“Glory of the World” Opens at NSU Art Museum in Fort Lauderdale

At NSU Art Museum’s bold new present on color-field portray, there may be one important omission that lovers of recent artwork will not have the ability to miss. Mark Rothko, whose color-block canvases made him one of the crucial important American artists ever, is just not right here — and that is the purpose.

“He made it very clear he was not a color-field artist,” Bonnie Clearwater, director and chief curator of the museum, says. And she is aware of a factor or two concerning the summary expressionist painter — she previously led the Mark Rothko Foundation.

“The exhibition actually is concerning the era that comes after as a result of they confronted a dilemma,” she says. “They have been all dedicated to summary portray, and in contrast to the summary expressionists who got here earlier than them and went by way of this entire course of — going from representational and expressionist artwork to surrealism and biomorphism, and finally to their resolved full-blown abstraction — this era begins the place that ends. Rather than having to undergo that exploratory stage, they begin with the truth that summary portray to them means fashionable artwork, and to be fashionable means to be an summary painter. But how do you create one thing new now that you understand what summary portray seems like? How do you make one thing that is not by-product, that is new, and best for you?”

“Glory of the World: Color Field Painting (Early Fifties to 1983)” is NSU Art Museum’s try to point out how summary painters working within the wake of summary expressionism — the motion portray of Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning, the all-encompassing canvases of Rothko and Barnett Newman — tried to discover a means ahead for the shape. The result’s a shocking present filled with dramatic, awe-inspiring work that search to redefine color-field portray for a brand new era. That means centering the contributions of feminine artists and artists of coloration.

Helen Frankenthaler, as an example, is credited with catalyzing the motion. With her 1952 portray Mountains and Sea, the New York artist achieved a groundbreaking new fashion centered on a method referred to as “soak and stain.” She would take oil paint, add a considerable amount of turpentine to skinny it out, and apply it to a naked, unprimed canvas, letting the colour penetrate the material. Clement Greenberg, America’s most vital artwork critic on the time, thought it was an enormous innovation, carrying on from gestural painters like Pollock.

“He acknowledged on this portray that Helen Frankenthaler had discovered a means of taking what Pollock did and opening it up for prospects,” Clearwater says. “And he brings two artists from Washington, D.C., who have been additionally exploring abstraction, attempting to work their means by way of the way you make this authentic gesture, this authentic work that departs from the summary expressionists — he brings them to her studio to see this portray. And it is the spark for them to pursue their very own improvements.”

Mountains and Sea is not within the present — it is on long-term mortgage on the National Gallery of Art in D.C. — however the museum neatly locations her work all through “Glory of the World,” letting us see how her improvements impressed succeeding artists. The chain begins with the 2 D.C. artists Greenberg invited to see the portray, Kenneth Noland and Morris Louis. They took the soak-and-stain method again to the capital and utilized it of their work, founding the Washington Color School within the course of. Both included likelihood into their course of: Louis would let paint drip and stream down the canvas, forming unpredictable shapes and layers of coloration, whereas Noland performed with geometry, making a collection of round mandalas the place the unchanging compositional format allowed the artist to play with various coloration combos. The exhibition locations all these work in dialog with one another — Louis’ bronze, algae-like Curtain subsequent to Frankenthaler’s burgundy Wine Dark, with Noland’s chevron-shaped Carriage hanging within the subsequent room, seen by way of the doorway.

The wow issue of those artworks solely will increase because the present digs additional into the chances color-field painters explored and the methods they used. Sam Gilliam’s dazzling Cordial I resembles a nebula, or the good mixture of hues present in agate, however look intently, and you’ll see the locations the place he folded his canvas whereas portray it. Ed Clark painted with a push broom, delivering thrilling compositions equivalent to Paris Series. Larry Poons threw paint on the canvas in big globs, leading to messy, visceral works that shimmer with the iridescence of poisonous waste; you possibly can see the ends in Regulus, a sludgy, 2.5-dimensional portray that appears to rework as you strategy, or Rain Race, which seems like satellite tv for pc images of an alien planet. Jules Olitski’s compressed-air spray gun work really feel dreamy and free; you possibly can think about floating in purple clouds taking a look at one thing like Comprehensive Dream. And Frank Stella furthered the geometric experiments of Noland, incorporating parts of op artwork in Waskwalu II (Variations on a Circle) and the sq. radial Sacramento, which recollects the colourful set design of Jodorowsky’s The Holy Mountain.

What makes the present really feel really important, nevertheless, is the way it facilities the contributions of Black color-field artists: Sam Gilliam, Ed Clark, Alma Thomas, Peter Bradley, Al Loving, and Frank Bowling. Many of those artists didn’t obtain recognition till late in life or after their deaths, and in response to Clearwater, “Glory of the World” marks the primary time they have been included in a serious museum present on color-field portray alongside their white contemporaries like Stella and Noland.

Clearwater was impressed to arrange the present after artist Eric N. Mack curated for the museum “Lineages: Works from the Collection,” which featured work by Gilliam, Frankenthaler, and different artists who influenced Mack.

“Eric, as a Black artist, like the opposite artists of his era, acknowledged that he had the duty to carry consideration to these artists that got here earlier than him, that he admired, that have been breaking new floor, however by no means acquired the eye that they need to have obtained,” she says. “He was bringing consideration to Sam Gilliam, Frank Bowling, Peter Bradley, this entire era of Black summary and color-field artists who’re solely within the final decade getting acknowledged for his or her contributions and improvements.”

The present does have some priority. Several artists in “Glory of the World” have been additionally featured in “The De Luxe Show,” a 1971 exhibition that happened in a disused theater in Houston’s traditionally Black Fifth Ward. The present was organized by artist Peter Bradley and collector John de Menil with the express purpose of bringing world-class summary artwork right into a neighborhood unable to entry it. White (Noland, Olitski, Poons) and Black artists (Clark, Gilliam, Al Loving) participated, making it one of many first racially built-in artwork exhibits within the U.S.

The present obtained enthusiastic help from the likes of Clement Greenberg, however even his clout could not get the white artwork institution to concentrate to the Black painters. Bradley and his cohort additionally confronted antagonism from the Black Arts Movement, which favored constructive, representational imagery and political messaging. But the painter fought again. Abstraction in fashionable artwork, he argued, derived from the appropriation of African artwork by Europeans equivalent to Picasso and Matisse. He wasn’t working in a white artwork kind however reclaiming a Black one.

Alma Thomas felt equally. Active within the civil rights motion, she embraced abstraction and coloration as a method of liberation. The deep pink on the middle of A Brilliant Sunset speaks to the eagerness she had for color-field portray and its energy. She put it finest within the wall textual content, “Through coloration, I’ve sought to focus on magnificence and happiness in my portray slightly than man’s inhumanity to man.”

“Glory of the World: Color Field Painting (Early Fifties to 1983).” On view by way of June 30, 2024, at NSU Art Museum Fort Lauderdale, 1 E. Las Olas Blvd., Fort Lauderdale; 954-525-5500; nsuartmuseum.org. Tickets price $5 to $16; free for youngsters 12 and beneath and members. Tuesday by way of Saturday 11 a.m. to five p.m., and Sunday midday to five p.m.