Venice 34 (The Figurative Tradition in Recent American Art)

National Art Education Association

Venice 34 (The Figurative Tradition in Recent American Art)Source: Art Education, Vol. 22, No. 1 (Jan., 1969), pp. 21-25Published by: National Art Education AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3191310 .

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1968 marked the 29th time that the United States has participated in the Venice Biennale, the largest and oldest international art show. Featured here and on the cover of this issue of Art Education are representative works from the American sector of the Biennale, currently (and through February 2, 1969) installed in a full- scale museum setting at the Smithsonian Institution's National Collection of Fine Arts in Washington, D.C. (the Smithsonian organized the American representation through the International Art Program component of the National Collection). Selection of the artists and of the art was done by Norman A. Geske of the University of Nebraska, who served as commissioner-at-large. He explains his choice of figurative art in an introduction to the exhibit's catalogue: "After more than twenty years, during which American artists achieved international leadership by demonstrating the pos- sibility and vitality of a completely abstract mode of seeing, it is now perfectly clear that figuration is once again a serious vehicle of expression for many American artists. While it is demonstrable that this tradition never ceased to have its practitioners, even during the ascendancy of abstract expressionism, it is equally demonstrable that the present practice of figuration is quite different from that of the earlier decades of the century and that its present strength is due in large part to the experience of abstraction itself." The two American artists whose works attracted the most attention in Venice were Gallo and Grooms. Grooms' "City of Chicago," a large installation of painted wood and paper, with motorized parts, is illustrated on the cover and again on page 24. The work, which amused some and appalled others, was described as "part theater, part department store window," and "an environ- mental satire that at first seems only outrageously funny but with longer looking reveals itself as both imaginative and superbly executed." Other artists represented in the show were sculptors Reuben Nakian, Leonard Baskin, and Robert Cremean; and painters Edwin Dickinson, Byron Burford, Richard Diebenkorn, James McGar- rell, and Fairfield Porter. The works reproduced here (by permission of the National Collection of Fine Arts, Smithsonian Institution) are as follows: Page 21, "Homage to Clyde" by Byron Burford; facing page, "Jack Earl and Friends," also by Burford; page 24, from left to right, section of "City of Chicago" by Red Grooms, "The Pear Tree" by Fairfield Porter (top), and "Recollections of a Visit to Leningrad" by Richard Diebenkorn (detail, below); page 25, Diebenkorn's "Large Woman."



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Venice 34 (The Figurative Tradition in Recent American Art)