The Whimsical and Free Artwork of Gene Davis

Installation view of Gene Davis’s “Untitled” works, on view in Ten Americans: After Paul Klee

“My last show of symbol paintings are just Klee blown-up large.”—Gene Davis

Gene Davis acknowledged the profound impact of Paul Klee—“his very first mentor”—on his artistic development. Beginning in the 1940s, Davis made regular visits to “the Klee room” at the Phillips, where Klee’s small masterpieces left an “unforgettable impression.” These untitled works by Davis with playful, flat forms were among a series of symbol paintings the artist made at the end of his life that harken back to his early experiments of the 1950s, when he painted freehand compositions with organic motifs (for example, Black Flowers). Davis attributed his “urge to do whimsical, free-hand drawings” to his “early infatuation with Paul Klee and children’s art.” Like Klee, Davis valued spontaneity and intuition over intellect—aspects that lay at the heart of Davis’s artistic methods, whether in his stripe paintings (such as Red Devil) or in his more gestural works.

This work is on view in Ten Americans: After Paul Klee through May 6, 2018.

A Constant State of Change: Painting Nature

William Baziotes, Sea Forms, 1951. Pastel paper mounted on board. Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, purchase

“There is no particular system I follow when I begin a painting. Each painting has its own way of evolving…Each beginning suggests something. Once I sense the suggestion, I begin to paint intuitively.”—William Baziotes

William Baziotes, who studied objects at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, developed an interest in rendering the underwater world. Like Paul Klee, Baziotes strove to become one with nature by penetrating the mysteries of the world that lay hidden beneath the surface. Indeed, because of their close affinities, works by the two artists were shown together in several exhibitions throughout the 1940s and 50s.

In 1957, Baziotes and Klee were presented with French Surrealist Odilon Redon in an exhibition at the Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston. The three were “creatively joined,” the catalogue noted. “In their emphasis on the beginnings of creation, they have shown us that every existence is in a state of development—that every plant, flower, animal, and being is in a state of change—that change is the essence of all nature, all mankind, and all art. . . . Through the free use of imagination, intuition, and visions they have transmitted the secrets of the new worlds of flora, fauna, and beings.”

This work is on view in Ten Americans: After Paul Klee through May 6, 2018.

When Pollock Embraced Spontaneity

All works: Jackson Pollock, Untitled, 1944/45 (printed 1967). Engraving and drypoint in blown-black on white Italia wove paper. National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC. (1) and (2) The William Stamps Farish Fund, 2009; (3) Gift of the Pollock-Krasner Foundation, Inc., 2009

In 1930, Jackson Pollock confessed to his brother his frustration that his drawing was “rotten; it seems to lack freedom and rhy[thm].” That changed dramatically in 1944, when Pollock spent several months at Atelier 17, the printmaking workshop where he practiced the Paul Klee-inspired automatic writing taught by Stanley William Hayter. Hayter’s Atelier 17 was a central meeting place for avantgarde artists such as Pollock, William Baziotes, Adolph Gottlieb, and Mark Rothko.

These three works were printed from more than 10 plates that Pollock etched over several months at Hayter’s studio. Hayter, who had seen how the method of automatic drawing had invigorated French surrealist artists, saw the potential to convert more followers among the American abstract artists. He insisted that his acolytes etch directly into the zinc plates without any preparatory sketches and call upon their unconscious to generate line drawings. Hayter’s studio became a rite of passage for many Abstract Expressionists, although it had an especially profound impact on Pollock, who took from the experience an appreciation for spontaneous, nondescriptive line. The emphasis on the physical act of making art set the stage for Pollock’s breakthrough just a few years later to his drip paintings.

This work is on view in Ten Americans: After Paul Klee through May 6, 2018.