Max Brennan and Sigrid Burton have furnished their SoHo loft with her art, items inherited from their families, and the fruits of their extensive travels.

By CONSTANCE ROSENBLUM

Published: August 4, 2011

BACK in the mid-’70s, when Sigrid Burton was a young artist living in a rented loft on Walker Street in what was coming to be called TriBeCa, she used to pore over the real estate ads in The Village Voice with almost religious fervor. Ms. Burton did this despite the fact that she was living so modestly, she used to ask taxi drivers taking her home late at night to drop her at the corner, to save the cost of circling around the block to her front door.

One day she saw an ad that caught her attention, partly because the place was being offered for sale by the owner. “That was good,” she said, “because I always hated to bother brokers when I knew I couldn’t really afford to buy anything.”

The space turned out to be a 3,300-square-foot loft on West Broadway just north of Canal Street, in a onetime printing factory built around 1890. “It was a wreck,” Ms. Burton said. “But it was also perfect.”

By perfect, she was referring to elements like ceilings 11 feet high and 360-degree views of Lower Manhattan’s warehouses and water towers from huge arched windows. She was also taken with the building’s facade, set off with granite pilasters and an Ionic capital. But although she carefully checked out the place, her financial situation left her in no position to bite.

In 1983, her thoughts returned to the loft. By that point she was on her way to becoming an established artist. She was also newly married to Max Brennan, owner of Manhattan Molds and Casts, a company that makes architectural ornament for period commercial buildings (the parapet atop the Flatiron Building is his). Thanks to the recent sale of a house she owned on the North Fork of Long Island for $150,000, she had some extra change in her pocket. And amazingly, the loft was still on the market.

The couple bought the loft for $211,000. But wreck was truly the word for what lay within. Acoustical tile covered the dropped ceilings. Shag carpeting hid the original oak floors. Fake wood paneling — “something that never helps,” Ms. Burton said — concealed the walls. The cavernous space had been chopped into a warren of tiny rooms. Nor did the couple have a clue as to what awaited them financially. “We were so naïve,” Ms. Burton said. “I’d renovated another loft for $5,000. I figured, how much could this one cost?”

Well upward of $300,000, as it turned out. And even though the renovation proceeded in stages, with corners cut left and right, the costs seemed prohibitive. “During the first renovation,” Ms. Burton said, “I thought we’d be in debt for the rest of our lives.”

Because they couldn’t afford real doors and didn’t want hollow-core versions, they installed doors only in the bathrooms. They saved $150, “which seemed like a lot at the time,” Ms. Burton said, by not laying a new floor in the foyer. Because they couldn’t afford medicine chests in the bathroom or overhead cabinets in the kitchen, they initially went without.

Are they finished? “We’ll probably never be finished,” Ms. Burton said. “It’s still a work in progress.”

Perhaps. But thanks to inherited family treasures, extensive travels and two excellent pairs of eyes, along with the help of the architect Carl Hribar, the loft has evolved into a veritable primer on craftsmanship in its many and varied guises.

Chairs are a passion. What Ms. Burton describes as the couple’s first adult purchase are the half-dozen reproductions of Charles Rennie Mackintosh’s high-backed chairs that ring the dining table like guests with perfect posture. They are joined by copies of the Frank Lloyd Wright Robie chair — “iconic but so uncomfortable,” Ms. Burton said — and copies of Gerrit Rietveld’s Red Blue Chair, which look like nothing so much as Mondrians with feet.

The couple also love rugs. Their collection includes a traditional Tibetan tiger rug made by refugees living in Nepal — the animal’s teeth and claws bared ferociously — that is one of many finds from their extensive travels. A trip to New Delhi netted two carved teak doorways that they dismantled and, with considerable effort, shipped back home. In Rajasthan, India, they found the wooden apsaras nestled above the entrance to the kitchen — a pair of crowned and winged celestial musicians, one on cymbals, the other on drums. A selection of Indian miniature paintings from the 18th century depicts one after another delectable domestic scene. One image, known as “Lady Yearning for Her Lover,” shows a tiny young woman prostrate as her maidservants cool her down by fanning her and applying sandalwood paste to her feet.

