Miami University Art Museum - Spring 2015 - William Douglas McGee Exhibition Guide

GALLERY GUIDE

JANUARY 27–JUNE 27, 2015

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Abstract Expressionist William Douglas McGee

Life and Career William Douglas McGee is not an artist commonly mentioned alongside fellow Abstract Expressionists like Hans Hofmann, Franz Kline, Willem de Kooning and Jackson Pollock. However, throughout a career that spanned more than five decades, McGee produced a sizeable body of work that epitomizes many of the core concepts of Abstract Expressionism. His principles and philosophies were universally applied to five bodies of work explored throughout his life: mixed media painting, mixed media collage, watercolor, color field paintings and mixed media assemblages. Less commonly explored by artists of the period, though popular during the earlier Cubist movement, are the mixed media collages. McGee had an on-andoff again relationship with collage between 1956 and 1962, and from 1978 until his death in 1999.

His collages perhaps demonstrate his approach to art more succinctly than any other medium during his career.

William Douglas McGee, 1971. Photograph.

Courtesy of Larry Huston and Dr. Flavia Bastos

Born in Syracuse, New York, in 1925, McGee showed artistic talent from a young age. In a 1970 interview, he recollected that his early “conception of art existed in the world of commercial art...especially in the area of illustration.” Early recognition came from local attention for his faithful copies of Norman Rockwell’s Saturday Evening Post covers.

When McGee was ten years old he received a small scholarship from his elementary school principal to attend a watercolor course at the Syracuse Museum of Art. The feel and aesthetics of watercolor resonated so much with McGee that he continued to use the medium throughout his career. It was from the work of Winslow Homer that McGee first learned how painting could serve as “a means toward self expression, which demands a balance between the means and the end, or in other words, one’s technique in balance (service) to one’s creative concept.”

McGee’s life, like most Americans, was interrupted in 1942 with the outbreak of World War II. He dropped out of high school to enlist in the U.S. Army and found himself stationed in France.

There he was taken captive and held in STALAG 7A, a German prisoner of war camp for French soldiers. It was in this camp that he met Parisian painter Gaston Rous, who soon became a creative mentor. McGee and Rous engaged in frequent conversations about art and creativity. Rous often critiqued his drawings, further whetting McGee’s artistic appetite. After the war, McGee returned to the U.S. and obtained his high school diploma. With the assistance of the GI Bill, McGee attended college with plans to become a teacher of American History. However, his passion for art, fueled by the friendship with Rous could not be ignored or relegated to the past like the war.

McGee attended the University of New Mexico from 1946-1951 where he received a Bachelor of Fine Arts in painting and art history. There he studied under Agnes Martin and Adja Yunkers, both well known abstract artists. Martin was one of the first generation of Abstract Expressionists. She would garner much recognition as an important painter, due in part to her representation at the famed Betty Parsons Gallery in New York City.

McGee later recounted, “At that time she [Agnes

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Martin] was painting desert landscapes in the spirit of John Marin, so through Martin I became involved quite strongly with Marin’s wonderful energy and style. Where in my case Marin’s color and Yankee energy was so primary!”

After completing his studies in New Mexico, McGee began searching for graduate schools to pursue a Masters degree with the intention of teaching art at a college or university. While researching graduate schools, McGee came across a number of catalogs with an iconic “bulls-eye” design on the cover promoting the acclaimed Summer Institute at Black Mountain College.

McGee was excited at the opportunity to study with Jack Tworkov and Franz Kline, both of whom would serve as resident painters at the famed school near Asheville, North Carolina.

Black Mountain College logo, ca. 1952

possessed no ideas about being a teacher. He did, however, have strong ideas about art and life. A person had to be dedicated to him in order to understand him. My own dedication was very intense as a young artist, for I was trying to learn as much from him as I could, admiring his personality and his art the way I did. It was a grand experience to work with him – not really as a student to a teacher…but rather as man to man, artist to artist. It was in this form that Kline had, I believe, such a charming and memorable effect on Black Mountain.”

After Black Mountain, McGee and his wife Martha Jane Masteller moved to Bloomington, Indiana, where he pursued a Masters degree in painting and art history at Indiana University. McGee was fortunate to receive a teaching fellowship. Financial support meant more time in the studio and less Composition with Blue, 1955. Oil on canvas. 20 x 14 inches. Courtesy of Larry Huston and Dr. Flavia Bastos

The summer of 1952 became one of the most influential periods in McGee’s education. By that time, modernist poet Charles Olsen had taken the helm at Black Mountain College when Josef Albers departed to chair the art department at Yale University. Although he spent only a brief period of time at Black Mountain College, that summer provided McGee the opportunity to network with artists with whom he felt at home.

