{"id":6371,"date":"2015-06-19T14:32:56","date_gmt":"2015-06-19T14:32:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/?p=6371"},"modified":"2015-06-20T02:19:12","modified_gmt":"2015-06-20T02:19:12","slug":"masterpieces-born-of-rebellion-from-van-gogh-to-pollock-at-the-milwaukee-art-museum","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/?p=6371","title":{"rendered":"Masterpieces born of rebellion: from Van Gogh to Pollock at the Milwaukee Art Museum"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\"the-liver-is-the-cock-s-comb\"“The Liver is the Cock’s Comb,” oil on canvas, Arshile Gorky, 1944<\/em><\/p>\n

Van Gogh to Pollock: Modern Rebels – Masterworks from the Albright-Knox Gallery<\/strong><\/em>, through September 20. Milwaukee Art Museum<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

If actor James Dean ever picked up a paintbrush, the result might’ve looked something like a Jackson Pollock, but without the artistic skill for orchestrating controlled abandon. What amounts to an art rebellion? If you can go back to a key moment, a kind of rebellion sometimes occurs when an artist makes an extraordinary, radical move.<\/p>\n

Imagine watching Pollock when he \u201cbroke the ice\u201d as his contemporary Willem DeKooning said. Pollock broke most of the rules of painting, pacing panther-like around huge canvases stretched out on the floor. His paint dripped, swirled and splattered — and blew the concept of depiction to smithereens.<\/p>\n

\u201cModernism is about rebels who look at convention, and say, \u2018I\u2019m gonna stand that on its head,\u2019\u201d says\u00a0Milwaukee Art Museum\u00a0chief curator Brady Roberts.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s a key aspect of the excitement and resonance of \u201cVan Gogh to Pollock: Modern Rebels.\u201d The exhibit of major works from the Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo.<\/p>\n

Pollock\u2019s engulfing \u201cConvergence\u201d from 1952 will show how differently art could express and, even more radically, do. The so-called \u201caction painting\u201d will also be represented by DeKooning\u2019s tension-filled \u201cGotham News\u201d from 1955, among others. They\u2019re two prime \u201crebel\u201d examples from Albright-Knox which has \u201cthe best collection of abstract expressionism in the world,\u201d says Roberts.<\/p>\n

\"pollock<\/p>\n

“Convergence,” oil on canvas, Jackson Pollock, 1952<\/em><\/p>\n

The mid-20th<\/sup>\u00a0century movement that made New York the \u201cart world capital\u201d will be offered in its \u201cthe historical context\u201d — \u201cpost-impressionism, Gauguin, Van Gogh, Picasso, surrealism, Joan Miro and more,\u201d Roberts says.<\/p>\n

Not all art rebels are \u201cirascibles\u201d as the action painters were once called. The show will include Miro\u2019s \u201cbest painting,\u201d the thickly-populated \u201cCarnival of Harlequin,\u201d a major statement of surrealist sensibility at its most playful. Also, there\u2019s Henri Matisse\u2019s gorgeously idiosyncratic sense of line and color in \u201cLa Musique,\u201d depicting two seated women, one playing a guitar. Another way of understanding Matisse’s disarming music-lovers as rebellion is to consider it was painted in France in 1939 — with Hitler’s Nazi invasion looming. Such embracing of unfettered beauty becomes an act of joyous defiance, especially as the Nazis would deem most modern art as “degenerate.”<\/p>\n

Which brings me back to Pollock. My composer friend Frank Stemper commented on Facebook that Pollock helped inspire his own music-creation because the painter “is so musical.” Then Frank asked, why is this so? My answer:\u00a0\u00a0He’s musical partly because, unlike most painters, Pollock virtually danced while he created his drip paintings, because he used the rhythm and pulse — and the lyrical feel — of that whole bodily gesture, to paint. Or more precisely, to make the paint dance, and fly! Pollock understood the liberating qualities and power of the inner musicality of dance.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Matisse<\/p>\n

