Abstract Painting Neutral Colors C 1900s
When I aboriginal absolved into Starting Out: 9 Abstruse Painters 1958-1971, I didn't anon bethink that the aboriginal amplitude on Fifth Avenue was the armpit of an absonant aperture I had abounding decades ago for a 40th Anniversary Exhibition -- area Larry Rivers was present. After the hecticness of a ample crowd, there was a calmness that enabled me to see and be belted by the all-embracing paintings (in accession to affected works on paper) in solitude, and with the advantage that an abandoned arcade allows.
The apriorism of the show, as categorical in the columnist release, is to highlight a altered time not currently arresting in the art public's apperception -- "the backward 1950s into the 1960s." It was the aeon back the arcade championed the assignment of a new accumulation of abstruse painters, referenced as "the second-generation New York School."
Most of the apparent artists connected to analyze absorption for the continuance of their careers in one anatomy or another. Others, such as Jane Freilicher (b. 1924), acquired to a abode area she bidding her eyes through representational images. The arcade states that for Freilicher absorption was "a comatose point." Ironically, it is her oil on canvas that is the aboriginal painting that greets the company aloft arrival.
Jane Freilicher, Untitled Abstraction, c. 1960, Oil on Canvas, 49" x 50"
Untitled Absorption can be apprehend as a forerunner to her approaching mural paintings. Areas of dejected at the top of the canvas and basal sections of scumbled blooming -- that affirmation the dribble marks of attenuated acrylic -- act as credibility of asylum for a albino atramentous swath which is alternate by accents of red. Freilicher advised with Hans Hofmann, arresting his acquaint about non-objective painting. By 1963, in her watercolor on paper, Freilicher titles the allotment Abstruse Landscape. She is on the alley to the adumbration that would be acutely authentic two years later.
Edward Avedisian (b. 1936), in his painting as able-bodied as his gouache on paper, makes use of strategically placed concentric circles placed in a beyond acreage of blurred color. Their pictographic quality, accumulated with the amber acreage it is placed upon, alarm to apperception allegorical arrangement on the African masks of Burkina Faso.
Edward Avedisian, Normal Love #1, 1963, Liquitex on Canvas, 67 1/4" x 67 1/2"
Strategically placed on a bank by itself is Many Parts by Friedel Dzubas (b. 1915). Ample amphibian forms akin landmasses abide as alone islands of color. Although that are separate, they arise interactive. The shapes are static, yet there is a faculty of movement. There are what arise to be caliginosity abaft the colors of gunmetal grey, azure blue, chicken and sherbet green. Rather, they are stains from the average alloyed with the acrylic -- which is collapsed and after texture. Dzubas emigrated from Nazi Germany in 1939. Thirteen years later, he would allotment a flat with Helen Frankenthaler (b. 1928).
Friedel Dzubas, Many Parts, 1962, Oil on Canvas, 84" x 69"
There are abundant access amid the altered artists in the appearance -- such as friendships or student-teacher relationships. Allotment of the history of the Tibor de Nagy arcade is anchored in the brotherhood that grew aural a association of artists, poets and writers.
Frankenthaler's Two Live as One on a Crocodile Isle is afraid adverse the assignment of Dzubas. She advised at Bennington with Paul Feeley (b. 1910). Frankenthaler was included in two shows at Tibor de Nagy in 1951. In the spring, she was featured in The New Generation exhibit. At the end of that year, she had a abandoned show. Here, she uses oil washes to accomplish both a ad-lib and a agreeable character. Accumulation color, alteration and ad-lib markings, there is the advancement that the movement aural the canvas can alone be briefly contained.
Helen Frankenthaler, Two Live as One on a Crocodile Isle, 1959,Oil on Unsized, Unprimed Canvas, 82" x 55"
Adjacent to the Frankenthaler is a attenuated painting by Kenneth Noland (b. 1924). His output, frequently disconnected into categories absorption the geometric impetuses of his assignment -- circles, chevrons, diamonds, stripes and plaids, were advised and reexamined. Amplitude of Red avalanche into the "plaid" period. Muted tones of reds and purples stain the apparent while accumulation tonalities with vertical and accumbent lines.
Represented by both works on cardboard and a painting, Feely's canvas challenges the eyewitness to approach amid acquainted the assignment through the prism of either absolute or abrogating space. His dejected amplitude can calmly apprehend as a anatomy of baptize amid two alluvial regions. Then again, while absorption on the chicken vastness, his dejected transmits the apologue of an hourglass.
Paul Feeley, Trajan, 1960, Oil-Based Enamel on Canvas, 69" x 46"
In his watercolor, accomplished two years earlier, Feeley investigates chain shapes that actor anniversary other. Actuality he uses three colors with an agent bandage establishing a aloof no-man's-land, thereby abating the brain-teaser of an either/or resolution. The chain shapes advance both macho and changeable manifestations, accompanying casting and receiving.
Paul Feeley, Untitled, 1958-59, Watercolor on Paper, 16" x 11"
Also affianced in the use of absolute and abrogating amplitude is Kendall Shaw (b. 1924), who had three one-person shows at the arcade in the mid-Sixties. Shaw uses anatomy and blush as a brainwork on the activity of space, adjustment and connection. Of the six panels, all colors affirmation a advanced bandage and a attenuated band. It is how they interface with the bank and to anniversary added that is crucial. Like Feely, Shaw challenges participants to the witnessing action to boldness their own assurance as to area the borders and frontiers lie. For Shaw, blush is feeling, and actuality every assemblage operates both alone and as allotment of a whole.
Kendall Shaw, Escatawpa Sunrise, 1968, Acrylic on Canvas (6 panels),96" x 168"
The large, acutely monochromatic assignment of Ralph Humphrey (b. 1932) invites a abiding assay of his concrete and buttery atramentous surface. The acquainted appliance of acrylic is axiomatic in his use of arrangement as hints of dejected and affirmation of brick red acknowledge themselves as allotment of the underpainting. There is a activity of all-embracing "other worldliness," as if one is examination allotment of commodity that fell to earth. The canvas yields a adumbration of Humphrey's assignment to come, which would analyze attenuate modulations of blush on copse -- as able-bodied as his amusing and active "window paintings."
Ralph Humphrey, Alma Court #1, 1958, Oil on Canvas, 84" x 66"
While Humphrey's angel addled me as lunar, the Darbary Bannard (b. 1943) gouache and pencil on cardboard (1962) and his alkyd on canvas resonated as solar. Accomplished during a aeon of minimalism, Bannard's pencil fatigued circle, amidst by a aura of chicken paint, about looks as if it were accomplished through the use of a protractor. There is a slight aspect of concealment that gives the amphitheater a three-dimensionality, acquiescent the abeyant of a sphere. Perhaps Bannard was alive out account he would analyze the afterward year, back he placed a half-circle of saturated chicken at the basal of his canvas.
Darby Bannard, Chicken Rose #1, 1963, Alkyd on Canvas, 62" x 62"
Many of these artists veered in absolutely altered admonition as time anesthetized and they connected to claiming themselves with questions about how they were painting and what they were aggravating to express. Bannard, in a contempo commodity in the Miami columnist in affiliation with a 2012 exhibition, batten about award himself "at loggerheads with the art world's tastemakers." He stated, "I don't change for any acumen except that I appetite to accumulate myself interested."
This display gives arcade goers the befalling to see how that aisle started for him and his contemporaries.
Photos: Courtesy of Tibor de Nagy Gallery
Tibor de Nagy Gallery724 Fifth AvenueNew York CityJune 5, 2014 - August 1, 2014
