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拍品專文
"We draw to the attention of these gentlemen the historical fact that, for roughly a hundred years, only advanced art has made any consequential contribution to civilization"
-The Irascibles in their Open Letter to Roland L. Redmond, May 20, 1950
Assembled by Adolph Gottlieb, in the spring of 1950, a small group of New York School artists convened to alter the accepted notion of American twentieth-century art established by several of the art world's leading institutions. In an open letter to the President of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, 18 American abstract painters along with 10 supporting sculptors protested the museum's "contempt for modern painting" in response to the juried exhibition, American Painting Today-1950, for which they accused the jurors of being "notoriously hostile toward advanced art" (The Irascibles in Open Letter to Roland L. Redmond, 20 May 1950). Marked by the Herald Tribune the 18 painters, including Gottlieb, Robert Motherwell, William Baziotes, Hans Hoffman, Barnett Newman, Clyfford Still, Richard Pousette-Dart, Theodoros Stamos, Ad Reinhardt, Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, Bradley Walker Tomlin, Willem de Kooning, Hedda Sterne, James Brooks, Weldon Kees, and Fritz Bultman, became known as the Irascible 18.
Capturing the zeitgeist of American Modernism, Property of a Private Collection immediately recalls the moment in American history, where a group of artists, who refused to be labeled under one movement, nevertheless became united to change the course of American art history, and emerged as some of the most sought after artists in the world. This well curated collection of intimate objects derives from the most pivotal moments in Abstract Expressionism and Color Field Painting. Centered around a stunning Gottlieb, the gem-like paintings and sculptures, which have been part of the same collection for nearly three decades, recall some of the most influential years in abstract art. Many of the artists emerged from similar roots, through their studies under Hans Hofmann or at the Arts Student League of New York, or even their work in the Federal Arts Project under the Works Progress Administration. The strives and influences of these artists have been passed down to recent generations not only through their political actions as with the Irascibles, but also through their teachings, travels, progress as women artists, and innovations.
Molding the next generation of artists, including Color Field painter, Kenneth Noland and Robert Rauschenberg, deep in the verdant hills of North Carolina, Ilya Bolotowsky, Theodoros Stamos and Jack Tworkov lead the experimental faculty of Black Mountain College, with the likes of Willem de Kooning, Franz Kline and John Cage. While they were invested in shaping the future of American art at Black Mountain College, Sam Francis, Jean-Paul Riopelle, and Joan Mitchell brought the language of the New York School to Paris, where they were able to bring new life to American abstract painting due to their critical distance from New York. Closer to the city, a rare set of women artists strove to create a name for themselves among a group of brutish men. Among them, Dorothy Dehner, former wife of David Smith created sculpture that initially owed something to Smith's rangy, attenuated style, but grew to have a Surrealist lyricism that was very much her own. Helen Frankenthaler, too, whose technique of staining pigment into raw canvases created a bridge between Abstract Expressionism and Color Field Painting, and thus became one of the most admired artists of her generation.
And yet, even with the great advances made by this extraordinary collection of artists during a period unlike any other in American art, their quest to overcome the challenges placed before them by the institution was not easy. Six months after the Irascibles protested the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Life, still hanging on the coattails of their groundbreaking article on Jackson Pollock, published a short article on the Met's juried exhibition, American Painting Today-1950, which highlighted the Irascibles with the famous photograph by Nina Leen. The subsequent Life article did more than provide the public with an image of the group-who insisted on looking more like 'bankers' than irascible. It placed the picture larger and ahead of the Metropolitan's competition winning works of art. Even more so, the caption of the infamous photograph, which Irving Sandler described as "the image whereby we invision the artists who achieved the triumph of American painting," was likened to the rebellious tradition of the avant-garde (I. Sandler quoted in, D. Siedell, Weldon Kees and the Arts at Midcentury, Nebraska, 2003). "French painters in 1874 rebelled against their official juries and held the first impressionist exhibition," declared the article. "U.S. artists in 1908 broke with the National Academy jury to launch the famous Ashcan School. The effect of the revolt of the 'irascibles' remains to be seen, but it did appear to have needled the Metropolitan's juries into turning more than half the show into a free-for-all of modern art" ("Irascible Group of Advanced Artists Led Fight Against Show," in Life, 15 January 1951, p. 34). As hinted by Life over half a century ago, this group of advanced artists would, as those before them, launch a new style of avant-garde, which we know to day as Abstract Expressionism, from which this collection recalls a remarkable history.