And nearly the entire world is on display in a glass cabinet in the living area, thanks to the army of costumed dolls, among them a Laplander trimmed in fur, a little witch doctor from Micronesia, a tiny matador from Spain and a Guatemalan doll swathed in brilliant textiles. Many were childhood gifts from Ms. Burton’s grandparents, travelers as inveterate as their granddaughter.

The walls are dominated by Ms. Burton’s large abstract oils, bearing such evocative titles as “Two Wings and a Violin,” a line from a Pablo Neruda poem. Mr. Brennan’s mahogany grand piano, a Mason and Hamlin instrument made in 1935 that his wife describes as the love of his life, sits near a corner. He can often be found here, playing jazz-inflected Gershwin, Cole Porter and other classics from the American Songbook. The family cat, Miss Otis, is immortalized in a painting by their friend the artist Anne Harris that hangs over their bed. The cat is so clever she walks on a leash when the couple visit their second home in Greenport, on the North Fork, where they’ve been going five years.

Over time, the view out the apartment windows has been radically transformed. When the couple first arrived, Gwathmy Siegel’s SoHo Muse, next door, was decades in the future, as were the SoHo Grand Hotel across the street and Enrique Norten’s assemblage of glass towers, complete with outdoor pool and luxury automobiles on the ground floor.

Ms. Burton and Mr. Brennan, now 60 and 59, aren’t the sort of people who grow misty-eyed recalling the old days. Yet they can’t help but marvel at how profoundly their neighborhood has been altered.

“Back when we arrived,” Ms. Burton said, “I would have bet you everything I had that I wouldn’t be looking at a Maserati showroom. Or space going for $2,000 a square foot.”

(This article was originally posted in the NY Times Habitat Section.)

“Vestige: Traces of Reality,” a two part exhibition at A.I.R. Gallery and Konsthallen, Sandviken, Sweden.  The exhibition is curated by New York based critic and curator, Jill Conner and includes the work of 20 A.I.R. Gallery artists.  The opening reception at A.I.R. Gallery will be held on Thursday, June 23 from 5:30pm to 8pm, with a talk by the curator at 5:30pm.

Since 1976, only two years after A.I.R. opened its doors, the gallery has presented groundbreaking exchange exhibitions with groups of international women artists from France, Israel, Japan, Hungary and Sweden.  Following last year’s exhibit of Swedish women artists, A.I.R. Expedition Sweden, the gallery is now pleased to offer the companion exhibition, Vestige: Traces of Reality.

Artists included in the exhibition: Susan Bee, Liz Biddle, Sigrid Burton, Daria Dorosh, Regina Granne, Nancy Lasar, Jisoo Lee, Jeanette May, Louise McCagg, JoAnne McFarland, Catherine Mosley, Ann Pachner, Sylvia Netzer, Sheila Ross, Ann Schaumburger, Barbara Siegel, Francie Shaw, Elisabeth Munro Smith, Joan Snitzer and Nancy Storrow.

About the curator: Jill Conner is an art critic and curator based in New York City. She is currently the New York Editor for Whitehot Magazine and writes for other publications such as Afterimage, ArtUS, Sculpture, and Art in America.

Lyrical Color
Art & Antiques Magazine, Jason Edward Kaufman

Download the Sigrid Burton Arts & Antiques Magazine Article PDF

February 2003

Sigrid Burton’s paintings explore nature and nuance in a vocabulary of hues.

