CLEVEGRAY WORKSON PAPER1940-1986 & : +""1 Publishedfor the exhibition CleveGray: Workson Paper 1940-1986 The BrooklynMuseum December15, 1986-February23,1987 Cover: Untitled #123, 1982 Acrylic, 22 x 30% inches Collectionof the artist Photographsby E. lrving Blomstrann,with the exceplionof page 2 by Nancy Tutko. tsBN0-87273-107-3 :);' Designedand publishedby The Brooklyn Museum,200 Eastern Parkway,Brooklyn, New York 11238.Typeset in Triumvirateand printed in the U.S.A. by Albert H. Vela Co Inc., New York City. by RichardWaller. Edited by Elaine Koss. Designed ,,t' O 1986 The BrooklynMuseum. All rights reserved. 't' # \ gLEVEGRAy WORKSON PAPER1940{986 DECEMBER15, 1986 _ FEBRUARY23, 1987 THE BROOKLYNMUSEUM what is a drawing,as opposedto a painting? where is fhe point at which theycan be separated?How easilyone says "That's a drawing.',,'That,s a painting." I have yet to hear the definitionof a drawing that satisfiesme. ln fact for the past ten years I have tried to eliminate the drawing-painting dichotomy.I want a line in painting, a line that is so integrated with the color and form that it is indistinguishablefrom, totallya part of them.And I want a drawing that is painted. Cleve Gray FOREWORD I A f hileworking closely with Cleve Gray places-if notactual landscapes that captivate lf lf to prepare an exhibition of his him,then landscapes of the mindand emotion. U U paintingsat the Albright-KnoxArt It is,therefore, a specialpleasure for me Galleryin Buffaloin 1977, I cameto knowand that The BrooklynMuseum is presentingthis respect him as an idealisticand highly retrospectiveexhibition of CleveGray's works intellectualartist who informs his work with an on paper from 1940 to the present.Linda acuteintelligence. Having come of ageas an Konheim Kramer, Curator of Prints and artist in the years just after 1945, Gray Drawings, has selected the works and witnessedthe importantchanges that occurred prepared the catalogue with the close whenthe newAmerican vocabulary of Abstract assistanceof the artist. Expressionismovertook the previousstylistic I am pleasedto have had a part in the movements of French modernism.After documentationof two different aspects of studyingwith And16 Lhote and Jacques Villon Gray'stremendously prolific and stylistically and absorbing all he could from these varied career and look forward to the distinguished painter-teachersand the forthcomingdevelopments in hiswork as well. immediatepostwar Parisianart scene, he returnedto the UnitedStates and converted ROBERTT. BUCK to a gesturallanguage that retainedhis strong Director figureand groundfoundations. Since then he The Brooklyn Museum has followed a forty-year odyssey whose stylisticdevelopment separates him from his colleaguesand makesit impossibleto place hisart within any particularmovement. Often, thoughnot necessarily always, he revealshis deep rootsin Cubismand Surrealism.Above all, his work interpretsactual times and London Rurns(four drawings),1944 Coloredpencil, 8 x 6elainches each Collectionof the artist 4 Gray:they were the firstworks on paperthat he did in a seriesand the firstindication of the abstractsensibility that was to permeatethe work that followed. Bythis point in hiscareer Gray felt a need to movebeyond the rationalismof his earlier art towardgreater spontaneity. Although he neverfelt comfortablewith the nonobjective basisof AbstractExpressionism, he eventually came to see aspects of the Abstract Expressionists'work that couldbe relatedto his passionfor Orientalart. To attaingreater freedomof expression,he beganto work in 1965on a serieshe called ReverseDrawings. These drawings were the product of a techniquehe hadlearned in artschool in New York yearsbefore. They involveddrawing on paperin opaquewhite watercolor, covering the drawingwith India ink, and then washing the opaquewhite off so thatonly the inkwas left. The resultingworks containedhard edges ratherthan tuzzy watercolor or washcontours. Sometimesthe artist dribbledthe opaque Feverse Drawing #3, 1965 white on; other times he appliedit with an lndiaink and acrylic,243/q x 18% inches automaticgesture. According to Gray, the Collectionof the artist imagery derivedfrom his love of Oriental paintingand calligraphy. With the Reverse Drawings, Gray had The switchfrom paintingon canvasto work- establishedthe directionof his maturestyle, ingon paperdepends on the problemhe istry- He has continuedto work in lengthyseries ing to resolve,and he is alwaysconsciously overextended periods of time,pursuing one reactingagainst what he did beforein order ideaas far as he can and thenstarting a new to take a step ahead.Although he regards series in which he tacklesan entirelynew drawingand painting as equallyimportant, he problem.Because he movesbetween such op- feelsfreer working on