54 MARCH 2016
change, but I also wanted to be that unrestricted, free to
meditate on form, to look at the color of a blue jay’s cap or
the rounded red belly of a fat robin and see the curve as a
composition. I was, after all, a girl from Ohio whose first
drawings were of trees.
I was almost ashamed to like Ellsworth Kelly or Agnes
Martin, among others; later, after shaking off the impact of
graduate school, I made it my mission to investigate my then
secret minimalist leanings. I was not ashamed to like Ornette
Coleman, whom we also lost in 2015. I left painting around
2000, and during a long sojourn replaced it with listening,
until I could circle back years later, like the curve of the robin’s
belly, right into the arch of the Hirshhorn Museum.^3
In December 2015, opening my midcareer survey at the
Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, I signed a catalogue
with shaky hands:For Ellsworth, my hero, thank you.Blue
1Fourteen days after I autographed a copy of my first monograph
as a gift to be given to Ellsworth Kelly, he died, at the age of 92.
He lived a long well-spent life, painting. I had complicated feelings
about him—a mixture of love, disdain, admiration and envy.
When I was a student at the Art Institute of Chicago in
the late 1980s, the school began installing a large suite of Kelly
paintings, displacing several other artists’ works and filling
the entire mezzanine balcony space of the museum. I had a
hard time with them. The air then was thick with sociopoliti-
cal issues and changes—the culture wars were on. I was 20,
immersed in the new multicultural ferment.^2
In hindsight, my distress over Kelly was mostly about
the politics of the moment, the push for inclusion in the
canon and the scholarly struggle against white patriarchal
authority. I was angry at his freedom! I wanted to effectEllsworth Kelly:
The Chicago Panels
(detail),1989-99, six
painted aluminum
panels. Courtesy Art
Institute of Chicago.
© Ellsworth Kelly.
MUSE
Blue TurningGrayOver You
by Jennie C. Jones
CURRENTLY
ON VIEW
The midcareer
survey “Jennie C.
Jones: Compilation,”
at the Contemporary
Arts Museum
Houston, through
Mar. 27.
JENNIE C. JONES
isaBrooklyn-
based sonic and
visual artist. See
Contributors page.