Cleve Gray: Considering All Possible Worlds

CLEVE GRAY CONSIDERING ALL POSSIBLE WORLDS

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CLEVE GRAY CONSIDERING ALL POSSIBLE WORLDS

JANUARY 15 – FEBRUARY 15, 2014

525 WEST 26TH STREET NEW YORK NY 10001 212.695.0164 LORETTAHOWARD.COM

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Cleve Gray’s Parallel Universe

by David Ebony

“That the freedom of man’s mind to celebrate his own feeling by a work of art parallels his social revolt from bondage. I believe that art is yet to be born and that freedom and equality are yet to be born.” — David Smith In my student days, David Smith by David Smith (1968) was a favorite book. Published posthumously, three years after the sculptor’s death, this brilliant and eccentric collection of notes and musings contained a number of passages, including the quote above, that I returned to on occasion over the years. The belief by an artist of Smith’s stature that art is yet to be born, and that freedom and equality remain illusive, struck me as a provocative and profound notion. At the very least, the quotation conveys a sense of Smith’s passion and commitment. He saw his endeavor as an urgent calling—the will to be present at the moment of art’s inception and to contribute to its genesis. What an exciting prospect! From his point of view, every artistic achievement prior to art’s birth, the whole of art history, in fact, would be regarded as a noble prelude.

As noted on the book’s cover, the volume was edited by the painter Cleve Gray. When, in later years, I encountered Gray’s own work, and especially the monumental mural Threnody (1973), which I saw during its 2002 reinstallation at the Neuberger Museum of Art in Purchase, New York, I recognized the painter’s conceptual kinship with Smith. Here, Gray used the language of abstract painting specifically to parallel a form of social revolt. It was commissioned by the museum and created as an anti-war protest, in direct response to the Vietnam War. The work sparked considerable controversy at its debut. Today, it could effectively decry questionable U.S. military actions in Afghanistan and elsewhere or serve as a universal anti-war statement.

An immersive experience that even the best color reproductions cannot convey, Threnody fills a special gallery with multiple abutting panels, each about twenty feet square. The related compositions are in deep, muted gray tones with dark red, blue and gold passages. Each contains variations of a single large, irregular vertical rectangle, approximately human scale, that could represent a

Cleve Gray preparing to paint Threnody panel at Neuburger Museum, 1971 photograph by Thaddeus Gray.

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lifeless body, a victim of war, perhaps, or a coffin. A feeling of rhythm and movement in each of the shapes, however, just as strongly suggests birth or a sense of becoming. Threnody is often compared with the Rothko Chapel in Houston (completed in 1971). Indeed, it shares the meditative comportment of Rothko’s work. But in its political ambition and intensity, it more closely parallels Picasso’s 1937 anti-war statement, Guernica.

Gray’s subtle approach to the theme certainly contrasts with Picasso’s bold and aggressive composition. And the artists’ personalities clashed as well. Gray’s sole meeting with Picasso in Paris, just days after the end of World War II, was an unhappy experience. As a U.S. army soldier and budding artist stationed in Paris, Gray wanted to meet the legendary maestro, and went to his studio unannounced.

Having just awoken, Picasso was rather gruff and rude. After showing him some recently completed portraits of Dora Maar, Gray was dismissed.

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Threnody, 1972-73, Acrylic on canvas, 28 panels; 6 panels: 240 x 110 inches each, 22 panels: 240 x 103 inches each Collection Friends of the Neuberger

“Picasso terrified me. I didn’t like him, and I never returned,” Gray later admitted.1 Nevertheless, he admired Picasso’s talent and achievement. By the early 40s, while still in his 20s, Gray was already an advocate of Cubism, with a great appreciation for works by Lyonel Feininger and John Marin. In Paris, he studied with André Lhote and Jacques Villon, Marcel Duchamp’s brother, with whom he established a particularly close relationship. Gray’s early works reflect the direct influence of both of those modernist pioneers.

Born in New York City in 1918, Gray attended the Phillips Academy and won a prize for the most promising art student. Against his father’s wishes, he decided to pursue a career in art. He graduated summa cum laude from Princeton University, where he earned a degree in art and archeology. He wrote his thesis on Yuan Dynasty landscape painting; Chinese landscape painting and calligraphy would later play an important role in his art. In Tucson just before he joined the army, Gray held his first solo show of abstracted landscapes and still lifes, mostly inspired by Marin and Cézanne.

