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Smithsonian treasures come to DAI

‘Modern Masters’ features abstract works that uses a wide range of techniques

Photos: DAI's upcoming exhibit

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3:16 PM Friday, July 16, 2010

By Meredith Moss

Staff Writer

DAYTON — How many times have you started a book but haven’t really gotten into it until you’d finished a chapter or two?

“Then you keep reading and the next thing you know you can’t put it down!” said Will South.

The chief curator of the Dayton Art Institute said paintings can require that type of perseverance, too.

“You need to get to know them and that takes time,” South said. “They start to reveal themselves, little by little.”

That’s likely to be the case with much of the artwork in the DAI’s upcoming exhibit, “Modern Masters From the Smithsonian American Art Museum.” The show, which explores abstract art in the years after World War II, opens Saturday, July 24.

Among the 31 artists represented in paintings, sculptures and collage are Richard Diebenkorn, Nathan Oliveira, Hans Hofmann, Louise Nevelson, Franz Kline and Robert Motherwell.

This exhibition, said South, represents the finest abstract painting being done in America in the 20th century and offers a wonderful opportunity for folks in the Miami Valley to experience the wide array of art techniques and artistic goals that fall under the abstraction umbrella.

“Abstraction is like reducing the basic theme of a novel to a few paragraphs. It’s giving partial information,” South explained. In the case of a painting, abstraction may range from splashed paint on canvas to a stick figure on a bathroom wall or a geometric.

“People so often expect paintings to look like something, and they forget that ideas and emotions don’t look like anything at all,” said South, who is asking visitors to leave their preconceptions at the door when they come to the new exhibit.

“This kind of painting can be exciting and moving and stimulating,” he said. “Sometimes the painting points not to a thing, but to an idea. Sometimes you can’t tell what it is at all.”

To help visitors along, Smithsonian senior curator Virginia Mecklenburg has written labels for each.

“I wrote them for people who need a starting point for abstract art,” said Mecklenburg, who spent two of her elementary school years in the Miami Valley when her father was in the military. The labels, she said, will help visitors understand what the artist had in mind when creating that piece of art.

Often, as in the case of Grace Hartigan, quotes from the artist are included:

“My male students at the time were obsessed with motorcycles — one even kept his in his studio — and out of sheer self preservation I bought a poster of Brando on a bike and Peter Fonda, some cycle magazines, pinned them on my painting wall and ‘Modern Cycle’ was the result.”

You’ll have fun finding a motorcycle headlight, gas tank, engine parts, handle bars and zippered motorcycle jacket in Hartigan’s painting.

It’s always important to keep in mind that there are real people behind all of the paintings, said Mecklenburg.

Many of these artists served in the military or other aspects of the war industry during World War II, many struggled during the Depression and then went off to fight the war. Some of the artists in the exhibit painted before the war, others after.

Artist Sam Francis became an artist by accident.

“He was a pre-med student at the University of California and after the United States entered the war he signed up in the Army Air Force as a military pilot and was fairly badly injured in a plane crash,” Mecklenburg said.

Although he had been on a science track at school, Francis ended up lying in bed on his stomach for years while recuperating. He was given a set of watercolors to help with boredom and began to paint.

Another artist, Michael Goldberg, was a paratrooper behind enemy lines during World War II. Before the war, said Mecklenburg, he created “beautiful geometric white constructions about perfection and purity.”

After the war, she said, his whole world view changed and his sculptures became menacing with clawlike forms.

“At the beginning, none of these artists were famous, they were struggling with who they were as individuals and artists and trying to find a voice that expressed their joy, their sorrow, their anxiety or their sense of beauty,” said Mecklenburg.

Mecklenburg said these artists looked at the multiple sides of mankind: both primordial and bestial as well as promising and hopeful.

Cynics often look at abstract art and say: “My child could do that!” In response, the DAI has come up with some creative opportunities for visitors:

At the special drawing stations – “Is Abstract Art Easy?”– you’ll have the chance to create your own abstract art. The results will be posted to the DAI’s photo-sharing website at Flickr.com

Three local artists — Loretta Puncer, James Pate and Mike Elsass — have been invited to provide commentary for a cellphone tour of the new exhibit.

“My goal is to enhance the viewers understanding of the artistic process by hearing from an artist directly,” explained Susan Anable, DAI director of education. “I thought it might help to explore the process of creation and to focus on all of the thought that goes into creating art, the considerations of the elements of art — line, shape, color, value, form, texture and space — to understand how an artist communicates with these elements and what a challenge it is!”

Mecklenburg will come to Dayton to speak at 6:30 p.m. Sept. 16. Her topic is “American Abstraction: Coming of Age in the 1950s.”

14 | L!FE | JULY 18, 2010 | DAYTON DAILY NEWS

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