Art

Hollywood Reporter on Carole’s “New Works” show

Carole was featured in an article in the Hollywood Reporter:

Kanye West and Kim Kardashian were among the star-studded crowd at the opening for Sager’s third solo show at William Turner Gallery in Santa Monica on Thursday.  Asked about his thoughts on the show, West was uncharacteristically short-spoken: “It’s awesome!”

As an award-winning songwriter and singer, Sager has shared the stage with an incredible array of talent over the years, and a number of them were on hand at the gallery to celebrate Sager’s work, including Barbra Streisand and husband James Brolin;Goldie Hawn and Kurt RussellKenneth ‘Babyface’ EdmondsJerry BruckheimerDavid FosterBrad andCassandra GreyBarbara GuggenheimJanuary Jonesand Jaclyn Smith.

Sager spoke with The Hollywood Reporter at the beginning of the reception and shared a few details about the inspiration behind her favorite painting subject: food.

“I didn’t realize until after I had painted about five food paintings that it was the area for me, because as a young child I was chubby and my mother and I had issues about it.  So food was a major thing; dieting, eating too much. And there was something about painting it and abstracting it that I find very enjoyable — to play with the paint and the subject. “

In addition to her studio work, Sager has become an avid supporter of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in recent years. LACMA director Michael Govan and his wife Katherine Ross were also in attendance at the opening for the new show. Sager was one of a handful of major donors to the museum to host a private dinner in her home for this year’s Collector’s Committee fundraising events for the museum.

Sager’s exhibition will be on view at the William Turner Gallery at Bergamot Station in Santa Monica until Nov. 8. For more information visit the gallery online at www.williamturnergallery.com.

ource: Hollywood Reporter

CAROLE BAYER SAGER: NOTHING LESS REAL THAN REALITY

By Peter Frank

Contemporary realism conceptualizes painting. It prompts us to consider how the camera has reshaped our view of our world by applying the visible conditions of the photograph to the physical conditions of the canvas. Much contemporary realism — including but not only Photo-realism – doesn’t really look at subject matter at all: it looks at how we see  subject matter as a result of looking at such subject matter through various lenses. It is a sophisticated exercise in perception, at least in the hands, and eyes, of those who understand what’s going on between the seeing and the seen. It is a discussion between painter and viewer about what is painted and, even more, how it is viewed.

Carole Bayer Sager doesn’t paint food, she paints how we look at and see food. In each of her paintings Bayer Sager depicts a field of vision. The identifiable thing — the nut, the cake, the sandwich – disappears in this field of vision, much the way something does when you stare at it with unyielding intensity. The peanut shell recedes into a blanket of shards, the popcorn kernel absorbs back into the field of burgeoning white shapes, the trail of jelly no longer seems to be emerging from the bread but now functions as a vertical pinion pushing back the horizontals of the bread, as if in a Mondrian abstraction. This isn’t still life. It isn’t still, and it isn’t life. This is seeing –how we see and how our sight has been reorganized by a device (or family of devices) that have been available for as long as anyone alive remembers.

In her statement, Bayer Sager tells us that, in effect, she thinks of her work as abstract, that is, as a matter of forrnal decisions and moves that either fall together or don’t. She revealingly compares the process to her songwriting, letting us in on a little secret: a song doesn’t get you because you because the lyrics are what you want to hear or because the music is so engaging, but because the music and the lyrics drive each other in just the right way. Everything has to work together or nothing works at all. Similarly, everything has to work together in a Bayer Sager painting, not because she wants you to look at food and get all ravenous, nor because she wants you to look at some handsome abstract structure and be seduced by its forms and rhythms, but because that abstract structure has to make the food stand out and disappear into it at the same time. She gets you salivating but transcendìng your hunger. If the picture works, it can feed you, not just make you want to be fed.

Bayer Sager is, if anything, more invested in the sensuality of the paint than in the sensuality of the subject matter. The paint itself is rich, thick, tactile, the surfaces often glazed. If the goodies she depicts inspire nostalgia for gustatory indulgence, the rich feel of the paint awakens a deeper, more directly and intensely felt sensation, one activated not simply by association but by direct observation. After all, the snacks and baked goods have been magnified, cropped, telescoped, and framed – all photographic techniques which Bayer Sager exploits (and thus comments on, as a contemporary realist), but which result in the subject matter’s distortion, often to the point of unrecognizabilìty. The food no longer looks like food, it looks like images of food; it inspires oral desire the way a billboard of a burger does, through association rather than observation. What we see before us are pictures of food–emphasis on “pictures” — not food itself. The works don’t smell of cooking oil, they smell of linseed oil – and anyone who likes their art fresh will tell you that linseed oil is an even less resistable aroma.

