By Sybil Maimin
The venerable National Academy Museum, founded in 1825, is currently aglow with vivid color and beauty thanks to a wonderful exhibition, "See It Loud: Seven Post-War American Painters," that showcases seven free-spirited artists who worked in the years following World War II. Bucking expectations, Leland Bell, Paul Georges, Paul Resika, Neil Welliver, Albert Kresch, Stanley Lewis, and Peter Heinemann refused to ally themselves solely with one or the other of the two major competing art movements--Abstract Expressionism and Representation. Ironically, they were considered rebels because they sought a middle ground, looking for a synthesis between the two opposing schools. Abstract Expressionism, as represented by a group of young New York artists including Mark Rothko, Willem de Kooning, and Jackson Pollock (The New York School), sought to replace representation of objects on canvas with a focus on color, space, and spontaneity. The artists in the show began their careers under the powerful influence of the new movement and initially painted in that style. Several studied with Abstract Expressionism's premier teachers, Josef Albers and Hans Hofmann. But, the influence of great European masters from earlier in the century as well as the more distant past, such as Matisse, Balthus, Giacometti, and Bonnard, as well as Titian, Canaletto, Corot, and Manet, remained with them. The results, seen in the exhibit, are paintings that draw upon the two movements in varying ways. The works may tell a story, look to nature, create movement, work with planes, and create mood and atmosphere, but also feature fields of rich color playing against each other, mere suggestions of objects, thick lines, and large scale.
Paul Resika uses lush colors and simple shapes. "August" (2007) is a soft, dreamlike evocation of a beach with a sunbather, a hat, a boat, and a tree. A series, he did, that features simple shapes, such as a reference to the moon (a circle) or a sail (a triangle), floating on a rich, almost electric, field of color is a masterful blend of the two schools. Stanley Lewis is quoted as saying, "You have to learn what abstraction is in order to understand what painting is." He draws and paints directly from nature in great detail, creating relief-like surfaces on special paper which he layers, roughs up, and covers with thick applications of paint. His subject matter--suburban houses and their natural settings--is evident in titles such as "Backyard, DC, Fall" (1995), "West Side of House (with Detailed Shingles" (2001-03), and "Two Houses in Leeds" (2004). Neil Welliver, who lived a hermit-like life on the Maine coast uses wide brush strokes and pockets of subdued color to capture the stillness and majesty of the scenes around him. He said, "My painting is very closely related to the way I live. I live in the woods . . . When my paintings are 'finished' I have no interest in them at all. . . They are, in fact, tracks in the snow behind me." Jewel-like hues dominate the intimate landscapes of Albert Kresch. Sky and land are in balance, and colors flow, glow, change, contrast with their neighbors, and create unimaginably lush settings. People, action, and stories are seen, with spare detail, in the work of Leland Bell, and Peter Heinemann lets the viewer get to know him through a series of self-portraits. Paul Georges is represented by monumental canvases depicting war scenes in Greek mythology as well as outsize paintings of large, brightly colored flowers--in the foregrounds of landscapes and in vases on tables.
The artists in "See It Loud" speak out with bold colors, individual styles, and determination to embrace and synthesize two opposing schools of art practice. The National Academy show demonstrates that blending two approaches is possible.
The National Academy Museum is at 5 East 89th Street. "See It Loud" runs through January 26.
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