In the introduction to their new exhibits, “June Harwood: Paintings” and “Tracing the Edge,” the Benton Museum described artist June Harwood as a key figure in the first California Hard-Edge movement, a style “characterized by abstract, flat shapes … precisely painted crip lines, and smooth planes of color.”
The exhibits, which opened to the public on Sept. 9, included Southern Californian contemporary abstract artists Jackie Amézquita, Linda Arreola, Aryana Minai and Kristopher Raos. Three of these artists, Amézquita, Arreola and Raos were the panelists for this event.
Dennis Reed, a Trustee of the June Harwood Charitable Trust — who has donated paintings to Benton in the past — opened the panel with a warm welcome. Reed described his first impression of Harwood’s work during an art show in 1964.
“That was a startling show,” Reed said. “I mean these paintings were deceptively simple like, what’s in these paintings that really left me wondering about the nature of painting.”
After Reed finished his remarks, Nicolas Orozco-Valdivia PO ’24, the curatorial assistant for “Tracing the Edge,” posed the question: “How do you think of a legacy of an artist who wasn’t afforded the same opportunities and the same exposure as other artists?”
Li Machado, the Benton’s curatorial assistant, described contemporary Latinx artists’ take on the Hard-Edge movement.
“[The] contemporary artists in Tracing the Edge are mainly Latinx and are using their ideas on the painting process, conceptual inspirations and their experiences living in L.A. to broaden what abstract art can look like,” Machado said. “So you get works paired side-by-side in the show that bear some resemblance, but with far different methods behind them.”
These Latinx artists conceptualize the hard-edge method, personifying it into their own immigration or background experiences into their art.
Orozco-Valdivia began the panel by asking the panelists to reflect on “the edge” in their own artwork.
Arreola described the edges in her paintings as “divisions that create three-dimensional space from a two-dimensional plane.” Raos thought of fragmentation, describing the edge as “where something starts and begins again.”
To Amézquita, edges are connected to borders and migration. Amézquita’s artworks in “Tracing the Edge” are copper plates rather than paintings. For these pieces, inspired by the idea of “confinement,” she allowed different produce to rot in plastic containers, developing maggots and flies and capturing the life cycle of the products and bugs in the copper sheets.
“I don’t have control over the maggots turning into flies … I’m making other work at the same time as I’m allowing it to happen, so I get to be part of it, this life transforming.”
The panelists also spent time challenging certain perceptions about abstract art with the crowd. Both Raos and Arreola utilize hard lines in their works, but disputed the idea that these lines are structured and static.
“They’re very precise,” Raos said. “As you start to look at them longer you’ll realize I don’t use tape to achieve that edge, so I’m taking that component out and I’m really relying on that hand and getting into that mantra of just moving the material and have it arrive at the color.”
Raos discussed the misconceptions around how long it takes to layer paint and create seemingly simple abstract planes of color. The talk ultimately resonated with students, validating the processes of student-artists such as Anika Yoshida SC ’27. Yoshida described how significant attention to detail can go into something that comes across as deceptively simple.
“I feel like I work very slow when I make things for fun, so the reassurance that a lot of other people feel the same way is really nice,” Yoshida said. “It can be really time-consuming for simple-seeming products.”