Perle Fine - Abstract Critical

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East Hampton artists at a beach picnic, 1962. Standing, left to right: Buffie Johnson, Lester Johnson, Howard Kanovitz, Fairfield Porter, Syd Solomon, Frederick Kiesler, Norman Bluhm, Emanuel Navaretta, and Perle Fine (with hand on hip). Seated, left to right: unidentified, Lee Krasner (back to camera), Al Held, Mary Kanovitz, Balcomb Greene; middle row: John Little, Elaine de Kooning, James Brooks, Rae Ferren, Charlotte Park, Louis Schanker, Sylvia Stone, Ibram Lassaw, Theodoros Stamos, Jane Wilson, Jane Freilicher, Robert Dash; left from front center: David Porter, Adolph Gottlieb, John Ferren, Lucia Wilcox. Photograph by Hans Namuth. Courtesy Center for Creative Photography, University of Arizona © Hans Namuth Estate. volatile, and at times atmospheric.” 31 Fine concurred, stating her opinion that Americans had contributed to art in the previous Wfteen years “through this churning and this violent kind of thing.” To Fine, color was necessary to the expression of emotion and pointed out that her paintings at Graham included some that that were muted and introverted and others that were the opposite. Indeed, despite the structural similarities, each painting, through both color and form, reveals diVerent spatial and emotional qualities. In one, a yellow rectangle pushes forward from a rich russet ground, while in another, the deep brown rectangle sits back and the dusky orangered ground pulsates toward us. Fine also aVected mood through the subtleties in her brushwork. At times, the edges are crisp, creating a clear diVerentiation between shape and background, and bringing one or the other forward. At other times, the edge is softened, allowing a square to Xoat in the space. In some of the images, the ground tone varies, seeming to bleed out from the edges. Lawrence Campbell observed this aspect of the works in a review of the Graham exhibition in Artnews, writing: “Since each painting developed as it went along, [Fine] has loosely Xaked oV certain edges, allowing other planes to collide at Wrmly deWned limits, and allowed other colors to lap as though they were at sea at some eternal doorway.” 32 In the Cool series, the position of the rectangles and squares in the compositions impact the way we read the space. Placed toward the lower edge of the canvas, the angular shape can seem to cut the picture plane, as in one of Barnett Newman’s zips, while the movement is at once centripetal, into the open window, and decentered, extend ing into the world beyond. As a result, the images 10
create a sense of the meditative and peripheral at once. They are thus emotionally and spiritually absorbing, in the manner of a work by Rothko, yet analytical in their spatial ambiguity. Although Fine linked her viewpoint to that of Mondrian, the Cool series parallels the era’s gestalt, as the pendulum swung from the intense exposés of the artists’ psyche that constituted Abstract Expressionist art to a type of painting in which the artist stepped back, letting the painting engage the viewer directly. Championing the new approach, Clement Greenberg named it “Post- Painterly Abstraction,” so as to align it with the classical tradition; he was alluding to the recurring alternating pattern throughout art history of the classical (nonpainterly) and the baroque-romantic (painterly). The name Color Field is the one, however, that has come most commonly to describe this stylistic mode, present in works created from the 1950s until about 1970. 33 Cool, a word whose usage has shifted throughout the ages, was a concept Wtting to the new era and the new painting. In Color as Field: American Painting, 1950–1975 (2007), Karen Wilkin described this phenomena. She observed that although there are commonalities in Color Field works by artists such as Helen Frankenthaler, Morris Louis, Kenneth Noland, and Jules Olitski (such as a “primacy of color, frontality, spatial and emotional ambiguity, and a paradoxical ‘signature’ anonymity, with the deployment of surprising hues made to assume the burden of associative meaning”), they In his review of Fine’s Graham show in the New York Post, Sandler gave credence to the way Fine had gone forward from the art of the previous era to the new paradigm, stating: Perle Fine, showing at the Graham Gallery, has gathered up the “action” in her painting and concretized it into large and peaceful rectangles that Xoat upon evocative backgrounds of blue-violet, brown, green, and rose. It would seem that she has absorbed the ambiance of Kline and Rothko without assuming the former’s violent thrusts or the latter’s glowing suspensions. What emerges, instead, is an altogether surprising delicacy, a kind of poetic equilibrium—and this, despite the inherent energy characteristic of boldly painted squares or rectangles, or the stark economy of color. 35 When Fine showed additional Cool series paintings at Graham in March of 1964, John Gruen wrote in the New York Herald Tribune: Miss Fine continues to explore the geometric shape as it occurs on a Xatly painted background—the colors creating tensions—the shapes assuming the function of expressive dividing lines that give way to other shapes, forming other sequences of expression. There is a vibrant light that emanates from these works, not blinding or jarring or dizzying. It is an arresting light that remains constant, lending purity—even dignity, to essentially emotional statements. 36 are more distinguished by their “cool”—in Marshall McLuhan’s sense of the word—than by any obvious relation to Abstract Expressionism. Louis’s, Noland’s, Olitski’s, and, to a degree, Frankenthaler’s otherwise diverse paintings, with their insubstantial surfaces and deliberately suppressed “handwriting,” all appear strikingly reticent, not only physically but also psychologically. . . . While scrupulously avoiding anything resembling psychological symbolism, the “post-painterly” conception of “cool” included the belief that a painting, no matter how apparently restrained, could address the viewer’s whole being—emotions, intellect, and all—through the eye, just as music did through the ear. . . What sets Color Field paintings apart is the extraordinary economy of means with which they manage not only to engage our feelings but also to ravish the eye. 34 Lee Krasner and Perle Fine at Ashawagh Hall Fair, Springs, New York, mid-1960s. 11
Page 1 and 2: Perle Fine A
Page 3 and 4: The Cool Series
Page 5 and 6: Perle Fine The Cool Series curated
Page 7 and 8: From the time she began to exhibit
Page 9 and 10: To Perle Fine, modern art is a cons
Page 11: to her new life in the country. “
Page 15 and 16: Perle Fine (1905-1988) museum colle
Page 17 and 18: Brooklyn Museum, New York, Internat
Page 19 and 20: Cool Series, No. 29, Cool Blue Cold
Page 21 and 22: Cool Series, No. 1, (Red over White
Page 23 and 24: Cool Series, No. 36, Rough-Hewn ca.
Page 25 and 26: Cool Series, No. 15, The Very End c
Page 27 and 28: Cool Series, No. 44, Double-Square
Page 29 and 30: Cool Series, No. 7, Square Shooter
Page 31 and 32: Cool Series, No. 22, Wide U ca. 196
Page 33 and 34: Cool Series, (Orange over Yellow) c
Page 35 and 36: Perle Fine in her studio, New York

Perle Fine - Abstract Critical

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