An Auspicious Launch for New York’s Haunch of Venison

The inaugural exhibition at the New York branch of Haunch of Venison — the contemporary art gallery with spaces in London, Zürich, and Berlin — is notable on several accounts. “Abstract Expressionism — A World Elsewhere” is an ambitious show, representing one of the most comprehensive surveys of New York School painting and sculpture in recent decades. The gallery’s location is itself unusual, occupying the top two floors of a 49th Street high-rise office building. And, as wary dealers have pointed out, its opening signals the greatest breach yet of the traditional separation between the roles of auction houses and commercial galleries. (Christie’s purchased Haunch of Venison last year, a move that some dealers consider an intrusion into their customarily nurturing relationship with artists. The gallery says it will be restricted from placing bids at Christie’s auctions.)“Abstract Expressionism” may be in part an attempt to assuage such fears. None of the works are for sale, and the installation exudes scholarly enthusiasm rather than commercial calculation. Instead of reaffirming orthodox views of Abstract Expressionism, curator David Anfam, the London-based art historian and critic, has selected not only important pieces by major artists but less typical ones as well, along with works by lesser known contemporaries. Indeed, Christie’s financial might shows in the most appealing way: in the comprehensiveness of the exhibition (68 paintings, sculptures, works on paper, and photographs by 28 artists, on loan from museums, foundations, and private collections) and a very handsome, lively installation that consistently illuminates and often surprises. “Ab-Ex,” too often presented as a syndicate of soul-searchers, has seldom looked so intimate and fresh.The curatorial wit is evident from the start. Stepping off the elevator, one encounters de Kooning’s bronze sculpture “Hostess” (1973), a startling (if not exactly alluring) aggregation of lumpy, beckoning gestures. Dominating the desk area are two large paintings: a 1955 Clyfford Still, humming with mordant sincerity and, from 1969, Philip Guston’s image of Klansmen, at once vigorous and full of clumsy faux-menace. Although utterly different in attitude, the three works share a probing, plastic intensity; they are fellow-travelers in decidedly non-monolithic movement, and a fitting introduction to an exhibition that highlights its breadth and contradictions.The show unfolds through a series of rooms elegantly designed by Steven Learner Studio. Some are spacious, resembling traditional “white box” exhibition spaces, and others small and windowed. The first large gallery intriguingly compares reductively geometric works by several artists. A sequence of ovoid forms in David Smith’s welded sculpture “Voltri IV” (1962) neatly echoes the painted ones in Motherwell’s “Elegy to the Spanish Republic” (1970). The three-dimensionality of Smith’s vertical strip of a sculpture, “Forging XI” (1955), speaks across a doorway with the painted “zip” of Barnett Newman’s untitled canvas from 1949. Continue on, and a trail of three luminous, landscape-like works by Gorky (early and mid-1940s) leads to another room, and to “End of Silence” (1949) — another Newman “zip” painting, but this one executed in surprisingly dense, coarse strokes.A radiantly red Ad Reinhardt (1952) has a small room to itself, while another room contains various works with colorful, fluid arabesques. Here, Baziotes’s “Mariner” (1960-61) and an adjacent untitled de Kooning canvas (1961) both revel in atmospheric landscape spaces, but while the former exudes an underwater dreaminess, the latter is all earth and fire.As with several of the major Abstract Expressionists, de Kooning’s works cover a broad span of time, so that in a few moments, one can take in a huge triptych from the ’80s executed in his late “ribbon” style, an exceedingly lush canvas from the late ’70s, and (my favorite) a 1949 painting in which delicate purples and off-whites jostle in spare, muscular rhythms. A highlight of the exhibition is David Smith’s “Tower Eight” (1957), a spindly, figure-like concoction of silver, tucked in a secluded space around the corner.Other expected artists in “Abstract Expressionism” turn up in unexpected roles. Jackson Pollock is represented only by smaller works, while Lee Krasner, the spouse of Pollock so overshadowed in real life, boasts one of the largest — an expansive canvas covered with thrashes of scarlet and white. (As for Pollock, the most peculiar of his five works is an untitled painting from 1951, animated by spare knottings of black rather than his usual, allover, aerated rhythms; the paint has been whimsically studded with small pebbles.) Hans Hofmann normally evokes a measure of weighty bombast, and Sam Francis a sunny lyricism, but the two artists come closer than one would have thought possible in a pairing of thinly, exuberantly brushed works (1964 and 1958, respectively) hanging on either side of a doorway.The spatial constraints tell in some rooms. Joan Mitchell’s large canvas (1959) thrives in its own smallish space, but two very large Francis paintings feel cramped in theirs. A huge Pousette-Dart triptych (1979-82) has been relegated to another corridor, making a distant view impossible. In the one instance where the installation seems to beg an obligatory response, several Rothkos and Gottliebs hang in a small, shrine-like chamber. Otherwise, the spirited installation trusts visitors to draw connections on their own — between, for instance, Aaron Siskind’s tiny 1973 photograph of graffiti and, in the next room, Kline’s brawny, 7-foot-wide “Vawdavitch” (1955).And about that exhibition title: In his essay in the sumptuous catalog, Mr. Anfam discloses his debt to the similarly titled study by literary critic Richard Poirier. With its pages, Mr. Poirier refers to “the American obsession with inventing environments that permit unhampered freedom of consciousness” — as good a description as any of the Abstract Expressionists’ common pursuit. Mr. Anfam, however, reminds us of their substantial differences, too. Just as he juxtaposes contrasting images on the walls, he compares Pollock’s famous quip, “I am nature,” and Still’s contradictory claim, “I paint only myself, not nature.” The New York School personalities were unprepared to abandon the independence of their inventions, it seems — a point vividly borne out by this generous, compelling exhibition.Until November 12 (1230 Avenue of the Americas, between 48th and 49th streets, 212-636-2034).

An Auspicious Launch for New York’s Haunch of Venison

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