Mary Abstract Expressionism was not killed by Pop Art. In fact, it continued in a fascinating direction, and has bubbled up from time to time into the popular art discourse. Mary Weatherford is one of those Abstract Expressionists who happened to have been born after the deaths of Pollack, Kline, and Ryan. Her work is in the vein of Joan Mitchell, Morris Louis, and the de Koonings, and though this is hte first piece of hers I've witnessed in the flesh, I was incredibly moved by experiencing it. it is a piece that comes to me with an impact of Joan Mitchel's 1970s and 80s work or early Philip Guston abstract pieces, but then there's the neon, a single stripe of neao buzzing blue through teh center, immediately bringing the power of Barnett Newman to the party. In a sense, this is a synthesis of the great Abstract Expressionist work of the 1950s, but using the neon tube seems to push the idea that this is a piece of technology as well, and since neon signage is the way I see the 1950s, it all ties togehter. The fact that this is a piece of 2017 is so impressive.
The Anderson Collection is so smart with this piece. It is placed across from the Frankenthaler, between a Morris Louis, a Robert Motherwell, nest to the alcove where slumbers Lucifer, the Kline, the David Smith, the Gottleib, and the Rothkos. It is set among the Abstract Expressionist master that is seems to be speaking of, or perhaps speaking to, and that makes it a heavy punch.
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HAving experienced the Matisse-Diebenkorn exhibit at SFMoMA, I can say I'm a fan. I'm not big into Diebenkorn, though I appreciate him on several levels, and I really tend towards dislike of Matisse, but the combination played so perfectly off one another, and it exposed Diebenkorn in a way that I absolutely appreciated.
The work currently hanging at the Anderson that I have the most love for is Ocean Park #60 and it is a wonderful work. Not a color field painting, though certainly influenced by Motherwell and Rothko, and not a minimalist painting, and it almost feels like a Mondrian painting executed freehand. It is the colors, the marine sensation, the fact I feel as if I am being washed over, that takes me. The Ocean Park paintings in the SFMoMA exhibition are wonderful, and at least somewhat interchangeable, but this one, this one feels different, as if Diebenkorn was working out something. This was a middle work in the long series of Ocean Park paintings, but it not only feels as if it is a part of a fully-formed definition of the series, but it feels as if it is breaking away, giving us something both more and less meaningful to the entirety of the series. The firm geometric encounter is powerful, but it is left with a hazy feeling, and one that made me look deeper into it, to find where the perfection gave way to the sfumato. There is no point, both exist, quantum-entangled, waiting for a viewer to make the decision whether or not the method to Diebenkorn's madness is alive or dead. To me, it is the Ocean Park series that is alive, and the definitions of how Diebenkorn's work that die with this piece, and it does both of them at the same time. There are many people in the history of art whose works I adore, but the one work of their's I have access to is not my fave. Martin Puryear is an artist who I have been a fan of since I came across his stuff at the MoMA years ago. Just about the only piece there that I did not connect with was Dumb Luck. The whole Dumb Objects thing is weird to me, and here the name seems to refer to the shape of the piece, roughly lock-like, but at the same time, calling to mind a shoe. Or a coffee cup. Or a pacifier. But it's none of those. It's a dumb object; it's of a form that is useless, dumb, functionless, like all art, right?
The problem for me here, and not with at least passingly similar works by the likes of Ruth Asawa, is that it has nothing beyond that. Yes, I get that it's kinda the point here, but there is making that point with something like Asawa's hanging 'baskets' that creates something in the space where it is exhibited, while this, this is just there, not just a dumb object, but an object that draws you in with the promise of 0% payoff. And that's what Puryear is really good at! He draws, he leaves breadcrumbs for you to follow, but in his other work (and the 2008 MoMA exhibit demonstrates it beautifully), you don't feel like you've been led into a field and left alone. Here, that's what I feel, and it's annoying more than thoughtful. Pop Art is not well-represented in the Anderson at the moment. You can look at California Funk as a sub-movement, but straight-up Pop Art? Nah. Wayne Thiebaud is either a Pop Artist, or a realist who simply representing common food objects.
