Mark Tobey Venice and Andover

2017 NOVEMBER NOVEMBER COV_NOV2017_V1.qxp_cover.june.pp.corr 18/10/2017 12:00 Page 1 2017 THE BURLINGTON MAGAZINE NO. 1376 VOL. CLIX EXHIBITIONS Mark Tobey Venice and Andover by DAVID ANFAM THE PITY IS that an important American artist who spent nearly a decade in England has never gained full recognition there. The exhibition Mark Tobey: Threading Light at the Addison Gallery of American Art, An- dover (to 11th March 2018), and previously at the Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice (closed 10th September), where this review- er saw it, further highlights this shortsighted- ness.1 Among the reasons for Tobey’s wider neglect are, firstly, that his affinities gravitated towards the West coast of the United States and the Far East. Secondly, the Abstract Ex- pressionist heavyweights eclipsed him. Tobey painted small – a fatal gambit during the pe- riod when large prevailed. Lastly, Clement Greenberg traduced the artist by denying his documented influence on Pollock. This exhibition provides an excellent chance to reassess Tobey’s stature. Given its majestic site on the Grand Canal, Venice’s sparkling light and the unique atmosphere of its former owner’s palazzo, the Peggy Guggenheim Collection offers a superb setting for almost any art. However, its tem- porary exhibition areas – at the bottom of the garden, as it were – pose one challenge. They are windowless. In Tobey’s case this became 78. World, by Mark Tobey. 1959. Tempera on board, diameter 29.8 cm. (Private collection, New York; an advantage, lending concentration to his exh. Addison Gallery of American Art, Andover). intimate facture, enhanced by subdued light- ing and the compact galleries. And yet a little The exhibition’s subtitle, ‘Threading father was a carpenter and that he always Tobey goes a long way. At moments, this big Light’, conveys the heart of Tobey’s craft: remembered the hooked rugs and domes- assembly of small paintings gave the impres- its artisanal tenor. Taken from the title of a tic crafts that preoccupied his mother. The sion that more was less. Notwithstanding 1942 composition (cat. no.1; Fig.80), Tobey’s young Tobey also drew caricatures, as did that, the project finely maps Tobey’s many ‘threading’ lineation suggests the close-up, a remarkable number of his mainstream strengths and occasional weaknesses. Para- repetitive and perfectionist movements of counterparts, including Willem de Koon- doxically, he comes across as both a limited some master fabric weaver. The attractive ing, Philip Guston, Yves Kline, Ad Rein- creator and a most resourceful one. catalogue’s solid scholarship reveals that his hardt and David Smith. Cartoons of course use line to reduce their subjects to essentials. All levity gone, calligraphy would remain Tobey’s fundamental tool. The first room in Venice held a surprise: Middle West (American landscape) (no.16; Fig.79). Despite Tobey’s tender memories of a Wisconsin childhood and the Mississippi, he never revisited these roots. It is easy to see why. This bleak quasi-Precisionist vista epitomises the Midwest as dystopia: empty, blockish and conflicted. Tobey came to hymn its antitheses: horror vacui, cat’s cradle filaments and auratic oneness. As an invet- erate god-seeker, we might say he replaced the Bible Belt religiosity of his upbringing with the Bahá’í Faith that he first encoun- tered around 1926. If the heavy ‘X’ marks a meaningless spot in the 1929 canvas, then Tobey’s eventual faith in ethereal universal meanings was its flip side. As he remarked in 1955, his ‘subject matter changed from the Middle West (where I lived long ago) to the microscopic worlds’. Accordingly, Tobey 79. Middle West (American landscape), by Mark Tobey. 1929. Canvas, 94 by 150 cm. (Seattle Art Museum; belongs to a roll call of Americans who left © Estate of Mark Tobey, ARS, NY/DACS, London 2017; exh. Addison Gallery of American Art, Andover). native drabness for headier destinations, 942 november 2017 • clix • the burlington magazine LAY_Exhibitions_NOV17.indd 942 19/10/2017 12:16 EXHIBITIONS whether of geography or the spirit. The mature Tobey triangulated the buz- zing city (as opposed to the heartland), humanity’s multitudinous tide (rather than subjective isolation) and transcendence (over time-bound specifics) – the last aspiration articulated through a radical spatiality as crowded as the Midwest is often deemed vacant. For Greenberg, writing in 1944, Tobey’s paintings were already a trifle too dense, leaving its maker scant leeway to ex- pand into other idioms. Such criticism held a grain of truth; Tobey himself later had some doubts about pursuing his ‘white writing’ ad libitum. In other words, was it too gossamer to stretch far and wide? By contrast, the next rooms proved To- bey’s dexterity, able to ring changes upon what was at root