“I believe that the black soul, if there can be such a thing, belongs in modernism.”

 —Frank Bowling

In For: JJ (New Life), painted in 1972, Frank Bowling’s distinctly Black modernism is given a radiant visual form. Successive bands of glittering color – pistachio green, sherbert pink and sky blue – evoke a transitory process with no stable form. A white spectral shape obfuscates the lower third of the painting, contributing to the atmospheric whole. While the jewel-toned colors catch the viewer’s eye, they also seem to recede behind a fuzzy haze of nostalgia and remembrance. Created the year after the artist’s first solo exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, the present work was presented at an exhibition held at the Center for Inter-American Relations in 1973–1974, and was included as one of Bowling's submissions to the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, from which the artist received a fellowship from in 1973. Entirely fresh to market and having belonged to the same collector for decades, the present work is a quintessential example from the artist’s New York period, when his critical success began to rise.

Born in Bartica, British Guiana (now Guyana), Frank Bowling began his career in London, studying at the Royal College of Art with fellow students David Hockney and R. B. Kitaj. After relocating to New York City in 1966, the late 1960s and early 1970s marked a crucial turning point in the artist’s career. It was during this time when Bowling attempted to make his work less self-referential and culturally allusive without becoming completely abstract. Bowling was invigorated by the energy of New York’s art scene, saying, “New York beckoned, and the toughness, competitive edge, and excitement drove me and my work to rise to new horizons.”ⁱ While living in the city, Bowling befriended artists and writers alike, including Clement Greenberg, Larry Rivers and Jack Whitten. The influence of American color-field abstraction in particular can be seen in For: JJ (New Life), with allusions to Barnett Newman’s zips and Mark Rothko’s rectangular color forms, both artists that Bowling admired.

Bowling’s arrival in New York would also encourage experimentation. In addition to Newman and Rothko, Bowling was also inspired by the soak-staining pioneered by artists such as Helen Frankenthaler and Morris Louis. Bowling is noted as valuing the staining not only for the “rich, glowing hues that could result from successive applications of paint but equally for the unexpected effects that could arise,” allowing for a new venture within the artist’s practice.ⁱⁱ The adoption of staining was not new but would be distinctly American to Bowling – he previously only stained his canvases in England when he did not have enough money to buy paint. Indeed, the use of the soak-staining created a kind of “found geometry” within the artist’s practice, creating linear bands which spread naturally across the surface of the canvas. These rectangular blocks of color, as noted by John Tancock, “emphasize both the shape of the canvas and the void in the middle in “empty center” paintings,” such as the present work.ⁱⁱⁱ For these works he abandoned the easel, placing his canvases on the floor to better encompass these larger-scale canvases. The paintings embrace the lines of the floorboards of the artist’s studio, using them as a tool to further highlight this geometric composition and relate immediately to Newman’s zips, rotating them horizontally and adding a softness that is characteristically Bowling. Joseph Masheck put it simply: “these new works are lovely hell.”^iv

Bowling’s Titles

“Like his titles, Bowling’s paintings are irrepressible gestures,” noted curator Elena Crippa. “They invite the unpredictable and elude control.”^v Bowling has always made cunning and witty use of his titles, drawing on his initial career aspirations of becoming a poet and studying literature. For the artist, titling only takes place once a painting is finished, when he attempts to reconnect with what took place during the making of the work. In the context of the present work, "JJ" refers to Josephine (Josie) Jammet, the daughter of Bowling's then partner, Susan Jammet-Parks. Bowling would live with Susan and Josie in New York for two years, starting in October of 1972. Memorializing his time with the duo, the present work reflects on cheerful memories through the pastel tones. The usage of the phrase “New Life,” howver, is a bit confounding – Bowling may be alluding to the moment of birth, a topic which has fascinated the artist throughout his oeuvre. Or he may be using the term more generally, referencing a more abstract renewal of sorts, perhaps referring to a renewal within his practice at this point in his career. Regardless, we understand Bowling’s titles to be ironic and evocative, both personal and in riddles. On some level, they could be considered private jokes with himself.

ⁱ Emily Steer, “5 Questions with Frank Bowling,” Elephant Magazine, January 9, 2017, online.

ⁱⁱ John Tancock, Frank Bowling, exh. cat., New York, 1974, n.p.

ⁱⁱⁱ Ibid.

^iv Joseph Masheck, “Frank Bowling, Center for Inter-American Relations,” Artforum, February 1974.

^v Elena Crippa, ed., Frank Bowling, exh. cat., London, 2019, p. 17.