Abstraction was a staple of art in
the 20th century until it was rudely displaced by Pop Art in the 1960s. While abstraction
took a secondary role for a time, it is once again popular with artists in the
21st century.
"Approaching Infinity: The
Richard Green Collection of Meticulous Abstraction" at the Crocker Art
Museum explores works of intricate complexity that deal with both microcosmic
and macrocosmic abstract imagery.
Beginning with forerunners such as
Mark Tobey, Yayoi Kusama, John Cage and Bruce Conner, the show traces the
development of abstraction based on repetition and, in the case of Cage, chance
operations.
One of the first works on view is a
small, ethereal, atmospheric tempera on Japanese paper by Tobey, done in 1969,
that exemplifies his "white writing," a kind of spiritual automatic
writing that adds up to a transcendent abstraction. At the terminus of the
exhibition is an intricately worked 2007 gouache drawing by Susanne Schossig,
who is an inheritor of Tobey's style. Thus the exhibition seems to come full
circle from its progenitors to those who have been influenced by them.
Along the way are works that
exhibition curator Diana Daniels points out are seldom seen in Sacramento
except in the pages of Art in America magazine. She was stunned to find such a
collection in the hands of Green, who lives in Gold River.
Green writes in the exhibition
catalog that at the turn of the millennium, he went from being a casual
collector to one focused on "the boundless patterns and complexities of
the physical world." His interests became metaphysical as well, focusing
on the spiritual as well as the physical.
"What unites Richard Green's
collection," said Daniels, "is his desire for dialogue between
knowing and feeling the enormity of all existence. He has pointedly turned to
artists who imagine and demonstrate for us the beauty of line, form and shape
in their art as a means to expand and validate developments in a half-century
of thought on our place in nature."
The exhibition Daniels has put
together is quiet and cool in tone, with many works consisting of minute,
repetitive markings that have subtle shifts in color. If you are one of those
who think abstraction is easy, you should look at these works.
Some, like James Siena's
"Non-Slice Variation" relate to recent scientific discoveries. His
ethereal blue markings resemble fractals that create an image reminiscent of
decoratively marbled paper.
The race to the moon informs Josaku
Maeda's watercolor "Human, space" which turns the moon into an
eyeball covered with spacewalk boots. Kusama, who has recently had exhibitions
at the Centre Pompidou in Paris, the Tate Modern in London and the Whitney in
New York, offers a witty work titled "Fishes Listening to the Sound of
Polka Dots," which, Daniels writes, questions "the meaning of self in
relation to a vast and complex universe."
Ross Bleckner gets down to the
cellular level in "Study for In Replication," an oil painting that looks
inside the body at what might be intestines.
Stephen Antonakos covers vellum with
dense, incised marks of graphite to make an intense field of black broken by
red circles that suggest planets. Barbara Takenaga's "Blue Wheel
(M-1)," an acrylic on panel, is a mandalalike representation of outer
space, delicately linear and richly colored.
While most of the works in the show
are unrelentingly abstract, Ed Loftus gives us an untitled graphite drawing on
paper that looks like a photograph. In it a skeleton walks in a landscape with
mountains and a lake, reminding one of the 18th century anatomist Albinus'
illustrations of skeletons wandering in pastoral landscapes. It's so refined
that you need a magnifying glass to see the abstract markings that make up the
illusion.
Magnifying glasses, which the museum
provides, are helpful in examining many of the works in the show. Green has
also lent a decommissioned camera lens from a U2 spy plane through which one
can see a fish-eye view of the show.
