Clark Continues New Direction With 'Make It New'By Stephen Dravis, iBerkshires Staff
12:09PM / Wednesday, June 25, 2014 | |
 Morris Louis' 'Beta Kappa,' acrylic on canvas. |
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Jasper Johns' 'Target,' oil and collage on canvas
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WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — It may be hard for the untrained eye to see much of a connection between Renoir and Rothko.
But there is an artistic lineage that connects 19th Century French Impressionists and 20th Century Abstract Impressionists.
This summer, the Clark Art Institute will help to connect the dots.
The Impressionists, of course, have been the Clark’s bread and butter since it opened in 1955. In August it will open a special exhibition that continues an expansion of the Clark’s focus to include contemporary art alongside the masters of the distant past.
David Breslin is at the heart of that expansion, one that is perhaps as significant as the physical expansion of the Clark’s campus to be celebrated with its grand opening on July 4.
Breslin is the Clark’s first associate curator of contemporary projects, a position he began about two and a half years ago. He already has curated shows by Spanish sculptor Juan Munoz (2010) and Ghanian sculptor El Antsui in the Clark’s Stone Hill Center.
For the last couple of years, he has worked with Harry Cooper of Washington, D.C.’s, National Gallery of Art to curate “Make It New: Abstract Paining from the National Gallery of Art, 1950-1975,” which opens on Aug. 2 in the new visitor and exhibition center.
Breslin said that there are important similarities between the impressionist movements separated by 100 years and two world wars.
“Impressionism was the avante garde of its day,” Breslin said, referring to the radical techniques developed by Renoir, Monet and the other artists generally associated with the Clark. “In abstract painting, they’re looking at form, color, texture … How do these factors change the way we see the world? They’re not Impressionists, but they’re thinking about the same issues.
“They’re thinking about what happens when you have this tube of viscous stuff and you spread it on a canvas and try to change the world.”
To illustrate the point, Breslin cites the words of a contemporary and friend of several of the artists in “Make It New,” who is featured in another Clark exhibit this summer: Sculptor David Smith, the subject of “Raw Color: The Circles of David Smith.”
Breslin referred to a 1964 television interview of Smith by poet and art critic Frank O’Hara.
“O’Hara poses this question: ‘Color for you isn’t the same as what color is for the Impressionists,’ “ Breslin said. “Smith’s responses is: That was color for them.
“He didn’t want to trash or denigrate what the Impressionists were doing. He saw this as a continuum. … We learn from and we translate and we transmute and are part of the same process and the same air. We can’t just adopt what we inherited. We have to change it somehow.”
“Make It New” will show how art evolved over a quarter century by exploring representative works from nearly three dozen abstract painters.
Breslin said he and Cooper spent a lot of time figuring out the best way to tell the story and decided to create several thematic galleries -- “Shape,” “Color Field,” “Pattern” and “Texture” -- that pair up different artists and allow conversations between their works.
“The great thing about having multiple galleries is we get to put people next to each other who probably didn’t know each others’ works at the extremes of those dates who may have lived in France and Washington, D.C.,” Breslin said. “It’s a way to disturb the traditional narratives we usually inherit.
“What did Alma Thomas, who was working in D.C., have to do with Frank Stella, who was in New York City?
“Color Field painting had this interesting triangular formation between D.C., Bennington, Vt., and New York City.”
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