What is "Color Desire" Anyway? Chromatic Expressions Comes to VBMA
- Vero Minute
- 2 days ago
- 1 min read
Jill Nathanson paints without figures or scenery. There's no subject to speak of, just color, carrying the entire picture on its own. Starting this Saturday, July 25, 20 of her paintings fill VBMA's Schumann and Titelman galleries in a show entirely the museum's own, built in-house, every piece on loan from the artist and her gallery, Berry Campbell.
Nathanson works in the Color Field tradition, a school of painting built on the idea that color alone, without shape or subject to lean on, can carry a whole picture. Her version of that tradition has a name, "Color Desire." The colors in her paintings depend on each other to work. Pull one out and the painting falls apart. In her words, the colors call forth one another, and they need each other across the painting.
That idea of dependence carries into the show's title. Chief Curator Caitlin Swindell chose Chromatic Phrases because each painting behaves like a musical phrase, unfolding through color relationships that only make sense together, over time. Think of it as plucking one string on an instrument, and the others humming along, even unplayed.
Two dates to circle: themed cocktail nights tied to the show, "Chromatic Shift" Oct. 2 and "Final Layer" Nov. 13.
