Painting Against the Grain

In the decades after World War II, artists argued the relative merits of abstract and figurative painting over drinks at the Cedar Tavern in Greenwich Village. The history books have muted that once lively debate, dubbing Abstract Expressionism an art movement of paramount importance. And today’s marketplace, too, values New York School abstractions above artworks by New York School figurative painters. But Henry Justin, a passionate art collector, is not ready to concede the argument.See it Loud: Seven Post-War American Painters, currently on view at the National Academy, featuring artwork drawn from Mr. Justin’s organization, the Center for Figurative Painting, spotlights the achievements of a group working against the grain.Leland Bell (1922-1991), Albert Kresch (b.1922), Paul Georges (1923-2002), Paul Resika (b. 1928), Neil Weilliver (1929-2005) and Peter Heinemann (1931-2010) came of age in the “polarized” New York art world of the 1940s and 50s when artists “were expected to choose an allegiance to abstraction or representation,” according to exhibition curator Bruce Weber. The pressure to adopt and defend an aesthetic position led these six artists to create formally rigorous figurative works to compete in scale and style with their Abstract Expressionist counterparts. Painter Stanley Lewis (b. 1941), also in this exhibit, is from a younger generation. But Lewis’ landscapes, chopped up, reassembled and collaged over with stapled-on strips of canvas, have a tenacity that fits in well here.Bell, a student of modernist painter Karl Knaths, has seven large canvases in this exhibit. Like Knaths, Bell uses black outlines to guide the eye through his paintings. In the multiple-figure compositions on view here a sinuous black stroke wiggles around high-chroma, flatly painted shapes.Georges, Kresch and Resika, all three students of German Abstract Expressionist Hans Hoffman, also employ abstract techniques in representational paintings. Kresch and Resika make landscapes simplified into strokes of high-key color. Georges’ large, loosely painted interiors and still lifes are exuberant canvases, bursting with the energy of an action painter. One amusing painting here by Georges is set in the Cedar Tavern. In the nearly eight-foot wide interior, Georges and his artist-friends sit around a table at the famed downtown watering hole. As Georges and Resika stare out of the picture, the rest of the group is absorbed by artist Aristodimos Kaldis flirting with an unidentified young lady.Welliver and Heinemann studied under Bauhaus abstractionist Josef Albers. Welliver’s large landscapes of the Maine wilderness are painted in one-shot with a wet-on-wet painting process that conveys the crisp light of Maine in fresh, blobby strokes. The ten self-portraits by Heinemann here, thickly painted oils that have been ruggedly worked, are sometimes composed inside brightly painted square frames, a format the artist described as “an homage to Albers.”Leland Bell once said he wanted his work to convey “a structure as powerful and human and deeply probing as Mondrian’s” without sacrificing “the appearance of things.” Henry Justin has built a collection around this very principle. Swimming against the tide, Mr. Justin is a rare collector whose acquisitions have been informed by his own strong beliefs. Mr. Weber, who worked closely with Mr. Justin on this exhibition, says he hopes See it Loud “will help restore a sense of historical balance to the understanding of the history of American art.” Whether visitors agree with Justin and Weber or not, this exhibit, reopening a debate that was thought to be settled, offers museum-goers a seat at the Cedar Tavern table, so to speak.See it Loud: Seven Post-War American Painters, on view through January 26, 2014 at the National Academy Museum, 1083 Fifth Avenue at 89th Street, New York, NY, 212-369-4880, www.nationalacademy.orgMore information about Xico Greenwald’s work can be found at xicogreenwald.com

Painting Against the Grain

Painting Against the Grain

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