Museum of Modern Art (MoMA)
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ABSTRACT EXPRESSIONIST NEW YORK
Abstract Expressionist New York celebrates the Achievements of a Generation that catapulted New-York-City to the Center of the International-Art-World 60-years-ago.
Even if you prefer Impressionism or Expressionism, at MoMA you cannot ignore the Abstractionists. The Storage-Vaults—from which the works in this show have been drawn—are crammed with them. In fact, it is like seeing Old-Friends after a Long-Absence!
This large show is drawn entirely from MoMAs collections, tracing the development of Abstract-Expressionism from the 1940s to its maturity in the 1960s. This Survey includes some 250 works: Painting, Sculpture, Drawings, Prints, Photographs, & Film.
Among the Masters are Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, Barnett Newman, Robert Motherwell, Arshile Gorky, Lee Krasner, Willem de Kooning, David Smith, & Joan Mitchell.
The show fills 25,000 square-feet of Gallery-Space, including the entire 4th-floor Painting & Sculpture Galleries, as well as galleries on the 2nd & 3rd floors.
It was good to see again the black-on-black, red-on-red, & white-on-white canvases of my Brooklyn-College colleague, Ad Reinhardt. When first I saw one of these, I was puzzled: "But it’s all Black!”
Reinhardt pointed out to me how the painting was composed of squares & rectangles, with contrasting textures of Black.
But you don’t have to be a painter to be Abstract. Aaron Siskind may be the photographer most closely-associated with Abstract-Expressionism: numerous works of his on display suggest the depth of this connection. Also featured is work by Harry Callahan, Robert Frank, & Minor White, revealing the ways in which the sensibility or structure of paintings from this period manifested itself photographically.
Glenn Loney