Helen Lundeberg

Sonic Youth’s most recent album, “Rather Ripped,” has a song called “Helen Lunderberg”. Over an almost tribal marching band drum the lyrics begin:

Helen Lundeberg
illusory landscape
five decades of paint

A couple of weeks ago (yes, it took awhile for me to post this) I finally looked up the name. Not surprisingly, Helen Lundeberg is a 20th century painter. She made paintings that are apparently called “hard-edge”, using clean geometric and organic shapes painted with flat colors. I found this page of Lundeberg’s paintings. I love the flat colors and the depth created by the tonal variation and compositions. This one, entitled “Sunny Corridor”, is my favorite. Even without the title, one can see that corridor and the sunlight shining in.

(The Sonic Youth lyrics possibly come from this book.)

Tags: abstraction, color, painting

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