Suitcase Paintings

This week...post-war/contemporary art set auction records: $72.8 million for Mark Rothko’s White Center (Yellow, Pink and Lavender on Rose) [from a Rockefeller , via Sotheby's, to a mysterious bearded collector!]; $52.6 million for a Francis Bacon; even $5.8 million for a Tom Wesselman.

This week here in Athens...post-war/contemporary art is on display. Blog posts already exist about the Jay Bolotin exhibition [here] and [here]. Tonight, we open to the public Suitcase Paintings: Small Scale Work by Abstract Expressionists. The show will remain open until July 22, and then will travel to five other museum venues.

From the Georgia Museum of Art's website:

"Big. That is how most of us think about Abstract Expressionism of the mid-20th century. The artists worked with big ideas, big emotions, big action and on big scale. This group of ground-breaking artists, sometimes referred to as the New York School, pushed the limits of scale, using the canvas as a field to act upon. However, most also created small-scale works of intense beauty and intimate size, while losing none of the bravura and energy.

Suitcase Paintings, organized by Art Enterprises, Ltd., Chicago, is designed to show this other side of the movement. The exhibition will also introduce to many viewers some artists who, while important at the height of Abstract Expressionism, may be less known today. Suitcase Paintings include[s] work by Franz Kline and Elaine de Kooning, among several others."

The primacy of the paint itself, and the role of Surrealism and the the free expression of the unconscious mind are themes throughout. Emphasis is on New York in the show, but Chicago and San Francisco Abstract Expressionists get a gallery. The exhibition is intense, made more concentrated by the small size of the objects.


“It’s possible to paint a monumental picture that’s only 10 inches wide, if one has a sense of scale, which is very different from a sense of size.” -- Robert Motherwell

“I don’t feel that it’s necessary to get a painting that large to have impact. I think that, with the control of whatever the medium is, you can get it, I always say, in a postage stamp size.” -- Perle Fine

Images: (l) View of the opening section of the exhibition, including paintings by William Baziotes, Buffie Johnson, and Alfonso Ossorio. (c) Franz Kline (1910-1962), Untitled, 1958, oil and collage on paper laid down on canvas, 17 3/8 x 14 7/8 inches, Collection of Art Enterprises, Ltd., Chicago. (r) View of the "Tenth Street Style" section of the show.