Creating an Artistic Language

Posted on March 15, 2018 by Experiment Station

Adolph Gottlieb, The Seer, 1950. Oil on canvas, 59 3/4 x 71 5/8 in. The Phillips Collection, Washington, DC, Acquired 1952. © Adolph and Esther Gottlieb Foundation/Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY

In 1941, in the aftermath of Paul Klee’s death and memorial retrospective organized by the Museum of Modern Art, Adolph Gottlieb produced a new, daring series, which eventually included over 500 works. He called these abstract inventions pictographs, or paintings filled with hieroglyphic-like forms. The Seer is one of the largest and last in the series. In a flat grid, Gottlieb juxtaposed abstract symbols conjured through free association with universal archetypes such as the arrow, circle, triangle, and ellipse in a manner reminiscent of Klee’s mature compositions.

During the 1940s, Gottlieb drew on Klee’s example in creating a unique artistic language that reconciled several opposing elements: line versus color, structure versus spontaneity, thought versus feeling, and stasis versus dynamism. According to Klee, these dualities mirror the primal conflict that has existed since the beginning of human existence. Gottlieb echoed the view, noting, “These opposites parallel our inner conflicts which are usually unresolved.”

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

When Pollock Embraced Spontaneity

Posted on March 8, 2018 by Experiment Station

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.

Nocturnal Energy

Posted on February 28, 2018 by Experiment Station

“You can’t just look at Klees. They must be absorbed on multiple levels.”—Mark Tobey

One of the older members of the Abstract Expressionist circle, Mark Tobey had a special relationship with Paul Klee that stemmed from his strong grounding in Asian calligraphy and aesthetics. His study of Chinese calligraphy and philosophy (first from a Chinese student in Seattle and later while living in a Zen monastery in Kyoto), combined with his Bahá’í faith, led to his development of a delicate, linear calligraphic style. Tobey applied his signature “white writing” technique in his mesmerizing Night Flight. Using densely layered networks of white pigment against a dark ground, Tobey creates lines suggestive of nocturnal energy and movement.

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