McNeil's world
Brilliant colors and perpectual motion PROVINCETOWN — The gallery vibrates with the colors that pulsate across George McNeil's canvases. Dance is actually one of the themes of this retrospective for an artist who spent many summers in Provincetown, from the mid-1930s to the early '60s. There are dancing figures in some of the works, but even in those that are totally abstract, the colors dance. Lusty orange, brash blue, raucous red, elegant teal, pungent green and saucy yellow whirl through the space.
"George McNeil: Bathers, Dancers, Abstracts," which is on exhibit at the Provincetown Art Association and Museum through July 21, brings back work McNeil pursued during his years in town. In conjunction with the museum show, the Berta Walker Gallery in Provincetown is exhibiting three paintings and a collections of works on paper by McNeil through July 14.
Even if you didn't know, you could have guessed that McNeil studied with Hans Hofmann. His color and energy are rooted in that master's teachings. McNeil was a Hofmann student in the 1930s, and, according to McNeil's daughter, Helen, in the catalog essay, "Hofmann's teaching was transformative." Helen McNeil and her husband, Graham Ashton, curated the exhibition, which was shown earlier this year at the ACA Galleries in New York.
McNeil was part of the WPA art program in the '30s and was a founding member in 1936 of American Abstract Artists, a group designed to find a marketplace for American abstractionists.
On View What: "George McNeil: Bathers, Dancers, Abstracts - A Themed Retrospective"
When: through July 21: noon-5 p.m. dail 8-10 p.m. Frida Saturday beginning Thursday, noon-5p.m. and 8-10 p.m. daily
Where: Provincetown Art Association and Museum, 460 Commercial St., Provincetown
Information: 508-487-1750
What: "George McNeil: The Provincetown Years"
When: 11 a.m.-4 p.m. daily, through July 14
Where: Berta Walker Gallery, 208 Bradfordt St., Provincetown
Information: 508-487-6411
the late '40s, the New York art world picked up the cue from Peggy Guggenheim, who launched a new generation of artists at her Art of This Century Gallery. And suddenly the works of Abstract Expressionists Jackson Pollock, Robert Motherwell, Mark Rothko and Adolph Gottlieb were all the rage. McNeil was part of the wave of Abstract Expressionism that took the country by storm in the 1950s.
In the early '60s, along with other artists who were challenging the dominance of Abstract Expressionism, McNeil began incorporating the human figure into his paintings. But even after he took up figurative work, his painting still boasted the effervescent, spontaneous gestures that so define Abstract Expressionism.
The earlier abstract works in the exhibition - the 1954 "Black Sun" and "Circumnavigation" and two paintings from 1961, "Nassau" and "Sacrifice" - are more subdued and darker than the later ones. It seems bringing the figure into his paintings liberated him. In the '70s, '80s and '90s, he went wild with the boldest of colors and the most dashing of forms. The canvases are nois rambunctious. Not surprising, he was watching MTV, and influenced by that, did a "Disco" series with figures clattering in wild postures, as in "Demi-mondaine Disco."
"Bettina Belter" pictures a large blue head with a hand holding a microphone, with the letters, "GMCN," the artist's initials. Attached to a thin, blue line of a neck is the singer's small square of a body adorned in plaid. Surrounding the central image on an orange background are several gyrating dancers.
In "Courtship," the shoes are still, placed sole to sole. A woman's high-heel, pointy-toe slipper and a man's black boot have stopped and are clinging to one another.
Although "Creanor" and "Herbatim" from 1987 are abstract, they evoke a picture of the razzle-dazzle, the bustle and the throbbing of urban life.
The colors are brilliant, creating forms that seem in perpetual motion, sometimes comic, sometimes disconcerting. This is the wild, wild world of George McNeil: turbulent and dramatic, exciting and disorienting, a big, brash circus of life's great emotions.