He lived and worked with a number of fellow up-and-coming artists, including Cy Twombly, Robert Motherwell and Robert Rauschenberg.

McGee considered himself most fortunate to study under Tworkov and Kline.

By McGee’s accounts, and evident in several early works, Franz Kline was his most influential instructor at Black Mountain. In Black Mountain College: Sprouted Seeds, a collection of student accounts edited by Merv Lane, McGee admits, “While I was very much under the spell of Franz Kline, Cy [Twombly] was under the spell of Motherwell. But we shared a lot in common as young very serious artists.” McGee wrote of Kline, “He was an extraordinarily original painter, who

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Island. It was a small department, where he found an intimate teaching environment with serious students.

His position at Brown was highly rewarding.

He would have stayed longer had it not been for personal family problems resulting in a divorce. Personally, he sought a refuge from the emotional turmoil. As an artist, he craved an energetic art scene to provide the creative drive. Nowhere else seemed more appropriate than New York City.

Untitled, 1954. Mixed media collage. 14 x 11 inches.

Collection of Larry Huston and Dr. Flavia Bastos

time working odd jobs to make ends meet. The fellowship set him on course as an educator. In relation to his time at Indiana University, McGee recalled “And so again I found myself in another very exceptional environment at Indiana. A very lively and strong art department with a wonderful studio program, and brilliant art history department faculty such as Henry Hope, Otto Brendel, and Ted Bowie who were recognized on an international level.”

From 1953-1956 McGee taught at the University of Cincinnati. During this time he began working in collage. These early works were heavy – with bold swaths of solid forms, displaying a similar compositional approach to his Franzesque black and white paintings. Discontent with the conservative academic tone of the art department, he was eager to return to the East.

Desiring to find proximity to the New York art world he took an assistant professor position at Brown University in Providence, Rhode

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Though the New York art world was invigorating, it presented professional difficulties. In 1962, McGee was still deeply rooted in Abstract Expressionism. The critically acclaimed American movement was declining in favor of Pop Art. In response, McGee commented, “I began to feel caught in a ‘time lag.’ By this I mean I seemed always to be struggling to catch up with the best painting of the period. About the time I felt at rest (at least reasonably so) [I] would discover the period was on its way out – it was more or less ‘spent.’ It didn’t feel this way for me but such as the case in the New York art world.” McGee felt lost with the emergence of Pop Art. Paired with the struggle of establishing himself in a new environment and his inability to find a studio space, he fell into an unintentional two-year hiatus. He spent the majority of this time thinking, frequenting galleries and observing his surroundings. He became a subject of the New York art world, not as a functioning painter immersed in it, but as an observer on the outside of a scene where he felt he belonged. He was in a position to either continue along his own path in a movement that was fading, or reinvent himself in order to remain relevant in a changing environment.

He struggled with determining his place and defining himself as an artist.

In 1964, after nearly two years of inactivity, McGee was inspired once again and returned to painting. This perhaps coincided with securing a teaching position at Hunter College, a prominent school within the City University of New York (CUNY) system. His return to teaching was

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media collage and color field painting. Most color field painters abandoned oil for acrylic or inexpensive household paints, as was the case for Jackson Pollock.

McGee eventually garnered the attention of New York based sculptor Tony Smith, who expressed encouragement and respect for McGee’s work. In 1973, McGee finally got a big break when he obtained representation by the Max Hutchinson Gallery. One of the first great SoHo galleries, Max Hutchinson gave McGee two one-man exhibitions as well as inclusion in several group shows. He was beginning to gain notoriety in the New York art world.

Several of his works were acquired for private and corporate collections.

End of Summer, 1967. Diptych, acrylic on canvas.

95 x 47 ½ inches (each). Gift of Larry Huston Family in honor of their son, Eric J. Huston, 2010. 2010.43

reinvigorating. He called this experience a “reconfrontation with himself.” McGee returned to a form of painting that had characterized his early career. While he employed earlier methods, he understood very well that in order to remain a contemporary artist he would have to adapt to his changing environment. Upon reflection in a 1990 interview with Martin Reis, McGee remarked, “I was perfectly willing to go all the way with a reevaluation and re-approach to art.”

He acknowledged this process of rebirth was slow and formative, but when it fell together he felt he had found his place.

It was as if McGee suddenly became a more well-rounded artist than he had ever been. He was able to use his experience in oils, acrylics, and mixed media collage to create a balance between lyrical and conceptual art. This concept had previously been a struggle. The unintentional hiatus offered him a new perspective on the movement in which he took part. Had it not been for those two years McGee was unable to work, he may never have had the epiphany that changed his outlook on his own career.

