The House of World Cultures’ exhibition tells the story of the Congress for Cultural Freedom’s use of an aesthetic of freedom, and contextualizes the lasting legacy of modernism within the geopolitical power struggles of the Cold War.
Abstract Expressionism
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Two Cy Twombly Exhibitions Marry Myth and Sensual Abstraction
By a playful amalgam of semiotics with scatology, Twombly redevised history painting into palimpsest poop.
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The Second Generation Abstract Expressionist Ed Clark
Ed Clark’s approach is simple and straightforward, and he has not altered it much over the years. I don’t think he needs to.
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An Ambitious Survey of the Titans of Abstract Expressionism
This expansive AbEx show is brash, irreverent, and unconstrained, just like the period it aims to express.
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Sexism and the Canon: Three Female Artists Reflect on ‘Women of Abstract Expressionism’
DENVER — The paintings in Women of Abstract Expressionism at the Denver Art Museum are rich with emotion, monumental in scale, and totally original.
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When Painter Clyfford Still Sent Rubber Underpants to a Pulitzer Prize-Winning Female Art Critic
In 1952, years before she won the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism, art critic Emily Genauer received a pair of rubber underpants in the mail — the kind of underpants babies wore before the advent of disposable diapers.
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‘Women of Abstract Expressionism’ Challenges the Canon But Is Only the Beginning
DENVER — The story goes like this. It is 1950. Virginia born painter Judith Godwin learns that dancer and choreographer Martha Graham will be in the region and all Godwin can think about is her desire for Graham to perform in Staunton at the all women’s school she attended, Mary Baldwin College.
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Why Were So Many Women Excluded from the History of Abstract Expressionism?
In the fourth episode of the Hyperallergic Podcast we focus on the Women of Abstract Expressionism exhibition at the Denver Art Museum.
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Clyfford Still’s Radical Repetitions
DENVER — The Clyfford Still Museum’s current exhibition, Repeat/Recreate, has been on the institution’s wish list for nearly 10 years, since well before it even opened.
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The Elusive Painter Who Predicted Minimalism in the Mid 1950s
John Ferren did not so much work outside the mainstream as circle it continuously in a personal and highly meditative quest for meaning.
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Finally, an Exhibition Devoted to the Women of Abstract Expressionism
The paradigm of the “overlooked female artist” is both a cliché and a truth.
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Learning from an Artist’s Early Experiments with AbEx
For young painters today, Abstract Expressionism is ancient history; a few rooms in MoMA’s permanent collection galleries, a handful of images from the pages of Gardner or Janson, all set before a backdrop of a now mythical Downtown Manhattan of $200-dollar-a-month lofts.