One of the pleasures of looking at art is contemplating historical precedents. In a contemporary painting’s colorful hues one may find faint glimmers of the luminous atmospheres of Turner or the water reflective depths of Monet. A splash of pigment may call to mind the floral bouquets of Odilon Redon or the solarized suffusions of Pierre Bonnard. An exuberant palette may remind the eye of the sheer luxurious abundance of Matisse, and a somber monochrome may conjure the brooding penumbral murk of Rothko. New York City artist Sigrid Burton’s shimmering Color Field paintings are springboards for such art historical journeys and for musings on the natural world as well.

Vaguely allusive organic forms hover in her soft, hazy light, like organisms glimpsed at the bottom of the sea or cellular life viewed through a microscope, Yet color-not science-remains her undisputed protagonist: fiery mixtures of alizarin crimson, rose madder, burnt carmine and cadmium red; expanses of cool ultramarine blues and lavenders; and clouds of glowing Naples yellow. Ranging in mood from angry to contemplative, her lyrical use of intense color aspires to what might be called “chromatic expressionism.”

Looking back, Burton’ penchant for color was almost inevitable. Growing up in Pasadena, California, her parents had Morris Louis and Kenneth Noland paintings on the wall, and the local art museum exhibited a trove of German Expressionists. After graduating from progressive Bennington College in Vermont, Burton made her way to Manhattan where she spent two years as studio assistant to Helen Frankenthaler and another year working for Jule Olitski, Color Field painter par excellence. These influences still inform her work, but she draws on many other sources as well. “I take my inspiration from exotica-foreign cultures, art, artifacts and landscapes – and also the daily stuff of my life and studio,” she says, sitting in her SoHo loft.

Burton has traveled to China, Egypt, Europe and perhaps most importantly, India; an Indo-American Fellowship allowed her to study the meaning of color in Indian traditional art, a subject she continues to explore in graduate studies at Columbia University. “In Indian aesthetics,” she says, “color is understood to have great expressive and communicative power.” Her apartment walls display antique Indian manuscript paintings and several doorways are adorned with Indian carved wooden portals acquired on one of many trips to the subcontinent. The most intricate and beautiful carving graces the entrance to her studio, providing a symbolic gateway to another realm.

Burton often has as many a four paintings going at once, concentrating on one for a week or perhaps working on several the same day. In her abstract expressionist days, she used to spread huge canvases on the floor and cover them with agitated swaths of pigment. “More macho,” she says. Now, she paints on upright canvases no more than 70 inches wide, a scale she says is “comfortable” for her gesture. She listens to jazz while she paints, and her approach is similarly intuitive and spontaneous. She works alia prima, never making preliminary studies. First she prepares the canvases with a white oil base (not gesso) that preserves some of the fabric’s texture, then applies a thin wash undercoat over which she begin to draw.

Medical imagery has long been one of Burton’s favorite motifs, from Leonardo da Vinci’s notebook to radiographs of her own aches and injuries. For example, after watching the World Trade Center disaster from her kitchen less than a half mile away, she developed tension in her neck; the ensuing X-rays and CT scans of her upper spine and skull became motif: in her recent paintings. She may cull image from art or science books, or even sketch the tail of one of her cats. Lately she has been painting over older canvases, making use of the underlying images as pentimenti. But whatever the motif, gradually it becomes integrated with the surrounding color. Years ago she switched from acrylic to oil to achieve greater complexity through glazing and to give her colors “a certain life” and “emotional resonance.”

In the mid-1990s, in her early-forties, Burton had what she calls “an existential crisis.” “It was the time my father died, and I lost a lot of friends to AIDS,” she recalls. I had a real crisis about what is the purpose of painting. It seems a very solitary, self-indulgent exercise, and in the face of something really traumatic like the AIDS crisis, what’s the point?” At the same time she notes she was “over stimulated” by her stay in India. “I couldn’t process,” she says. So she stopped painting for two years. Then, after some soul-searching, she came to the conclusion that, for better or worse, painting was her life. “This is what I do the best,” she says. “I’ve got to keep doing this.”

