Janes’ Domain

New York School painters Jane Freilicher and Jane Wilson lived parallel lives. Born in 1924, they died at 90, just a few weeks apart, a year ago. They came of age in an art world dominated by Abstract Expressionism, but opted to work representationally. After summering together in the Hamptons in the late 1950s, they both bought second homes in the hamlet of Water Mill, where, for the next fifty years, they painted the scenery of East End Long Island.An exhibition at the Parrish Art Museum, now in its final days, presents artwork by these two painters side by side. Despite all they have in common, in this show their differences stand out. While working in the same place at the same time, moving in the same circles, each developed a unique style. Wilson’s career culminates in large, pared-down landscapes from memory. Nearly abstract in their reductionism, Wilson’s moody canvases convey her state of mind as much as the surrounding marsh and beach. Freilicher, on the other hand, has a maximalist approach, painting everything she sees with gusto.Originally from the rural Midwest, Wilson studied art with Abstract Expressionist painter Philip Guston at University of Iowa before moving to New York City. She joined the downtown arts scene of the early 1950s, co-founding Hansa Gallery, an artist-run cooperative on Tenth Street that also exhibited paintings by Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning. Blessed with striking good looks, she supported herself at this time by working as a fashion model.The flat terrain around Water Mill reminded Wilson of Midwestern plains. Her mature works, canvases of sea and sky, were painted in the studio, away from the motif, mostly from memory, aided by preparatory watercolors. Writing in the exhibition catalog, Mimi Thompson explains, “Wilson was always able to hold the memory and form of natural landscapes in her head.” In seascapes with low horizon lines and large, open sky, Wilson wills “thin layers of colors into masses of air,” Thompson says.Simply constructed paintings like “Near Night, Water Mill,” 1985, and “Tempest,” 1993, seem inspired by the color field compositions of Rothko and the stormy canvases of late Turner. Using a range of colors, from crimson to green, Wilson captures reflected light and changing weather over the Atlantic.Though she studied with Abstract Expressionist Hans Hoffman, Jane Freilicher found “what Hoffman taught was applicable to any kind of painting.” Nevertheless, she encountered resistance to her artwork throughout the 1950s, saying, “realism, or almost any kind of figuration, was thought of as something reactionary, old hat, not intellectually serious.”Uncowed, she rejected the harmonious, all-over abstract compositions then so much in vogue. “Why, when everything else in modern life is so complicated and ambiguous, is this effect of complete unification especially modern? … When a painting suggests, it seems to be thought to have greater virtue than when it states clearly.” With the courage of conviction, Freilicher set about painting from direct observation, making exuberant artworks that convey her zest for life. “I look out at the world and there’s always some kind of refreshing thing I see.”“Thicket and Field,” 1984, is loaded with information. Branches and leaves twist and turn in the foreground. Beyond the bushes, open land is dotted with small trees, a pond with geese and a construction site. Never one to aestheticize, Freilicher paints the housing developments, telephone poles, electric transformers and water tower on the horizon line. Above it all, a twilight sky seems to go on forever, with fluttering clouds hanging in the air.An unfussy flower arrangement of white peonies and floppy poppies dropped into a mason jar is casual, as fresh as a summer day. On a plate on a tabletop, the bouquet is described with deft brushwork, each petal clearly formed. In the background, the tall grasses around Mecox Bay glow with midday sun.Freilicher, looking back at her friendship with Wilson, recalled, “there was some sort of affinity in our painting, but it wasn’t actually that we influenced each other. Maybe a certain reinforcement.”This exhibition also features photographs by Wilson’s husband, John Gruen, of the “Water Mill Group.” Freilicher and Wilson mixed with an accomplished crowd in the Hamptons, including poets John Ashberry and Frank O’Hara and artists Larry Rivers, Robert Rauschenberg, Grace Hartigan, Jasper Johns, Rudy Burckhardt and Fairfield Porter.Two side-by-side paintings by Fairfield Porter, rounding out the show, illustrate the distinctive characters of the two Janes. In “Jane Wilson,” 1957, the artist is stately and introspective as she sits for her portrait, back straight, arms and legs gracefully folded. But in “Jane and Elizabeth,” 1967, Freilicher slumps in a director’s chair, wearing a wry smile as her young daughter tries desperately to pull her away to play.Jane Freilicher and Jane Wilson: Seen and Unseen is on view through January 18, 2016, The Parrish Art Museum, 279 Montauk Highway Water Mill, NY, 631-283-2118, www.parrishart.orgMore information about Xico Greenwald’s work can be found at xicogreenwald.com

Janes’ Domain

Janes’ Domain

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