“La Musique” oil on canvas, Henri Matisse, 1939<\/em><\/p>\n

And this also helped Pollock process his demons. Much earlier the anguished genius Vincent Van Gogh found his own way, on the front end of the show\u2019s historical spectrum. Before him, artists rarely attacked the canvas with such raw gusto or expressive directness, so the emotion in the brush gestures communicated as much as the depiction of the scene, as in \u201cThe Old Mill\u201d from 1888. \u201cModernism is also the invention of style as personal expression.\u201d Roberts says.<\/p>\n

\"van<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Old Mill,\u201d oil on canvas, Vincent van Gogh, 1888<\/em><\/p>\n

Modernism\u2019s roots rise from 19th<\/sup>\u00a0century Romanticism, Roberts notes, but it\u2019s also a response to the industrial revolution. An explicit example referencing that revolution in the show will be Robert Delauney\u2019s 1913 \u201cSun, Tower, Airplane,\u201d a cubist evocation of The Eiffel Tower, a Ferris wheel and an airplane, \u201cthree modern inventions that defied gravity,\u201d Roberts explains.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo, in 1913, there\u2019s a sense of a sort of utopian future, and that artists are leading the way. Kandinsky, who\u2019s is also in the show, was writing about this, saying the best artists, like Picasso, were seers and prophets who understand that the world was going to change, and it\u2019s going to be this glorious new thing.<\/p>\n

\u201cOf course, World War I happened, and that ended the utopian euphoria for industrial vanity.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Delauney\"<\/p>\n

“Soliel, Tour, Aeroplane (Sun, Tower, Airplane),” oil on canvas, Robert” Delauney, 1913\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

Nevertheless, modern artists continued as seers and rebels, even against the recent standard of rebellion, as 1960s pop art rejected abstract expressionism.<\/p>\n

Among the still-underappreciated great modernists in the show is the Armenian-American Arshile Gorky, a key link from surrealism to abstract expressionism. Visitors will see arguably Gorky\u2019s greatest work, \u201cThe Liver is the Cock\u2019s Comb\u201d from 1944 (pictured at top), \u201ca big, luscious, beautiful painting,\u201d Brady says. I can vouch first hand for Brady’s characterization of the Gorky, having seen it in a Gorky retrospective in New York.<\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

Brady also sees striking parallels between the Albright-Knox and MAM \u2013 including visionary collectors. The core of Milwaukee\u2019s permanent holdings is the Mrs. Harry Lynde Bradley collection. In the early part of the 20th<\/sup>\u00a0century, Albright-Knox had a trustee named Conger Goodyear who sensed modernism\u2019s growing dynamism and started bullishly collecting. He began by acquiring a \u201cclassical\u201d blue-period Picasso, \u201cLa Toilette\u201d from 1906. The painting faced controversy upfront from conservative board members for displaying a female nude so forthrightly. Later, the generous donor Seymour Knox would crucially help the gallery gain its world-class modernist heft.<\/p>\n

Also, the Buffalo facility is presently, like Milwaukee\u2019s, building a major addition to house and present its expanding collection. The construction shut-down of the Buffalo galleries is why their collection is touring, Roberts says.<\/p>\n

The show will also include major works by Marc Chagall, Paul Gauguin, Georgia O\u2019Keeffe, Frieda Kahlo, Robert Motherwell, Marko Rothko, Salvador Dali, Richard Deibenkorn, Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, Alberto Giacometti and others.<\/p>\n

______________<\/p>\n

All images courtesy The Albright-Knox Art Gallery and the Milwaukee Art Museum.<\/p>\n

This article was originally published in a slightly shorter version in\u00a0The Shepherd Express.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“The Liver is the Cock’s Comb,” oil on canvas, Arshile Gorky, 1944 Van Gogh to Pollock: Modern Rebels – Masterworks from the Albright-Knox Gallery, through September 20. Milwaukee Art Museum If actor James Dean ever picked up a paintbrush, the … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6371","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-www-kevernacular-com"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hJWE-1EL","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6371","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6371"}],"version-history":[{"count":21,"href":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6371\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6412,"href":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6371\/revisions\/6412"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6371"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6371"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6371"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}