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Mark Tobey transformed the fluid lines of Eastern calligraphy into a unique I1o- d I I : rL .9uoi ln 1929, exhibited a few recent paintings in Wi..o.ri, in 1890, he moved with his family to three ":t at 's Cal6 Gallery in . Romany years later. His father, a carpenter and building contractor, carved Marie's was a bohemian hangout far from the posh galleries on animals from stone-a weighty material very different in spirit _. i-!a.-,"[ Tobey's show would have faded from the ethereal refinement of his son's mature style. Young Mark o*>,,,7 's 57th Street, and '

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This pase tempera on paper mounted on board, lO x 14.9 in. <25.4x37.94 cm.t, Following pagei Notthwest Dfift,1958 and gouache on paper laminated on board support, 44.69 x 35,625 in. (113.5 x 9O.S cm). fo o9 In L921., Tobey traveled cross-country to , the first of a worthy in the modern era. Vhat, for example, does Jackson Pol-

His appetite for non-Western penmanship having been whetted paintings, creating a luminous mesh of intertwined forms. C: in Seattle, Tobey studied Arabic and Persian writing in Beirut, An artist who wants to make the scene is well advised to show !; , and Constantinople. up, a maxim lost on Tobey, who was forever departing for parts l< Before he left New York, Tobey had met a painter named Juliet unknown to denizens of the New York art world. Traveling to Thompson. A friend of Khalil Gibran, the Lebanese poet and vision- Devon, in Southwest England, rn1"931, he taught at the Elmhurst 1-< ary philosopher, Thompson was also a convert to the Bah6'i faith, Progressive School, taking time out to supply the school with !n which was founded in the mid-19th century on the belief that all frescoes and induct one of the faculty members into the Bah6'i Oo religions, like all people, are of equal value. Devoted to the ideal faith. From England he visited Mexico, France, and what was !r of a unified world, members of the faith are 1; anti-nationalist and then known as Palestine. A few years afterward, he visited Teng

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z) ;{=; oo da 6: zfr OI oI !o m9 or O! z o@ ts! mj: ;la-. m ^o i:-3 Though many ol 's standard phrases are more than showed there almost yeafly until the late 1950s. Among the painters 1ci a awkward, "white writing" makes a good if not a perfect Tobey's was Pollock. Impressed, he a friend little fit drawn to work wrote to En with Tobey's quietly shimmering imagery. Strictly speaking, his that TobeS seen in Manhattan as a'W'est Coast artist, proved that thin streaks white paint are brushstrokes, yet they perform none New York was not "the only place in America where painting (in the of the brushstroke's usual tasks. They neither generate an image real sense) can come thru." This remark joins with the similarities Ii of an object in pictorial space (as in realist painting) nor do they between the two painters to raise the question of influence. About ;I >l convey some personal attitude or quality of feeling (as in, for exam- the time that he first encountered Tobey's work, Pollock began mak- ple, ). Closely spaced and often connected ing the allover paintings that led, toward the end of 1945, to the drip =1 by angular zigs and zags, Tobey's marks seem at once precise and paintings that vaulted him to art-historical prominence. Did Pollock 1m i-3 utterly spontaneous. Filling the surface of a canvas edge to edge, learn alloverness from Tobey? Possibly he did, though all we can >l rP, his "white writing" creates a web one would call dense if it were know with any certainty is that his flung and spattered colors have a rI not so airy. Filled with subtly modulated space, Tobey's paintings flair, a pictorial drama, that Tobey deliberately avoids. !7hen asked pictorial, n? are unquestionably as are the marks of his brush. These about the subject of his webs of color, Pollock said that "every good ;9 works are in no sense written. Yet one senses in their linear inflec- painter paints what he is"-a self-centered response at odds with the tions the artist's lifelong immersion in calligraphy, and that justi- temper of Tobey's imagery. The equalizing impulse that evens out .2 fies to some extent the critics' talk of "white writing." the latter's fields of "white writing" carries over to his relationship ;- During the 1940s, the S7illard Gallery was one of the few in with his audience. Tobey does not address us with the bravura of f< New York to show work by members of the contemporary American the maestro. His mastery is quiet, drawing us into the subtly varied !i;! avant-garde. Tobey's first exhibition at $Tillard was in 1944, and he rhythms of implicitly infinite fields of incandescent white. Y. i{1m-z From left: Threading Light, 1942 tempera on board, 29.25 x19.75 in, (74.3 x 5O.2 cm); :o Untitled,1944, tempera on paper 20,25 x14 in. (51.44 x 35.56 cm). n!

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By the end of the 1940s, the Abstract Expressionists were pro- Graves, Guy Ariderson, and . Far from the art- ro claiming a postwar triumph. Vith a series of spectacular break- critical rhetoric and quickening art market of New York, these art- L, throughs on the pictorial front, they had moved the capital of istsrespondedtothelandscapeinthevicinityof Seattle,especially FF da <0 the avant-garde from Paris to New York. Tobey did not stay in the shores ofPuget Sound, with paintings that transform natural oo town for the.celebration, which went on until the early 1980s, forms into symbols of ultimate things-birth, death, regeneration. zt Y9 when New York was suddenly flooded o< bvGermanandltalian:i'.T|1*^Td "During the mid-192os, Tobey traveled to Paris, where tr; the city's dominance came to an end. rl Greece. Ul tn1.951he acceptedJosef Albers' he met Gertrude Stein, and on to Spain and r: .iE invitation to serve as a suest critic at His appetite for non-Western penmanship having been Yale's School of Art. That same year. zu o: thecatiforniapataceorrr,"i"eio.,oi whetted in Seattle, Tobey studied Arabic and Persian l,; ;< Honor, in San Francisco, presented" Wf iting in Beif Ut, Haifa, and COnStantinOple." o\ retrospective of his career. The Pari- zu sian Galerie Jean Bucher gave him a Yo solo exhibition in 1955, and three seasons later he was the recipi- If American art has a mystic wing, it is to be found here, in images ent the International Grand Prize at the Biennale-the that reiterate the paradox of Tobey's painting: in transcending the <: second American to have been so honored. The first was self, each of these artists developed a thoroughly individual style. Ir James ;:o Abbott McNeill Whistler. Tobey, however, never locked himself into a single mode or man- :E By then, Life magazine had singled Tobey out as the leader of ner. Constantly varying his "white writing," he invented a seemingly ao the , a group of painters that included Morris unlimited variety of intricately interwoven forms. On occasion, his

