FORT WORTH, TEXAS.- The Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth will present “Julie Bozzi: Landscapes 1975–2003,” on view to the public November 23, 2003 through February 22, 2004. Julie Bozzi: Landscapes 1975-2003 was organized by the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth.
Julie Bozzi creates American landscape paintings that portray a subconscious familiarity of American places. A resident of Texas since 1980, Bozzi often paints areas around Fort Worth and Dallas, along the Gulf Coast, and in the eastern Texas Piney Woods. Her approach involves sitting in her car near dusk in front of the chosen site and painting directly onto the canvas. The format of her works—narrow vistas—echoes the view through her car windshield. This format can be seen in Landscape with Two Poles, 1997, a work on paper measuring 4 x 9 1/4 inches, along with many other works in the exhibition.
"Always portraying the overlooked areas within a landscape—the parts without the usual dramatic or monumental elements—Julie Bozzi sees her choice of subject matter as a kind of rescue," says Modern Associate Curator Andrea Karnes, the curator of the exhibition.
Born in 1943 in California, Bozzi attended graduate school at the University of California, Davis and participated in the arts program at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Maine. She began painting en plein air in the summer of 1975. The earliest works in the exhibition are from that year, and the most recent work in the exhibition was completed in 2003.
Bozzi reveals the many ordinary intersections between nature and culture. Her scenes depicted in this body of work show the backdrops that camouflage man-made structures, or small pockets of unmanicured natural growth within urban spaces. These works depict "outskirts"—the pockets of land where you find the empty six-pack, such as the scene in Bozzi’s painting Periphery of Botanic Garden (From Remote Parking Lot), 2001. This is where people go who are themselves on the fringe.
The artist’s formal compositions are as atypical as her subject matter. While the classic landscape scene invites the viewer in along diagonals receding into space, Bozzi’s paintings are invariably frontal. Space is created almost entirely through overlapping. In many cases, a barrier such as a wall, hedgerow, fence, or road makes up a significant part of the composition, denying easy access to the space beyond. This is seen, for example, in Santa Monica Boulevard near Bronson Avenue, Los Angeles, California, a work on paper from 1980. In this way, her landscapes reflect the acute objectivity of her own time. As she matured as an artist in the 1970s, Minimalism was in full force. Bozzi was clearly influenced by elements within the movement, applying some Minimalist characteristics to representational objects. Her non-hierarchical compositions, stripped-down colors, and the frontality of her pictorial field relate specifically to Minimalist sculpture and can be seen in almost all of her works.
Bozzi’s imagery also represents an eccentric synthesis of postwar portrayals of the American landscape. With progress, westward expansion, and a shift from agricultural to industrial development at the turn of the century, landscape painting evolved from projecting "the promised land" to mirroring a changing nation. Rejecting the romantic grandeur of their predecessors, the early twentieth-century Ashcan School created politically charged urban scenes with an imagery that acknowledged social problems. Artists involved with the Ashcan School, such as Arthur B. Davies, Robert Henri, and John Sloan, depicted, much to the distaste of their critics, scenes such as the alleyways and slums of inner-city dwellings. In the 1930s and 1940s, nationalism resurfaced with the Regionalists, among them, Grant Wood, John Steuart Curry, and Thomas Hart Benton, who celebrated the American lifestyle by depicting rural scenes in a concise manner. Bozzi, with her use of urban sites that appear rural, might be seen as creating gentler versions of these two extremes. However, more than the Ashcan School or the Regionalists, Bozzi’s work pays homage to the influential American painter Edward Hopper, who was painting at the same time as Benton and the Regionalists, but operated on the opposite end of the landscape spectrum. Bozzi’s work is more scaled-down and condensed, but both artists depict a straightforward, sober American landscape without epic markers or glorifications. Hopper painted the so-called "American scene," but rather than being nationalistic, his works are personal and charged with a psychological impact, often conveying loneliness and the vacuity of city life. Bozzi’s works, like Hopper’s, indicate a darkness within the American character.
Julie Bozzi: Landscapes 1975–2003 is accompanied by a hardcover catalogue with a foreword by Director Marla Price and an essay by Associate Curator Andrea Karnes. The publication also includes color illustrations of all works in the exhibition and a biography of the artist. The catalogue will be available through The Modern Online at www.themodern.org and in The Modern Shop at the time of the exhibition. The exhibition was curated by Andrea Karnes, Associate Curator, Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth.
