Abstract Expressionist New York
At the Art Gallery of Ontario
Until Sept. 4, 317 Dundas St. W., Toronto; ago.net
In his 1917 essay Mourning and Melancholy, Freud argued that melancholy was a non-reaction to loss - that, in fact, melancholy was pathological, a denial of the reality of loss that resulted in an unhealthy attachment to the lost object. Subsequent theorists have applied parallel readings to indulgences in nostalgia, reading it as a kind of willful disability, a refusal to accept not only loss but the progress of time.
This core denial problem unsettles (and, I would argue, makes weak) the Art Gallery of Ontario's summer blockbuster Abstract Expressionist New York: Masterpieces from the Museum of Modern Art, an otherwise occasionally thrilling collection of mid-century artworks by U.S.-based artists. Setting aside the problematic word "masterpiece," which appears nowadays to be little more than a euphemism for "good taste," AbEx (as it is popularly called) is fuelled by the dissociative dynamics of nostalgia.
Essentially, the show operates on, and sells, sells, sells, the fanciful idea that in a previous generation, the art world was a more cohesive, fierce, and risk-taking world, one also more prone to camaraderie and collectively agreed upon schools of thought. This is nonsense, of course - a mug's game expertly parodied, by happy coincidence, in Woody Allen's new film Midnight in Paris.
This is not to say that communities do not develop in the art world and/or in the creative fields (I'm in one myself, as, very likely, are you). But such communities are never cohesive "schools" (that comes later, in the marketing) and are always fraught with all kinds of tensions - intellectual, sexual, competitive, class-based, etc. The 1950 photograph that welcomes viewers to AbEx - of 15 artists, all white and all but one of them male - says it all. The last ones standing get to write the official histories. Nostalgia is morbidity plus party snaps.
Furthermore, enough already with Toronto celebrations of New York. I have this crazy dream that I will live long enough to enjoy one solid 12-month period wherein something is not sold to me as being "hot from New York."
But I digress. Blame 25 years of hearing about NYC, every damned day.
The exhibition's thematic faults aside, and that's a long, wide aside I'm making space for here, one cannot argue with the treasures to be found in AbEx. Summer blockbuster exhibitions are like summer movies: 20 per cent quality content, 40 per cent passable distraction, 40 percent filler.
First, the quality. Helen Frankenthaler's Jacob's Ladder is a towering mushroom cloud, rendered in dusty pinks, chunks of leathery paint topped with airy swirls, and a base cluster of cold, sea-bottom greens. Lee Krasner's Gaea is a floating cloud world, held up by off-red ovate bubbles and inky, insectile buttresses.
A trio of gorgeous Franz Kline black and white, bold-stroke calligraphic paintings illuminate one corner, hovering like busted barn boards in a blizzard, waiting to land. And one of Jackson Pollock's early drip works, Number 1A, 1948, moves back and forth across the canvas as if in love with its own ejaculatory prowess.
And then there's Rothko. For me, looking at a Rothko colour field painting is akin to visiting a cathedral under full sunlight. I feel engulfed, happily small and innocuous, dream-drunk, a man on an alien beach confronting a vast ocean of lava, a farmer stopping at midday to admire his teeming fields. I turn to goo in front of a Rothko, and I'm okay with the slack-jawed giddiness the paintings inspire in me. Awe is precious.
Meanwhile, in the mid-range, the 40 per cent, you'll enjoy a suite of Barnett Newman's bratty vertical strip paintings, proto-punk single finger provocations that are possibly the original inspiration for the idiotic "my kid could do that" response; Isamu Noguchi's feisty, puzzle-piece, mixed-media cut-out paper works (works that deserve way more viewing space); Clyfford Still's slithering, gravity-wrenched oils, works that resemble slicks from crime scenes; and Aaron Siskind's photographs of urban textures, peeling paint and roughed-up surfaces observed as if they were natural wonders.
On the down side, there are several structural problems with this exhibition, and a handful of works that are simply horrid.
The physical space allotted AbEx is inadequate and does not flow. When I saw the show, in mid-afternoon on a weekday, several of the narrow halls were so packed you either had to jostle and elbow your way to the work or give up. Most people, I noticed, just walked on to the larger rooms.
Another problem are the add-ons, the underwhelming filler - such as the scholastically (yes, I am using that word ironically) related time-and-place photographs of Robert Frank or Rudy Burckhardt (shrug-inducing, standard-issue 1950s street photographs taken You Know Where), or the pre-AbEx art of the late-Surrealist Arshile Gorky. While moderately amusing, Gorky's works are more derivative than predictive.
And whatever you do, dodge Adolph Gottlieb's indecisive, pancake-flat, near-Pop paintings, and run, run from Philip Guston's muddy, jail-grey mid-sixties slop buckets, paintings with about as much light and inner dynamism as a splat of road kill.
While it's true that no single exhibition, especially a summer crowd-grabber, can, nor is meant to, please everyone, Abstract Expressionist New York would be twice as strong with half the work.
Poor old Freud was on to something. Melancholiacs, like nostalgia-hoarders, have problems letting go.
In other venues
Sarah Anne Johnson at Stephen Bulger Gallery
Until July 16, 1026 Queen St. W., Toronto; bulgergallery.com
The title of the show, Arctic Wonderland, doesn't lie - Johnson's manipulated images, based on travels in the Far North, would make great illustrations for a Jules Verne novel.
Fibreworks at Side Space Gallery
Until July 17, 1080 St. Clair Ave. W., Toronto; sidespacegallery.com
After viewing this rough, vibrant and smart collection of multimedia textile works, most made from scraps of material, you'll never look at your tea towel the same way again.
Surface at Monte Clark Gallery
Until July 17, 55 Mill St., Building 2, Toronto; monteclarkgallery.com
A dreamy, summery show that looks at how both the surface of a work and the surface depicted can reverse and re-reverse roles until the viewer is pleasantly hypnotized.