Robert Weingarten

PALETTE SERIES

In his search for meaningful subject matter, Robert Weingarten has traveled widely and photographed in remote and unfamiliar parts of the world. Although he is best known as a landscape photographer, his diverse portfolio is unified by his continuous fascination with the effect of light on color.  Now, in a new series of large-scale photographs, Weingarten turns his attention to the color palettes of some of the most celebrated artists working today, such as Chuck Close, Eric Fischl, Jasper Johns, Laura Owens, and Ed Ruscha.  Made with the scientific precision of high-resolution digital photography, these details of artists’ working environments and materials are printed very large—three feet by five feet—transforming the scale of the original scenes into one of chromatic and luminescent drama.  Palette Series, which showcases 21 images, is on view at the Corcoran Gallery of Art from July 15 through October 1, 2006.

Palette Seriesis a continuation of Weingarten’s ongoing exploration of light and color as seen in his 2003 6:30 AM Series.  From his bedroom window in Malibu, California, Weingarten photographed the same view of the Pacific Ocean at 6:30 am almost every day for an entire year. “I realized that what I loved most was the changeability of what I was seeing,” says Weingarten.  “Every morning is different; the atmospheric changes that occur day to day are what really grab me.”  Weingarten produced a collection of 137 photographs that expose nature’s infinite palette and powerful variability.  Palette Seriesevolved directly from this investigation.  

  “With Palettes, I started wondering how the light that painters work in informs their palette,” says Weingarten.  “For example, will a Southern California painter, such as Ed Moses, have a brighter, more chromatically intense palette than an artist working in Manhattan?”

  In defining “color palettes,” Weingarten chose to use that term as broadly as possible.  The resulting images comprise a series of photographs taken of anything that could represent an artist’s palette. These range from raw materials (such as Ed Rucscha’s cotton ball with pigment), drippings on a sink (in Ed Moses’ studio), random brush strokes and writing on a wall (in David Salle’s studio), an accumulation of paint stains on a table (in Red Grooms’ studio), floor drippings (as seen in the studio of Jim Dine) to artists’ actual palettes and paintings (as in the case of Jasper Johns, Chuck Close and Fernando Botero).

  “The images that make up Robert Weingarten’s Palette Seriesare both documentary details of something seen and lyrical abstractions of something felt,” says Philip Brookman, Chief Curator at the Corcoran Gallery of Art. “Weingarten performs an illusionist’s sleight-of-hand with these photographs.  He lights the original painted surfaces to emphasize their texture, excavating microcosmic landscapes of color from artists’ workspaces.”

  Over the course of producing this ambitious series, Weingarten came to the realization that there was no correlation between an artist’s palette and the light in which he or she works.  The darkest palette was used by Ed Moses, who works outdoors in the full sunlight of Southern California.  The lightest and most pastel-like palette was that of Richard Estes, who paints in New York City.

Images: 40” x 60”
Paper: 44” x 64”
Epson Ultra-Smooth Fine Art paper Pigment Prints
Editions of 10