Page 50 - Wax Fusion Spring 2022 Issue 6 WIP v19

Encaustic, like other art forms besides photography and film, is

an ancient medium with its own history, traditions, and
naughty rule breakers. It belongs in a conversation about the

historical avant-garde art because it was there at the artists’
disposal, including the Swiss abstractionist Paul Klee, who built

up the surface of several of his paintings with encaustic.

I would argue that after Abstract Expressionism of the 1940s
and 1950s, there was no more avant-garde battling with

entrenched academic tradition, and once-radical ideas were
basically recycled into new movements and rebranded for the

era. Encaustic made notable appearances, however, in art of
later decades that are worth mentioning. In the late 1950s,

Jasper Johns (whitney.org/exhibitions/jasper-johns) was a
transitional bridge between Abstract Expressionism and Pop

Art. He famously used encaustic so that his brushstrokes could
be preserved in stasis, and the material gave an uncannily
elegant finish to familiar images like the American flag. John

Cage even claimed that when looking at Johns’ surfaces, he

was in danger of falling in love.

A radical artist coming up in the 1960s, Lynda Benglis
(www.locksgallery.com/artists/lynda-benglis) in many ways

responded to the sterile geometry of Minimalism by becoming
its alter ego. As a sculptor, she used audacious materials,

including encaustic, latex, and foam, in candy colors to create
works that were often body-like in form or finish. Those soft,
sensual surfaces in unexpected shapes, sometimes poured

directly on the floor with a nod to Jackson Pollock, also helped

to question gender stereotypes and inequities in the art world.

And finally, encaustic remains a tool in the arsenal of artists
today, and it is a coy shapeshifter in their experimental hands.
The works in this issue attest to the fact that, while encaustic

has signature characteristics, it is not the material so much as

the one who shapes it to their own ends.

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