Graphic Eloquence: American Modernism on Paper is on view at the George Museum of Art, at the University of Georgia, Athens, through September 4. It’s a wide ranging, rambling show from the collection of Michael Ricker, the Texas-based donor of many of the works. Ricker and the museum’s Curator of American Art, Jeffrey Richmond-Moll, made the final selections and many of the layout arrangements. The installation is stunning and thought provoking. Work by WILLIAM BAZIOTES, FRED BECKER, EDMOND CASARELLA, MINNA CITRON, WORDEN DAY, DOROTHY DEHNER, FANNIE HILLSMITH, BORIS MARGO, HUGH MESIBOV, ANNE RYAN, and MITCHELL SIPORIN, is featured, with prints and drawings showing more or less equally.
It was especially wonderful to view Anne Ryan’s black-line woodcut Fantasia, 1947, facing off Fannie Hillsmith’s pair of intaglio early and final states for Interior with Lamp/Table, 1945. Above.
Showing Dorothy Dehner’s engravings alongside an ink
line-drawing is inspired.
A pair of Hugh Mesibov surrealist drawings from 1944 are an ideal compare and contrast exercise. One is a large watercolor fantasy, Three Mechanical Figures #1. The second, Duet, a 9 x 6-inch sheet of crayon and ink tightly drawn composition – two robots meeting on shelf while lost in space?
We're only recently back from the trip to Athens -- it was a wonderful journey.
