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Sheldon Museum of Art Catalogues and Publications Sheldon Museum of Art

1986

Geometric Abstraction in America

Donald Bartlett Doe Sheldon Memorial Art Gallery, University of Nebraska- Lincoln

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Doe, Donald Bartlett, "Geometric Abstraction in America" (1986). Sheldon Museum of Art Catalogues and Publications. 37. https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/sheldonpubs/37

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GEOMETRIC s ABSTRACTION

Resource/Reservoir is part of Sheldon's ongoing Resource Exhibition Series. Resource/Reservoir explores various aspects of the Gallery's permanent collection. The Resources Series is supported in part by grants from the National Endowment 'lor the Arts and a grant from Cliff's Notes . • A portion of the • • Gallery's general •• 1 • • operating funds for the , fiscal year has been • • I -, 1 provided through a - grant from the Institute , -1 • I • I of Museum Services, - •• a federal gency that I. • .1 .-1 • offers general - • •• operating support to I I I. the nation's museums . • 1- - • • I- • • • -. • • • •

L on Polk Smith Black-Blue·Grey·Whit Square, 1947

Geometric'Abstraction in America Precisionism and Regionalism were the were "exponents of Bohemian infantilism" dominant styles of the late Twenties and early who wrote "volumes of pseudo-philosophic Thirties; the isolationist and chauvinistic at­ drivel on the advantages of cubes and titudes which encouraged conservative im­ cones. "> agery of the American Scene generated In the same month- November- that scorn for Modernist art. Sounding very like Craven was composing these views, the the critics who derided the Armory Show of avant garde in New York was organizing it­ 1913, Thomas Craven (for example), writing self, meeting to discuss the formation of a in the New York American in 1936 about A. school and forum which would allow them E. Gallatin's purchase of Picasso's Three to develop and discuss their artistic aims. 2 Musicians for his Museum of Living Art , set The artists were divided among themselves. a standard for vituperation: One group, led by such artists as Arshile Rallying around a fallen idol, the vested inter­ Gorky and Willem deKooning, were deeply ests, collectors, nuts and professional es­ influenced by Surrealism-however in­ thetes have joined hands in a last desperate debted they were to the Cubist tradition. The campaign to restore the tarnished majesty of Picasso, a king without a kingdom, a ruler with other was strongly influenced by the ideas few loyal syncophants and courtiers but with and the art of the De Stijl group, principally Volume 1 few subjects in the ranks of genuine artists . Mondrian, as well as the Constructivists and Number 4 Such "courtiers," Craven went on to claim , Suprematists. The profound separation be- 1986 tween the emerging traditions of Surrealism and geometric abstraction precluded the formation of a single curriculum. There were no serious obstacles to a joint exhibition, however, and several additional meetings generated, in April of 1937, the first Amer­ ican Abstract Artists exhibition. Not every artist joined the AAA.-Davis and Gorky refused to participate, for example-but the size of the exhibition grew steadily. By 1946, in a Whitney Museum exhibition catalogue, Lloyd Goodrich could accurately observe that "about the middle 1930's began a new trend toward abstraction, particularly among the younger artists, until today it is one of the dominant tendencies in our art. " 3 Fundamental to this development was the gathering of the avant garde in Paris after World War I. The Dada crowd which had held forth riotiously at the Cabaret Voltaire in Zurich had dispersed, but many had come to Paris. There, in 1924, they followed their spokesman and party whip, Andre Breton, into the new camp of Surrealism. Picasso I1ya Bolotowsky and Georges Braque resumed their careers Red Tondo, 1967·68 in Paris. So too did the second generation of Cubists, among them perhaps the most influential being Ferdinand Leger. From So­ viet Russia, where the license for Supre­ matists and Constructivist experimentation