Neo Action Abstraction
November 15, 2008
through April 15, 2009
A 2008 exhibition at New York's Jewish Museum entitled "Action Abstraction: Pollock, de Kooning and American
Art, 1940 - 1976," raised important points with respect to the differing views of two renown art critics, Harold Rosenberg
and Clement Greenberg. Each critic had championed different principles and the artists who exemplified their ideas. Rosenberg,
for example, believed that a modern artist's personal signature could and should be seen in physical characteristics, such
as the idiosyncratic brushstrokes that express "action" in painting. On the other hand Greenberg believed
in ostensibly "impersonal" abstraction, devoid of any type of figurative suggestion.
The Neo Action Abstraction Exhibit curated by the Southern Nevada Museum of Fine Art is testament
how, with the benefit of hind-sight, today's artists are expanding on the works of earlier abstract art and artists, and the
observations of the critics who focused on their works.
Each
artist in this exhibition has taken what came before and built upon it, incorporating Greenberg’s and Rosenberg’s
criteria, while adding their own identity. It’s a potent reminder that every generation has the ability to reconsider
the rules, principles and standards by which a work of art is proclaimed important.
“Neo
Action Abstraction” can be viewed as an amalgam of the styles of de Kooning, Pollack, Franz Kline and others,
brought forward fifty years. The earlier artists were and are the muse for the next generation of artists and new painting
styles that combine, reinterpret and push action painting and abstraction in new directions.
Exhibiting Artists:
Richard Bailey, Constantine, Michael Griesgraber,
Joseph Palermo, Jenik, Michael Wardle
