Tag Archives: abstract expressionism

Arts and Culture

Modern Art Monday Presents: George Morrison, The Antagonist

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the antagonist by george morrison photo by gail worley
Photo By Gail

George Morrison (1919–2000) was one of the most significant yet often underrecognized figures in twentieth-century American art. A member of the Grand Portage Band of Lake Superior Chippewa (Ojibwe), Morrison became known for his richly textured abstract paintings and later for his celebrated wood collages inspired by the rugged shoreline of Lake Superior. After studying at the Art Students League in New York, he became part of the city’s vibrant postwar art scene, exhibiting alongside many of the leading Abstract Expressionists. While his Indigenous heritage informed his deep appreciation for the natural world, Morrison resisted being defined solely as a Native American artist, preferring to be recognized first and foremost for the strength and originality of his modernist vision.
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Arts and Culture

Robert Rauschenberg’s Spreads and Scales at Gladstone Gallery

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installation view robert rauschenberg exhibit photo by gail worley
All Photos By Gail

Do you love the art of Robert Rauschenberg? I sure do. I was super excited last week to pop into Gladstone Gallery (it had been a while between visits) to find that they’re currently hosting an exhibition of Rauschenberg’s layered, multidimensional wall- mounted and sculptural works from his Spreads and Scales series. You rarely see these works outside of a museum, and this is the first show to highlight the two related series —  made between 1975 and 1983 — in New York for more than 40 years. These important bodies of work demonstrate the artist’s unparalleled ability to expand the artistic possibilities of recognizable, everyday objects by ingeniously juxtaposing and combining forms in space. Continue reading Robert Rauschenberg’s Spreads and Scales at Gladstone Gallery →

Arts and Culture

Modern Art Monday Presents: Carolee Schneemann, Butterworth Box II

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butterworth box photo by gail worley
Photos By Gail

Carolee Schneemann (1939 – 2019) moved to New York in 1961 and soon became associated with the Living Theatre and the Judson Dance Theater, producing experimental works that explored bodily sensations. Although Schneemann is best known for these performance-based works, which she referred to as “kinetic theater,” her artistic practice was rooted in painting. Continue reading Modern Art Monday Presents: Carolee Schneemann, Butterworth Box II →

Arts and Culture

Modern Art Monday Presents: Norman Lewis, American Totem

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norman lewis american totem photo by gail worley
Photo By Gail

American Totem (1960) is one of a series of black-and-white paintings that Norman Lewis made which explore the emotional and psychic impact of the civil rights movement. Lewis, one of the few Black artists associated with Abstract Expressionism, created a form  that evokes the infamous hooded Klansman, but the monolith is composed of a multitude of smaller forms resembling apparitions, skulls and masks.

Lewis’s work suggest that terror is both representable and abstract, conscious an unconscious, visible and hidden. The painting was made more than decade after Lewis’s first solo show at the Willard Gallery in New York in 1949, which had earned him considerable renown but neither the financial rewards nor exhibition opportunities if his peers.

Photographed in The Whitney Museum in NYC.

Arts and Culture

Modern Art Monday Presents: The Earth Is A Man By Roberto Matta

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The Earth Is A Man
Photo By Gail

Originally trained as an architect, Roberto Matta settled in France in 1933, where he worked with Le Corbusier. During a visit to Spain in 1934, he befriended the poet Federico Garcia Lorca, who was assassinated two years later by agents of the Fascist leader, Francisco Franco. In a tribute to his friend,  Matta composed a screenplay called The Earth Is A Man, and the text’s apocalyptic imagery, rapidly shifting perspectives, and emotional language became the principal source of his artistic work over the next five years.

This large canvas is the culmination of Matta’s project. Exhibited shorty after its completion (in 1942) in New York City, where the artist had immigrated at the onset on World War II, the painting’s abstract and visionary qualities influenced a new generation of artists, who would later become known as the Abstract Expressionists.

Photographed in the Art Institute, Chicago.