-The Irascibles in their Open Letter to Roland L. Redmond, May 20, 1950
Assembled by Adolph Gottlieb, in the spring of 1950, a small group of New York School artists convened to alter the accepted notion of American twentieth-century art established by several of the art world's leading institutions. In an open letter to the President of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, 18 American abstract painters along with 10 supporting sculptors protested the museum's "contempt for modern painting" in response to the juried exhibition, American Painting Today-1950, for which they accused the jurors of being "notoriously hostile toward advanced art" (The Irascibles in Open Letter to Roland L. Redmond, 20 May 1950). Marked by the Herald Tribune the 18 painters, including Gottlieb, Robert Motherwell, William Baziotes, Hans Hoffman, Barnett Newman, Clyfford Still, Richard Pousette-Dart, Theodoros Stamos, Ad Reinhardt, Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, Bradley Walker Tomlin, Willem de Kooning, Hedda Sterne, James Brooks, Weldon Kees, and Fritz Bultman, became known as the Irascible 18.
Capturing the zeitgeist of American Modernism, Property of a Private Collection immediately recalls the moment in American history, where a group of artists, who refused to be labeled under one movement, nevertheless became united to change the course of American art history, and emerged as some of the most sought after artists in the world. This well curated collection of intimate objects derives from the most pivotal moments in Abstract Expressionism and Color Field Painting. Centered around a stunning Gottlieb, the gem-like paintings and sculptures, which have been part of the same collection for nearly three decades, recall some of the most influential years in abstract art. Many of the artists emerged from similar roots, through their studies under Hans Hofmann or at the Arts Student League of New York, or even their work in the Federal Arts Project under the Works Progress Administration. The strives and influences of these artists have been passed down to recent generations not only through their political actions as with the Irascibles, but also through their teachings, travels, progress as women artists, and innovations.
Molding the next generation of artists, including Color Field painter, Kenneth Noland and Robert Rauschenberg, deep in the verdant hills of North Carolina, Ilya Bolotowsky, Theodoros Stamos and Jack Tworkov lead the experimental faculty of Black Mountain College, with the likes of Willem de Kooning, Franz Kline and John Cage. While they were invested in shaping the future of American art at Black Mountain College, Sam Francis, Jean-Paul Riopelle, and Joan Mitchell brought the language of the New York School to Paris, where they were able to bring new life to American abstract painting due to their critical distance from New York. Closer to the city, a rare set of women artists strove to create a name for themselves among a group of brutish men. Among them, Dorothy Dehner, former wife of David Smith created sculpture that initially owed something to Smith's rangy, attenuated style, but grew to have a Surrealist lyricism that was very much her own. Helen Frankenthaler, too, whose technique of staining pigment into raw canvases created a bridge between Abstract Expressionism and Color Field Painting, and thus became one of the most admired artists of her generation.
And yet, even with the great advances made by this extraordinary collection of artists during a period unlike any other in American art, their quest to overcome the challenges placed before them by the institution was not easy. Six months after the Irascibles protested the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Life, still hanging on the coattails of their groundbreaking article on Jackson Pollock, published a short article on the Met's juried exhibition, American Painting Today-1950, which highlighted the Irascibles with the famous photograph by Nina Leen. The subsequent Life article did more than provide the public with an image of the group-who insisted on looking more like 'bankers' than irascible. It placed the picture larger and ahead of the Metropolitan's competition winning works of art. Even more so, the caption of the infamous photograph, which Irving Sandler described as "the image whereby we invision the artists who achieved the triumph of American painting," was likened to the rebellious tradition of the avant-garde (I. Sandler quoted in, D. Siedell, Weldon Kees and the Arts at Midcentury, Nebraska, 2003). "French painters in 1874 rebelled against their official juries and held the first impressionist exhibition," declared the article. "U.S. artists in 1908 broke with the National Academy jury to launch the famous Ashcan School. The effect of the revolt of the 'irascibles' remains to be seen, but it did appear to have needled the Metropolitan's juries into turning more than half the show into a free-for-all of modern art" ("Irascible Group of Advanced Artists Led Fight Against Show," in Life, 15 January 1951, p. 34). As hinted by Life over half a century ago, this group of advanced artists would, as those before them, launch a new style of avant-garde, which we know to day as Abstract Expressionism, from which this collection recalls a remarkable history.