280
PARTISAN REVIEW
Adolph Gottlieb's new pictures, at the Martha Jackson Gallery,
were extremely impressive, except for a few, like the powder-puffy
"Black, Blue, Red," and the Arabic-looking "From Midnight to Dawn."
This gifted painter has moved very successfully from his pictograph
convention of recent years. He still uses arrows, suns, and stars, and
divides his canvas in hieratic ways, but not in the grid he was formerly
so fond of. Many of the pictures use, instead, the device of a horizon
("Hot Horizon," "Red at Night," "Cold Front I," "Groundscape")
which can provide flat painting, often with large sun-like spots, as well
as more textured, more various areas of linear rather than spatial
incident. The "horizons" and "grounds" work well together, although
of two different orders, combining two divergent strains in modem
painting. "Falling Star," one of the most beautiful pictures, does not
use a horizon, however, nor does "Centipede," an extremely appealing
small work. "Hot Horizon" and "Unstill Life III" were also good
pictures, and the level of most of the others was very high. Gottlieb
is that interesting example of a very original painter who manages to
triumph over his influences, responding to them with his own strength
and inventiveness, and thereby achieving pictures of great beauty.
(George McNeil is another such painter, as one could see in his show
at the Poindexter Gallery. I would mention "Wide Structure," ''Gigue,''
and "Concupiscence" as being especially good. Perhaps the point about
Gottlieb and McNeil is that they bring to their influences an already
developed individual sense of the medium.)
Hans Hofmann is the
doyen
of abstract expressionism, making his
influence on it felt in a way that is perhaps immeasurable. His show
of recent pictures at the Kootz Gallery was extremely puzzling; I would
like to have seen it against the background of his other work. Many
of the pictures start out Hofmannesque-very large, bright, exciting
in their energetic statement, compelling in their creation of kaleido–
scopic depth and space, strong, finished, impressive. But in what seems
an afterthought, these pictures acquire Glamer-like squares of flatly
painted color, precisely edged, and placed at significant areas of the
canvas
on top of
the picture. They seem to me to destroy the picture
already developing beneath them, to flatten it, and make minor the
very beautiful painting some of them have. Ideally, I imagine, they
should serve as a foil or a frame, fixing the range of plastic movement,
setting it off and making it more intense. Instead, they seem to have
an opposite effect, as
in
the immense "Towering Spaciousness." In
others, such as "Let There Be Light," they seem to be more a part
of the picture; this one has the squares painted more freely, more