In this regard, Bayer Sager tweaks the conditions of photo-realism as well. We don’t think of the photo-realist style as painterly. But in fact it is, and perhaps should be; While so many photo-realists are masters of the airbrush, certain of them (one thinks, for instance, of Richard Estes, and even Robert Bechtle) investigate the relationship of painting to photography by making sure their surfaces stay painterly, even while the pictures themselves are unmistakably photographic. In this way such painters underscore the conceptual clash between the sensual medium of painting and the anti-sensual medium of photography. A distinctive figure like Wayne Thiebaud also figures in this discussion: Thiebaud’s images don’t look like photographs at all, in part because of his ferociously juicy brush, but they rely at least indirectly on photography–and photographic manipulation — in the cold isolation of their subjects. Bayer Sager does not emulate Thiebauds painterly manner (much less his candy-toned palette); but she keeps Thiebaud in her sights by creating a tactile – a rather oddly, disturbingly tactile photo-inflected realism, one driven by the presence rather than the absence of a painterly surface.

Mention of Thiebaud, of course, reminds us that Bayer Sager is hardly the first contemporary realist to concentrate on food. But she does not mimic their strategies. She does not artificially break up the picture with painterly devices, but ends abstracting qualities in the images themselves. When she overloads the visual field, the subject matter goes in and out of focus by itself, and we find ourselves rubbing our eyes not in order to refocus, but in order to move in and out of the painting so as to the proper relative scale – which her cropping and tilting never quite allow.

Carole Bayer Sager’s paintings are not about our desire for the subjects she depicts. They are about our perceptions. They challenge not our ability to resist our appetites but our ability to understand how we see things. This involves our psychological motivations and our sensory responses, to be sure, but it also involves the shaping of those responses and, for that matter, those motivations – by the technology that shapes our universe. The camera helped determine our consumer culture by directing our desires and even our needs for certain stimuli. And the camera was able to do so because it had long ago won our confidence. We depend upon the camera to know our world. But how dependable is the camera? Perhaps the only thing that clever machine has revealed is that our eyesight is not dependable, either. But, then, we learn that, over and over again, from art in general. Art such as Bayer Sager’s còntinues to remind us that, as the Zen koan puts it, things are not as they seem, nor are they otherwise.

Huffington Post Review By Katherine Brooks

Hyperrealist Paintings Of Food Transform Melting Cheese Into Mouthwatering Art

Painting, as a practice, has a long history of capitalizing on the sensual, intimate aspects of people and objects. From a lounging nude figure to a flourishing, still bouquet, artists have managed to depict both the beautiful and the banal in strikingly new lights.

For Carole Bayer Sager — yes, the Carole Bayer Sager — even a grilled cheese sandwich and a melting Hershey Kiss can qualify as the subject of an aesthetically gratifying work of art.

Sager, the singer-songwriter who’s collaborated with Bette Midler, Barbara Streisand, Neil Diamond and Quincy Jones over her vast musical career, has been exhibiting her hyperreal renderings of savory foods since 2011. Capturing the delicious debris of carnal feasts, from crushed hard candy to crumbling cake, she transforms portraits of mouthwatering snacks into equally sensory-arousing, two-dimensional tributes.

Feast your eyes, and taste buds, on Sager’s works below, set to go on view at William Turner Gallery on September 18.

Carole Bayer Sager’s upcoming show will be on view at William Turner Gallery from September 18 to November 8.

Source: Huffington Post

Carole featured in Art Studio America

Carole, her art and her studio are featured in “Art Studio America”

From the article in “The Art NewsPaper”:

The premise of the book is simple; a Route 66 kind of journey across America’s multifarious landscapes, stopping on the way to chat to a wide range of the country’s artists and getting a good snoop around their studios in the process
Follow the links for the entire articles:

art-studio-america-1-thumb-620x377-70970

Art Studio America

Cool Hunting:Art Studio America

The Art Newspaper:Up Close and personal

Scarlet Cheng Article from Huffington Post

Carole Bayer Sager at the William Turner Gallery

Love, loss, and fortitude are often the subject of Carole Bayer Sager’s lyrics — you’ve heard them before, sung by everyone from Petula Clark to Chaka Khan. But five years ago Sager turned to a new career — painting on canvass — and she’s been at it feverishly ever since. Her first major show at a commercial gallery, “New Works,” is at William Turner Gallery in Santa Monica, CA, through Jan. 5, and it’s a knockout. The paintings range from medium to large — up to 7-foot tall — and are astonishingly luscious celebration of snack foods. Yes, drippy, gooey mounds and falling cascades of peanuts, popcorn (caramel and plain), ice cream, and peanut butter and jelly. Things you really shouldn’t be eating, of course, but rather crave.