Fuck that. He's a Pop Artist. The thing about Pop from where I sit is a feeling. It is the feeling that the world of today is a set stage, and the Pop Artists were merely capturing it with all the realism their technique could muster. This is EXACTLY that. Completely. Totally. Thiebaud's Candy Counter is Pop Art, without utilizing what would become known as Pop Art techniques. The painting is realist, closer-related to Thomas Hart Benton and Paul Cadmus than Rauschenberg or Lichtenstein, but it feels like it is capturing a moment that exists, real for a certain location and time and kind of shop, but that is also as artificial as the moment captured is as composed as the painting that Thiebaud has created. A look at a piece in the Anderson that I completely over-looked... I mean saw beneath...
Comments? [email protected] When I think about puns, I think about paintings. Apparently, that's the best place for 'em! William Allan's Half a Dam is a visual and a word pun, all rolled into one!
I love this gallery, but am not thrilled with this piece personally, though I completely get why it's one of the most important in the Anderson Collection, and absolutely adore how they've positioned it as a focal point, a defining aspect of the most important room of the museum!
Norman Lewis is one of the very few African-Americans you read about when looking into the art of the era that brought us Abstract Expressionism. He was often exhibited alongside the works of the rest of the New York School. He was a master, but after being considered a major figure at the time, he was shunted to the side in the following decades, which is a shame as I find his work to be incredibly engaging. The inclusion of three of Lewis' work as a temporary exhibition is a very nice touch, especially since the three works are hung on the free-standing wall that has the Pollock work Lucifer on the other side. The piece Untitled from 1949 is a joy. I had only once seen a Lewis painting, and it was far more like the larger canvas, also Untitled. Here, Lewis is working in rough-hewn geometry, seeming to create a series of somewhat hazy intersecting and interlocking triangles. The effect is impressive, as it brings the eye not to the pinnacle of the forms, but to the splashes of color that are present at random intervals. Those alone made me wonder what was the idea here - to create an image which celebrated the colors presented by giving them room to land thoroughly, or was it to show them being consumed by the black and grey, as if they had once ruled the canvas and now the darkness was seeping in from all side.
This work was not my favorite of the Lewis pieces, but it was the one I spent the most time with on two of my visits. This is a painting of post-war America, moving forward, busy, hustling, streaming into the future. The flag shows that we were the winners, we had beaten back Japan, gone over and kicked Uncle Fritz right in the monocle! We were getting ready for the boom, the best years of our lives, of all lives, ever.
And yet, here, no one is looking at you. Every back is towards you, as if you didn't matter. As if you were the one being left behind. This one hurts. It really does. It is a painful reminder that not everyone goes on to the bigger and the better and the best. Some of us watch the backs of those with ambition or connection or innovation or whatever. We are at the back of the pack, watching as the stream flows away from us, while we are the stones the creek flows over, maybe making a ripple, but often not even that. Christopher Brown is a helluva painter. This work was created, then sanded, then re-painted, and thus it makes it feel imprecise, or perhaps more accurately, like a memory fading. By the time he painted it in 1992, the memory was fading, we were no longer that America of 1946, fresh off the bomb and V-E and every other cliche. We were still moving away, still reaching for a new tomorrow, but it was nothing like what those Pamplonaing away from us would recognise. The painting of 1992 would be the same idea, different clothing, different timing, but the same idea; not every one moves ahead. If I have one complaint about what is on view in the Stanford's Anderson Collection, it is the last of Pop Art. Yeah, there are a few pieces, but no Rauschenberg, Warhol, or Lichtenstein, though I know that some of it is on display at SFMoMA. It happens, though I know there are several of each of those folks in the collection. The piece on the floor as I visited that most was a Donald Sultan work depicting a streetlight.
Why is it Pop Art? I mean, wasn't Pop mostly a 1960s thing and this is from the 80s? Yeah, true, but art movements don't so much as have edges as they do areas as fuzzy as the boundries of Rothko squares. Sultan chose a simple recogniseable image and gave it to us against a simple black background. There is nothing about the subject that would give us any idea as to the importance of it in the world. It's a street light, that's all. Like Warhol's soup cans or Lichtenstein's comic book images, it's not important what the subject is; it is important that it is being presented on a wall in a museum. It is a lovely piece, and the way it is presented in the space is what made it for me. It is on the end of a short wall. When you are facing it, you're looking down what I think of as the left-side hall. It is as if it is illuminating the way, marking a point in the trip where you can stand and know you're under light, and sometimes when it comes to contemporary art, that's a blessing. |
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February 2019
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