had been abruptly withdrawn, came Naum Tower .. . playing the most powerful projec­ Gabo and Anton Pevsner. From Holland tors in the world upon the streets ... my came the rigorously theoretical De Stijl art­ project was thrown OUt."5 ists. Theo Van Doesburg and Piet Mondrian. The Utopian dreams which could billow Generally (although the specific tenets of to preposterous scale were rooted in an urge faith were different), the Constructivists and to overwhelm what had certainly been­ the De Stijl artists entertained a visionary, promised to be-disaster. The memory of even religious concept of art as an effica­ the astounding carnage of World War I was cious force in society, imagining art and ar­ fresh. A world-wide depression threatened chitecture which fused Utopian ideals with the stability of the western world. And finally, technology. In this, these artists were kin to of course, there was by the middle Thirties the great French architect, Le Corbusier, and the daunting spectre of a maniacal Third to the masters from the Bauhaus, Walter Reich. It is neither coincidental nor absurd Gropius and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. that the visual arts explored the hidden realm Le Corbusier, like his Bauhaus col­ of dreams, or offered the dream of a world leagues, was possessed by a dream of a rationally balanced in art which was struc­ transformed Paris. Had he had his way, the tured by clean geometric shapes and pre­ center of Paris would have been bladed from cise planes of primary colors. the earth. "My dream," Corbusier declared, The theories of De Stijl and Constructivists "is to see the Place de Concorde empty artists-and to a lesser extent, the Supre­ once more, silent and lonely ... these green matlsts-were available to an international parks with their relics are in some sort ce­ audience through a number of publications meteries, carefully tended. .. In this way established in the period. In 1926, Cahiers the past becomes no longer dangerous to d'Art was founded and became a journal life, but finds instead its true place within read widely in advanced art circles in Eu­ it. " 4 rope and the United States. In 1930, a group The Bauhaus architects were perhaps less of artists committed to the clarity and social violent in their antipathy to the past, but were efficacy of abstraction based upon geom­ equally committed to a streamlined archi­ etry formed Cercle et Carre (Circle and tecture of glass supported by a three-di­ Square). Although this organization lasted mensional grid of structural steel. Such, they only a year, it generated in the following year believed, would help create a techno-urban the highly influential group Abstraction-Cre­ man, uplifted by his light-filled, rationally ation Non-Figuratif, which published a jour­ proportioned living spaces devoid of em­ nal of the same name. In its pages, as Susan bellishment. Larsen has noted, The prospect of a Utopian environment Mondrian's Neo-Plasticism emerged as a po­ touched, in all, a wide range of artists. Leger tent, uncompromising vision, highly admired and emulated in varying degrees by artists complained that, for the 1937 Paris Expo­ working abroad including . America's sition, "I suggested Paris Completely White; Charles Biederman, Burgoyne Diller, and Harry I asked for 300,000 unemployed to clean Holtzman. Abstraction-Creation became a and scrub the facades. Create a white and forum in which the complex evolution of ab­ luminous citY,-in the evening the Eiffel stract art in Europe cou ld be clearly seen. 6 In New York during the Twenties and Thir­ In the same April in which "Cubism and Ab­ ties, drawing upon all of this, the presence stract Art " was installed at MoMA, Gallatin of modern art expanded enormously. Dur­ opened an exhibition of fi ve American art­ ing the Twenties, three public collections of ists: Charles Biederman, Alexander Calder, contemporary art were established; in the John Ferren , George L. K. Morris, and next decade were founded two more. Charles Shaw. The first was the Societe Anonyme , es­ Although they were not the only collectors tablished by the American collector, Kath­ in New York , Barr, Dreier, and Gallatin were erine Dreier and