Last fall I had a chance to visit Sager’s studio, an elegantly modern, light-infused space which she had special-built for her artmaking. (She has a separate music studio, attached to her house up the hill.) The paintings were mostly done, hanging on the walls, with an easel in the middle of the room and a desk in the corner. “I like to be able to step back and look at these paintings,” she says.

Born and raised in New York City, Sager started writing songs as a teenager. “A Groovy Kind of Love,” the song she co-wrote with Toni Wine, became a hit while she was still attending the New York City High School of Music and Art. Recorded by the British group The Mindbenders, the song reached #2 on Billboard’s Hot 100 list. The song was also recorded by Petula Clark, Sonny & Cher, and Phil Collins. For 10 years Sager was married to the legendary Burt Bacharach, with whom she wrote “On My Own” (which became a Patti Labelle hit) and “That’s What Friends Are For” (which won the Grammy’s Song of the Year in 1987). Admittedly, writing songs has been a way to navigate a painful and difficult personal life. “Writing songs just saved my life,” she says. “I always need to be doing something creative.” (She is now happily married to Robert Daly, former chair of Warner Brothers.)

Five years ago Sager picked up the brush, and she hired private tutors to learn from. Since I happen to know one of them, I can see she hired the best in the Realist tradition. On the computer Sager shows me her portfolio, and she has done portraiture — Steve Martin and Mr. Chow among them — but clearly the hyper-real still-lifes that surround us are her passion.

The paintings reflect her delight in experimenting with color, composition, and texture. “Portrait of Two Popcorn” features two popped kernels on a black background, with a ghostly reflection upon the surface on which they are sitting. One can’t help but to anthropomorphize them because of the way they’re presented — like two star performers standing side by side on a stage, taking their applause. In “Popping” she sends dozens of kernels flying – they are caught suspended in midair, again with a black background to highlight their vanilla forms. In “Big Pop,” she has us looking into a bowl of popcorn, creating depth and three-dimensionality through composition and color values, and bold application of blues and purples.

Somehow it seems appropriate that a pop songwriter is so fascinated by a Pop art style — the giant blow-ups of common food being part of the lexicon of such Pop greats as Andy Warhol with his Campbell soup cans and Claes Oldenburg with his giant sculpture of ice cream cone, hamburger, and so on. During my visit Sager also reveals that these were the kinds of food forbidden to her when growing up – she was plump and much criticized for it by her mother. So now she gets to indulge a little! (Calorie-free, of course…)

Sager certainly knows how to trigger our own cravings — we are dazzled by the prospect of sweet, gooey things with contrasting mouthfeel. “Global Warming” is one of my favorites — its very title reflects a wry, self-aware humor. It features a ball of vanilla ice cream sitting on a thick cookie, drenched with dripping hot fudge. Beneath that chocolate coating are bumps of peanut. Take a bite (in your mind), and you can savor the warm and cool, the soft melt-in-your mouth of ice cream and fudge, contrasted with the crisp crunch of baked cookie. Another spellbinder is “Drippy” with its closeup of layers of crunchy peanut butter, grape jelly, and biscuit, some of that soaked in jelly juice. To add a bit of tension, a giant jelly drip is cascading down the side. At four-foot-square in size, the subject becomes epic, and Sager captures it all with a lively, confident brush and consummate wit.

Source: Huffington Post

Carole Bayer Sager offers splended nosherai @ William Turner Gallery thru Dec 15

A nice post-event array of photos from the opening in arts•meme.  arts•meme is a cultural blog written by Debra Levine

When the baseball stadium vendor cried out “peanuts, popcorn, cracker jacks,” little Carole Bayer Sager, as a kid, took that sing-song offering seriously. The prodigious lyricist/songwriter is also proud creator of a fun and poppy collection of super-sized snacks in serious, searing colors. The show’s early November opening at William Turner Gallery in Santa Monica brought out an impressive who-is-who of Los Angeles art lovers, among them film industry cognoscenti. Sager’s impressive output lends new meaning to the term, nosherai.

