Landscape 1976

Editor: Here we have Charles Garabedian's "Landscape" from 1976, using collage and painting with oil and watercolor. The geometric shapes give it a playful, almost childlike quality, but also create a strange sense of distance. What do you see in this piece, considering its historical moment? Curator: It's tempting to view this work as a straightforward landscape, but the abstraction pushes us to consider broader societal shifts occurring in art and culture in the 70s. There's a breakdown of traditional artistic hierarchies happening then. The collage elements, combined with painting, point to a rejection of pure formalism, a pushing against the established institutions dictating "high" art. Do you think the geometric shapes, as you call them, evoke specific social structures? Editor: I see what you mean. The pyramid shape might be a kind of hierarchy. Are those stacked bricks at the top... perhaps symbolic of industrial society? Curator: Perhaps, or think of the "Landscape" genre itself. Traditionally landscapes celebrated idealized nature and national identity, yet Garabedian’s deconstruction suggests a more fractured understanding of those concepts. Considering the aftermath of Vietnam, and increasing social fragmentation, it would fit the disillusionment in a post-utopian, perhaps dystopian, vision. Do you get a sense of instability from this, as opposed to the pastoral scenes painted a century before? Editor: Definitely unstable. I wouldn't want to live there. The color palette, especially the stark yellows and blues, enhances that sense of unease. It’s interesting to think how it reflects broader anxieties. Curator: Exactly. Garabedian, in a way, uses the art institution against itself. Exhibiting this fractured vision, where viewers are forced to consider not just beauty, but societal and political concerns, reveals art's potential as a mirror reflecting and refracting the complexities of its time. This painting encourages viewers to be active participants in deciphering what a "landscape" truly represents. Editor: I learned so much about the intersection of art and broader cultural anxieties from our discussion. Curator: And I was also reminded how the destruction of traditional techniques in "Landscape" prompts the audience to look for the cultural cues within.