Through October 28, 2012, works by WILL BARNET, WILLIAM BAZIOTES, DOROTHY DEHNER, MORRIS
GRAVES, and ANNE RYAN, are featured Signs & Symbols, at the Whitney Museum of
American Art, 945 Madison Avenue at 75th Street, NYC.
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| Anne Ryan, Collage, 1951. Courtesy of the Estate of the Artist. This piece is larger than the Whitney's but relates in horizontal format. |
This show explores the development of American abstraction in the postwar
period, from the mid-1940s to the end of the 50s, in paintings, drawings, sculpture,
prints, and photographs, by more than forty artists.
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| William Baziotes, (Figure on Green), about 1940. Courtesy of the Estate of the Artist |
These works are calligraphic, with traces of the figure; together they form a search for
a distinctly American aesthetic. In the
New York Times Ken Johnson wrote that the artists worked in “Archaic myth, oracular
symbolism and private language.” He goes on to mention William Baziotes’
“luminous shapes [that] suggest marine life” and Morris Graves’ link to
magic realism. The recent past had
rendered realism too banal, but by using symbols artists could still create
works to which viewers could relate.