artsmeme.com

photos courtesy William Turner Gallery

Scarlet Cheng’s review of Santa Monica Exhibit

Carole Bayer Sager’s “New Works” is a joyous exhibition, a visually luscious celebration of all the snack foods you love to eat – but probably shouldn’t. Things like peanuts, popcorn (caramel and plain), ice cream, and peanut butter and jelly. Of course, Sager is better known as a song-writing maven with a career that has spanned decades. Her lyrics have been sung by everyone from Petula Clark to Sonny and Cher to Dionne Warwick. Five years ago, she took up the paintbrush, and she’s been going at it feverishly ever since. She has done portraiture, but it seems to me these hyper-real still-lifes are her passion.

Ranging in size from medium to large (up to 7 feet tall), these paintings show her experimenting with color, composition, and texture. In “Portrait of Two Popcorn,” she features two popped kernels on a black background, and adeptly puts in a bit of ghostly reflection on the surface upon which they are sitting. In “Popping” dozens of kernels are caught suspended in midair, again with a black background, as if they were flying through deep space. “Big Pop” depicts popcorn as if you were looking into a bowl of the stuff, successfully creating a sense of depth and three-dimensionality through composition and color values, and the saucy addition of blues and purples.

Sager instinctively knows how our cravings get triggered – we love the promise of sweet, gooey things with contrasting textures and golden colors. “Global Warming” is a close-up of a ball of vanilla ice cream sitting on a thick cookie and covered with gooey, dripping-down hot fudge. There are bumps of peanuts underneath that chocolate coating. As you take a bite (in your mind) you can savor the warm and cool. Another spellbinder is “Drippy” with its layers of crunchy peanut butter, grapey red jelly, and biscuits. On the right, one giant drip of jelly is cascading down the side, and the crumbs in the biscuit are so beautifully painted, you can feel them rolling around on your tongue (William Turner Gallery, Santa Monica).

Scarlet Cheng From ArtScene

DuJour Coverage at Carole’s Opening-Photos

DuJour: THAT’S WHAT FRIENDS ARE FOR: A PARTY TO CELEBRATE CAROL BAYER SAGER’S NEW WORK

The multi-faceted artist gathers a famous crowd for her newest exhibition in Los Angeles

Although she’s primarily known for her songwriting, Carole Bayer Sager has become an artistic talent of another kind: a painter. On November 1, Bayer Sager hosted an opening-night reception at the William Turner Gallery in Santa Monica for a new exhibition of pop-culture inspired paintings titled New Works. The paintings include lifelike images of everything from popcorn and peanuts to buttered corn and PB&J sandwiches.

“I have been surrounded by pop culture my entire life. I live it and add to it when writing songs,” the artist explained. “In my recent paintings, I am fascinated by studying small and often overlooked every day subjects, and enlarging them beyond their natural states, transforming them into something entirely new.”

New Works will be on exhibit until December 1, 2012. (Extended to December 15, 2012)

Read the article to see some pictures of Carol Bayer Sager and friends from the opening-night party.

Kelly Meyer, Carol Bayer Sager and Rita Wilson

Source DuJour
http://dujour.com/2012-12/664/thats-what-friends-are-for-a-party-to-celebrate-carol-bayer-sagers-new-work

Show Extended through December 15, 2012 At William Turner Gallery, Santa Monica

New Works: Paintings by Carole Bayer Sager

William Turner Gallery is pleased to announce that New Works, an exhibition of paintings by artist Carole Bayer Sager, has just been extended through December 15th. The show opened on Thursday, November 1st.   The exhibition features Bayer Sager’s evocative new series of paintings, which focus on abstracted subjects. Rich in color and sensual surface textures, the paintings range from micro to macro views of peanuts, popcorn and cracker-jacks, amongst others. These intimate and expansive perspectives create an intentional ambiguity, allowing viewers to more freely tap into their own associations.

According to Bayer Sager, “I have been surrounded by pop culture my entire life. I live it and add to it when writing songs. In my recent paintings, I am fascinated by studying small and often overlooked every day subjects, and enlarging them beyond their natural states, transforming them into something entirely new.”

Bayer Sager’s artistic progression began five years ago with mastering portraits and the human form. “When I first saw the portraits Carole was making and then found out how short a time she has been painting, I was very impressed,” says friend and painter Eric Fischl.  “Having taught painting, I know how rare it is for someone just beginning to be able to control the luminosity of flesh. Carole is one of those rare exceptions: a natural talent.”

