Richard Pousette-Dart - 1985 Newspaper Review

Works Judge Distortion Of Contemporary Art
by Gary Schwan

The Post, Sunday, April 14, 1985

A remark by a Polish artist brought me up short recently. Franciszek Starowieyski creates theater posters, an important art form in Poland. An exhibition of his work is now at New York's Museum of Mod-ern Art.

He says "the aptitude of contemporary man for the fine arts is dying out, and it is the task of the avant garde to preserve as much as possible from the past."

The avant garde preserving the 'past? The idea seems paradoxical. The task of the avant garde has been to use new art to jolt people out of old habits of seeing and feeling. In fact, some argue that the avant garde no longer exists because, far from being shockable, the middle class is eager to embrace new or outrageous art.

The Pole's comment isn't as opaque as it seems, according to the author of the exhibition catalog. The artist uses 17th-century styles. In so doing, he has "chosen a time when the seeds of the present are recognizable. (His) works measure the distortions of our progress."

An exhibition of paintings in Coral Gables offers the chance to gauge the distortion of what passes for progress, too. The show has works by Minnesota-born Richard Pousette-Dart. It will be at ArtSpace/Virginia Miller Galleries, 169 Madeira Ave., through May 18 (call 305-444-4493).

The show is well worth the journey, for the artist is a link with a noble line of painters. His powerful nonobjective paintings seem to represent both past and present. They serve as a measuring stick with which to gauge the work of contemporary artists—realists and abstractionists — who have shown a willingness to be facile for the sake of clever commentary.

Pousette-Dart is an artist of substance, and his rich and elaborated works call attention to themselves.

Richard Pousette-Dart, Wall of Signs
84 x 50 inches, Panel I, Acrylic on Linen

Richard Pousette-Dart, Gallery Installation

But is the artist, at 69, the youngest of the first generation of abstract expressionists, or the oldest member of the second wave? The former. He began exhibiting in 1940. Although his lyrical works have little in common with the "gestural" wing of abstract expressionism, they reflect attitudes that most of the extraordinary postwar American painters of the New York School brought to making art.

First, there's gravity — a sense of dealing with important issues. All great works of art contain gravitas.

Second, there's spirituality. In Pousette-Dart's pulsating paintings, we sense how the spiritual can infuse and transform matter.

Of course in nonobjective works, where no subject exists, connecting the reality of paint with spirituality requires a "leap of faith" on the viewer's part. We are ready to take the leap because Pousette-Dart's works are so, well, alive.

I saw his paintings at Easter, and found moving images of resurrection and life in his big, shimmering yellow discs, which, from some vantage points, seem to grow magically to fill the entire canvas.

Finally, there's craftmanship. The pictures often are built up, layer upon layer. One thinks of palimpsests. Forms peek from beneath the topmost layer of paint. The surfaces are so enriched, thick and creamy that we're tempted to swipe a finger across the canvas and taste the paint/icing.

The show has a dozen large paintings or so, dating from the past 15 years. His works may contain different forms — tiny, cell-like squiggles; fat discs; ideographs. But they have at least three things in common: They use every inch of canvas; they're dappled with luminiscent color; they radiate intense light.

His Hieroglyph #1 Blue (1973) is a universe on canvas — every speckled inch covered with tiny pinpricks of color. It's as if the color had emerged from the last gasp of thousands of exploded stars.

With Blue Path In Space (1982), we encounter a vertical format. Long rows of ratchety forms are linked, swaying up and down the canvas. They look a bit like old glyphs. Near the top of the picture, a broad and dramatic "swoosh" of blue paint cuts from one side of the work to the other.

This work produces curious emotions. How to describe its effect on the viewer? Well, imagine you were some tribesman engaged in a ritualistic dance that's suddenly interrupted by the magical appearance of a shooting star.

"People must find their own experience in my work," Pousette-Dart said. I find the evidence of a great past in present paintings. I am also reminded that some attitudes of the past are exactly what is missing in a lot of contemporary work by other artists.

One of those old attitudes holds that painters should always eschew glibness for thought. It is nice to have something to say.

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