Tag Archive "arshile-gorky"

Gorky at PMA–an artist ahead of the curve

The Gorky retrospective that opens tomorrow at the Philadelphia Museum of Art is an eye-opener–one of those exhibits that shows the artist as a thinker, working out problems and solving them. To see the drawings (and the gorgeous and bold handling of line in them)–sometimes multiple drawings–preparatory to paintings is wondrous, at once belying the idea that the paintings are casual and improvisatory abstractionist expressions and belying the idea that the paintings are static reproductions of the drawing ideas.

Cézanne and Beyond at the PMA

The impact of a great master on his followers is a fascinating topic.  Rodin’s work loomed so imposingly over the next generation of sculptors that they all claimed to dis-own his influence (not entirely truthfully); many did so by returning to direct carving, since Rodin was a modeler whose carved work was executed by assistants.  Cézanne’s followers showed no such anxiety of influence, as can be seen in Cézanne and Beyond at the Philadelphia Museum of Art (through May 17). The exhibition is truly spectacular in the quality of the works and the questions they provoke.

Taking Sides; Action/Abstraction: Pollock, De Kooning and American Art, 1940-1976

Jackson Pollock, Totem Lesson 2, 1945, oil on canvas. National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, Purchased 1986. © The Pollock-Krasner Foundation/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Action/Abstraction: Pollock, De Kooning and American Art, 1940-1976 at the Jewish Museum through September 21, 2008 is interesting for its contents and its ambitions; it will appeal to viewers with knowledge of Abstract Expressionism and its impact on artists of the next generation as well as anyone with a serious interest in how art worlds function, at least in one striking example. This is not an introduction to Abstract Expressionism nor even to art in ... More » »