The Blue Thread

Will Barnet, The Blue Thread, 1984, oil on canvas, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Frank K. Ribelin and museum purchase through the Luisita L. and Franz H. Denghausen Endowment, 1996.72

Will Barnet has painted several images of mothers and children that capture intimate scenes of family life. In The Blue Thread, the verticals and horizontals of the windows, table, and chair divide the painting into neat rectangles, and Barnet positioned his daughter, her son, and the family cat so that they evoke figures from an Egyptian wall painting. The subdued tones and stylized poses transform a fleeting moment in his household into an image that feels timeless.

Title

The Blue Thread

Artist

Will Barnet

Date

1984

Location

Not on view

Dimensions

38 ³⁄₈ x 72 ³⁄₈ in. (97.4 x 83.9 cm.)

Credit Line

Smithsonian American Art Museum

Gift of Frank K. Ribelin and museum purchase through the Luisita L. and Franz H. Denghausen Endowment

Mediums

oil

Mediums Description

oil on canvas

Classifications

Painting

Keywords

Occupation – domestic – sewing
Figure group – female and child
Animal – cat
Architecture Interior – detail – window
Recreation – leisure – home life
Object – toy

Object Number

1996.72

Palette

Emoji

Linked Open Data

Linked Open Data URI

Videos

Date

January 16, 2009

Information
Transcript

An interview with the artist Will Barnet. Will Barnet studied at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, then moved to New York in 1930 to attend the Art Students League. After his first son was born, Barnet began a series of paintings that show scenes of family life. He experimented with abstraction for several years, aiming to "eliminate realistic space" in favor of simple geometric forms. His later work is more representational and focuses almost entirely on the female form. ("Will Barnet, Works of Six Decades," American Art Review, June-July 1994)

WILL BARNET: Color is extremely important to me. But I'm not a colorist in a usual sense because my colors are not realistic. They happen to be colors that have to be used in relation to the mood of the painting. So that in “The Blue Thread,” the light in it is New England. Even though it looks like a woman, it looks like a child, it looks like to cat, and it looks like a window, that window has been structurally placed to give a balance to the whole painting. The cat unifies the whole picture between my daughter and her son. You have the window above, which begins to act like the sky, and then down below you get a sense of moving out and giving a vast feeling, almost like a landscape. A landscape made inside.

Compositional organization is the key to my work. The canvas itself is flat, and you are not a photographer. You're an artist, a painter. You have to recognize that that flat surface has to be respected. Each form has its own position, like in reality, so that an abstract painting of mine has a lot a reality to it. It's not just abstract shapes.

Well, “Positano” was a result of a summer in Positano, Italy. It's an extraordinary place, because when the Mediterranean begins to glow from the light of the moon, it got me very excited. I made a lot and drawings according to the landscape around me. Very sharp at points—big rocks, almost abstract shapes, and they began to influence my painting.

My abstract and figurative work is part of the same language. It's a language that exists, and that language is respect the surface of the canvas and organizing my small forms, large forms so they all fit together, work together, and talk to each other.

It can be very exciting and particularly near the end when you're feel you've got the whole thing together. It's a very exciting moment. Very exciting.

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