A big part of Abstract Expresssionism, if we get right down to it, was to push art out of context. So yea, I appreciate it's a bit ironic for me to say that a current retrospective of the movement lacks context. The current big show at the Museum of Modern Art is really just that -- out of time, at sea, and serving purposes that are hard to grasp at first glance.
This show is something that has been on my radar for a long time, and since I live far from the city, getting there requires a bit of planning. I have been a big fan since high school, and i wrote my thesis in college about Frank O'Hara, the poet, man-about-town, and associate curator of painting at MoMA who was close to the movement.
MoMA's show pulls together a large number of highlights from the movement -- much from the museum's own collection. It is a greatest hits collection, but one that lacks a sense of nostalgia, passion or affection for the work. I've been struggling to find the right word for how all that feels -- not elegiac, nor like an obituary. It isn't a tombstone, but more of a cenotaph. At the same time, the show seems to be missing the sort of intellectual heft you'd expect from one of these once-in-a-generation reassessments. It is almost taxonomical -- this is what Abstract Expressionism is, this is who did, here are the best examples of it. It feels like the first draft of an art history textbook for high school students.
But the question of context is always right there, because it is a tricky issue when it comes to this work. Group shows about Abstract Expressionism in general seem to fail, because they don't make coherent points with each other as much as they do with themselves. Solo shows of particular artists can be brilliant. I have distinct, happy memories of shows devoted to Hans Hoffman, Clyfford Still, and my personal favorite, Barnett Newman. The MoMA show seems somewhat aware of this, and does a good job of tracing the development of Pollock from the student of Thomas Hart Benson to "Jack the Dripper." But everyone else seems to suffer from a selective approach.
And yet, even though Abstract Expressionism is so often a punch-line, (for the record, why do people still insist on dismissing AbEx by saying that "any four-year-old could do it?" I spend a lot of time painting with a four-year-old, and I tell you, she never does anything like this), the show was packed. Part of that is because New York museums are always packed (sorry, I'm desensitized to Berkshire museum going, which is usually blissfully quiet and solitary in the winter). So it hard to avoid the idea that this show was a crowd-pleaser, MoMA making its once-in-a-generation effort to present a comprehensive show about a movement that is intimately bound up in their own history. It is a reminder that this happened.
This show is something that has been on my radar for a long time, and since I live far from the city, getting there requires a bit of planning. I have been a big fan since high school, and i wrote my thesis in college about Frank O'Hara, the poet, man-about-town, and associate curator of painting at MoMA who was close to the movement.
MoMA's show pulls together a large number of highlights from the movement -- much from the museum's own collection. It is a greatest hits collection, but one that lacks a sense of nostalgia, passion or affection for the work. I've been struggling to find the right word for how all that feels -- not elegiac, nor like an obituary. It isn't a tombstone, but more of a cenotaph. At the same time, the show seems to be missing the sort of intellectual heft you'd expect from one of these once-in-a-generation reassessments. It is almost taxonomical -- this is what Abstract Expressionism is, this is who did, here are the best examples of it. It feels like the first draft of an art history textbook for high school students.
But the question of context is always right there, because it is a tricky issue when it comes to this work. Group shows about Abstract Expressionism in general seem to fail, because they don't make coherent points with each other as much as they do with themselves. Solo shows of particular artists can be brilliant. I have distinct, happy memories of shows devoted to Hans Hoffman, Clyfford Still, and my personal favorite, Barnett Newman. The MoMA show seems somewhat aware of this, and does a good job of tracing the development of Pollock from the student of Thomas Hart Benson to "Jack the Dripper." But everyone else seems to suffer from a selective approach.
And yet, even though Abstract Expressionism is so often a punch-line, (for the record, why do people still insist on dismissing AbEx by saying that "any four-year-old could do it?" I spend a lot of time painting with a four-year-old, and I tell you, she never does anything like this), the show was packed. Part of that is because New York museums are always packed (sorry, I'm desensitized to Berkshire museum going, which is usually blissfully quiet and solitary in the winter). So it hard to avoid the idea that this show was a crowd-pleaser, MoMA making its once-in-a-generation effort to present a comprehensive show about a movement that is intimately bound up in their own history. It is a reminder that this happened.
