Personal Critical Archive of the Visual and Related Arts
Ray Yoshida
American; 20th-century
Chicago, IL: Smart Museum of Art
74%
Undesirable Grouping. 1975. Acrylic on canvas
If this painting has a weakness, it's that so much of what it's up to has been given over to conceptualization: the pied surface, the "undesirable grouping" of its objects, the thick lines that look like they've been where they're at since time immemorial. The absence of much of Yoshida's "hand" leaves the work feeling a bit bound up in itself; there are limitations, in other words, on what it is capable of offering up to experience. That said, Yoshida's characteristic pebbly technique isn't just a pretty effect, but rather a tool. On the one hand, it equalizes the whole surface of the painting, including those portions bounded by linework. On the other, it's a mechanism for differentiation; slight variations to color or density of speckling can be disproportionately suggestive of forms. This economy of technique is gainful. Plus it's just a great fucking design: the way the objects' bases are staggered, how some are enclosed and some are unenclosed at bottom, the call and response between round and straight, stiff and free. It's all very cerebral, but it comes off. (2025)