Review: The NGA's 'American Masters' is art with astounding confidence
Art | Sasha Grishin
American Masters 1940–1980. National Gallery of Australia, until November 11.
On his retirement, the outgoing director of the National Gallery of Australia, Gerard Vaughan, made the remarkable observation that the art collection of the National Gallery was numerically larger than that of the National Gallery of Victoria and the Art Gallery of New South Wales combined.
While many of the 160,000 artworks in the NGA collection are drawn from the great heritage collections of Australian prints, photography and the applied arts, in the gallery’s earliest history, under its inaugural visionary director James Mollison, significant collections of international art were created in such areas as American art, Russian avant-garde art and international printmaking. Selections from any of these collections would attract the nomenclature of a ‘‘blockbuster exhibition‘‘ with precious dazzling treasures and destination pieces.
Before the gallery opened its doors in 1982, Mollison was armed with a reasonable acquisitions budget, particularly under the enlightened administration of prime minister Gough Whitlam, and bought exquisite items at what, in retrospect, were deemed bargain basement prices. Philistine politicians and the gutter media of the day attacked these acquisitions until the general public saw the works and were thrilled by their boldness, funky inventiveness and provocative nature. Blue Poles by Jackson Pollock became the most famous painting in Australia and still attracts thousands of visitors annually, some of whom peer at it with hushed reverence, while children squeal with surprise and delight.
The exhibition American Masters was instigated by Vaughan and inherited by the new incoming director Nick Mitzevich. It presents some of the highlights of the American collection at the gallery, the lion’s share of which was acquired under Mollison. Having spent many years living and teaching in Canberra, there is more than a touch of nostalgia on seeing so many old friends, many of which have not been on display for decades.
There are of course the evergreen favourites, including Pollock’s Blue Poles and Willem de Kooning’s Woman V, but many others, including Alan Sonfist’s Earth monument to New York, Robert Smithson’s Rocks and mirror square II and the knockout Sol LeWitt Wall drawing no 380, I have not seen for many years.
Much of the work is of exceptional quality – amongst the best examples of its type – and frequently consisting of the signature pieces by artists such as Mark Rothko, Claes Oldenburg, Frank Stella, Andy Warhol, Bruce Nauman, Joseph Kosuth, Robert Mapplethorpe, Cindy Sherman, Dan Flavin, Barnett Newman, Agnes Martin, Chuck Close and Roy Lichtenstein. These are household names in the pantheon of American art and, in most places, would be billed as must-see ‘‘masterpieces’’.
Walking through this well-arranged exhibition I could not but be struck by the confidence of much of this art. Most of it was from New York, where there seemed to be an arrogant self-confidence that artists were working in the art capital of the free world and what they were doing was innovatory, exciting and of international significance. Such confidence would be unthinkable in New York today; the centre has fallen apart, artists are gripped with self-doubt and few would try to mimic the hollow rhetoric of the 1950s, 60s and 70s.
What also struck me was how few of the American greats were actually American-born. Many were displaced by the Nazi occupation of Europe, others came from what was the former Russian Empire or parts of Asia. Even those artists whom we tend to associate with the hardcore American New York School, including Philip Guston, who actually came from Ukrainian Jews and was born in Canada. Arshile Gorky was Armenian, Mark Rothko was Russian Jewish while Willem de Kooning was Dutch. Today, more artists in America would migrate to Canada rather than suffer the oppressive atmosphere and impossible rents in New York.
The other thing about the American avant-garde of this period - it was predominantly a boy’s club. Its best female artists, including Agnes Martin, the Parisian-born Louise Bourgeois, the Japanese-born Yoko Ono, the German-born Eva Hesse and the wonderful and feisty Helen Frankenthaler, initially struggled for serious recognition.
Post-war American art was an incredibly influential development for the art of many countries, including Australia. Some of it, from today’s perspective, appears a little silly, the scale unjustifiable in view of the relatively trite content, and the assumptions about the nature of art and the human experience a little naïve and blown out of all proportion by the American art market.
The great experiment in American art in the second half of the 20th century was dazzling - at times breathtaking - and always intended to impress. The strength of the holdings of the National Gallery enable such an exhibition to be mounted from its own collection, a feat that could be attempted by very few art galleries in the world.