After the war, and throughout the 1950s, he exhibited his paintings regularly, working in his studio in Warren, Connecticut, where he moved in 1949. He achieved a modicum of success as he continued to explore a quasi-Cubist style of figurative painting. In 1957, he married the writer Francine du Plessix. Thereafter, literature and writing played a significant role in his life. He published occasionally, and in the 1960s was a contributing editor of Art in America, for which he wrote articles on David Smith, Picasso, Duchamp and others. Over the course of his career, he published three books, on Smith, John Marin and Hans Richter.

Gray’s art always retained a certain European sensibility. Throughout his long career, he often found himself an outsider in relationship to the contemporary art mainstream, especially with regard to American trends. He resisted the advent of Abstract Expressionism, and in a 1959 issue of American Scholar published a diatribe against its egocentric precepts. Soon after, ironically, he adopted many of the techniques of gestural abstraction.

Gray, however, was disinterested in the brand of visceral, violent self-expression associated with Ab Ex giants like Pollock and de Kooning. Instead, he adopted the idiom of pure abstraction and ges-

1. Cleve Gray by Nicholas Fox Weber

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turalism for use toward more cerebral and contemplative aims. From the early ’60s up until the time of his death in 2004, Gray’s work might be characterized as vibrant expanses of color activated with deft lines and rudimentary forms, inspired by nature and born of a sincere ambition to tap into the meditative and spiritual aspects of the creative act. At times the work seems related to Color Field painting, such as paintings by Frankenthaler, Louis and others, but Gray’s emphasis is consistently on line, form and gesture, to which the composition’s attendant color- and spatial relationships are only subordinate.

Gray often worked in series, producing variations on themes garnered from his travels abroad.

Visits to Greece, Israel, Egypt and elsewhere inspired certain color sequences, shapes and lines that would metamorphose from one composition to the next until he felt satisfied that he had fully explored the source material. Considering All Possible Worlds, the focus of the present exhibition, is a particularly striking and cohesive group of paintings begun in the early 1990s. Most of these pieces consist of one or two thick gestural lines traversing radiant monochrome grounds of contrasting hue. The works are reductive but not minimalist.

The painting Considering All Possible Worlds #23, for example, features a single dark blue wavy brushstroke horizontally bifurcating a large canvas with a luminous violet ground. Executed in a single flourish, with a considerable amount of panache, the line alludes to a mountain landscape while it evokes the artist’s movement and presence in the moment. From the same year, Plumbed Purple of Thunder shows a more complex but similarly energized series of horizontal green brushstrokes stretching across the center of a mauve canvas.

The series is clearly inspired by Chinese and Japanese calligraphy, particularly Zen painting. But Gray’s gestures do not refer to any specific script or writing; they have no relationship to graffiti and exist wholly in the realm of pure painting. Some of the works allude to nature or architecture.

Crane (1990), for instance, features a sinuous black line rising up through a horizontally bisected field of yellow on the bottom and light gray at the top. The elegant black shape could indicate a bird in flight or a towering derrick. The spare, hazy geometry of the background seems to bear an art-historical reference to his contemporaries, such as Mark Rothko or his friend Barnett Newman.

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In the way Gray isolates the gesture, though, his efforts seem more allied with those of certain contemporary painters rather than artists of his own generation. Works by David Reed, James Nares and Katharina Grosse, as well as Brice Marden’s painting of recent years, immediately come to mind. Gray’s large vertical composition White Rising (1990), for example, showing a single splashy white line soaring from the bottom toward the top of a vibrant green canvas, might hint at some existential gravitas in its fervent execution. But the gesture is iconic, arrested and frozen in time. Gray always seemed to be working in a parallel universe, outside his own time, and painting for the ages. n

Threnody, 1972-73, Acrylic on canvas, 28 panels; 6 panels: 240 x 110 inches each, 22 panels: 240 x 103 inches each Collection Friends of the Neuberger

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Plumbed Purple of Thunder, 1991, Acrylic on canvas, 52 x 72 inches

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Hopkin’s Comet, 1990, Acrylic on canvas, 40 x 60 inches

Crane, 1990, Acrylic on canvas, 60 x 40 inches

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Considering All Possible Worlds #7, Acrylic on canvas, 60 x 80 inches

Rinse and Ring the Ear, 1990, Acrylic on canvas, 60 x 60 inches

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Reach #3, 2002, Acrylic on canvas, 50 x 64 inches

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Untitled, c. 1992, Acrylic on canvas, 45 x 60 inches

right: Clash #11, 2002, Acrylic on canvas, 72 x 55 inches

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Blue Mountain, 1992, Acrylic on canvas, 45 x 60 inches

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Flash, 1990, Acrylic on canvas, 40 x 50 inches

Blackbird, c. 1991, Acrylic on canvas, 60 x 60 inches

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CHRONOLOGY

1918 Born September 22, in New York City.

1924–32 Attends Ethical Culture School in New York City.