Marcel Duchamp (with the most important importers of European Joseph Stella and Man Ray) . The Societe art and ideas during the late Twenties and Anonyme was dedicated to presenting a se­ early Thirties. They not onl y generated influ­ ries of exhibitions which explored devel­ ential collections, but also produced inform­ opments in contemporary art. Group shows ative, sometimes exemplary exhibitions. of Cubism, Futurism, Dada, Surrealism were Dreier sustained a lengthy correspondance among those designed, in Dreier's phrase, with a number of European painters, among to "stimulate the imaginative and inventive them Pannaggi, Moholy-Nagy, and Gabo. attitude in the United States."? In 1926, No­ She supported Louis Lozowick's publication vember 10, until the new year, the Societe of Modern Russian Art, and became thor­ Anonyme presented a major exhibition of oughly conversant with the ideas of the sem­ contemporary art at the Brooklyn Museum, inal artists, Gabo and Mondrian. surveying art not only from Paris , but from It is their ideas, perhaps, that Dreier found Germany and Russia as well. most compatible with her own . She believed Dreier's collection came to include an ex­ Mondrian to be one of the most important traordinary range of geometric abstraction. artists of this century and declared him to By 1931 , she owned three works by Mon­ be, with Rembrandt and Van Gogh, among drian, the Constructivists EI Lissitzki , Gabo the most important artists in the history of and Pevsner, Liubov Popova, and others. Dutch art. In the 1950 catalogue of the So­ From the Bauhaus came not only Lazlo Mo­ ciete Anonyme, Dreier sought to summarize holy-Nagy but such relatively little known his ideas: "Mondrian came to the philo­ artists as Ivo Pannaggi, an Italian Futurist sophical conclusion that ALL IS SPACE," she who joined the Bauhaus. Diller, Holtzman, wrote with her usual enthusiasm for the up­ Patrick Henry Bruce, and other, far less per case. "To create unity art has to follow widely known Americans, were also a part not nature's aspects, but what nature reall y of her collection. is. Art has to determine Space as well as A. E. Gallatin, like Dreier, established a form , and to create the equivalent of these museum out of his ambitions as a collector, two factors. "8 founding the Gallery of Living Art in 1927. In Dreier's abstract language, we find an Given that title because he purchased works echo of Mondrian's often dazzingly elusive by living artists, Gallatin, by the middle Thir­ prose- and an oblique reference to the bal- ties, had also built a collection which sur­ veyed contemporary modernist art with special strengths in geometric abstraction. A Synthetic Cubist painter himself, Gallatin's collection was more precisely focused than that of Dreier, offering a survey of the tra­ dition which begins with Cezanne and moves through Cubism to Constructivism and De Stijl. The Museum of Modern Art opened two years later, in 1929. This institution was founded upon two very substantial collec­ tions: that of Abby Aldricfl Rockefeller and Lillie Bliss. From the outset, MoMA held an exceptional survey of Post Impressionism and early Cubism. In 1935, when Mrs. Rock­ efeller gave MoMA's distinguished director, Alfred Barr, his first money for new acqui­ sitions ($1,000.00), he purchased, among other works , two Suprematist oil paintings by Kazimir Malevich . Like Dreier, both Gallatin and Barr orga­ nized major exhibitions of contemporary art. Barr, however, held to the view that the rise of Precisionism and Regionalism was not a retreat toward realism , but proof that the real demiurge in American painting was a love for the concrete, actual fact. Hence, in his scholarly exhibition, "Cubism and Abstract Art " of 1936, Barr included no American ab­ stract artists. Gallatin, whose collection Barr Alice Trumbull Mason The Barbery Hedge. 