The Brooklyn Rail

I recently had the joy of waltzing into the Lockwood Gallery in Kingston and straight into the mighty heart of James Holl. It was a welcomed serendipity on a crispy autumn afternoon in upstate New York. I arrived unannounced to see his solo show Indeterminate Landscapes and there he was, chatting with curator Alan Goolman. Holl was glowing with glee and full of cheer as his sprightly artworks enlivened the room around us. It was a splendid encounter: I had recently penned a review of his wife Susan Wides’s photography show at Public Private Gallery in Hudson, New York (Wides herself another beautiful human being and brilliant artist). As soon as we made the connect, it was a feeling of instant camaraderie and kindness.

Pause and rewind: Holl studied English literature at the University of Washington in Seattle before arriving in New York City on a Greyhound bus in 1975. He went on to obtain his M.A. in Fine Arts and Painting at Columbia University (also the site of his first solo show in 1976). The seventies were a thriving time for artists in the city, an era in which modernism was morphing into postmodernism and postmodernist tendencies in art and philosophy had given way to a new chapter of intellectual engagement with art and aesthetic culture. The overarching themes of the epoch in which Holl established himself—prevailing topics such as popular culture, politics, and economics in relation to art—bolstered his resolve to dive in and be a part of the action. Holl’s early creative explorations reflect his engagement with the burgeoning postmodernist attitude, where his sculptural works such as A Lecture in the Past Tense, Put, Put, Put, Do, Did, Dent (1978) embody the mood with its title alone. Aside from his considerable exhibition history as an artist, Holl boasts a solid career as an educator (having taught at Marymount Manhattan College, SVA, and St. John’s University, among other institutions) and a graphic designer (he founded his own design company in 1978).

Cut to present: Indeterminate Landscapes features a body of work that Holl completed between 2001 and 2009. He and Susan were living in Union Square in Manhattan during the tragedy of September 11, 2001, and shortly after they left the city. During that respite, a visit to Joshua Tree National Park in California afforded him a vista of the desert landscape from a glider plane. Looking down on the earth without a horizon line in view, Holl experienced a dramatic change in scale that would become the inspiration for the “Indeterminate Landscapes” series. “I eliminated the lines and modulated the dots in subsequent paintings to appear as rocks becoming figurations,” he comments.

As he conversed about his life and artistic practice, my eyes bounced along through the paintings, following Holl’s rock-pebble shape as it surfaced (and resurfaced) as a recurring theme in works such as Indeterminate Landscape 4.20.08 (2008) and Catskill Souvenirs, View Within Sleepy Hollow 6.9.08 (2008). An audacious colorist, Holl’s celebration of luminosity reveals itself in the vivid blue hues of Long Dream, 12AM, 7.31.07 (2007) and the lustrous yellow expanse of The Long Dream, 8AM, 7.31.07 (2007). At the helm of the gallery, his sculpture Rakes for Small and Large Fields (2008) consisting of two large rakes draped with gray stones made of Styrofoam and leaning against the wall offered an amusing footnote to Holl’s affinity for rocks as metaphors ambiguity and distortion.

Holl’s show in Kingston is one of three venues currently hosting solo presentations of his work, including the Athens Cultural Center in Athens, NY and TurnPark Art Space in West Stockbridge, MA. In addition to all this, a new publication, The Landscape Painter 1972-2023, chronicles his journey as an artist and features essays by Carter Ratcliff and David Ebony. It was a delight to listen to Holl as he walked me through the exhibition, all while his charming demeanor further invigorated the already animated atmosphere of the show. He spoke of humor in form (with Miró as a reference), the ambiguity of space, the floating world, and “the lift” that art provides. When I revisited my notes to draft this write-up, his final comment from our visit appropriately encapsulates the whole of our moment together: “Art is about spirit.”