When Burton returned to the studio, she began creating what she considers break through paintings of natural forms in envelope of atmospheric color. If they lend themselves to varied readings, that is just what she wants. “I am not trying to elicit a specific response or mood,” she explains. “I hope the different relationships in the painting – color, atmosphere, tonal variations, drawing, motif, figure/ground – will intrigue the viewer subjectively, and the responses will be different over multiple viewings.

“Painting is like play,” she continues. “It’s the process 1 love, and in that sense, the product doesn’t really matter that much.”

The dialectic between color and form has always inflected, even impelled the painting of Sigrid Burton. Sometimes color does seem to overwhelm form, but more often form asserts itself in the midst of her luminous, translucent clouds of color, giving unanticipated backbone to otherwise invertebrate masses of hue and tone. If color is the more omnipresent protagonist in Burton&rquo;s dialectic, form is the more persistent. And note the term “protagonist”, not “antagonist”: Burton’s color-form dialectic is a dialogue between partners, the senior partner the more prominent, but not the more important.

Never has this been more evident than in Burton’s recent series of canvases and works on paper. In these, her characteristic numinous color, darker and more brooding than ever, seems to gel in crucial places (normally towards the center of the canvas) into some sort of organic presence — more flora than fauna, but with a peculiar vitality, even sense of kinesis, as well as an equally peculiar relationship with the atmosphere(s) around it. This relationship is fraught with ambiguity: it balances on the breakdown of distinction between figure and ground (as well as between plant and animal), but resists the dissolution of that figure. Indeed, the figure, bulbous, tendrilous, unfurling, glowing — itself infused with Burton’ luminous hues — seems, if anything, to be drawing strength from its surroundings, like a lily pad absorbing nutrients from its pond.

The water-plant simile seems apt — rather more so than other associations readily provoked by these mysterious forms, forms rendered with such calculated, even calibrated inexactitude. While giving shape, focus, and, yes, local color to her pictures, Burton’s images themselves float in decidedly aqueous milieux. If they can be read as buds and leaves and flowers and stems, they still do not seem landbound (unless the immanent murk around them could be interpreted as the unvariegated mulch of a forest floor or bog — which, of course, would only mirror the flotsamic humor of sea and lake alike). Perhaps they are species of kelp, or perhaps tree branches that have fallen into a lagoon. Or, indeed, these delicate trails and bubbles may be marine animals, coelenterates or mollusks adrift in their element. Shell-like — and bladder-like, and fin-like, and tail-like — these shapes appear just often enough (and just enough of each appears) in Burton’s latest body of work to obscure the distinction between plant and animal. Are these beings, and being-fragments, in fact microscopic? Could they be diatoms or even microbes existing at a level where the discrete natural kingdoms converge?

Beyond this point, such conjecture leads away from the essence of Burton’s painting. It’s not that such a metaphorical inquest is inappropriate; the images are inarguably redolent of the natural world. But Burton is not praticing botany or microbiology here, she is practicing the even less exact art of present-day painting — less exact, that is, in terms of “recording” the exterior world, but arguably more exact in terms of reordering the world through the sensibility of the image-maker. She exploits the very inexactitude of representation that painting affords her, in order to afford us (and herself) the pleasure of the image and of the color that suffuses it. She also allows us the more ludic pleasure of trying various identities onto her forms; but of course it’s an open-ended game, never settling into a process by which the viewer’s attention diverts from her central concern, the presence of the painting as an entirety. The painting is at issue; the image at its core may be its spine, but it is not its subject. The subject here is the whole of the painted picture, formulated with oils on a rectangularly bounded canvas plane — and the impact that picture has on the eye of the beholder.

It is a pleasant diversion to “read” Sigrid Burton’s paintings for their real-world associations. It is far more appropriate, enduring and gratifying simply, and ultimately, to see them — to look at once at and into them, to comprehend those real-world associations, in all their ambiguity, as part of a concept of the visual that fuses the known with the unknown, the seen with the unseen, the associable with the ineffable — to the point where the ineffable is identifiable, as a meta-nature of the eye.