Review/Art; 'African-American Abstraction,' an Exploration (original) (raw)
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- June 28, 1991
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June 28, 1991
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Some exhibitions give us the thorough treatment, the satisfying sense that no stone has been left unturned. Others barely scratch the surface. Tantalizing in their promise, in the questions they raise, the opinions they unsettle, these shows may simply indicate a new topic, ready for exploration, but in doing so they can have tremendous impact.
"The Search for Freedom: African- American Abstraction 1945-1975," at Kenkeleba Gallery, is such a show: surface-scratching yet ground breaking at the same time. It is in many ways incomplete, uneven and unprepossessing; it is also almost unbearably crowded into the large but awkward galleries of this East Village alternative space. The 63 works -- mostly paintings and a few works on paper -- by 37 artists are often badly stretched or framed; a number are being exhibited for the first time in years, several for the first time ever. A small budget limited the size of the show at the onset; a last-minute space crunch forced the elimination of more than 30 of the works borrowed. (The show was originally intended to celebrate Kenkeleba's expansion into new galleries across the street, but the renovation was not completed in time.)
Nonetheless, this exhibition opens a window on history and should provide a basis for surveys and retrospectives to come. Moving from the late 1940's to the mid 70's, through roughly three generations of painters, it gives a good indication of how much must be learned about black artists' contribution to Abstract Expressionism and their participation in more recent brands of non-objective art like Color Field painting and Lyrical Abstraction. But it does so with extraordinary diversity, so that this contribution is never molded into a monolithic chunk, but instead remains the effort of distinct individuals. Its diversity should encourage an equal diversity of opinion and critical response.
The show is strongest and most surprising in its presentation of the early postwar years. During this period, a loosely knit group of black artists was mining the different veins of the burgeoning New York School while also incorporating references to African motifs or to jazz into their work (as were some of their white contemporaries). This section includes several impressive paintings from the late 40's by Hale Woodruff, whose use of hieroglyphs and mask configurations paralleled that of Adolf Gottlieb, an avid collector of African art at the time.
Stronger still in touch and composition are the semi-abstract mask images, also from the late 40's, by Harlan Jackson, a painter born in 1918 who studied with Mark Rothko. In these highly tactile works, Picasso's dissections of the human face, themselves inspired by African masks, are turned into attenuated abstractions whose facial features announce themselves slowly. For other artists, abstraction could accommodate a clearly defined social subject. The dark painting titled "The Death of Bessie Smith" by Rose Piper, who is an aunt of the Conceptual artist Adrian Piper, combines flat biomorphic shapes with an anguished figure.
Other outstanding works in this early section include the small animated collages and watercolors of Thelma Johnson Streat and Ronald Joseph from the late 40's. (Streat's strategy of fusing schematized African sculpture with bright modern patterns finds a later echo in Vivian Browne's 1973 painting "Benin Equestrian" in the next gallery; here, a lush stain painting becomes the setting for an elusive mounted warrior). Especially prescient is Ed Clark's striking shaped painting from 1957, in which careening brushstrokes, extending beyond the canvas's edge, take off from Willem de Kooning's paintings while predicting John Chamberlain's crushed-car sculpture.
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