Art | Abstract expressionist pleasures
May 30, 2011
Abstract Expressionist New York | Art Gallery of Ontario | until Sept 4, 2011
AGO’s latest exhibition, Abstract Expressionist New York: Masterpieces from The Museum of Modern Art, launched this past weekend with a sold-out party. Swanky-pants revelers switched between tipple in Walker Court (where Egyptrixx and The Makeover pumped out beats) and the blockbuster selection of art on the gallery’s 2nd floor.
These killer highlights from MoMA’s comprehensive collection of the New York artists who developed a new, distinctly American visual language after WWII form a snapshot of the movement’s essential pieces in context. There are its posterboys. A room full of early, figurative Pollocks and signature drip pieces. Then, a stunning panorama of Rothkos: canvases featuring light swatches of colours that prefigure his trademark luminescent, floating rectangles, which he intensified with each colour-crushed layer and turpentine burn/smear from 1950 onward. In the penultimate room, en route to Barnett Newman’s elemental zips, hangs the sole, transcendental Ad Reinhardt. Speedwalkers could mistake it for a mere black square. But there isn’t a drop of that colour here. Reinhardt’s Abstract Painting (1960-61) demands that the viewer stop and concentrate on its subtle, dark storm of hues, which only emerge with patience. So satisfying.
Bookended by the World War and Cold War, the staggering variety of styles represented by Abstract Expressionist artists such as Franz Kline, Willem de Kooning, Helen Frankenthaler, Robert Motherwell and Lee Krasner (pictured above) all share a particular sense of urgency, according to MoMA’s director, Glenn Lowry. No kidding. Toronto is the sole Canadian stop for the exhibition.
Also…
Abstract Expressionist New York performance | AGO | June 13 (during Luminato 2011)
Louise Bourgeois’ Throbbing Pulse (1944) – on display at Abstract Expressionist New York
VERSUS
Unknown Pleasures (1979) designed by Peter Saville - adapted from an old Scientific American image
DISCUSS.
RELATED | Painting on Paper: the Drawings of Robert Motherwell (AGO) review
Bourgeois image | Berkeley Art Museum/Pacific Film Archive
Unknown Pleasures image | Lossless Album
