Link to Post:
http://dailyserving.com/2013/02/camaraderie-on-canvas/
Hayley Plack blogs about the exhibition Angels, Demons and Savages: Pollock, Ossorio, Dubuffet at the Phillips Collection, Washington D.C., on view through May 12, 2013.
Plack writes that "The exhibition traces the relationships between Jackson Pollock, Alfonso Ossorio, and Jean Dubuffet, three artists working simultaneously across continents in similar abstract styles during the period of 1945 to 1958. The 53 paintings and prints in the exhibition tell the story of how Pollock, Ossorio and Dubuffet influenced each other through not only their close friendships, but also through the sharing of ideas, techniques and even studio spaces... All three grappled with abstraction versus figuration, and each had an interest in process and materials."
Link to Post:
http://abstractcritical.com/article/painting-and-performance/
On the occasion of the exhibitions A Bigger Splash: Painting after Performance at Tate Modern (through April 1) and Explosion! The Legacy of Jackson Pollock at the Fundació Joan Miró (through Feb 24), Stephen Moonie considers the history of "painting and performance in relation to one another." He asserts that "it is evident that painting can no longer be taken for granted: instead it operates within an expanded field across and between media."
He concludes: "What is clear... is that performance and painting are closely intertwined, and that the relationship between the two works both ways: painting is not only a pathway into performance, but that many aspects of performance equally lead back into painting..."
Link to Post:
http://hyperallergic.com/61329/jackson-pollock-and-john-cage-an-american-odd-couple/
Jason Andrew writes about two concurrent exhibitions: Jackson Pollock: A Centennial Exhibition at Jason McCoy Gallery (through December 14) and John Cage: The Sight of Silence at the National Academy Museum (through January 13).
Andrew writes: "Pollock and Cage were aesthetic extremes of each other. Pollock sought to make paintings that were entirely an expression of his manic inner ego, whereas Cage fought to remove himself completely from the decision-making process involved in art. And yet, Pollock and Cage did have one thing in common. They shared a common adversary: hundreds of years of European history, theory, and dominance in the arts. So while Pollock fought to break from Braque, Cage battled to break from Beethoven."
Link to Post:
http://abstractcritical.com/article/a-bigger-splash-painting-after-performance-at-tate-modern/
Dan Coombs reviews the exhibition A Bigger Splash: Painting After Performance at Tate Modern, on view through April 1, 2013.
Coombs writes that performance art "can be an exhausting medium with little room for the sort of contemplation possible in front of a painting. The form itself is ephemeral and disappears as soon as the performance is over and often the only evidence that such a thing ever happened is through a photograph or a film... This is ironic given that performance art is a continuation, and some might say completion, of the modernist drive towards actuality. It articulates its form through a real body, a real presence, and gives its subjects, which are often imbued with political urgency, a condition of actual being. The disadvantage with it is that, as with events in real life, it is over so very quickly, and often we encounter it most readily through the mediated form of photography or film, a translation of actuality into a fiction. Painting, in comparison, seems embarrassingly immediate."
Link to Post:
http://www.artnews.com/2012/11/26/pollock-paints-a-picture/
Robert Goodnough's classic 1951 narration of Jackson Pollock's studio process.
In addition to documenting Pollock's now familiar drip technique, Goodnough also reveals the lesser known aspects of Pollock's method. Goodnough writes: "The final work on the painting was slow and deliberate. The design had become exceedingly complex and had to be brought to a state of complete organization. When finished and free from himself the painting would record a released experience. A few movements in white paint constituted the final act and the picture was hung on the wall; then the artist decided there was nothing more he could do with it. Pollock felt that the work had become 'concrete'—he says that he works 'from the abstract to the concrete,' rather than vice versa: the painting does not depend on reference to any object or tactile surface, but exists 'on its own.' "
Link to Post:
http://www.pirihalasz.com/blog.htm?post=873479
Piri Halasz reviews several new shows in Chelsea including The Lure of Paris at Loretta Howard Gallery (thorugh November 3), Jackson Pollock and Tony Smith at Matthew Marks Gallery (through October 27), and Carolanna Parlato at Elizabeth Harris Gallery (through October 6).
