Post-War Abstraction

Post-War Abstraction

at the Courtauld.

A small, but fascinating exhibition of works selected from the Courtauld's collection, which considers how artists freed themselves from the traditions of representational art to create abstract visual languages concerned with form, colour, gesture and subjectivity.

Alice Adams, Blue Plunge, 1966, (watercolour over pencil on wove paper)

Henri Michaux, Untitled, 1959, (black ink on paper)

With its suggestion of calligraphic symbols, this densely patterned ink drawing produces a dynamic landscape of anthropomorhic blots, which, in Michaux's words 'jump, run, climb, clamber down again'.

Sam Francis, Red, Black, Blue; Composition, 1958, (watercolour and opaque watercolour on paper)

Francis served as a military pilot and this emotive use of colour was partly influenced from his aerial experience of the landscape.

Philip Guston, Close-Up II, 1959, (oil on paper, mounted on board)

To see more of Guston's work go here

Jean Duduffet, Clar Grounds, 1955, (collage and black ink on paper)

Although on first encounter this work appears to be non-representational, it soon becomes apparent that we are looking at an abstracted landscape: a black sky above an eerie terrain populated by strange, fossil-like forms.

Richard Serra, Courtauld Transparency #4, 2014 (lithographic crayon on plastic sheet)

A hybrid of printmaking and drawing, this work was made by layering three transparent plastic sheets, the outer two of which Serra prepared with lithographic crayon. Applying pressure to the upper surface with a steel tool, he transferred ink to both sides of the central sheet, discarding the outer sheets to be left with a double-sided drawing.

Uncertain of how his movements would register and how much of the crayon would adhere, Serra was essentially working blind and ceding control to his materials. His presentation of the drawing as a framed work means that we see elements of the reverse through the sheet, interacting with the composition on the front to enliven our perception of surface and depth.

looking closer

Susan Schwalb, Parchment, 1981, (copper point and smoke on clay-coated paper)

Susan Schwalb is known for her use of metalpoint, a technique in which a metal stylus (in this case made of copper) is used to draw on a specially prepared surface. This remarkable work dates from the early years of Schwalb's transition into abstraction and is among 165 'burnt' works that she produced over a four-year period. First, Schwalb burnt the sheet with a candle to produce hazy, irregular smoke marks, before applying precise, luminous lines with a copper stylus. The result is a meditation on the relationship between chance and artistic intention.

Gerhard Richter, 3.1.85, 1985, (watercolour and oil on paper)

During the 1980s Richter experimented extensively with painting abstract watercolours, savouring the spontaneity and immediacy of the medium in contrast to the slower, intensive requirements of oil paint. In this work, he took the unorthodox step of combining the two media, drawing out their different transparencies to produce a complex visual effect of remarkable depth. Richter seems to have welcomed the unpredictable interaction of oil and watercolour and their challenge to his control of the image.

One of my favourite artists, I have seen a lot of his  work over the years. To see some of it you can go here , here , here - the last post is the most comperehensive one.
 

Joseph Beuys, Felt Corners (Movement) & Organic Movement, 1963, (oil and pencil on buff-coloured card)

Cy Twombly, Untitled, 1959, (crayon, pencil and paint on paper)

In 1953, Twombly worked for a short time as a cryptographer in the US military. The experience was deeply influential on him and seems written into the tension between concealment and exposure that plays out in this work. Twombly drew on the sheet with graphite pencil and crayon in dense, looping lines before obscuring many of these marks with thick, expressive strokes of creamy paint. We are left to puzzle together these fragments, searching for a meaning that seems just out of reach.

Cy Twombly, Untitled, 1959, (pencil on paper)

Twombly saw an affinity between drawing and writing, both of which he considered to be essentially gestural. Scattered across htis large sheet is an array of softly made lines and symbols, reminiscent of a wall graffitied with notations of private significance. Though these graphite marks hint at the possibility of legibility, they ultimately remain enigmatic, lodged in a personal realm of meaning, but still open to interpretation. The work's combination of subtlety, scale and complexity makes it an impressive early example of Twombly's highly original approach to abstract drawing.