Dan Christensen, "Serpens," 1968, acrylic on canvas, 112 x 173-1/2 inches

Lisa N. Peters

We recently received a note from Julie Joyce, curator of contemporary art at the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, letting us know that Dan Christensen’s Rana (1968) has been included the museum’s current exhibition, Colorscope: Abstract Painting, 1960-1979 (on view March 20-August 15, 2010).

Consisting of works mostly from the museum’s permanent collection, the exhibition considers abstract painting in the era when artists shifted their focus from abstract expressionism’s surface manipulation to a new concentration on nuances of color and lighter, more lyrical types of handling. The show brings to the fore such aesthetic modes as post-painterly abstraction, color field painting, lyrical abstraction, hard-edge, and op art.  These approaches followed each other in such rapid succession that the critics could barely manage to label them before the artists using them moved on, creating new stylistic variations.  As the artists carried on dialogues among themselves in which they rethought  old rules and piggybacked on each other’s ideas, they constantly challenged the boundaries of painting. Continue reading →