The Great Beach: June Entering
PARALLELS BETWEEN PRINT AND PAINT
Katelyn Chen
The Source Project
Binghamton University Undergraduate Honors Research Program
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Overview
This research project is based on SUNY Binghamton University’s Bocour Collection. The Bocour Collection encapsulates around forty paintings which have been gifted to the University by Leonard Bocour. Bocour is known to be the founder of Bocour Artists Colors, a noteworthy paint manufacturing company. He collected numerous paintings from his artist friends and customers, therefore earning himself a reputation of being an ardent art collector. One of the works in his art collection titled The Great Beach: June Entering was painted by the artist Jan Gelb. It currently resides in Binghamton University's permanent Bocour Collection. Bocour likely acquired this painting as a means of payment in order to receive some of his paints, which was typical of Bocour to do (offer free paints for a work from the artist). When observing this painting in person, I felt a strong sense of connection with how Gelb had expressed herself artistically, and therefore decided to develop research pertaining to this painting in particular.
Gelb, Jan. Channels of Night. 1957.
Gelb, Jan. The Great Beach:
June Entering. (CA 1960-1967)
Introduction
Introduction
A change in environment typically fosters a change in artistic expression. Jan Gelb, a printmaker-turned-painter, experienced this when she moved from working at Atelier 17 in New York City to living in isolation with her husband in a dune shack on the Peaked Hill Bars of, then remote, Provincetown.
Prior to her relocation, Gelb had spearheaded the emergence of a group of artists, known as 14 Painter-Printmakers, that has been long associated with the avant-garde art movement in the US.
However, during her time spent isolated in the dune shack, Jan Gelb radically transitioned from her life as a prominent printmaker to creating paintings of her newfound muse: her front yard. Gelb’s front yard was the beach, and to her, it was a monumental inspiration to her works. Indeed, the beach itself became integrated into her work, with specks of sand from the capricious dunes evident in her painting, The Great Beach: June Entering (CA 1960-1967).
In my research, I argue that what might appear to be a radical shift from one form of art-making to another, does not, in Gelb's case amount to a complete departure from printmaking. The layered process that is integral to printmaking is reflected also in her painting. Recognition of this continuity, I show, enables us to better understand her painting, while also acknowledging the significance of the impact of her new environment on her work.
Additional Point of Research: What other artists have experienced a similar shift in environment as Gelb did, and did it affect their medium of artistic expression as well?
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