1955 un successfully attempted to acquire for MoMA in 1941 , was of a very different mind . ances at work in Mondrian's mature style. In those works, line, space, and color play against each other in delicate equipoise. It is to Mondrian's rigorous use of the right angle, geometric shapes limited to the rec­ tangle and square, and primary colors plus black and white that most of the artists rep­ resented in the Sheldon's collection of geo­ metric abstraction are, directly or indirectly, most deeply indebted. Some of the artists in the Sheldon's col­ lection were close students of his work. Bur­ goyne Diller was perhaps the first American artist to be profoundly influenced by the Dutch master. Swiss born Fritz Glarner, un­ like Diller, became a close friend of Mon­ drian's after his move to New York in 1940. Glarner's mature work, a superb example of which is illustrated here, employs Mon­ drian's colors-with the addition of gray­ and the carefully structured character of his paintings. Glarner's planes of color have a calculated wedge shape, however, and are not utterly flat as are Mondrian's, but weave at slight angles into shallow depth. Bal­ combe Green, Alice Trumbull Mason, and lIya Bolotowski-to name three remarkably different artists in the Sheldon's holdings of geometric abstraction-fuse aspects of Mondrian's style with other sources, most notably Synthetic Cubism. Leon Polk Smith's work from 1947, also illustrated, is also pro­ Baicomb Greene Monument to Light, 1942 foundly indebted to Mondrian-although the Oklahoma-born painter abandons a strict lationships."ll The floating white shape on reliance upon primary colors and the ex­ the white space of Malevich's Suprematist pansive use of white found in Mondrian to canvas, in these terms, has a clear symbolic generate a subtly pulsing rhythmic structure meaning. Naum Gabo's Constructivist im­ of several shades of blues as well as black agery, both three and two dimensional, made and gray. up of planes actually or seemingly sus­ Given the definitive achievement of Mon­ pended in space, reflects closely related drian, the variety found in the use of his views. In his "Realistic Manifesto" of 1920, essential vocabulary by American painters he declared, seems remarkable. In Mondrian's art, how­ The plumb-line in our hand, eyes as precise ever, it appears that his unique approach to as a ruler, in a spirit as taut as a compass, we construct our work as the universe constructs geometric form was carefully consistant with its own, as the engineer constructs his bridges, his complex ideas. " In plastic art, " he wrote, as the mathematician his formu la of the or­ "the reciprocal action of determined forms bits.'2 and determined space establishes the ob­ While American artists were familiar with jective expression of reality. This action con­ these ideas (for, in addition to the activities stitutes the dynamic movement that of Dreier, Barr, and Gallatin, many abstract expresses intrinsic life. The objective rep­ painters of the period traveled to Europe; resentation evokes a uni~rsal emotion, in­ Leger, Moholy-Nagy, Gabo, and Mondrian describable and therefore constant. "9 all traveled to, if they did not in fact move Quite plainly, the precision of Mondrian's to, the United States), their own remarks have language is really being employed to con­ what can be called a more pragmatic focus. vey articles of the artist's own faith. But he Albert Swinden, in the American Abstract insisted that the "culture of neo-plastic art" Artist's exhibition catalogue, observed , " ... could present intuitive truth. "A cultivation the abstract method may be understood as of instinctive faculties," he also insisted, a direct concern with the extension of prin­ "produces human degeneration; a cUlti va­ ciples used by all significant artists of the tion of intuitive capacities creates human past. "'3 That is, all art reflects the same es­ progress."10 sential principles of composition. In the same Human progress was quite precisely what catalogue, George L. K. Morris asserted, Mondrian had in mind. He was not alone. "The bare expressiveness of shape and po­ As Mondrian strove to present "pure reality" sition of shape must be pondered anew; the through his austere, abstract art, Malevich weight of color, the direction of line and an­ was, in the succinct words of Magdalena gie can be restudied until the roots of pri­ Dabrowski, "influenced by a view of the world mary tactile reaction shall be perceived as a synthesis of forces . . . This view re­ again."14 jected the existence of matter in terms of In the same spirit, Alice Mason wrote, stable objects and saw the world as an im­ "Wonder is in the work again as it was in mense abstract field of forces and their re- primitive . . . art. The abstract painter builds A lb rt wind n Ab Ira lion, 1940

