: "Placing Avery," currently on view at the Neuberger Museum of Art
through September 18, groups work by Milton Avery with artists he
admired, artists he knew and artists he influenced. The
exhibition features 12 paintings and prints by Avery, and 22
paintings, prints and drawings by other artists, all drawn from
the Neuberger Museum of Art's permanent collection.
With these works as the set-ting, "Placing Avery" endeavors to
depict how the work of established masters took hold in Avery's
work, and how a considerable number of younger painters chose to
translate their vision on the strength of his example. The
exhibition is the last of a series that celebrates the Neuberger
Museum's 30th Anniversary year and its history of collecting
historically significant artwork.
Milton Avery, "Two Clowns," 1937, oil on canvas, 367/8 by 28
inches. Collection Neuberger Museum of Art, gift of Roy R.
Neuberger. -Jim Frank photo
Avery had a strong, "Connecticut Yankee" work ethic. He
painted for 50 years, some-times spending all day for weeks at a
time at his easel and sometimes creating as many as five or six
paintings or studies in one day. He has been quoted as saying, "Why
talk when you can paint?" He loved to travel as much as he loved to
paint, and his travels instilled in him a love of nature, natural
settings and color, which he invested in his landscapes and
seascapes. Avery also painted familiar, intimate moments of his
family and friends, his home and his studio.
Avery's sensibility was rooted in the combination of American
regionalism and European and American impressionism. Beginning in
the 1920s as a relatively traditional painter, Avery's style
changed and evolved, ultimately taking him to the brink of
abstraction. Although he was influenced by many illustrious
forebears, including Pierre Bonnard, Georges Braque, Henri
Matisse, Pablo Picasso and Maurice Prendergast, and
contemporaries such as his friends Marsden Hartley, Mark Rothko,
Adolph Gottlieb and Barnett New-man, Avery's style remained
uniquely his own, even as he experimented with multiple stylistic
approaches.
He became a master of flat, two-dimensional objects in which the
painting itself is the subject matter. His masterly use of color
secured his place as a central figure in Twentieth Century art.
His inter-twining of flatness with vivid coloration can be
experienced in the work of younger artists whose creativity he
impacted, including Willian Baziotes, Helen Frankenthaler and
Alex Katz.
Milton Avery, "Strip Tease," 1939, oil on canvas, 321/2 by
403/4 inches Collection Neuberger Museum of Art, gift of Roy R.
Neuberger. -Jim Frank photo
Avery grew up in financial hardship. He father died early,
and young Avery was forced to work to support his mother, his aunt
and his aunt's children. Avery never lost the haunted memory of his
humble beginnings, al-though his later circle of friends included
the sophisticated and culturally aware. His subject matter,
therefore, drew on the inner strength of his family, his circle of
friends and his delight in vaudeville performers, animals, new
landscapes and new ideas.
At Avery's memorial service in 1965, Mark Rothko famously
remarked: "There have been several others in our generation who
have celebrated the world around them, but none with that
inevitability where the poetry penetrated every pore of the
canvas to the very last touch of the brush. For Avery was a great
poet-inventor who had invented sonorities never seen or heard
before. From these we have learned much and will learn more for a
long time to come."
"Placing Avery" is curated by Jacqueline Shilkoff, Neuberger
Museum of Art assistant curator.
The Neuberger Museum of Art is on the campus of Purchase
College, State University of New York. For information,
www.Neuberger.org or 914-251-6100.
