Virginia Jaramillo at the Bechtler
I slipped away to Charlotte, NC the week before Memorial Day to have a quick visit with my family. American Airlines flies direct from Portland to Charlotte, but with the time zone change, every option is bad. My working solution is to fly from Portland late in the evening, sleep on the plane, and arrive in Charlotte early in the morning.
The flight was uneventful. I slept through wearing big over-the-ear noise canceling headphones. American took about 30 minutes to unload the plane. My adrenaline wore off while standing at the luggage carousel and I could feel sleep catching up with me. Once I had my bag, I trundled across the crosswalk to the rental car emporium. One sole employee covered the Enterprise, National, and Alamo counters alone. This poor woman was blessed with the worst possible customers and I was lucky enough to get in line behind all of them. After an hour, a second employee showed up to help with the growing line. She apologized profusely for the wait.
I buzzed out of the airport parking deck in my shiny, rented Nissan Altima and made my way through downtown, and onto Independence Boulevard, headed southeast, towards Matthews.
On the way, as is my tradition, I stopped at the Waffle House. I parked right by the door, just like James Bond and noted the car next to me held a sleeping driver with one sock-foot dangling out of the driver-side window for some cool air. I grabbed a booth and ordered an egg sandwich, loaded hash browns (smothered, covered, diced), orange juice, and lots of coffee. My waitress had incredible pink dreads. Two ladies sat in the booth next to me and gossiped about their lives, their men, their kids, and spoke profoundly about how their parents parenting styles differ from theirs. More wisdom, but more violence.
As I was left, a mighty squall blew in. My friend napping in his car tucked in his foot and rolled up his window. I climbed in my car and watched the rain.
I got home to see the parents, glugged down some sweet tea then took a power nap and a shower.
***
Later in the day I headed to Uptown Charlotte to visit the museums. The center of Charlotte is a well cultivated little jewel of a center city. It is completely artificial, like a southern fried Las Vegas attraction, but it is, undeniably, nice.
When I was in college (in the 90s) downtown Charlotte was basically closed at night except for a restaurant and maybe two bars. Technically some of the big hotels had bars which, technically you could visit if you dressed well enough and didn’t arouse suspicion. The center of the city was a business district for business.
Today there are all kinds of fun things to do and see in the center of Charlotte, including the Bechtler Museum of Modern Art.
Through June 8th, you can see Virginia Jaramillo: Principle of Equivalence, a retrospective of Jaramillo’s painting from the 1960s to today.
Virginia Jaramillo is Mexican American and an El Paso, TX native; she was born in 1939. She is still painting today, in her mid 80s. She is completely new to me. She rose to prominence in the mid 1960s, She was selected to appear in The De Luxe Show along side Kenneth Noland and Jules Olitski. My art history courses completely ignored her
The show opens with big wall text and a short biography. The exhibition began, chronologically to my right. I hung a left and began at the end. When I saw 2023 on one of the wall labels I did a double take. I went back to review the big bio on the wall to check that birthdate again. Impressive.
Jaramillo’s grand triptych To Touch The Earth shimmers in gold, bronze, and silver at the end of the room. Inscribed in the brushy metallic panels are tiny, thin, hard lines that almost get lost behind the brushwork. They have an archeological feeling, as if they are evidence of a past space faring civilization. Her most contemporary work has a touch of the cosmic. Many of these paintings remind me of Feynman diagrams, as if they are describing the interaction of exotic sub-atomic particles.
This retrospective Jaramillo’s work is a short walk through 60 years of art history. Each room in the exhibit has echos of the art world at the time the paintings were created. One room includes many large stain paintings, echoing the work of Helen Frankenthaler. Where Frankenthaler’s paintings evoke estuaries or landscapes seen from the passenger seat of a speeding car. Jaramillo’s stain paintings are more like strata of earth. She also stains with oils instead of Frankenthaler’s acrylic. I was told in art school that acrylic must be used as the oil paint would rot the canvas. Lies.
Jaramillo’s torn collage works evoke Robert Rauschenberg’s combines. Her later Curvilinear paintings remind me of the mature pop art of Lichtenstein, and the post painterly abstraction of Frank Stella. In each case, though, Jaramillo is making these influences her own. She was engaged in the changing art world and her work reflects that awareness.
It might be a little strange to comment on such a thing, but so many 20th and 21st century artists arrive at a mature (marketable) style and stop there. No one wants to buy a weird Warhol. They want people to know it’s a Warhol. Artists have tremendous pressure to maintain a style of working that is immediately recognized. An artist becomes a brand. When I run across an artist with a long career who changed and evolved along the way (as they should) it’s a tiny thrill. Oh look! Change.
If you find yourself in Charlotte before June 8th, stop by the Bechtler