a more or less micrograph- ic mode. For example, The void devouring the gadget era (1942; no.2) mixes semi-legible forms with an engulfing grey vapour, cast- ing a backward nod to Paul Klee and ahead to Roberto Matta’s sci-fi fantasies. From the same year, White night (no.3) instead ap- proached complete abstraction. Likewise, to the minute rectilinear grid comprising Unti- tled (1944; no.15) Tobey opposed the zigzags in Universal field (1949; no.22) and the recog- nisable arcs powering Gothic (1943; no.10). The quality that does tend to tire is grisaille, beguiling as its lambent glow can be. The dilemma inhered in Tobey’s means, since by definition disegno admits colore only with 80. Threading light, difficulty. The one cleaves to contours, the by Mark Tobey. other requires planes. Indeed, in the few in- 1942. Tempera stances when Tobey introduced more asser- on board, 74.3 by tive hues – witness Happy yellow (1945; no.19) 50.2 cm. (Museum of Modern Art, and the blue Fragments in time and space (1956; New York; exh. no.59) – they look a bit arbitrary. Chromo- Addison Gallery phobia suited his asceticism. of American Art, The catalogue seeks to differentiate To- Andover). bey from Abstract Expressionism, perhaps to stress his singularity. This raises questions. the veritable field of the megalomaniac’s ap- far from the New York School’s madding Was not Tobey’s spiritual universalism on parently limitless worldly possessions. crowd and machismo? a par with that espoused by, say, Richard What did the field signify? Certainly As variety waned around halfway through Pousette-Dart, Mark Rothko and Clyf- mystery and enchantment – a typology es- the Venice display, Robert Gardner’s first ford Still? (Maybe tellingly, the first gets no tablished at least as early as the sonic field film about the artist (1952) with Tobey’s mention in the curator’s essay.) Similarly, his (136 bars based on a repeated E♭) suggesting piano music, sounded a welcome divertimento. ardour for the city echoed Kline’s, while the nature’s oceanic reaches that opens Wagner’s Thereafter, Tobey’s efforts to free himself ideograms and fossil-like layers paralleled Das Rheingold. But it meant more too. The from ‘white writing’ alone yielded fascin- pictographs by Adolph Gottlieb, Theodoros holistic harmony associated with ‘all-over’ ating results. Among them were a tondo Stamos and others during the 1940s. effects served as reparation, a ‘world without (no.73; Fig.78), the Tachisme-like Red rift Above all, Tobey mined the pictorial end’ ideology against a war-torn and palpa- (1962; no.76) and ink-on-paper works in the field, as his titles confirm. In doing so he bly disjointed reality. Thus Tobey’s fields be- East-Asian literati or sumi-e style (nos.66 and drew abreast of Abstract Expressionism’s long to the same matrix as Abstract Expres- 67). Centred on a wall in the final gallery, manifold recourse to field imagery – from sionism. Furthermore, the origin of the term the largest piece in the show, Unknown jour- Pollock’s skeins to Rothko’s enveloping haz- ‘white writing’ to describe such palimpsests ney (1966; Centre Pompidou, Paris; no.81), es and Newman’s chromatic continuums. In may be obscure insofar as it was not Tobey’s read like a swansong. The poignant title re- fact, the field amounted to a trend in Ameri- (and perhaps stemmed from his Willard sembles an epitaph for a genuine visionary. can art at around mid-century. It preoccu- Gallery exhibition in New York in 1944), If perhaps Tobey stopped just short of great- pied such figurative painters as Ben Shahn although he liked it. Nevertheless, the cat- ness, he never failed to go it alone into the and Bernard Perlin, photographers includ- alogue misses the obvious conclusion. That white nights where East meets West. ing Minor White and Harry Callahan, and is, a derivation from the phrase ‘The Great the mystical Abstract Expressionist Charles White Way’ – which Tobey’s Broadway 1 2 Catalogue: Mark Tobey: Threading Light. By Debra Seliger, in whose hands it again evinced neon pictures confirm (no.34). These neons Bricker Balken. 208 pp. incl. 220 col. pls. (Addison fantastic detail and small dimensions. It even continue a direction (unacknowledged here) Gallery of American Art, Andover, and Skira Rizzoli, infiltrated cinema: recall the celebrated close begun by Joseph Stella’s Battle of lights, Coney New York, 2017). £34. ISBN 978–0–572–5904–7. of Orson Welles’s Citizen Kane (1941), as the Island, Mardi Gras (1913–14). Another lacuna 2 See J. Jackle: City Lights: Illuminating the American camera gradually zooms out to encompass is Tobey’s homosexuality. Surely it kept him Night, Baltimore 2001, pp.195–224. the burlington magazine • clix • november 2017 943 LAY_Exhibitions_NOV17.indd 943 19/10/2017 10:33.

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