William Turner adds, “That deep creative vein Carole has mined so successfully in music, turns out to have an incredibly strong branch of expression in visual art. “Carole’s gift for words has found a new source of expression in the sensuality of paint.  We are very pleased that the reaction to the work has been so positive, and that we are able to extend the run of the show.”
For more information about Bayer Sager and her artwork, visit www. carolebayersagerart .com.

Additional Information:

William Turner Gallery: 2525 Michigan Avenue, Santa Monica, Calif.
Gallery Hours: Tuesday-Sunday, 11a.m. to 5p.m.
Exhibition on view through December 15, 2012.
Visit www. williamturnergallery .com for more information.
Contact: Christine Anderson
Communication Arts + Design, Inc.
(310) 869-8597 or ca @ communicationartsinc.com

Carole’s work featured in the Huntington Post

In the Huffington Post, the feature was titled “We Want To Eat These Paintings”

“Last time we oohed and ahhed over the artwork of songwriter/painter/epic multi-tasker Carole Bayer Sager she was focusing on portraits of high profile friends like Steven Spielberg and Steve Martin. For her newest exhibition at William Turner Gallery in Los Angeles, Sager switched tacks and painted the simple pleasures of popcorn, peanuts and the perfect PB&J.”

Click on the photo or click here to read the rest of the article

An Evening with Carole Presentation Video

The video presentation from “AN EVENING WITH CAROLE BAYER SAGER: ART AND MUSIC”

The GRAMMY Museum is pleased to welcome one of the most prolific and poignant writers in pop history, Carole Bayer Sager, to the Clive Davis Theater.




Sager’s songbook spans almost 40 years and contains some of the period’s most popular and successful songs. From the GRAMMY-winning That’s What Friends Are For, the Oscar-winningArthur’s Theme, and the Oscar-nominated The Prayer, to Don’t Cry Out Loud and On My Own, Sager’s songs have become pop standards. Her songs have been recorded by celebrated artists such as Barbra Streisand, Michael Jackson and Whitney Houston among many others. With her talents, it is no surprise Sager has won a GRAMMY Award, an Academy Award, two Golden Globe Awards and a Tony Award. Hear Sager, with GRAMMY Museum Executive Director Bob Santelli, discuss her accomplished career including her latest passion: painting. From portraits to abstracts, Sager’s work has received notice in the art world and beyond, including her successful debut solo art show at the LA Arthouse in Los Angeles in 2011.

Carole Bayer Sager Art Exhibit November 2012

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Christine Anderson
Communication Arts + Design, Inc.
(310) 869-8597 or ca@communicationartsinc.com
>New Works:   Paintings by Carole Bayer Sager
November 1st – December 1st, 2012
William Turner Gallery, Santa Monica

(Santa Monica, Calif.) August 14, 2012 – William Turner Gallery is pleased to announce New Works, an exhibition of paintings by artist Carole Bayer Sager. The show opens on Thursday, November 1st, with a reception for the artist from 6:30 – 8:30 PM.  The exhibition will feature Bayer Sager’s evocative new series of paintings, which focus on abstracted subjects. Rich in color and sensual surface textures, the paintings range from micro to macro views of peanuts, popcorn and cracker-jacks, amongst others. These intimate and expansive perspectives create an intentional ambiguity, allowing viewers to more freely tap into their own associations.

According to Bayer Sager, “I have been surrounded by pop culture my entire life. I live it and add to it when writing songs. In my recent paintings, I am fascinated by studying small and often overlooked every day subjects, and enlarging them beyond their natural states, transforming them into something entirely new.”

Bayer Sager’s artistic progression began five years ago with mastering portraits and the human form. “When I first saw the portraits Carole was making and then found out how short a time she has been painting, I was very impressed,” says friend and painter Eric Fischl.  “Having taught painting, I know how rare it is for someone just beginning to be able to control the luminosity of flesh. Carole is one of those rare exceptions: a natural talent.”

William Turner adds, “That deep creative vein Carole has mined so successfully in music, turns out to have an incredibly strong branch of expression in visual art. “Carole’s gift for words has found a new source of expression in the sensuality of paint.”

For more information about Bayer Sager and her artwork, visit www.carolebayersagerart.com.

Additional Information:

William Turner Gallery: 2525 Michigan Avenue, Santa Monica, Calif.

Gallery Hours: Tuesday-Sunday, 11a.m. to 5p.m. Exhibition on view through December 1st, 2012. Visit www.williamturnergallery.com for more information.

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Carole Bayer Sager