canvasand onlyturns positesas structureand the dissolutionof to paper,which he considersmore constrain- form,color and noncolor,texture and nontex- ing,when he knowsexactly what he wantsto ture,there are similar forms, colors, and con- do. "Paperhas a moredemanding character ceptsthat tend to recurin hisvarious formats. thancanvas," he says."You workwith paper And yetthe imageryof hisworks on paperrare- as partof the matieremuch more than you do ly overlapswith that of his workson canvas. withthe canvas.You can havea fightwith the 6 canvas,but you can't do that with paper theState University of NewYork at Purchase, becauseeventually it will disintegrate." wasthe resultof yearsof antiwaractivity and After completingthe ReverseDrawings, theultimate expression of Gray'sanguish over Grayabandoned paper for a longtime, turn- thetragedy of Vietnam. ln contentit harksback ingto the largepaintings of hisCeres and Hera to his drawingsof the Londonruins. series.In these paintings, which were inspired Havingspent almost fifteen years on the by histravels in Greecein 1964and 1965, he verticalform, Gray found that he could go no reexploredthe brilliant color and upright forms furtherwith it. Whilevacationing in Vermont of his"red verticals," which now represented in 1974he made a seriesof paintingson paper for him a femalewho was part goddess, part in whichhe decidedto switchto horizontal column,and part tree. So involved was he with forms, and gradually,in works like After theseworks that he producednothing on Vermont,forms similar to thoseof the Reverse paperthrough the latesixties except a few Drawingsreappeared. Then, in 1975 in landscapesin watercolorthat he madefrom Jerusalem,he begana seriesof workson naturewhile on holiday in Nassauin 1967and smallsheets of paper(the Jerusalem Series) Martha'sVineyard in 1969.Although these in whichhe broketotally not onlywith the watercolorscontain certain qualities of color verticalbut with the horizontalas well.This andform that reappeared later in hiscareer, series,which he continuedas the Affer unlikemost of his workthey presented him JerusalemSeries when he cameback to the withno formal problems. Indeed, he classifies UnitedStates, employed gestural lines and themas "informal"because they were intend- circular,almost cosmic, forms. ed merelyto capturea landscapehe loved. Afterreturning to canvasfor several years, More typicalof Gray'soeuvre are the Gray beganworking with dry pigmentson drawingsof hisMoroccan Serieg which were paperin 1979.These pigments, he discovered, inspiredby a three-weektour of Moroccoin blurredfor him the distinctionbetween the 1970.Gray strove in this series to eliminatethe mediumand the support. Similarly, when he separationbetween drawing and painting, to wentto Romein Decemberof thatyear as a makethe brushstrokeand line become one. ResidentArtist of theAmerican Academy, he Whileturning away from color, he maintained incorporatedinto his acrylics the marble dust thevertical shape, reading it thistime simply he foundon the floorof the studioof the as "woman" and superimposingit on a sculptornext door. The soft colors,varied square,which for him represented a tile. Hav- textures,and scratchy,graffiti-like gestural ingresolved on canvas some of the problems formsof the resultingseries, Roman Walls, presentedby the vertical form, he felt comfor- wereinspired by the surfacesof Rome'sold tableworking directly on Japanesepaper. buildings. The artist'sexplorations of the vertical Graycontinued the colorful Roman Walls shape on both paper and canvasfinally seriesfor the next two years, but then moved culminatedin 1974in a sequenceof fourteen intothe almost colorless calligraphic works of largepaintings entitled Threnody. This series, his Zen Series(reminiscent o,f 'the Reverse commissionedby the NeubergerMuseum of Drawings)and followinga.,progression of experimentationsimilar to what he had gone a continuouscycle when viewed in the context throughwith the verticalform. In 1984,still of his entire career.As LawrenceAlloway usingthe same gesturalforms, he returnedto notedin a discussionof Gray'sart in 1970,"A color and specificimagery in his Embassy consecutivelogic emerges, highly convincing Series,so titledbecause it wasexhibited at the in retrospectthough it is a form of logic residenceof the Americanambassador in impossiblefor the artist to predict during * Prague. These drawings, inspired by the work." shape of the umbrellapine of ltaly,were a continuationof the calligraphicstyle he had LINDAKONHEIM KRAMER arrivedat in his Jerusalemworks. Curator of Printsand Drawings While in Prague,Gray visitedthe old The Brooklyn Museum Jewishcemetery, an uncaredfor but tragically beautifulplace in whichone cannothelp but visualizethe centuriesof bodiesthat were -CleveGray,