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1949
Thomas McCormick Gallery at the "1949": Claude Bentley, Seymour Fogel, Miyoko Ito, Franz Kline, Nathan Lerner, Ezio Martinelli, Jan Matulka, Leonard Nelson, John O'Neil, Jackson Pollock, Melville Price, Jose de Rivera, Seymour Rosofsky, Rudolph Weisenborn, Emerson Woelffer, et alia This is an exciting exhibition. Thomas McCormick Gallery is currently exhibiting at the TBA Exhibit Space an excellent selection of Modernists in a showing entitled "1949." What makes "1949" of particular interest is that a number of the works are from the estates of the artists represented, and most were created in the fervid years when the experiment was fresh and hopeful. This is the authentic creative impulse, created before it became ritualized and perfunctory, and before interior decorators created a demand for portable wallpaper. And it is well presented; right down to the August 8th, 1949 issue of Life magazine, in which Jackson Pollock was profiled as the "greatest living painter." (Thomas McCormick acquired four copies of that issue.)
Today Modernist movements, and particularly Abstract Expressionism, immediately bring to mind New York City, and it is indeed true that in midcentury, to the surprise of Americans and the dismay of les Parisiennes, the center of the 'art world' shifted from Paris to New York City. Initially there were many European emigres; and a search for American idioms; and all too quickly the great ferment became packaged and popular and on the shelf. But it shook up art and left much of real value. Artist John Ferren, in his 1958 "Epitaph for an Avant-Guarde," declared: "It was not a question of knocking over other gods. It was a question of finding your own reality, your own answers, your own experience.... We discovered a simple thing, yet far-reaching in its effects: 'The search is the discovery.'" Ferren further noted: "The painters of this period shared certain ideas about painting and about the process of painting. They did not -- and still do not --share a style of painting. Each of them has a style of his own which is increasingly individual and personal. It is the outsider who has capitalized on a 'look' and made it appear a style." This is exactly what "1949" offers: Honest work, quality, all the variety before the 'look.' There is a surprising number of Chicago artists. And the gallery has added then-contemporary furniture and news items as ambience for the paintings. The exhibition title, "1949," reflects Thomas McCormick's birth year. And "1949" is an excellent corrective to the 'textbook canons.' Suzi Glabik, in her provocative, Has Modernism Failed? (Thames and Hudson: 1991) concluded: "Only when traditional rules exist, and one is used to expecting them, can one then enjoy breaking them." The work of Seymour Fogel (born 1911) is impressive, and well-represented at the Thomas McCormick Gallery. Fogel highlights Glabik's comment by innovating with a full knowledge of the art legacies he innovates against: the artist followed his art through the socialist realism of the thirties, through hard-edged painting and abstract expressionism to a large output of what he termed "unusual work." Fogel's "Mother and Child" (ca. 1949) is striking. It is a 30 x 24 inch oil on masonite. The painting presupposes familiarity with traditional and often serene, if not static images, perhaps of madonnas, but here Fogel analytically reconstructs that template with curved line and intersections. Bounded color sections, liked stained glass or mosaic, help the eye to discern object unities, but there is motion everywhere within the painting. It is a motion determined by the viewer's eye as it follows curves and jumps disjunct color areas. Seeing it without a thought to later proliferations or 'knock-offs', seeing as if for the first time, it brings deep pleasure. Fogel studied at the National Academy of Design, did mosaic murals for the U.S. Customs Courts Building and N.Y. high schools, and a sand sculpture wall for the Hoffman-La Roche Residential Tower in Nutley, N.Y.. His work is in the Whitney Museum of American Art. In viewing much of Fogel's art, it is clear that the 'outsider' games of pigeon-holing are senseless: Orphism, Rayonnisme, etc., etc. -- the paintings express Seymour Fogel. They are excellent. They can be seen in "1949" at the TBA Exhibit Space.
