A Brief Response to Alla Prima Amnesia
A Letter to the EditorFrom Ryan Johnson, December 17, 2025
Re: Alla Prima Amnesia: Phoebe Helander’s Paintings from the Orange Room at P·P·O·W by Anna Gregor
Dear Editors,
I’m starting to think that the honor of making capital-P Paintings will be awarded to very few, and very similar painters! It’s really not a surprise that Phoebe falls short of such a bruising, cerebral expectation of what a painting should be.
Let me start with the author’s last paragraph. There is actually nothing stopping the author from putting a high degree of effort and attention into viewing the work. The author could (probably) bring their own chair in, make multiple visits, or ask to view works in private. We actually live in the freest time to experience paintings that ever existed. But of course, paintings don’t need to be encountered this way in order for real connection and meaning to be gleaned. The nice thing about a painting is that it doesn’t need to express every truth or formal-material connection in one canvas.
After a nice introduction of the work, much of this writing has to do with the supposedly ahistorical “amnesia” of the paintings. I seriously doubt that Helander (with the educational baggage that comes from a BA from Hampshire College and an MFA from Yale) is capable of being ahistorical or an amnesiac of any sort. In fact, the crush of history and of the present clearly defines her motives in her essay. Is there something about her brushwork, color, or composition that supports the author’s claim that the paintings fail to “materialize loss”? If so I would love to hear more, because formal, concrete observation is lacking after the start of the review. The author all but says that alla prima painting is inadequate for conveying contemporary meaning, which I take many issues with. Other critics were able to pick out transcendent moments from this painter working with this kind of narrowed attention.
The parenthetical “(for what could we viewers learn from the latter?)” might be the split in the road between my views and that of the author, who I deeply respect. Thank you for writing!