GALLERY PREVIEW: SAN FRANCISCO, CA

Figurative Pioneers David Park and Milton Avery are the subject of a new exhibition at Hackett Mill

avid Park and Milton Avery, Mill of Hackett Mill in San Francisco Through May 31 the first exhibition to pair explains, “Breaking conventions of th Hackett Mill Dtwo of the 20 century’s historical categories, we juxtapose 145 Natoma Street, Suite 400 most influential figurative painters, is David Park and Milton Avery for the San Francisco, CA 94105 a thought-provoking and revealing first time. Park pioneered figurative t: (415) 362-3377 exposition of two midcentury artists painting in 1950 when it was very www.hackettmill.com who resisted the objective abstraction unpopular, ultimately giving birth to of their time yet refined it for their the Bay Area Figurative movement. own ends. It contains their paintings Avery introduced color as the true from the 1930s to the 1960s. Francis subject when gesture was paramount,

Milton Avery (1885-1965), Reader with Plant, 1963. Oil on canvas board, 22 x 28 in. (AVE-021-OC).

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Hackett Mill.indd 78 4/3/18 3:31 PM David Park (1910-1960), Portrait of Lydia Sewing, 1955. Oil on canvas, 24 x 20 in. (PAR-066-OC).

which gave birth to the American color universal relevance.” and were concerned with the surface field movement. Conventional thinking The exhibition continues through of the picture plane; Park (1910-1960) has kept each of these artist’s dialogues May 31. building up thick impastos of paint with separate. Together, we see why an Both artists had the tenets of scenes of domesticity and Avery (1885- artist’s personal search for identity is of abstract expressionism in their view 1965) reducing detail to a minimum in

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Hackett Mill.indd 79 4/3/18 3:31 PM Milton Avery (1885-1965), March Sketching (The Artist’s Daughter), ca.1940-45. Oil on panel, 20 x 16 in. (AVE-059-OM).

his still lifes and figure paintings. often big but their brushwork always is. skill, making extravagant use of paint Roberta Smith wrote of Parks in He walked the line between abstraction and color, while keeping a close eye on a 1987 article, “His paintings are not and representation with consummate the subject at hand.”

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Hackett Mill.indd 80 4/3/18 3:31 PM Milton Avery (1885-1965), Still Life with Mandolin, 1948. Oil on canvas, 24 x 30 in. (AVE-071-OC).

Portrait of Lydia Sewing, 1955, is Park at how unfulfilling his abstract paintings until 1925 when he went to New York his best, painted only five years before were and took nearly all of them to the that he could concentrate on art. Even his death from cancer at 49. Berkeley dump. Helen Park Bigelow, in then, he worked nights to be able to Avery’s Reader with Plant, 1963, her book David Park, Painter: Nothing paint during the day. is a similar domestic scene paired Held Back, quotes her father, “I was At the time of his retrospective down to its basic shapes and what he concerned with big abstract ideals like exhibition at the Whitney Museum of considered the real subject: color. Mark vitality, energy, profundity, warmth. They American Art in 1982, Barbara Haskell Rothko described Avery’s subjects became my gods. They still are…but wrote, “Avery combined an engagement as “a domestic, unheroic cast…that I realize that those paintings practically with purely aesthetic issues with a often achieves the monumentality of never, even vaguely, approximated any loyalty to the observed motif. In doing Egypt.” Rothko and Avery had worked achievement of my aims.” so, he bridged the gap between realist together in Provincetown, and Rothko Park, with his teacher Richard and abstract art. That he initially did delivered the eulogy at Avery’s funeral. Diebenkorn, Joan Brown, Manuel this in the twenties and thirties, when Working on the West Coast where he Neri, Nathan Oliveira, Paul Wonner, subject matter and ‘realist’ painting were had moved from Boston when he was Elmer Bischoff, Wayne Thiebaud and paramount and, later, in the forties and 17, Park attended the Otis Art Institute others made up the Bay Area Figurative fifties, when they were suspect, attests to briefly before he gravitated toward Movement in the 1950s and 1960s. the independence of the vision which the lively art scene in Berkeley that, For the early years of his life, Avery he sustained throughout his life.” at that time, was a hotbed of abstract was obliged to work in blue-collar jobs The parallels between Park and Avery expressionism. After WWII he realized to support his extended family. It wasn’t are an interesting subject to explore.

GALLERY PREVIEW: SAN FRANCISCO, CA 81

Hackett Mill.indd 81 4/3/18 3:31 PM