Art Gaze

An affection for abstraction

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Written by Kat Murrell
Nov 17, 2010

New work by Scott Reeder springs from quirky origins to lyrical results. – Photo: Courtesy Green Gallery

Abstract art is a phenomenon of the 20th century that began with the vibrant explorations of the Russian Wassily Kandinsky and Franco-Spanish crackups of the human figure in cubism, courtesy of Monsieur Georges Braque and Señor Pablo Picasso. Life on the cutting edge of art in pre-World War I Europe meant chucking out centuries of convention with daring and bravado. But here in the heart of the Midwest? Not so much. It took a few decades.

This is evident in the “Wisconsin Moderns” show at Dean Jensen Gallery, 759 N. Water St., on view through Nov. 27. Proprietor Dean Jensen summarizes the state of things in his catalog essay, noting that in the 1940s, abstract art was basically absent from the Badger State. As he put it, “the state’s art schools might just as well have posted signs declaring ‘Modernism not spoken here.’” Abstract art just wasn’t done.

But new ideas are powerful forces. Progressive approaches to art making, richly expressive of the feelings, fears and aspirations of an unprecedented world, eventually broke through. Jensen revives the names and reputations of some of these early practitioners.

A big, cubist sort of painting with a powerful running figure by Carl Holty (1900-1976) was an early touchstone. On loan from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Department of Art History, it hovers over a descending stairwell, part of the show but distant, as though looking on to other works that followed in its path. Other Holty paintings, such as “Cove” (1944), plunge into the borderland between representation and abstraction. Authoritative black lines suggest a port and sails, an effect like a modernist stained glass window. Yet, the tracery of paint denies description of figures in favor of flat design.

Fred Berman (b. 1926) works the surface of canvases with weighty texture. They densely shimmer as though the world exists only through a watery curtain. The dissolution of form goes beyond any Impressionist. Pieces like “Nocturnal” (1995), the whispers of figures - horses and riders, perhaps reindeer, maybe a sea anemone? – cultivate mysterious and curious auras before sinking back into the depths of dark pigment.

Lucia Stern (1895-1987) is represented with buoyant, geometric compositions that foreshadow 1960s pop colors. In her untitled piece of 1960, a mask-like face created out of delicately layered mesh, there’s a darker, totemic quality. Further introducing her work in different mediums, a 1950s sculpture of a bird seems to follow Constantin Brancusi’s 1923 “Bird in Space” (the Brancusi piece was notoriously taxed in 1927 when brought into the U.S. because customs officials refused it the duty-free designation of “art”). Jensen notes that Stern was an active voice in Milwaukee during her life, writing and speaking behalf of all that was daring and progressive in the visual world.

That was then, this is now

Fast forward to the 21st century. If you’re in search of progressive art today, The Green Gallery is one of the foremost venues in the city. John Riepenhoff, a practicing artist in his own right, oversees two gallery spaces, titled as east and west in reference to their locations. The Green Gallery East, 1500 N. Farwell Ave., hosts “Scott Reeder: New Work” though Dec. 5, featuring pieces of deceptive complexity.

There’s something strangely familiar, but otherworldly, as pale lines streak across a dark gray background, enlivened by breathy trails of blue and magenta. The rhythmic play of lines in the surface, varying in bright intensity, is like the after-effects of fireworks or a long-exposed image of the cosmos. Other works take on an opposite motif. Patterns are made through the massing of innumerable small dots, coagulating like seeds or bubbles of primordial ooze. They writhe like a biological microcosm enlarged to monumental scale.

This all sounds very grand, but these works aren’t burdened by weighty self-importance. They operate on a big scale, as large as 6-by-10 feet, but retain an easy, lyrical quality in their matte surfaces. And that “something strangely familiar” feeling? In their pre-art existence, these shapes were pasta and lentils, but scattered on a canvas, their negative spaces suggest far more than simple foods.

At first glance, these paintings by Reeder, a professor at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, may seem aligned with the muscular efforts of Abstract Expressionism. But, the underlying impulses better recall the humor and surprise of Dadaist and Surrealist statements. Rayograms by the American surrealist Man Ray, pictures made by laying objects on photo-sensitive paper and exposing to light, are ancestrally related to this meeting of pasta and paint.

Regardless of these precedents and underpinnings, on their own they are luminous and subtle. Forms and colors pulse, fluctuating in space, blurring their humble origins, and transforming into something beyond themselves.