Double Team

Posted by Maverick ~ on May 7, 2018
Posted in: Art, Music, Photography. Tagged: , , , , , , , , .

Double Team 
Enamel paint on panel (2005)
Tom Burckhardt
American

Tom Burckhardt's Double Team represents his signature style-an abstract composition of energetic patterns and bright colors interwoven with passages of realism.

In the lower register of Double Team, the large square of warm beige doubles as an abstract element and construction material. Burckhardt manipulates scale and spatial relationships, representing diminutive workmen with caps and tool belts, who labor to construct the composition of the work of art in which they are depicted.

The postmodern Double Team borrows freely from earlier styles-zigzagging lines and stripes from Pattern & Decoration and Op Art, squares of color from Hans Hofmann and the vertical format of Chinese landscape painting. The red calligraphic line recalls Abstract Expressionism except that here the stylized gesture is a carefully planned, formulaic drip.

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10 comments on “Double Team”

  2. I like this and I see the drip but I’m not sure I know what a “formulaic drip” is. With regards to people who describe art, I sometimes I want to slap them upside the head, look them in the eye while violently shaking their shoulders and say “Hey! Talk to me in English”. Metaphorically speaking of course. 🙂

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    • 😂 It does come off as kind of pretentious. To be linguistically fair though the word formulaic usage has been trending upwards the past 100 years. 🙂

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  3. Haha, I’m thinking you should have David do guest posts about abstract art. His comments are priceless and so down to earth. As for me, the formulaic drip makes me think of graffiti.

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      • I appreciate the confidence Gabriela and you have in my ability to review abstract art but I doubt that I am the right let alone the appropriate person. I don’t think one necessarily has to like the art they are reviewing but they should at the very least be able to appreciate it. I like some abstract art but on the whole I neither like nor appreciate abstract art.

        A case in point is Jackson Pollock. I recently painted our living room walls and the drop cloth was as good an “in the style of Pollock” monochromatic abstract painting as you’ll ever see.

        I don’t like his work and I don’t appreciate his work. A work of art should touch the viewer in some way rather than make the viewer afraid to touch the work. At best I find his work to be derivative, stylized gestures of formulaic drippings. And don’t get me started on Andy Warhol soup cans. I now it pop not abstract but it’s the same thing, people going ga-ga over nothing.

        I do admire and to some extent envy Pollock’s and Warhol’s ability to cash in on what they do. But hey, I have the same admiration and envy for the guy who brought pet rocks to market.

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      • Jackson Pollock would probably agree with you. It was said he was backed by the CIA to lessen the influence of other art. Commercially, art may be in some cases more politics than talent. I certainly understand what you’re saying regarding appreciation..

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