Arshile Gorky: a Retrospective of Drawings.WHITNEY MUSEUM OF AMERICAN ART Whitney Museum of American Art, in New York City, founded in 1930 by Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney. It was an outgrowth of the Whitney Studio (1914–18), the Whitney Studio Club (1918–28), and the Whitney Studio Galleries (1928–30). Opened to the public in 1931, the museum actively supports American art through the purchase and exhibition of the work of living artists. Arshile Gorky Gorky, former name of Nizhny Novgorod, RussiaGorky: see Nizhny Novgorod, Russia.Gorky, suburb of Moscow, RussiaGorky (gôr`kē) or Gorky Leninskoye has generally been regarded as among the first Abstract Expressionists, and hence a paradigm-breaking innovator, but his art was deeply rooted in a devotion to the old masters (Cezanne, Picasso, and Miro) that bordered on impersonation and an emphasis on well-rehearsed displays of technical virtuosity. Gorky was unrivaled in his patently erotic longing for aesthetic release--and greatness. This 140-work exhibition, curated by the Whitney's Janie C. Lee and Gorky scholar Melvin P. Lader, should make for good critical sport for those reconsidering the myth of AbEx from the vantage of Gorky's maverick traditionalism, but the immediate and preternaturally enduring satisfactions are those of sex in a pen and sex in a pencil. Nov. 20-Feb. 15. |
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