach to technique and subject matter. He has since become known for his irreverent and comical interpretations of popular personalities and bustling urban vistas. Starting out as a performance artist and filmmaker in the late 1950s, Grooms has been characterized as a cross between P. T. Barnum and Marcel Duchamp. Home Clarion portrays a cluttered kitchen that the artist visited in Maine.