wTNTER 2ot7-ta aRT&ANTtauEs 77 .: ', ..;:. ;i1;j";!,.::r;i ;"$rj-$,:iji "writing" wasn'r white but vividly !.,'-"'.'i, .,.;!;t+T,i:r$*;{t:'rt,iF.:9f;:ii ; j:+l1ii;$iit*fir*$ red or a vibrant blue or found its '-}:t:rrt' l" way to some sorseously unnam- l;li.,11;i1;l" ti'';:":{ii1:l:i;ii'n,"+*-L, u[ ..,.' a s h i s m a rk s mer ge d .1,r..1.'...-: .*":.1 '..:.r- ,'.,:'-..-. t,,ii.;l:.;,-,..1,,]'.. :fi intotexturesthatevokelifeat ' :; - r" -]...;.... the cellular level. After studying ,. .1.;..1,, ., . -"i';i:,,.' .'. ,' '..;,:t....;*.- .' ,',.....,.'t...t,,',',,.',-.'',;1;; ,:-..t,:..,.'.' 'l"i.,.::.-''"r, ... ., ; l1o:::ttdrawinginthelg50s' .;,,1..-',..;;,.-:.:..,,.,,t.":,..:;,,.:,'-.1 ,.,.. ,;.':-t1' experimentwiththrownink. In ' -..:',1::"i, ,,,.r,;.;-it".'t ".-t.. -".. ':.-.., l:.1,-i.lt,"-,'.' worksonpaperfromthisperiod,

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t, :'.,..:",':,..'-.: ' . ',.,..:,.,,1 ..,:. :.',:::':i:,., 'i- Vith his partner Pehr Hall- '.,..::.', .'':,:i, f-,'. -,-,..11 ] 1,,:1.i. sten, Tobey settled in , Swit- -"":';',1i.;i zerland,ir1960, and lived there r . : . . -.i,'i ".,-,. for the rest of his life. An exhi: ' '' :;',. '."1 . .' .1 l;..'-r'1 . -'. j , bition of his paintings went on ; I I o

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mC o< ...... i ,: 4z .'.-l,-1..1': ,'.. ,-.;";' of FineArts.AndtheSmithson mo tl'....,., O@ ,.-'.:: i.'.',;:':.i'.._,.,.r.:, .':. '.,--,';,.. .:"..-.,-, ianlnstitution'sNationalCollec- ' no . ',,,..,,r:...'',. ' "l.i :,,":. ..;,'f:j.tl::...,.;l',. :r" i , ,,,. rionof FineArtsorganizedyet >! t i,,. , :. ,.., i, another retrospective two years AC t*''l om '". before the artist's death. Once @o n> he arrived at his aesthetic matu- has long been recognized as a mI >) major contribution to the evo- 30 lution of abstract painting. Still, CZ mo he does not assert his presence- CO his ego-through his art in the -o=' manner of Pollock, ITillem de Kooning, and other Abstract ;o Expressionists. Though there is aa Om something heroic about Tobey's . rT diffidence, it has often taken him T Ot o- out of the spotlight. -n iI From the late 1990s until I recently, only the Reina Sofia, in UZ Madrid, had staged a major exhi- Z! bition of his work. Then, in20'J.6, €. Tobey was included in "Abstract

7A ART&ANT OUES WINTER 2O]7.]8 vey seen at the Royal Academy in . This was an audacious inclusion, for it redrew the histor- ical map to provide a place in New York's first homegrown art move- ment for a painter who, as Pollock noted more than six decades ago, was not a New Yorker. And last year the Peggy Guggenheim Col- lection in Venice offered "Mark Tobey: Threading Light," a survey that began in the 1920s and contin- ued through every stage of the art- ist's career. Indifferent to the wars of style, Tobey never considered for z moment going in any direction but o t his own. Thus his paintings never o looked dated, and they look as new z now, two decades into the 2lstcen- 1 I tury, as they were when they were d fresh from the easel. >o From the late 1990s until z, recently, only the Reina Sofia, in Oz z- Madrid, had staged a major exhi- bition of his work. Then, in 2016, o5 Tobey was included in "Abstract UF o! Expressionism." a sweeping sur- Zo <, who, as Pollock noted more than ;3 six decades ago, was not a New >z t Yorker. And in 2016 the Peggy +t Guggenheim Collection in Venice oJ offered "Mark Tobey: Thread- Fts -u ing Light," which traveled, this t\ past November, to the Addison !a Gallery of American Art at Phil- ;o lips Academy in Andover, Mass., r<2i where it will be on view through ot March ll. 2018. Beginning in o^r zu the'1920s, the survey continues F< through every stage of the artist's career. Indifferent to the wars of z- 9R style, Tobey never considered for moment going in any direcrion but his own. Thus his paintings o- z= never looked dated, and they look Oru as new now, two decades into the dU 6Z 21st century, as they did when Zu they were fresh from the easel. [i! Window,1953 casein on board,44Vex28Vz in. (tt2,7 x72.4 cm).

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