In the Lure of Paris Halasz finds Jules Olitski and Ed Clark to be standouts. She writes: "Olitski seems to have been one of the few Americans actually looking at the better postwar French painters practicing the French equivalents to American abstract expressionism known as tachisme or l’art informel..." Halasz continues: "[Clark] is... known for having painted with push brooms instead of brushes... [his painting] benefits from the use of large, sweepingly simple forms and clear, vigorous colors, wisely limited & separated from each other -- much livelier than the blackened, bush-like center in the Joan Mitchell on display, or the muddy, overdone creation of Al Held."
The Lure of Paris provides a fitting backdrop for Halasz to view a show of new paintings by Carolanna Parlato: "[Parlato's] intuitive color sense is one of the strong points of the current show... Also, her paint is a lot thinner than the hallmark smears of the 50s, sometimes transparent in fact, when an almost dry brush appears to have been stroked across the canvas, depositing only hair-like lines of paint, as opposed to solid areas, and allowing the complimentary undercoat to shine through. Finally, at its best her organization is a lot stronger than most of the tyros at work in 'The Lure of Paris.' "
Link to Post:
http://www.artnews.com/2012/09/13/jacksonsotheractions/
Robin Cembalest writes about Jackson Pollock's little-known sculptures from 1956, on view in the exhibition Jackson Pollock & Tony Smith: Sculpture at Matthew Marks Gallery, New York, through October 27, 2012.
Cembalest writes that "the lowly status of Pollock’s object-making has its roots in the artist’s own day, when painting was considered the pinnacle of Abstract Expressionism—and sculpture, as Ad Reinhardt famously put it, was 'something you back into when you look at a painting.' It didn’t help that Pollock’s sculptures hardly resemble his drip classics. The humble objects don’t scream 'Pollock,' or action, never mind painting. Most of his extant sculptures, under a dozen, don’t even resemble each other. And their hands-on quality—hammered copper, hand-built clay—contradicts the popular image of Pollock conjuring his abstractions in a rhythmic ritual dance."
Link to Post:
http://blogs.artinfo.com/modernartnotes/2012/07/revisiting-pollocks-mural/
Tyler Green revisits a two part interview with Pepe Karmel co-curator of the 1998 MoMA Jackson Pollock Retrospective, about Pollock's monumental, breakthrough painting Mural, which is currently undergoing a well publicized conservation.
In part one Karmel notes that "It's an important painting for Jackson Pollock because it's the moment that announces his future as a painter of large, mural-scale paintings that become environments, and furthermore paintings that are in this distinct, all-over style that changes people's idea of what a painting might be."
In part two Karmel remarks that at the time "I don't think it had the kind of impact the later paintings had. It was a bit of a one-off, after which he went back to making smaller paintings. It probably didn't make that much sense to people. They may have been impressed by it, but by itself it didn’t announce a new style. Aesthetically, looking back, we go, 'Aha, this is it. This is when he gets there, even prematurely, and then goes away from it.' I’m guessing other people, including artists, who saw it didn't understand its implications for some time."
Link to Post:
http://henrimag.com/blog1/?p=5506
To introduce his article on the "the visual anxiety that American painters feel when confronted with the European visual traditions," Mark Stone posts a revealing (and poignant) video of Clement Greenberg discussing Jackson Pollock's anxiety about whether his all-over drip technique was really "Painting."
Stone proposes that Pollock's inner-struggle is one that continues to affect contemporary American painters. He writes that Greenberg "makes clear that Pollock wanted to return to the Impressionists, to learn from them. And for me this points to our own continuing conundrum about painting. Pollock wanted to learn about painterly vision in Nature, about the way the Impressionists would see and paint through time instead of seeing and painting in time – visual culture versus experiential culture."
Link to Post:
http://hyperallergic.com/38988/atelier-17-abstract-expressionism-new-york-school/
Hrag Vartanian interviews Todd Weyman of Swann Auction Galleries about Abstract Expressionist prints from Atelier 17, a print shop run by Stanley William Hayter.
Weyman notes that "Atelier 17 in New York was unique in that it brought together 'old guard' European modernists such as Miro, Ernst, Masson, Lipchitz, Hayter and others, with the vanguard of the New York abstract scene, like Rothko, Motherwell, Pollock, DeKooning..."
