What are the main themes in Frank Bowling’s work?
After moving to New York in 1966, Bowling’s commitment to modernism meant he was increasingly focused on material, process and colour, so that by 1971 he had abandoned the use of figurative imagery. Bowling’s iconic ‘Map Paintings’ (1967-71), which include the stencilled landmasses of South America, Africa and Australia, embody his transition from figuration to pure abstraction. As a contributing editor at Arts Magazine (1969-1972), Bowling rejected the idea that ‘artists who happen to be black’ should be making overtly political or protest art and defended those engaged in abstraction.

His critical writings represent a significant contribution to intellectual debates on ‘Black Art’. His sculptural paintings of the 1980s include embedded objects and thickly textured canvases, and have been described as evoking landscape, riverbeds and geological strata. Bowling shares Turner and Constable’s preoccupation with light, which is never more evident than in his expansive ‘Great Thames’ paintings of the late 1980s. His themes are a direct response to his life and experiences. London is the city where Frank trained as a painter, learned to be an artist and achieved early notoriety. New York is the city where, at the height of the Civil Rights movement, he felt compelled to migrate to and became involved in discussions of ‘Black Art’, a place of renewed energy and ideas where he sought to find new ways of making art.

How does he make his work?
Frank Bowling combines, figurative, symbolic and abstract elements to make paintings that relate to the movements Abstract Expressionism and Colour Field Painting. As an abstract painter, Bowling uses a rage of methods to make his work. In his earlier works he often used stencilling or screen-printing to add maps or imagery from his family history. From 1973 to 1978, he experimented with ideas of chance and ‘controlled accidents’, pouring paint from a two-meter height to create his visually arresting ‘Poured Paintings’, as an expansion from colour field painting. He later went on to explore light, colour, and geometry specifically. He incorporates less traditional materials such as the use of ammonia and multi-layered washes, to thick impasto textures, acrylic gels, collage, stitched canvas and metallic and pearlescent pigments.

Where does he get his inspiration?
Bowling divided his time between London and New York, maintaining studios in both cities. This transatlantic orientation was to see his early engagement with expressive figuration and pop art shift to an immersion in abstraction which continues in his practice today. Visible in his work are the legacies of both the English landscape tradition and American abstraction from which Bowling honed a distinctive vocabulary, combining figurative, abstract and symbolic elements. As Bowling has explained, ‘I was always very conscious of scratching out and of new interpretations replacing the old; updating traditions.’

What other artists does he relate to?
Over the years, the points of reference in his work reflect Bowling’s interest in a wide scope of art history, from Constable and Turner to Mondrian, Barnett Newman and Mark Rothko. This transatlantic orientation was to see Bowling’s early engagement with expressive figuration and pop art shift to an immersion in abstraction which continues in his practice today.

GLOSSARY

Abstract Expressionism
Abstract expressionism is the term applied forms of abstract art, is often characterised by gestural brush-strokes or mark-making, and the impression of spontaneity.

African American art
A broad term for art created by American artists with African ancestry.

Black Art Black
Art is a broad term describing visual art created by artists who are Black.

BAM
The Black Arts Movement (BAM) was an African American-led art movement, active during the 1960s and 1970s incorporating predominantly artists and writers.

Civil Rights Movement
The civil rights movement was a struggle for social justice that took place mainly during the 1950s and 1960s for Black Americans to gain equal rights under the law in the United States.

Colour Field Painting
Colour field painting describes the work of abstract painters working in the 1950s and 1960s characterised by large areas of a more or less flat single colour.

Modernism
Modernism refers to the twentieth century movement in society and culture that sought a new alignment with the experience and values of modern industrial life. Building on late nineteenth century precedents, artists around the world used new imagery, materials and techniques to create artworks that they felt better reflected the realities and hopes of modern societies.

Pop Art
The Pop art movement emerged in the United Kingdom and the United States during the mid-to late-1950s. The movement presented a challenge to traditional art by including imagery from popular and mass culture, such as advertising and mass-produced objects.

Artists

Mel Edwards (born 1937) is an American artist whose artwork has political content often referencing African American history, as well as the exploration of themes within slavery.

David Hockney (born 1937) is a British artist, an important contributor to the pop art movement of the 1960s, he is considered one of the most influential British artists of the 20th century.

Jasper Johns (born 1930) is an American painter, sculptor and printmaker whose work is associated with abstract expressionism, Neo-Dada, and pop art. He is well known for his depictions of the American flag.

Daniel LaRue (1938 – 2017) was an American artist, best known for his large-scale public sculptures.

R.B.Kitaj (1932 – 2007) was an American artist known for his expressive, figurative works that playfully depict contemporary life, art historical references, and sexuality.

Al Loving (1935 – 2005) was an African-American abstract expressionist painter. His work is known for hard-edge abstraction, fabric constructions, and large paper collages, all exploring complicated colour relationships.

Although Jack Whitten (1939 – 2018) initially aligned with the New York circle of abstract expressionists active in the 1960s, his work gradually distanced from the movement’s aesthetic philosophy and formal concerns, focusing more intensely on the experimental aspects of process and technique that came to define his practice.

Discussion questions

• 53 years separate the creation of these two canvases. Compare and contrast the artist’s technique, what can you see that may have altered over this time-period and what remains the same?

• Frank Bowling has often cited his admiration for the work of British painter J.M.W. Turner (1775-1851). In looking at these two canvases, how and in what ways might the work of Turner have influenced the artist?

• Notice the scale of both paintings. How does the size of the works add to the dramatic impact on the viewer?