By Darren Panicali
You know, you don’t go to many museum exhibits with a contorted, baffled expression on your face that screams of the question “What the hell is that?” but that’s really what the MoMA’s abstract expressionism gallery will have you doing, with its works all meandering outside the visual arts box and straying from the safe and the customary. I strolled on down to the exhibit on Saturday, 11/13, and I was trying to keep the most open and receptive mind possible for what was to come – how else could you possibly approach an art style so feverishly and flamboyantly nonconformist and strange? I wasn’t about to walk in and cast everything off as nonsense; I’d be miserable. No, I was ready and willing, and Deborah Goldberg (bless that poor woman; she had a cold and still delivered a fine tour, complete with excellent oration and description) was about to show me the light – or perhaps a few of the most bizarre works of art known to man. (Well, who’s keeping track anyway?)
Deborah gave us a crystal-clear window through which to view these outrageous paintings: She described them as moving away from subject matter and forcing viewers to consider the methodology instead – what materials were used, how they were applied, what modes were utilized, and so on. And instead of blathering on and on about the history of the art and what it meant as we moved from work to work, she would leave much room for simple contemplation and interpretation, describing the pieces succinctly and giving a brief history of the lives of the artists, lives which were always so filled to the brim with arduous struggle but also the will to forcefully push forward cogent messages through art. Each work was a culmination of both the uplifting and destructive experiences the artist had endured, and you could really feel that as Deborah spoke.
Some of the drives behind certain paintings were so inspiring. According to Deborah, Gorky wanted to create forms that were “biomorphic, organic, and amoebic,” Gottlieb desired to design “that which is tragic and timeless” and “good for humanity” in his hieroglyphic-like works, and Newman hoped to instill a “sublime or transcendent spiritual feeling” with his color field genre. The various media employed contributed a gamut of brilliant techniques to the abstract expressionist movement – application of paint in layers, adjustment of patterns with turpentine, use of anything from dried-up brushes and tape to turkey basters and rags … all kinds of innovative and outlandish stuff! And to top it off, they were used in many different ways: Paint was applied in certain orders, or the paint would be caked up to create a 3D obtrusive effect, or various colors would flow both within and beyond boundary-lines – it was fantastic.
But particularly fantastic was Hedda Sterne’s New York, VIII:
Courtesy of www.moma.org
One of the things that piqued my interest in our seminar discussions was Professor Jablonka’s comment about having to be there and actually experience the painting rather than viewing it online or in print. I was a little skeptical of this idea and was actually eager to test her point, and to my delight, she was right, and this was the piece that best helped me to see that. Sterne employed synthetic polymer paint to create a scintillating radiance – a demure but pervasive glow, characteristic of a dimly lit romantic scene. The key words here are dreamlike and surreal. It was like that first moment atop the magnificent Woolworth Building after first gazing upon the city in all its stupefying grandeur. But as I look at the above image, I can’t help but think it doesn’t even compare to the feeling I had in front of the work. The luminosity here is faded, and the contrasts of the colors have dwindled. Sterne used such brilliant techniques: She created streaks of light with brighter colors (You can’t see them here!) and depicted chaos with the interspersing of dabs of light blue, orange, tan, and gray on a black and pale blue background. The dreamy quality I felt seeing it with my own eyes a few feet away has diminished, and a lesser, disappointed appreciation lies in its wake… But still, I found this work to be absolutely gorgeous, and overall, I’ve really come to understand a strange type of art that was just so foreign before. Thanks Deborah and Professor Jablonka!
