Henri Matisse, Pink Studio, 1911, Oil on canvas, 71 x 87 inches, Collection Pushkin Museum, Moscow, Russia
Dear Readers,
For Field of Pink, twenty-eight artists from Sydney, Australia; New York; Atlanta; Bremen and Nürnberg, Germany; Adana, Turkey and beyond were invited to respond to a simple prompt: pink. The resulting works reveal the extraordinary range of meanings carried by a single hue. For some artists, pink is symbolic; for others, it is emotional, perceptual, cultural, or deeply personal. The exhibition expands our understanding of pink through countless tonalities, intensities, and material expressions. It is a collection of luminosity and hue—a field of color in the spirit of Color Field painting, but equally a field of many voices. Field of Pink evokes a landscape, an expanse of possibility, and a gathering of artists whose individual interpretations contribute to a rich and varied dialogue about the expressive potential of pink.
Visual artist and poet Nicolette Reim has curated Poetic Lives of Pink, bringing together five poets whose works evoke pink—not literally, but through memory, imagery, rhythm, and emotion. Each of the featured poets—Edward Hirsch, Kathryn Kimball, Sean Nevin, Gail Mitchell, and Ernest Gusella—offers a distinct chromatic sensibility through language. Readers can not only experience the poems on the page but also listen to each poet reading their own work, adding another layer of intimacy and resonance.
Phil Auslander traces the cultural evolution of pink in his essay Peak Pink, beginning with Diana Vreeland's response to Norman Parkinson's celebrated 1956 Vogue photograph. He follows pink's remarkable journey—from a color once associated with luxury because of the rarity and expense of pink dyes to its ever-expanding cultural meanings in fashion, design, politics, popular culture, and contemporary art.
As a painter whose primary language is color, editing this issue has become a personal meditation on the many lives of pink. These essays, poems, and artworks invite you to experience this remarkable color in new ways and transport you to your own most luminous shade of pink.
Thank you to the artists, poets, writers, and everyone who makes The Art Section possible.
All my best,
Deanna
Deanna Sirlin
Editor-in-Chief
The Art Section
Deanna Sirlin is an artist and writer from Brooklyn, New York currently living and working in Georgia. She received an MFA from Queens College, CUNY where she studied with Robert Pincus-Witten, Charles Cajori and Benny Andrews. She has received numerous honors, including a Rothko Foundation Symposium Residency, a grant from the United States State Department, a Yaddo Foundation Residency and a Creative Capital Warhol Foundation Award for its Art Writing Mentorship Program. Her book She's Got What It Takes: American Women Artists in Dialogue was published by Charta Art Books, Milan, IT and New York City, NY
Deanna Sirlin
Photo: Jerry Siegel