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Bruce Cohen
Painting
American
(Santa Monica, California, 1953 - )


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Biography

Bruce Cohen’s formalist realist paintings explore the paradoxical relationship between absence and presence through their beautiful renderings of still lifes and uninhabited interior spaces. Cohen’s work seamlessly blends the real and the imaginary as he transforms the objects in his studio into calculated meditations on structure, balance, light, and form. Inspired by what art historian Susan Landauer refers to as the “crystalline clarity and the immaculate surfaces of the Dutch masters,” Cohen’s paintings revive the tradition of realism and recast it in a thoroughly contemporary context.1

Born in Santa Monica, California, in 1953, Cohen’s parents encouraged his tendency toward art and as a result he began drawing—primarily landscapes—at an early age. Even before high school Cohen expressed an interest in traditional Dutch still-life painting, but it was not until he reached late adolescence that he started to sketch the objects around him. After a summer at the Otis Art Institute in Los Angeles, Cohen enrolled in the College of Creative Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where art students were given the freedom to pursue their own goals. Cohen’s work during his days at UC Santa Barbara was strongly colored by the influence of surrealist artists René Magritte and Giorgio di Chirico. In the early 1970s Cohen met artist Paul Wonner, who was a visiting artist at UC Santa Barbara. Although Cohen never took a course from the older artist, the two developed a friendship based on respect for one another and each other’s work. With the support of Wonner, who had been creating whimsical still lifes since the mid-1970s, Cohen shifted his focus away from surrealism and began to pursue still-life painting. Drawing on a range of sources, Cohen built an immaculate and complex style that uses the literal appearance of objects as a point of departure for interpretations of real and unreal, seen and unseen.

Untitled (Corner of the Studio) (2003) presents a quiet interior, populated only by the richly colored flowers adorning the column in front of the window and the chair sitting before the glass-topped table. The sharply rendered interior tends toward abstraction in its streamlined presentation—the shapes of the objects fit firmly together like meticulously designed puzzle pieces. The rhythm of the work is strengthened by the artist’s acute sense of balance—the airiness of the sky-filled window on the left counteracts the heavy weight of the table on the right. Although the image feels austere, cold, and stagnant, Cohen adds life to the work through the inclusion of the vase of lilies and the vase of irises; but even these seem to lack warmth. As art historian Thomas Garver notes, the flowers “offer a different cycle of time—a faster counterpoint to the unchanging rectilinearity of architecture and furniture.”2 Aside from activating the scene, the flowers also add variety to the image, their organic form elegantly intermingling with the severity of the architectural environment. Perhaps recalling the ever-present influence of the Dutch masters, Cohen includes a traditional Dutch-style still-life painting of fruit on the wall; the painting-within-a-painting subtly mimics the lemons resting on Cohen’s studio table.

Although Untitled (Corner of the Studio) appears to be a straightforward account of the artist’s surroundings, there remains a feeling of unanswered mystery. The combination of interior space and still life objects creates a domestic environment in which human figures are oddly missing. This absence builds an evocative narrative in which time becomes essential. Given few clues by the artist, viewers are left to imagine what came before and what will follow in this serene studio space.

Ripe with narrative mysteries, Cohen’s paintings evoke what art critic Ronnie Cohen calls, “the hidden, symbolic side of reality.”3 In his sharply painted still lifes, Cohen embraces contemporary formalist realism by visually blending elements of abstraction and representation. Using aspects of space, form, and perspective, Cohen depicts a convincing rendition of his studio interior, imbuing each work with tension and ambiguity. —L.W.

1. Susan Landauer, The Not-So-Still Life: A Century of California Painting and Sculpture (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003), 164.
2. Thomas Garver, Flora: Contemporary Artists and the World of Flowers (Wausau, Wisc.: Leigh Yawkey Woodson Art Museum, 1995), 33.
3. Ronnie Cohen, “Bruce Cohen,” Artforum, December 1987, 117.

(SJMA Selections publication, 2004)


Born in Santa Monica, California in 1953, Cohen’s parents encouraged his tendency toward art and as a result he began drawing, primarily landscapes, at an early age. Even before high school Cohen expressed an interest in traditional Dutch still life painting, but it was not until he reached late adolescence that be started to sketch the objects around him. After a summer at the Otis Art Institute in Los Angeles, Cohen enrolled in the College of Creative Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where art students were given the freedom to pursue their own goals. Cohen’s work during his days at U.C., Santa Barbara was strongly colored by the influence of Surrealist artists like René Magritte and Giorgio di Chirico. In the early 1980s Cohen met artist Paul Wonner, who was a visiting artist at U.C., Santa Barbara. Although Cohen never took courses from the older artist, the two developed a friendship based on respect for one another and each other’s work. With the support of Wonner, who had been creating whimsical still lifes since the mid-1970s, Cohen shifted his focus away from Surrealism and began to pursue still life painting. Drawing on a range of sources, Cohen has built an immaculate and complex style that uses the literal appearance of objects as a point of departure for interpretations of real and unreal, seen and unseen. (SJMA Collections Committee, 2004)


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