Gorky retrospective at Art Museum (3rd review)

Should biographical facts of an artist's life influence our opinion of his work? Do we really need to know that Van Gogh cut off one of his ears, boxed it and sent it to a woman who had rejected his advances? Is that why his self-portraits are so popular? Are people curious to see the visible evidence, or are they really admiring his brushstrokes and composition? You have three guesses.

Vermeer is such a relief. We know very little about his personal life; therefore we can just lose ourselves in his paintings: in the rounded, solid forms, reflections from natural light and the symphony of colors interacting across the canvas. We can leave it to the fiction writers to invent all the romance and intrigues they might imagine for his life. We have his paintings and need nothing more.

I wish this were the case with Arshile Gorky, the Armenian-born refugee from Turkish oppression who came to this country in 1920 and immediately adopted a new identity, complete with a fake nationality and fictional bio. His long overdue retrospective is now on view at the Art Museum. More than 180 paintings, drawings, prints, sculpture and memorabilia tell us more than we need to know about this artist.

Phony sob stories

Since all artists learn by looking and copying the techniques of masters they admire before they can find their own voice, do we really need to stand in admiration of Gorky's early Cézanne-type paintings or his variations of Impressionism? Gorky might have been well advised to destroy these experiments.

(Artists, take note: Get rid of your early efforts, lest they come back to haunt you or your heirs. I've seen this happen too often.)

And you can forget all those sob stories about Gorky's mother dying of starvation in his arms. That's probably as apocryphal of Gorky's name and the biographical details of his date of birth, nationality and education.

True, Gorky had a photograph of himself as a young boy standing next to his seated mother in a standard pose from that era. But most of us have a similar picture in our family archives. From that photograph, Gorky made numerous studies as well as two large portraits, The Artist and His Mother (1926-36), more appropriately titled, Schmaltz for a Buck. You needn't stand in front of them contemplating the tragedy of life. Move on"“ there are wonders to come.

The excitement of aviation

When Gorky discovered Cubism, everything changed. Now we have the beginnings of a great artist blossoming with his ten large-scale murals commissioned by the WPA Federal Art Project for the Newark Airport (1935-1937). Sadly, only two of the murals have survived: canvas paintings that were found beneath 14 layers of wall paint in the Newark Airport Administration Building. These paintings, strongly influenced by Leger and his urban vision of the new machine age, capture all the excitement of the new form of travel, predicting our current space age.

Beginning with his Garden in Sochi series of paintings (1940-43), Gorky finds his own voice, and it's wonderful. These are supposed memories of his father's garden in Armenia (re-named so they wouldn't reveal his true origin), abstract forms in a loose, melodic composition that almost dances out of the canvas. Three Waterfall paintings and a drawing from 1943 are completely abstract paintings of colors that run off the canvas. Here Gorky seems on the verge of Abstract Expressionism.

Then The Liver Is the Cock's Comb (1944) suddenly dispels the euphoria of a paradise on earth. Sadly, Gorky had returned to the reality of life: erotic, violent and always in motion.

The end of hope

Tragic episodes in Gorky's personal life are reflected in the paintings on view in the final galleries, so that his suicide in 1948 seems almost inevitable. His Last Painting in 1948 demonstrates the extent of his depression. The black eyes peering through the dark depths of space project the end of all hope. And he had tried so hard!

Although the exhibition is a completely enervating experience, it does encompass an important artist's life in all its facets, and it's accompanied by an excellent catalogue. The retrospective, organized by the Art Museum's curator of modern art, Michael Taylor, will travel to the Tate Modern in London and The Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles following its Philadelphia run.♦


To read another review by Andrew Mangravite, click here.
To read another review by Marilyn MacGregor, click here.
To read another review by Robert Zaller, click here.
To read a response, click here.