Burgoyn Diller Third Theme Abr: rraction. 1 40-45 72

his canvas without representation . .. but in position provided by the abstract use of relation to the fullest use of the elements of geometry. As Morris also remarked , " ... it paint that have appeared from time to time is on quality alone that any work must stand , throughout the history of art. "15 Morris, writ­ with a right to be judged by itself and without ing again in the A.AA catalogue of 1946, any relation to anything else. "17 offered a discussion of the working process Beyond this absence of restrictions im­ of abstract artists and asserted, "An ab­ posed by theory, the American artist was stract picture above all requires complete also afforded access to highly individual control over tensions, form-directions, mass uses of geometry simply because they were relations , and tactile surfaces .. . the greater not part of a closely knit movement. Further, the simplicity the more intense becomes the the political climate in the United States was requisite control. "1 6 always quite different than that in which These observations would seem char­ Mondrian, Gabo, Corbusier,and the Bau­ acteristic: they do not lead toward a dis­ haus group shaped their views . In America, cussion of abstract art as a means through few dreamt of an Utopia created by an aus­ which universal laws can be perceived, nor tere, rational architecture. Few, evidently, Footnotes: do they argue that abstract art is the means argued that an abstract geometric art could 1. Cited in John R. by which the human ~ce can evolve toward encourage humanity to evolve toward a Lane and Susan C. a higher, Utopian state. Instead, American higher state. Larsen, Abstract painters evidently directed their remarks to­ For these reasons and more, geometric Painting and ward justifying abstract art as 1) exposing abstraction could flourish in New York as a Sculpture in America, the principles behind all art, 2) as exploring highly varied venture. By the late 1940's, 1927-1944, the fundamental continuity of abstract art however, Abstract Expressionism, rooted in Pittsburgh: Carnegie with the history of art, and 3) asserting that Surrealism, displaced geometric art from the Institute and New abstract art was as difficult to create-"re­ cutting edge of the avant garde. Even so, York: Harry N. quiring exquisite control"-as representa­ Charles Biederman and the west coast art­ Abrams, Inc. , 1983, p.25. tional art. In New York, in short, American ists Frederick Hammersley, Karl Benjamin, artists found abstract art a legitimate end in and John McLaughlin produced an impres­ 2. Ibid, p. 36 itself and offered arguements to justify its sive body of work. Joseph Albers continued 3. "Pioneers of existence. his career begun at the Bauhaus- and in­ Modern Art in Because American artists were free of the fluenced a number of important American America," Exhibition restrictions imposed by the canons of De painters. Especially in his Polish Village Se­ Catalogue, New York: Whitney Museum of Stijl and other European movements, they ries, Frank Stella examined anew the pos­ American Art, p. 17. were not necessarily restricted to the use of sibilities of abstract geometry; so too have right angles or specific shapes in specific, such very different artists as Dorothea Rock­ 4. Cited in Robert symbolic colors. Their primary obligation was bourne and AI Held. In all, the tradition im­ Hughes, Shock of the New, New York: to restore "wonder" and to develop "com­ ported by Drier, Barr, and Gallatin plainly Alfred A. Knopf, plete control" over the possibilities of com- endures. Donald Bartlett Doe 1982. p. 188. Mclaughlin, John, # I, 1965 Footnotes ole, 152.4 x 121,9 cm I 60 x 48" continued university of Nebraska, F, M, Hall Collection 5, "Modern Loew, Michael, Ophelia, 1963 Architecture and olc, 182,9 x 203,2 cm I 72 x 80" Color," George L, K, University Collection, gift of the Artist through Morris, trans" in