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拍品专文
The New York art world of the 1960s can be described as complex, diverse, and above all cool. Referring to both new avant-garde artists and the influence of the established post-war Abstract Expressionists, the decade also marked the emergence of a circle of significant dealers and critics. Gallerists that had built their notorious reputations through the popularization of European modern masters in New York and witnessed the first generation of Abstract Expressionists like Sidney Janis, Betty Parsons and Charles Egan, were joined by an influential new guard that included Leo Castelli and Allan Stone. Together, along with critics like Clement Greenberg , this privileged group of taste makers transformed New York City into the center of the art world into the scene in which to be seen.
The dynamism that categorized the New York art world at this time was largely due to the conflation of an entrenched, still viable painterly aesthetic, and a desire to reject and break away from this model. The vast emotional attachment that categorized Abstract Expressionism of the fifties melted away into the new decade's "cool detachment," as coined by the artist Alan Kaprow,. This coolness of the sixties was palpable in the New York art world, where emotion was replaced by sensation, psychology with physicality, and interpretation with presentation.
At no other time in New York's art history had so many young, emerging artists been so eagerly embraced by the art world and its potential collectors and investors. The model of the "starving artist" gave away to a "high luster" of the artist as tastemaker. The 1960s marked the moment that galleries in New York began to define themselves by the artists they showed, and each one wanted to be the first to exhibit the newest and hippest, as well as throw the best party, in order to cater to the growing appreciation of the artists of the day.
New artists asserting innovative styles like Pop, Minimalism, and Conceptualism, began to lead the conversation. Abstract Expressionists remained essential to the dialogue as an origin from which many of these new movements emerge. Willem De Kooning proved to be especially influential and continually adapted his own art throughout the decade, showing new work at Sidney Janis and Allan Stone galleries. Artists from all over the country and the world discovered that in order to be "in" they would have to be part of this new New York. The artist Wayne Thiebaud, for instance, although already established on the west coast, saw the need to establish a foothold in the east. Embraced by the Allan Stone Gallery, Thiebaud was simultaneously inspiring and being inspired by the New York art world and his work flourished in this environment, possessing vestiges of late Abstract Expressionist bold brushwork in his capturing of the everyday commercial subject matter of Pop.
When speaking about the 1960s Thiebaud proclaimed, "It was that whole wonderful period of New York painting... I spent evenings and weekends getting to meet those people, going to exhibitions, gathering at the Cedar Tavern, which became such a famous place. It was a relatively small art world, and at openings you saw critics, artists, writers, musicians and poets. It was a great changing experience for me." (Stephen C. McGough, Thiebaud Selects Thiebaud, Crocker Art Museum 1996). Rarely is there a period in time that can be so strikingly seen as a transformative moment. The sixties, especially New York in the sixties, possessed a distinct spirit, a vibe, and a way of life, that became a crucible for one of the most profoundly creative and iconoclastic moment in the history of American art.
The dynamism that categorized the New York art world at this time was largely due to the conflation of an entrenched, still viable painterly aesthetic, and a desire to reject and break away from this model. The vast emotional attachment that categorized Abstract Expressionism of the fifties melted away into the new decade's "cool detachment," as coined by the artist Alan Kaprow,. This coolness of the sixties was palpable in the New York art world, where emotion was replaced by sensation, psychology with physicality, and interpretation with presentation.
At no other time in New York's art history had so many young, emerging artists been so eagerly embraced by the art world and its potential collectors and investors. The model of the "starving artist" gave away to a "high luster" of the artist as tastemaker. The 1960s marked the moment that galleries in New York began to define themselves by the artists they showed, and each one wanted to be the first to exhibit the newest and hippest, as well as throw the best party, in order to cater to the growing appreciation of the artists of the day.
New artists asserting innovative styles like Pop, Minimalism, and Conceptualism, began to lead the conversation. Abstract Expressionists remained essential to the dialogue as an origin from which many of these new movements emerge. Willem De Kooning proved to be especially influential and continually adapted his own art throughout the decade, showing new work at Sidney Janis and Allan Stone galleries. Artists from all over the country and the world discovered that in order to be "in" they would have to be part of this new New York. The artist Wayne Thiebaud, for instance, although already established on the west coast, saw the need to establish a foothold in the east. Embraced by the Allan Stone Gallery, Thiebaud was simultaneously inspiring and being inspired by the New York art world and his work flourished in this environment, possessing vestiges of late Abstract Expressionist bold brushwork in his capturing of the everyday commercial subject matter of Pop.
When speaking about the 1960s Thiebaud proclaimed, "It was that whole wonderful period of New York painting... I spent evenings and weekends getting to meet those people, going to exhibitions, gathering at the Cedar Tavern, which became such a famous place. It was a relatively small art world, and at openings you saw critics, artists, writers, musicians and poets. It was a great changing experience for me." (Stephen C. McGough, Thiebaud Selects Thiebaud, Crocker Art Museum 1996). Rarely is there a period in time that can be so strikingly seen as a transformative moment. The sixties, especially New York in the sixties, possessed a distinct spirit, a vibe, and a way of life, that became a crucible for one of the most profoundly creative and iconoclastic moment in the history of American art.