Jan Matulka's estate is represented by Thomas McCormick Gallery, and McCormick's pieces indicate that the artist kept some of the finest pieces for himself. "1949" should have added Matulka here. His are works of an artist not playing to the media or a mass public, but truly involved in his art. The gallery has, however, prepared a full color catalogue, "Jan Matulka: Works from the Estate" ($20.00). Jan Matulka emigrated from Czechoslovakia, promoted Cubism and Purism, and later, in the 1930s, Surrealism. In 1937 he helped found the American Abstract Artist's group. In much of his art, it is color and line, abstracted into uninhibited motion, which predominates over the figures. Matulka should have been richly included here. One aspect which this showing brings to the fore is how many Chicago artists enlisted in the avant-guarde, and 'on the ground floor,' before the trends became trendy. Two among the prominent in this exhibition are Seymour Rosofsky (1924-1981) and Miyoko Ito (1918-1983). Chicago somehow asserts over its own an obstinate insistence upon the concrete and real. In Seymour Rosofsky's work, realism and the unreal collaborate, which together with his obsessive paint handling have usually placed him in 'Chicago Imagism.' Critic Dennis Adrian, in The Art of Seymour Rosofsky (Krannert Art Museum: 1984) noted some affinities with artist, Ivan Albright, in Rosofsky's work, but called the Chicagoan's working method freer, less finicky. The pieces at Thomas McCormick Gallery work well with the companion modernist offerings. In some manner, they form a bridge for the viewing eye to capture and clarify theme and motif: a preparation for more radical works in "1949." They prepare the viewer to see the figurative in free, unanchored aspects; whereas the Franz Klines and Jackson Pollocks have in essence left discernable reference behind for purely visual effect. (The viewer's conclusion, not the artist's stated intent.) Some of the painters in "1941," like Rosofsky and Ito, still pay obeisance to the decipherable; others, like Fogel and Matulka, deal with a Platonic abstraction from a perception of reality; and finally others, like the total abstractionists and 'Action Painters' such as Jackson Pollock, recede into paint and performance. The Thomas McCormick Gallery represents the estate of Miyoko Ito and will centerpiece her work at the inaugural exhibition of their new West Loop location this autumn. The Renaissance Society at the University of Chicago published the exhibition catalogue, Miyoko Ito: A Review, for their 1980 exhibition of her works. In that 1980 catalogue, art critic, Dennis Adrian, noted of her 1950s work that she was not 'abstracting' the composition from the motif, as it were, but is instead recapturing in the studio an atmosphere, an emotional climate and intensified recollection which completely transforms the place or event which might have primed the artist's artistic processes." In her career, Ito worked through a Cubist aesthetic to later Surrealistic landscapes. The Thomas McCormick on-line gallery statement notes: "Roads lead nowhere, perspective and vanishing points abruptly shift; deserted horizons recall de Chirico and Tanguy."
Among the many artist represented in "1949," the pieces by John O'Neil (born 1915), as well as the art of Claude Bentley (1915-1990) are particularly compelling. Between the mid-1930s through the early 1950s, John O'Neil's painting focused on lone figure portraits or single figures in a landscape or, as in "1949," in a cityscape. His oil on canvas, "City Strata" (1949), measures 22 x 28 inches, and it is very representative of his art. His art evolved into abstractions which share much with Kandinsky, and with time his color modulation became more complex. The work of this exhibition is bright, glowing, and in composition recalls some of the formal arrangement of stained glass design. Bentley's painting is oceanic in its color scheme and recalls vigorous ballet in the sweep and swaying of line and enclosed areas. His "Intermezzo" (1950) in this show, is an oil on canvas and measures 30.5 by 55 inches. Bentley studied at Northwestern University and the Art Institue of Chicago, and divided his time between Chicago, New York and New Mexico. I confess that I have not seen his work earlier, but Thomas McCormick Gallery has a complete resource file and after seeing the work at the TBA Exhibit Space, I will be actively searching for future exhibitions. The Claude Bentley paintings are first rate. A number of the exhibition artists are covered by biographical and critical entries on the Thomas McCormick Gallery's website: http://www.suba.com/~tmwa/#artists and the gallery has references on all. But these are works that really require viewing the originals, 'in the flesh.' Edward Lucie-Smith, commenting in Movements in Art Since 1945 (Thames and Huson: 1987), was correct in saying: "one sees how difficult it was to build on what those pioneers had achieved."
The "1949" exhibition is exciting. As artist, John Ferren, said in 1958: "In this period, if a picture looked like a picture, i.e., something you already knew, it was no good. We tried to make a clean slate, to start painting all over again. Some of us found monsters. Some of us found a painting. Some of us found painting." If critic Suzi Gablik is right, that much of modernism faltered on its later celebrity, media packaging; and the final, radical evolution into an estrangement from purpose or meaningfulness which characterized its offspring, this show at least captures the early hopefulness. For, as Polish aphorist, Stanislaw Jerzy Lec, said: "The in the beginning was the Word; then came the cliche." Whatever the modernist experiment led to, be it in art or politics, it produced intoxication for the eye, energy and possibilities and some outstanding artwork. There are many examples in "1949." Today, some artists bemoan the lack of clear movements: art follows scattered ways. "1949" is a mirror of such a period of searching. Then and now, there is much to praise. The exhibition runs until August 28, 1999 at the TBA Exhibit Space, 230 West Huron Street. Telephone: 312/ 587-3300. Website: www.suba.com/~tmwa Thomas McCormick Gallery, currently at 2055 N. Winchester Avenue, Chicago, will move to 835 West Washington in the West Loop Gallery district this fall. Editor's Note: Herschel B. Chipp's Theories of Modern Art (Un. of Cal. Press: 1968) is a source book for Modernism in art. Tom Wolf's The Painted Word and Suzi Gablik's Has Modernism Failed? lend a counterpoint, are in print, and available through artscope.net's Barnes & Noble link. --G. Jurek Polanski Jurek Polanski has previously written and art edited for Strong Coffee in Chicago. He's also well known and respected among the Chicago museums and galleries. Jurek is currently a Visual Arts Correspondent for ArtScope.net. |
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