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Lot Essay
The success of Milton Avery's work lies in his ability to modernize a familiar domestic scene by transforming it into a carefully orchestrated arrangement of color and pattern. He translates his subjects, whether objects or people into a unique lexicon of shapes and forms that fit together to become a cohesive whole. The Mandolin Player is exemplary of Avery's unique ability to convey a harmonious narrative through skillful placement of color and form.
In the present work, the female figure gently strums her mandolin in what appears to be a simple interior setting. Fundamental to Avery's style, the pictorial space has been condensed into a flattened two-dimensional picture plane. Using broad strokes of color to delineate the familiar objects, Avery has reduced the composition to a myriad of shapes that creates a harmonious puzzle of abstract forms. As Hilton Kramer notes of Avery's work, "Figures and the objects around them are divested of identifying detail and simplified to flat, cutout forms, which are then reinvested with the strength of Avery's color, which, in turn, can generate its peculiar plastic force only because every part of the canvas is locked into a position of maximum expressive balance." (Milton Avery: Paintings, 1930-1960, New York, 1962, p. 17)
Painted in 1946, The Mandolin Player was executed during the most critical period of Avery's career. The mid-1940s proved to be a defining time for his mature style. Many scholars attribute the important stylistic developments in his work of this period to his new professional affiliation with Paul Rosenberg's gallery. Avery's relationship with Rosenberg exposed him to modern European artists and their abstract ideals. Rosenberg arrived in America in 1940, bringing with him a cache of great works by important European artists that provided Avery with a new understanding of abstract representation. Barbara Haskell has explained these influences, "Rosenberg's proclivity for taut structure and architectonic solidity encouraged Avery to emphasize these aspects of his work. He replaced the brushy paint application and graphic detailing that had informed his previous efforts with denser more evenly modulated areas of flattened color contained with crisply delineated forms. The result was a more abstract interlocking of shapes and a shallower pictorial space than he had previously employed. Avery retained color as the primary vehicle of feeling and expression, but achieved a greater degree of abstraction by increasing the parity between recognizable forms and abstract shapes." ("Milton Avery: The Metaphysics of Color," Milton Avery: Paintings from the Collection of the Neuberger Museum of Art, Purchase, New York, 1994, pp. 8-9)
Avery has cleverly imbued The Mandolin Player with a lyrical sense of music and motion as the colors and their relations to one another hum with expressive rhythm. The highly saturated palette of greens, blues, oranges and pinks is representative of Avery's works from the mid-1940s, as is his use of blocks of color as a method of modulating space.
The Mandolin Player exhibits all of the most celebrated components of Avery's work during the most critical period of his career and wonderfully manifests Hans Hofmann's comment: "Avery was one of the first to understand color as a creative means. He knew how to relate colors in a plastic way. His color actually achieves a life of its own, sometimes lovely and gentle, at other times startlingly tart, yet always subtle and eloquent." (as quoted in Milton Avery, Manchester, Vermont, 1990, p. 1)
In the present work, the female figure gently strums her mandolin in what appears to be a simple interior setting. Fundamental to Avery's style, the pictorial space has been condensed into a flattened two-dimensional picture plane. Using broad strokes of color to delineate the familiar objects, Avery has reduced the composition to a myriad of shapes that creates a harmonious puzzle of abstract forms. As Hilton Kramer notes of Avery's work, "Figures and the objects around them are divested of identifying detail and simplified to flat, cutout forms, which are then reinvested with the strength of Avery's color, which, in turn, can generate its peculiar plastic force only because every part of the canvas is locked into a position of maximum expressive balance." (Milton Avery: Paintings, 1930-1960, New York, 1962, p. 17)
Painted in 1946, The Mandolin Player was executed during the most critical period of Avery's career. The mid-1940s proved to be a defining time for his mature style. Many scholars attribute the important stylistic developments in his work of this period to his new professional affiliation with Paul Rosenberg's gallery. Avery's relationship with Rosenberg exposed him to modern European artists and their abstract ideals. Rosenberg arrived in America in 1940, bringing with him a cache of great works by important European artists that provided Avery with a new understanding of abstract representation. Barbara Haskell has explained these influences, "Rosenberg's proclivity for taut structure and architectonic solidity encouraged Avery to emphasize these aspects of his work. He replaced the brushy paint application and graphic detailing that had informed his previous efforts with denser more evenly modulated areas of flattened color contained with crisply delineated forms. The result was a more abstract interlocking of shapes and a shallower pictorial space than he had previously employed. Avery retained color as the primary vehicle of feeling and expression, but achieved a greater degree of abstraction by increasing the parity between recognizable forms and abstract shapes." ("Milton Avery: The Metaphysics of Color," Milton Avery: Paintings from the Collection of the Neuberger Museum of Art, Purchase, New York, 1994, pp. 8-9)
Avery has cleverly imbued The Mandolin Player with a lyrical sense of music and motion as the colors and their relations to one another hum with expressive rhythm. The highly saturated palette of greens, blues, oranges and pinks is representative of Avery's works from the mid-1940s, as is his use of blocks of color as a method of modulating space.
The Mandolin Player exhibits all of the most celebrated components of Avery's work during the most critical period of his career and wonderfully manifests Hans Hofmann's comment: "Avery was one of the first to understand color as a creative means. He knew how to relate colors in a plastic way. His color actually achieves a life of its own, sometimes lovely and gentle, at other times startlingly tart, yet always subtle and eloquent." (as quoted in Milton Avery, Manchester, Vermont, 1990, p. 1)