Abstraction in American Art Draws Crowds

Since its December opening, the Montclair Art Museum’s exhibit, “Patterns, Systems, Structures: Abstraction in American Art” has been attracting a steady stream of viewers.

The exhibit – which came from the museum’s vast collection of permanent holdings – is a big show of surprises. The result is a show that bedazzles, intrigues and educates.

The show also appeals to a variety of art fans – from a preschooler who saw Edna Andrade’s big op art work and exclaimed, “I love this one” to a more mature group making observations about Robert Motherwell’s 1965 piece “Sea of Biarritz.”

Montclair-based artist Elizabeth Seaton, who teaches at the museum’s Yard School of Art, enjoyed “Deliverence Disco” a 1987 work by George J. McNeil, while visiting the show with her husband. She said, “What I really value about this installation is the variety of angles of attack on the issue of abstraction.” 

That variety is exactly what Chief Curator Gail Stavitsky said she had in mind for this exhibit, “My goal was to show the full spectrum of abstraction, from works with references to nature to works completely separated from nature.”

 Stavitsky also chose a mix of museum favorites and rarely-seen pieces from the museum’s collection, “We have a staggeringly strong collection but can only show a fraction of our holdings at any one time. There are a beautiful, rare Joseph Stella collage and a Bill Weinberger photograph, a close up of rust on a car, which we have never shown before.”

Both Weinberger and Jensen were New Jersey-based artists, from Newton and Glen Ridge respectively.  Some of the artists on display are marquee names, including: Stuart Davis, Georgia O’Keefe, Marsden Hartley, Josef Albers, Ad Reinhardt, Romare Bearden, Arshile Gorky and John Marin, represented by “Movement,” a 1946 rain driven image of coastal Maine. 

The show, which spans three large galleries, starts in the 19th century with two landscapes: James Abbot McNeil Whistler’s “The Sea,” ca. 1865  and George Inness’s “Niagara Falls,”1885—nine more late period Inness’s can be seen in in one of the museum’s other galleries.

“I knew I would include Will Barnet, Stavitsky said.  His “Celebration” is a strong print that we have never shown-- I’m very happy to show something different of Will’s.”The museum and Stavitsky have a long affiliation with whose current paintings were on

Earlier in his long career, Barnet was a major figure among the Indian Space painters, a group of American abstractionists who looked to Native American art for formal inspiration. The show offers an especially illuminating look at two of these works: “Indian Space Abstraction,” ca. 1948 by Peter Busa and “Laughing Boy”, 1949 by Stephen Wheeler. Both are on view near a showcase of three Native American artifacts, typical of those that inspired them. Across the room hangs “Mythological Meeting,” a dramatic Roy Lichtenstein from 1979 when the artist was eschewing his usual pop culture influences for that of Native American art.

Stavitsky’s lucid wall text offers biographical, historical and analytic information about each work and its place in abstraction.

The show continues through May 19. Part II, devoted to abstract 20th century painting and sculpture opens on February 12 in the adjoining Lehman Court and Shelby Family Gallery. Its opening coincides with the opening of “Look Now: Modern and Contemporary Art from Private Collections,” which includes some of the artists in the current exhibit. 

The Montclair Art Museum is at 3 South Mountain Avenue, Montclair. A docent led tour of the current exhibit will take place on Saturday, January 21 at 1 p.m., free with museum admission. For directions, hours, admission and other events, see Montclair Art Museum.