He observed how the art world was moving away from traditional painting materials such as oil on canvas and he began working in mixed

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Things were looking very good for the fiftynine year old artist until 1978. That year, McGee and his second wife Myra Tomback were in the process of renovating a large barn located sixty miles north of Manhattan in Patterson, New York, into a combination home and studio. This very ambitious project was nearly complete when tragedy struck. Upon returning from a visit to Myra’s parents, they found their barn completely destroyed by fire. For McGee, “it was easily the most shocking experience of our lives, and along with the devastation, I lost about thirty percent of my life’s artwork. Fortunately the seventy percent that was spared had not yet been moved from my former studio. So several weeks after this tragedy I began to feel the need to paint again, but alas, I was without a studio – something that I have always had in one form or another.”

McGee and Tomback moved a few miles north to the small town of Pawling after the fire.

For the next six years, McGee continued his uphill climb in the New York art scene with a new body of work. Sadly, this rise came to an end in 1984 when Max Hutchinson closed his gallery. McGee was once again without New York gallery representation. He was never again able to obtain another gallery affiliation with as great a reputation as Hutchinson. During the 1970s, it was difficult for New York artists

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to establish strong gallery connections unless one was well known and well connected.

Fortunately, McGee remained active with his teaching at Hunter College.

Fire Element, 1978. Mixed media collage. 10 x 10 inches.

Gift of Larry Huston Family in honor of their son, Eric J. Huston, 2010. 2010.43

In 1987, McGee left his position at Hunter College and took a one year post at Lehman College, located in the Bronx before formally retiring.

From 1988 until his death on December 25, 1999, McGee remained active in the local art scene around Pawling. He had several one person and group shows over the years that included collages, assemblages and paintings.

From studying painting and art history to his collaboration and interaction with some of abstract expressionism’s most famous artists, to the fire of 1978, McGee proved that he was a strong asset to the American art scene and could adapt to his ever-changing environment.

Throughout his career, William McGee faced a myriad of challenges and overcame obstacles that would ultimately enable his success and facilitate the development of his place in the art world.

Approach and Process

He eventually found representation in the 1980s at the Leslie Cecil Gallery. Though it was a small uptown-Manhattan gallery, it was in the process of developing a serious reputation for contemporary art. McGee was given two one-man exhibitions. He considered these shows to be “very strong, personal shows – definitely the most mature of my career to date.” Things were once again looking good.

However, as fate would have it, Leslie Cecil had to give up her gallery for personal health reasons. McGee again found himself up against heavy odds with a growing number of artists exploring new concepts and directions that made it difficult for “an older painter—even of high quality.”

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McGee’s time at Black Mountain College was likely the most influential period in his life and career.

This experience offered McGee the opportunity to explore the trajectory of his approach to art making. Based on a comparison between Kline’s black and white, spontaneous action paintings and several of McGee’s works from the 1950s, there is a striking similarity. In the few examples of these gestural works, it is evident that McGee was experimenting with Kline’s particular idiom.

It is generally accepted that Kline developed his iconic style following his exposure to Willem de Kooning’s gestural paintings of the 1940s.

Although McGee’s foray into this body of work was short (1952-1955), he continued to explore the expressive and active movements of line and color in his collages and assemblages, as well as in some of his later watercolors from the 1970s.

McGee later reflected on a small one-man exhibition of oil studies he mounted towards the end of the summer at Black Mountain College. “The work was strongly influenced by Franz Kline, however within this influence there was a distinct sense of my own form, and a pictorial space that was unlike Kline,

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which was generally more two-dimensional. The earlier influence of John Marin’s more abstractlandscape space was the key to the kind of space I was unconsciously developing – deeper space at the same time totally abstract.” McGee’s work also differed from Kline’s by the introduction of color, as noted by the titles of several works known through photographs.

Franz Kline (American, 1910-1962) Figure 8, 1952.

Anderson Collection, Stanford University.

Along with McGee, fellow artist and Black Mountain College instructor Robert Motherwell was profoundly influenced by Kline’s black and white action paintings. In the 1950s, Motherwell produced several important black on white abstractions clearly linked with Kline and McGee. Motherwell’s most noted works in this manner is the series Elegy to the Spanish Republic, featuring more than 150 canvases over a span of three decades. Though McGee and Motherwell are connected by Kline’s influence, the most tangible evidence of a relationship between these artists is visible in their collage work. Mostly produced during the middle of their careers, the artists employed similar approaches to layering, cutting or ripping pieces of paper, and additive elements such as paint. McGee referred to these works primarily as “mixed media.” The primary difference between these artists is McGee’s more natural application of found materials, whereas Motherwell favored a more “planned” approach by modifying materials into distinct shapes.

