Opening: 3 October 2010 - Closing: 25 April 2011

---

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 4^th-floor Painting & Sculpture Galleries, as well as galleries on the 2^nd & 3^rd 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.