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拍品专文
‘[Tobey] is valued because of his spirituality, his timelessness, his energy and vitality, his intimacy, profundity, and sincerity. No one has a more vibrant line, more singing color, more sophisticated control of the spatial complexities of abstract form. He has [woven]... his own fabric to give form to his own vision. He has built his own world and, in the process, has helped illuminate ours’
–M. C. Rueppel
A loose skein of yellow threaded through a dense complex of exuberant white on a fathomless black background, New Crescent is an excellent example of Mark Tobey’s mature style. Developed after his 1934 visit to Asia, where he studied the traditions of Zen painting and calligraphy, this work represents the apotheosis of Tobey’s signature ‘white-writing’ paintings. As a proponent of the universalist Bahi’a religion, which professes unity and balance as its essential tenets, Tobey used his art to meditate on the transitory, and on ideas of the spiritual versus the material. In New Crescent, Tobey adapts the individual techniques of Eastern art and the thematic elements of his universalist faith to portray and deal with aspects of modern, Western urban life. Using calligraphic lines and ideograms to convey the rhythms of the city, Tobey activates the picture surface with dynamic power. The result is an inner tension of such strength and vitality that the entire painting appears to vibrate.
Comparisons with the works of Jackson Pollock are inevitable. Both artists were influenced by the European Surrealists who immigrated to New York in the 1940s, and Tobey certainly knew of Pollock‘s work when his own mature style was developing. Yet Tobey’s paintings stand in splendid isoaltion, differing from Pollock’s work in both their means of creation and ultimate intention. Meditative, intimate, balanced and precise, New Crescent’s introspective rhythm draws the viewer into its complex and infinate atmosphere in an effortlessly unique way.
–M. C. Rueppel
A loose skein of yellow threaded through a dense complex of exuberant white on a fathomless black background, New Crescent is an excellent example of Mark Tobey’s mature style. Developed after his 1934 visit to Asia, where he studied the traditions of Zen painting and calligraphy, this work represents the apotheosis of Tobey’s signature ‘white-writing’ paintings. As a proponent of the universalist Bahi’a religion, which professes unity and balance as its essential tenets, Tobey used his art to meditate on the transitory, and on ideas of the spiritual versus the material. In New Crescent, Tobey adapts the individual techniques of Eastern art and the thematic elements of his universalist faith to portray and deal with aspects of modern, Western urban life. Using calligraphic lines and ideograms to convey the rhythms of the city, Tobey activates the picture surface with dynamic power. The result is an inner tension of such strength and vitality that the entire painting appears to vibrate.
Comparisons with the works of Jackson Pollock are inevitable. Both artists were influenced by the European Surrealists who immigrated to New York in the 1940s, and Tobey certainly knew of Pollock‘s work when his own mature style was developing. Yet Tobey’s paintings stand in splendid isoaltion, differing from Pollock’s work in both their means of creation and ultimate intention. Meditative, intimate, balanced and precise, New Crescent’s introspective rhythm draws the viewer into its complex and infinate atmosphere in an effortlessly unique way.