Word: abstractions
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...first "grand" American style, mature abstract expressionism (painted from about 1950 onward) has been studied and shown almost to exhaustion. Shaped into an institution by the growing system of critics, dealers, curators and Government cultural agencies, the once fragile and isolated-looking works of Pollock, Rothko, de Kooning, Gorky and their peers became the emblems of a cultural empire: no style or movement since surrealism was diffused so fast, or imposed itself as completely on painters around the world. But the earlier work of these artists, done before, during and just after World War II, is still patchily known. Last...
...should give the coup de grâce to the lingering idea that abstract expressionism was a "native" movement. On the contrary: it was unimaginable without its source, surrealism. Indeed, it was the last great efflorescence of romantic imagery in art. The New York painters were very selective about the modernist enterprise. They had lived through the Depression and arrived on the edge of a world war. They were not apt to believe in art-induced utopias-the rationalization of mankind through ideal form. So the Bauhaus-constructivist line meant little to them. Surrealism, however, was more congenial. To begin...
Also featured are a light, airy-hued canvas by Philip Guston--a lesser abstract expressionist but a very good work of his and William Baziotes' "Bird of Paradise" executed in 1947. Ad Reinhardt also manages to slip into the show with an untitled work done...
Although no finished Gorky paintings are in the show, his drawings and preliminary studies for other compositions are examples of the mature Gorky--the abstract expressionist whom Gorky eventually discovered in himself with the help of the Chileam surrealist Matta, after years of imitating the work of his contemporaries and past masters. The study for "Calendars", recently donated to the Fogg, is a very strong work which shows Gorky in one of his finer moments...
...holes in the Fogg's collection. Both the Hoffman and the Motherwells are weak and the absence of the Pollock doesn't help things either. In addition, the show suffers from a lack of any work by Barnett Newman, a major figure on the color-field side of abstract expression. Though the Mark Rothko is an example of this school, it hardly compensates for Newman's absence. On the positive side, the show is well exhibited, and it is a nice surprise to see what the Fogg can fish out of its storerooms when it wants...