Untitled, 1952. Oil on canvas. 17 x 22 inches. Courtesy of Larry Huston and Dr. Flavia Bastos

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Around the late 1960s, McGee entered into a more complex method of approaching his art. His attention turned to not just how the canvas would appear after he was finished, but how the canvas would interact with and affect its surroundings. Crediting Matisse and Rothko for incorporating environment into the final concept and atmosphere, McGee said that he too became very interested in “environmental art,” and experimented with the concept by positioning his pieces in a way that compelled the viewer to observe them three-dimensionally. His emphasis on three-dimensionality (although it was geared towards his painting) shows his awareness of the physical matter. Having worked in collage since the mid-fifties, McGee was well acquainted with the incorporation of threedimensional components.

By 1970, after having worked for almost twenty years, McGee had developed different ways to approach his art. He explained that early in his career, materials commonly represented the means to an end. He, however, didn’t have the same outlook as his fellow painters that held this view, and revealed in an interview that he placed more emphasis on the value of a color than the color itself. Rather than letting the color dominate how he used it, he used the color the way in which he wanted it to affect the end result. So, in a way, he used color as the means to an end.

For McGee, the visual weight of each material factored into the end result of an artwork, and he found that rather than using color as a tool to determine the outcome, he could use the value of each color to do so.

McGee was always concerned with how his materials would factor into the final product.

He recalled how “It was a most conducive time and environment for me to reconsider my own approach to painting. And so the color-field became my new approach. It was an exciting experience and it compelled me to look and feel within myself more than ever for the shear notion of color and scale...Executing honest, but derivative painting, generally under the spell of Barnett Newman, I began to find a destructive form that was genuinely my own. These paintings ranged in feeling and character from tenderpoetic expressions all the way over to powerful images that carried symbolic, sometimes historical, overtones.” McGee’s exploration of Color Field painting continued until 1974.

Thinking of his paintings in more environmental and atmospheric terms than before, he explained, “The canvas itself is a slice of atmosphere.” The canvas that he refers to can be understood as the surface onto which he paints as well as an all-encompassing metaphorical canvas to represent the foundation of each artwork. His approach to art and the way it’s presented is something to be appreciated, as it gives the public an opportunity to observe an artist’s true and honest mindset.

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Red Wing, ca. 1974. Acrylic on canvas. Gift of Larry Huston Family in honor of their son, Eric J. Huston, 2010. 2010.45

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McGee was always interested in the balance of different components in his art – heavy and light, masculine and feminine, harsh and soft – so by controlling the opposing aspects, consciously and unconsciously, they would come together and create the best result. He realized that this was no easy feat, but balance remained one of his priorities throughout his career. McGee once said, “…my own attitude, my own way of being a human being…being a man…being an artist has to be carried out in the canvas so that if the paintings get more balance in them, it just simply means that I’m doing a better job of understanding myself.” It’s clear that he viewed the canvas, his approach to art, and his role as an artist quite uniquely.

The Collage Effect While at Brown University (1956-1962), McGee entered his first phase of collage making along with oil and acrylic paintings on paper. McGee frequently drew inspiration from the higher elevations and rolling hills of eastern Rhode Island. Titles such as Terra Firma and Race Point reference the geological and geographical makeup of his surroundings as well as specific locales.

These works predominantly feature earth tones punctuated by splashes of blue perhaps alluding to the diverse natural landscape in proximity to the inlets of the Atlantic Ocean.

Terra Firma, 1960. Mixed media collage. 18 ¼ x 24 inches.

Collection of Larry Huston and Dr. Flavia Bastos

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Race Point, 1959. Mixed media collage. 23 ½ x 18 inches.

Collection of Larry Huston and Dr. Flavia Bastos

One approach to collage that distinguished McGee from other contemporary artists is his refrain from the use of pop culture references. In a few select examples, such as Tiffany (1958) and R aymond (1958), McGee used pieces of newspaper, letters, or notebooks that featured notable places or people. Unlike others who used magazine excerpts or photographs of people and objects, like Robert Rauschenberg and Kurt Schwitters, McGee relied on materials that he felt possessed an intrinsic value as distinct aesthetic items. The materials applied to his mixed media works did not function in the context of a mosaic, but as an assemblage of parts that are connected by independent tonal and color values. This concept will be a recurring theme addressed in the 1960s and 1970s. His collages fluctuate between shallow two-dimensional assemblages of material to volumetric three-dimensional

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of McGee’s artwork that had been packed in cardboard boxes was destroyed. However, a significant portion was only partially burned.

