Demi Pirouette (Half Turn on the Haunches) 1981

Curator: Before us is Jo Baer's "Demi Pirouette (Half Turn on the Haunches)," painted in 1981. It exemplifies her exploration of abstraction and her divergence from the minimalist works she was known for earlier in her career. Editor: It’s like looking at a faded dream, wisps of memories clinging to form. There's something ghostly, almost paleontological about it – like fossilized ballet moves, or maybe a creature caught mid-metamorphosis. Curator: Indeed. Baer shifted away from hard-edged minimalism in the 70s, embracing more organic forms. This piece uses watercolor and perhaps oil pastel to build a very subtle composition of interlocking shapes, rejecting, at least in some senses, the demands for starkness in modernist abstraction. Editor: What strikes me most is the muted palette, the almost painful quietness. Yet there’s movement too. I love how it seems both to advance and recede, hovering on the surface while suggesting depths unknown. Makes you wonder what lies beyond the veil of visibility, doesn't it? Curator: Absolutely. And it's important to remember the art world context in which this was created. Conceptualism's hold was lessening, giving space to painting with personal content to reassert itself. Baer very consciously pushed against the prevailing taste for cool abstraction by introducing these elusive images. Editor: Cool abstraction? More like emotionally repressed abstraction! This… this feels almost courageous by contrast. The delicacy, the ambiguity, the willingness to embrace something so transient—I appreciate the defiance. Like she’s whispering, “I dare you to feel something”. Curator: Well said. The piece asks us to reconsider what abstraction can be: less an exercise in pure form and more an evocation of intangible sensations. Editor: Yes. It’s a gentle provocation to look deeper, feel a bit more, to dance halfway and imagine the whole. That's the pirouette in life. Curator: A poetic assessment to round out our discussion here, capturing Jo Baer's intent as well. Thank you. Editor: My pleasure! It always helps to talk a little when looking at this strange beautiful abstraction. It unlocks it.