Spring 1985

Curator: Standing before us is Alexander Bogen's "Spring," a watercolor painted in 1985. It embodies a vibrant expressionistic style. What's your immediate take on it? Editor: A chaotic beauty! It feels like a storm of colors resolving into something hopeful. I get this overwhelming sense of... release? But I wouldn't have necessarily pegged it as spring at first glance. Curator: Right. It doesn’t have obvious floral representations, but more an essence of the season. I think about the interplay of these vibrant yet transparent washes, each color possessing its own agency and dynamism in the whole arrangement. Note how Bogen lets colors bleed, creating these hazy, dreamlike transitions, contrasting sharp reds, yellows, blues against lighter hues. Editor: Absolutely. And it’s interesting how he uses negative space. The areas left bare, with just a pale wash, aren't empty at all—they serve as a grounding presence, allowing the stronger colors to really pop. Like that almost angry splash of red in the foreground. What's that doing there? Curator: Maybe that splash of red acts as a counterpoint to the overall airy lightness – a reminder that even in spring there’s a raw energy, an untamed quality. It could be read through the lens of colour field painting as pure expression – it's not necessarily trying to replicate a landscape or object, but evoke the sheer emotional experience of spring through color alone. The large blue block near the top… Editor: Is that like the sky looming? It is the calm in the chaos. I like how Bogen leaves areas unfinished; he’s hinting rather than stating. The composition creates these visual pathways, constantly leading your eye around the piece. There is no central figure, yet its tension is almost sculptural! Curator: Indeed! This reflects the dynamism of the abstract-expressionists and modernists! "Spring" it’s as if the artist caught a fleeting moment, not pinned down nature but painted pure sensation. Editor: Precisely, Bogen uses watercolour not to simply depict something literal but to reflect on how the sensations feel; as though it were trying to catch nature's ephemeral essence. A worthwhile quest.