Page 46 - Studio International - September 1965

Alice Baber and the tragedy of light

by James Jones. The author of From here to Eternity considers
the work of an American artist living in Paris

I have watched the development of this remarkable positive space. She was working in cadmium red,
painter with a close eye and closer intellectual interest cadmium orange, cadmium yellow. light and medium
over a period of about eight years. It is the first time (all, one notes, sun colours), and the space between
(and so far, the only time) I have had the opportunity the oranges suddenly came alive. And as it did, the
to study the interior development of a serious, good spatial relationships between the oranges became
painter from almost the moment of a new inception. I agitated, somehow no longer fixed, hence the title.
1 consider myself lucky to have had such an opportunity. It was for her the painting in which she departed from
Forrhw,rh 1962 Alice Baber says of the beginnings of the development subject matter and moved toward a more personal
Paris
in her painting which has led to her present work, that image, personal metaphor.
2 she wanted to dominate still-lifes because they would From these first, very precious and different oranges,
More things undreamed 1965
4 X 5 ft. not accept gratuitous light. The particular painting was she moved along to working in two-dimensional circles
New York one she called Battle of the Oranges, and she was trying of light, an attempt to give transparency so as to see
3 to find ·a way to get the light moving across the whole more than one thing at one time. It was still the light
Window Candle 1962-63 thing'-without having to rely on the conventional she was after, from behind, from before, from within,
146x114cm
Pans view, the traditional values of negative space and simultaneous total luminosity. Again she changed. to
PHOTO: MARIANNE ADELMANN

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