1929–33 Begins formal art training in New York with Antonia Nell, a pupil of George Bellows.

1933-36 Attends Phillips Academy, Andover, Massachusetts.

Wins the Samuel F. B. Morse Prize for most promising art student.

1936-40 Attends Princeton University and graduates summa cum laude, with a degree in Art and Archaeology. Studies painting with James C. Davis and Far Eastern Art with George Rowley, for whom he writes his thesis on Yuan dynasty landscape painting.

1942 Joins The United States Army, serves in England, France and Germany.

1944–46 Studies with André Lhote and Jacques Villon in Paris under the GI Bill.

1946–47 Joins Jacques Seligmann Gallery and has first solo New York exhibition.

Exhibits at Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, Annual Exhibition.

Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Paintings of the Year.

1948 Included in Art Institute of Chicago, 58th Annual Exhibition.

1949 Moves to Warren, Connecticut.

Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington.

D.C. 21st Biennial Exhibition.

Art Institute of Chicago, 58th Annual Exhibition.

1950 Exhibits at Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Young American Painters.

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1951 Exhibits at Brooklyn Museum.

1955 Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 24th Biennial Exhibition.

1957 Marries Francine du Plessix.

Exhibits at Jacques Seligmann Gallery, New York.

1960 Becomes contributing editor of Art in America.

Joins Staempfli Gallery, New York.

(1960-1970) Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, Connecticut, Eight from Connecticut.

1961 Wins the Ford Foundation Purchase.

Exhibits at Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, Abstract Expressionists and Imagists.

Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 27th Biennial Exhibition.

1963 Exhibits at Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 28th Annual Exhibition.

Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, Annual Exhibition.

1966 Translates Marcel Duchamp’s A l’Infinitif.

1968 Upon sculptor’s death, edits David Smith

by David Smith.

Becomes a trustee of the Rhode Island School of Design, serving until 1979.

Exhibits at The Art Center in Hargate, St. Paul’s School, Concord, New Hampshire.

1969 Exhibits at Phillips Collection, Washington D.C. 1970 Joins Betty Parsons Gallery. (1970-1983) Appointed to the Board of Trustees, New York School of Drawing, Painting, and Sculpture (until 1975).

1970 The Art Museum, Princeton University, retrospective.

1972 Commissioned by Neuberger Museum, State University of New York at Purchase, to create paintings for a gallery designed by Philip Johnson measuring 90 feet by 60 feet by 22 feet. Begins work on this project, entitled Threnody.

1976 Joins Board of Trustees of the Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, Connecticut, a position held until 1978.

1977 Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York, Cleve Gray: Paintings, 1966–1977.

Appointed Commissioner on the Connecticut Commission for the Arts (until 1982).

Exhibits at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, New Acquisitions.

1980 Invited as artist-in-residence at the American Academy, Rome.

1986 The Jewish Museum, New York, Jewish Themes/Contemporary American Artists.

1987 Last year at American Academy in Rome.

Cleve Gray; Brooklyn Museum, New York, one-man exhibit.

1990 Joins Berry-Hill Gallery, New York (1990–2002).

1997 Elected as Honorary Trustee, Rhode Island School of Design.

1998 Elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

2004 Dies at the age of 86 in Hartford, Connecticut.

2005 Ameringer & Yohe Gallery (2005-2009) 2012 Cleve Gray estate represented by the Loretta Howard Gallery.

Heron, 1991, Acrylic on canvas 60 x 40 inches

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This catalogue published on the occasion of the exhibition

Cleve Gray in his Warren Connecticut Studio c.1973, photograph by Inge Morath.

CLEVE GRAY

Considering All Possible Worlds January 15 – February 15, 2014 Loretta Howard Gallery 525 West 26th Street New York NY 10001 212.695.0164 www.lorettahoward.com ISBN: 978-0-9842804-8-3

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Special thanks to: Lillian Lovett and Neuberger Museum of Art Purchase Collage SUNY Catalogue photographer: Thomas Mueller Design: HHA design