Ab Ex Journey

Washburn Gallery is a great place to go see Abstract Expressionist work. There was a nice show of small works there last month that featured the sign from the exterior of the Cedar Bar. I went to 20 W 57th St. with my sister Joanne ( an Interior Designer whose business is The Interior Edge) and my daughter Gillian. Gillian said it was the most powerful piece in the show. For me there were a lot of interesting pieces ; a realist pencil portrait by de Kooning and a more abstract portrait of de Kooning by Elaine de Kooning,a small Pollock, a Joan Mitchell. The piece I liked the most was by Jimmy Ernst. I’m recently noticing that I’m attracted to his work whenever I see it. He’s was Max Ernst’s son; he escapes the Nazi’s at 18; comes to New York becomes the Director of Peggy Guggenheim’s Art of This Century at 20; is right smack in the middle of The Irascibles photo in 1951,ends up living out in Easthampton and Florida. What a great story and I love the geometric/cosmic nature of his work.
My motivation to go to see the show was to see the Bar sign. It has an iron red crackled paint surface and is similar in color to the background dyed fabric Jackson Pollock used in a couple of horizontal paintings he did in the late 40’s. This ties into an Abstract Expressionist journey I began 3 years ago at Williams College in Mass. I went with Gillian to a tribute to Kirk Varnedoe named “Jackson Pollock: Beneath the Surface”
an exhibit of 3 Pollock paintings the Williams College Museum and a 4 hour talk at the Williams College Theater with Adam Gopnik, art critic and writer for the New Yorker; Pepe Karmel, Associate Professor in the Department of Fine Arts,NYU; Tom Branchick, Director, Williamstown Art Conservation Center;Jason Vrooman conservator and Judith M. Lenett Fellow; Helen Harrison, Director, Pollock-Krasner House and Study Center; Ellen Landau, Professor at Case Western University; S.Lane Faison former director of the Williams College Museum of Art; and Steve Gordon Wlliams’55, former teacher and artist.
Pollock’#2 1950 was being shown with #13A, 1948 Arabesque and #7, 1950 after being restored at the Conservation Center. While Gillian and I were looking at the paintings that day in came Lane Faison, who was 98 and using a walker( he died later that fall). Lane Faison is famous for being one of the Monuments men in WWII ( he cronicled Hitler’s personal Art Collection )and was director of the Williams College Museum in 1952 when these same paintings came there as part of an exhibition that had gone to Bennington College. When asked during the talk that afternoon about how he felt at that moment we witnessed he said” I just thought, Hello old friend,”. He also said the exhibit happened because he was friends with Greenberg and he asked Greenberg could the show come to Wiliams as long as it was going to Bennington and that Pollock came up for the opening but was on his best behavior and didn’t drink so he also didn’t talk. It was a great privilege to see this event though half the general audience left at intermission. For me this is when it got interesting. At the end there was a Q&A, more interesting stuff was revealed,i.e. I was unaware that Pollock had done collages with Motherwell. Joan Washburn was one of the people pointed out as asking some questions or referred to to provide some insight. I’d wanted to go to the gallery ever since.
I was so inspired by this event that I read De Koonings biography, Pollocks biography, New Art City by Jed Perl and bought the Varnedoe/Pepe Karmel catalogue to the MOMA Exhibit. It felt nice to get to be with the bar sign for a few minutes as it has been such a prominent character in the scene.