Where many artists would have accepted the art as a complete loss, McGee found himself drying and saving as much as he could. Alas, another opportunity emerged for artistic growth. In an interview after the fire, he explained, “I had a creative feeling, or urge, to revise – to orchestrate these pictures into new and conceptually different images.” The earlier period of collage making re-emerged.

He was again presented with a chance to express his love for materials – tearing, cutting, placing, shifting and layering.

Hunter Mountain, 1962. Mixed media collage. 29 x 22 ½ inches. Collection of Larry Huston and Dr. Flavia Bastos

forms. He frequently folded and molded materials rather than simply layering to build up a sense of space.

Several of his collages refer to the landscape t h ro u g h co m p o s i t i o n , a n d t h e i m p l i e d visualization of the given titles. The horizontal movement of the color and tone of materials used in Untitled (1957) and Untitled (1959) allude to broad views of the landscape.

In Hunter Mountain (1962), McGee more literally recreates the rising geology of the rocky peaks. A steel-blue sky helps give the vertical thrust of the mountain a frame of reference.

McGee saw a new body of work, the Fire Series, unfolding before him. He thrust himself into the exploration of abstract space and abstract form with sentimental affection for the remains of artworks that were dear to his heart. He looked to the tragic fire as another rebirth, in which the fragments of burned wood, metal, cloth and paper could be reappropriated and reapplied into something new. Several works from the Fire Series best illustrate the opposing forces of heavy and light, masculine and feminine, and harsh and soft. It is these dynamics that allowed McGee to remain connected with the roots of Abstract Expressionism.

Written by Mahaley Evans, Curatorial Intern, and Jason E. Shaiman, Curator of Exhibitions Untitled, 1979. Mixed media collage. 17 ½ x 22 ½ inches.

Collection of Larry Huston and Dr. Flavia Bastos

The second wave of collage/mixed media work came as a result of the fire in 1978. Much

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Acknowledgments The Miami University Art Museum gratefully received more than four dozen works of art by William Douglas McGee in 2010 as a gift from the Larry Huston family in honor of their son, Eric. Seven of those donated works are on display in this exhibition along with twenty-four works and ephemera on loan from the collection of Larry Huston and Dr. Flavia Bastos. In 2010, Larry Huston acquired art from the estate of William Douglas McGee. The collection consists of nearly 150 works, including collages, color field paintings, mixed media paintings on paper, and watercolors on paper, in addition to personal correspondence, photographs and two audio interviews with William Douglas McGee. This exhibition and the accompanying gallery guide would not have been possible without the generous

About the Museum

assistance of Larry Huston and Dr. Flavia Bastos who shared these important materials used in researching the life and work of William Douglas McGee. Special appreciation is extended to Tom Hogeback of Village West Framing in Oxford for the professional framing of the artworks.

Finally, special acknowledgment is given to Mahaley Evans, a Fall 2014 Curatorial Intern at the Miami University Art Museum. Evans devoted several months to the study and research of McGee’s life and work. She assisted greatly in the writing of the text panels and the gallery guide for this exhibition.

Also, thanks to Morgan Murray for her graphic design work on the exhibition.

Raymond, 1958. Mixed media collage. 20 x 16 ¼ inches.

Collection of Larry Huston and Dr. Flavia Bastos

Construction of the Miami University Art Museum in 1978 was made possible by private contributions to Miami University’s Goals for Enrichment capital campaign in the Mid-1970s.

A major gift for the building came as a bequest from Miami alumnus Fred C. Yager, class of 1914.

Walter A. Netsch, the museum’s architect, Walter I. Farmer, class of 1935, and Orpha B. Webster generously donated extensive art collections and were all instrumental in developing early support for the museum.

The Art Museum is accredited by the American Alliance of Museums.

Art Museum Staff Robert S. Wicks • Ph.D., Director Jason E. Shaiman • Curator of Exhibitions Cynthia Collins • Curator of Education Mark DeGennaro • Preparator/Operations Manager Sherri Krazl • Marketing/Communications Laura Stewart • Collections Manager/Registrar Debbie Caudill • Program Assistant Sue Gambrell • Program Coordinator

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801 S. Patterson Ave. Oxford, OH 45056 MiamiOH.edu/ArtMuseum (513) 529–2232 Gallery Hours Monday–Friday: 10 a.m.–5 p.m.

Saturday: Noon–5 p.m. *Closed Sundays and university holidays

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