The Brooklyn Rail on Denise Green's biography

"Though it’s Green’s writing that is the most engaging, frankly cataloguing the progression of her career since its advent in the late 1960s."

green_denise coverChristof Trepesch’s chapter in Denise Green: An Artist’s Odyssey, a collection of essays on the career of the eponymous Australian-born, New York-based painter, opens with an emphatic assertion on the importance of color in the artist’s work. Trepesch states: “its rich spectrum and diversity permeates her entire oeuvre and informs the compositions of her paintings in a transcendent way.” Green’s use of color is indeed a striking part of her largely abstract, New Imagist paintings. So it’s surprising that, save for an occasional black-and-white reproduction, images of the work are scarce. It would stand to reason if this book were based around contextual and conceptual themes. But Green, despite having had quite a presence in the Lower Manhattan art scene during the 1970s and 1980s, and having made a concerted and successful effort to constantly exhibit in Australia, is largely absent from mention in either of these recent histories. So taken altogether this book attempts a big stretch, acting as a chronicle of her career, theoretical examination, and introduction all at once.

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Published in: The Brooklyn Rail
By: Juliet Helmke