Avery, Gottlieb, and Rothko Soar in Gloucester Show

We went to see the sort-of blockbuster at the newly remodeled and reopened Cape Ann Museum in Gloucester last week. I say sort of because of the three artists featured -- Adolph Gottlieb, Milton Avery, and Mark Rothko -- it is only Rothko who gets mega-attention at a scale needed for a big show at MOMA or one of the heavy hitters. But this is good: Seeing artists of this caliber without massive crowds is a delight. Now, it's not that there wasn't a good turnout. It was surprisingly busy considering it was a Tuesday morning when we attended. Need I mention that everyone there was old like us? Sure. I mean, it was noticeable. I suspect the art crowd skews older now, but this show also required a car to get to, and it was a workday. But I do believe important aspects of culture are being lost in the digital age. One can argue it was ever thus, but that doesn't mean I have to like it!

The premise of the show is that Avery served as a mentor to Gottlieb and Rothko and also that their friendship entailed much mutual exploration of the same subjects and aesthetic principles. In essence it portrays the movement from figuration to abstraction. Full abstraction was never Avery's thing, as it was to become for Rothko and Gottlieb, but he did lead the way with the loosening up of representational painting. Put simply, these two admired Avery greatly, and the show did change my perception of his contribution to American art. While in Gloucester, they mostly depicted either beach scenes featuring lounging people engaging in blessed lassitude or portrayals of the working harbor, which was a bit down at the heels because of the Great Depression. Significantly, the three were outliers in Gloucester, which, though it was a thriving art colony then, it was more conservative in its approach to landscapes and seascapes. This may be why the three achieved many of their biggest breakthroughs when they decamped in the 40s to the more experimental scene in Provincetown.

The question for me is: Was there something inevitable to the steady movement toward full abstraction? Is it a matter of always seeking to get to the essence of form and color and feeling? I think yes, on both counts. Or, to clarify, the move to abstraction can do these things, but it's not the only way to get there, as the influential but dogmatic Clement Greenberg maintained at the time. Abstractions get you in touch with feelings and thoughts that are pre- or sub-verbal. And there is wisdom and insight here, in the realm of the subconscious, which is relatively free of the static and noise that characterizes mass culture and society today. This place can also be gotten to through representation, of course. Just take one look at a Vermeer. But it is full bore abstraction that drew Gottlieb and Rothko forward. And it is full bore abstraction that speaks to me most powerfully and intimately.

Here I will briefly discuss the big abstract Rothkos, shown above, that anchor the show. First of all, that photo presents only the barest sense of what it's like to see those in person. The power of the paint is visceral. I addressed the irreplaceable qualities of the physical world in my previous post, and here, with the Rothkos we experience what might be Exhibit A in the case for material reality. When we were  standing in front of the painting on the right, we both noticed that the colors actually seemed to be vibrating. Seriously. It's sort of hilarious that they have come up with "immersive" art experiences where images of Van Gogh are projected onto all the walls, ceiling, and floor of a large room. Those projected colors most certainly don't vibrate or hit you on a visceral level. The colors are loud but shallow.

Another thing that the photo does is give a somewhat false sense of the edges around the forms. Considering again the painting on the right, when you view this in person these edges are anything but clean and hard, and because of this you get a sense of form as less a physical than a spiritual mystery. As I wrote in a blog post here after seeing a Rothko show at the Harvard Art Musems in 2015, viewing the Rothkos makes "clear that his all edges were meticulously blended. Not only does this give the shapes a floating feeling, but it makes the shapes both distinct and indistinct at once. These rectangles are like all our categories, then, insofar as they are blurred around the edges. Night and day are real, but where is the boundary between them? No one can say." And looking at this quote now, I could also ask this question of the superb exhibition in Gloucester. Where was the line between the figurative and abstract works of these artists? It's there and not there.