the Ford Foundation American Abstract Artists, New York: Mason, Alice Trumbull, The Barbery Hedge, Ran Press, 1946, 1955, o/c, 61,6 x 57 ,2 cm / 24%" x 22%,' unpaged, Nebraska Art Association 1974 6, Lane and Larsen, Trinity # 10, 1969 p, 16, olc, 41,3 x 45,7 cm /16% x18" 7, Ibid, p, 18, Nebraska Art Association, gift of Mr, and Mrs, 8, The Societe Wolf Kahn Anonyme and the Nicholson, Ben, Two Forms, Version Three, c, Dreier Bequest at 1940-42 Yale University, A olc covered panel, 45,8 x 45,1 cm / 18 x 17%" Catalogue Raisonne; Nebraska Art Association, gift of Mr, and Mrs, Robert L, Herbert, Frederick S, Seacrest Eleanor S, Apter, Elise K, Kenney, co­ Pasmore, Victor, Transparent Relief eds, New Haven & Construction in White, Black and Indian Red, London: Yale 1960-61 University Press, perspex, wood and formica, 1984, p, 479, 60,6 x 61,5 cm I 23% x 24 W' 9, "A New Realism," University Collection, Bequest of Bertha in American Abstract Schaefer Artists, 1946, Rosser, Warren, Avebury Axis III, 1980 unpaged, encaustic on canvas and wood, 10, Ibid, Relational painting #89, 1961 218.4 x 159,6 cm 186 x 63" Fritz Glamer 11, "Malevich­ University of Nebraska, F, M, Hall Collection Mondrian: Geometric Select Checklist Scarlett, Rolph, Untitled #58, c, 1940 form as the gouache/pencil on paper glued on paper, 18,7 expression of the Albers, Josef, Study for Homage to the x 19.4 cm / 73/8 x 75/8" absolute," Nelson­ Square, Early Diary, 1954 University of Nebraska, James E, M, and Helen Atkins Musuem of Art oil on masonite, 38,1 x 38,1 cm I 15 x 15" Thomson Collection BULLETIN, October, Nebraska Art Association, Thomas C, Woods 1982, p, 26, Untitled #49, c, 1940 Collection 12, Cited in The gouache/pencil on board, Societe Anonyme, Benjamin, Karl Stanley, Large Planes, 1957 20 x 19,7 cm I 7% x 7%" at Yale, p, 286, olc, 101,6 x 127 cm I 40 x 50" University of Nebraska, James E, M, and Helen Nebraska Art Association, gift of Frank Woods Thomson Collection 13, "On Estate Simplification, " in Simpson, David, 4 Square- Pedro, 1980 American Abstract Barletta, Joel, Blue Diamond/Series #3, 1974 acrylic on canvas, Artists, New York: olc, 90,8 x 90,8 cm I 35% x 35%" 203,2 x 203,2 cm I 80 x 80" privately printed, University Collection, gift of Stanley Kelly University of Nebraska, F. M, Hall Collection 1938, unpaged, Biederman, Charles, #35, Oranans, 1971-73 Smith, Leon Polk, Black-Blue-White Squares, 14, "The Quest for painted aluminum, 1947 an Abstract 109,3 x 86,3 x 24,1 cm I 43V,6 x 34 x 9%" olc, top left-bottom right, 86.4 cm, top right­ Tradition," Ibid, Nebraska Art Association, Thomas C, Woods bottom left, 85,7 cm I 34 x 33%" 15, "Concerning Collection Nebraska Art Association, gift of Olga N, Plastic Significance, " Sheldon, Peter Kiewit Foundation and Nelle Ibid, Bolotowsky, lIya, Red 7fJhdo, 1967-68 Cochrane Woods Fund olc, diameter 121,9 cm I 47" 16, "Aspects-of University of Nebraska, F. M, Hall Collection Red-Violet Diamond, 1980 Picture Making," olc, 304,8 x 304,8 cm I 120 x 120" America Abstract Diller, Burgoyne, Third Theme Abstraction, Nebraska Art Association, gift of the Artist Artists, 1946, 1940-45 unpaged, olc, 50,3 x 50,3 cm I 20% x 20%" Stella, Frank, Ciezowa II, 1973 17, "The Quest," Nebraska Art Association, Nelle Cochrane mixed media: felt, corrugated cardboard, Ibid, Woods Collection chipboard, paper compress board, masonite and wood, Greene, Balcomb, Monument to Ught, 1942 243,8 x 227,3 x 10,7 cm / 96 x 89% x 4%" olc, 127 x 86,3 cm I 50 x 34" Nebraska Art Association Nebraska Art Association, Thomas C, Woods Collection Swlnden, Albert, Abstraction, 1940 o/c, 76,2 x 91.4 cm I 30 x 36" Glarner, Fritz, Relational Painting #89, 1961 University of Nebraska, F, M, Hall Collection olc, 195,6 x 118,7 cm 1 77 x 46%" University of Nebraska, F. M, Hall Collection Von Wiegand, Charmion, Evolution, 1949-50 olc, 76,2 x 101,6 cm I 30 x 40" Hammersley, Frederick, And You Scratch University of Nebraska, F. M, Hall Collection 000111000 Mine, 1972 Sheldon Memorial Art Gallery oil on linen, 61 x 61 cm I 24 x 24" University of Nebraska-Lincoln Nebraska Art Association , with aid of funds Lincoln, Nebraska 68588-0300 from the National Endowment for the Arts (402) 472-2461