Major Exhibition 'New York Cool' Revisits NYC's Downtown Art Scene in the '50s and '60s

Story posted April 14, 2009

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Robert Goodnough, American, born 1917, Large Rectangles Large, 1964-65, Oil and acrylic on canvas, Grey Art Gallery, New York University Art Collection, © Robert Goodnough.

The Bowdoin College Museum of Art will present New York Cool: Painting and Sculpture from the NYU Art Collection, a nationally traveling exhibition organized by New York University's Grey Art Gallery, between April 17 and July 19, 2009.

Curated by New York University professor and art critic Pepe Karmel, and drawn entirely from the New York University Art Collection, the show features more than 80 paintings, sculptures, drawings, and prints, including significant works by artists such as Willem de Kooning, Helen Frankenthaler, Alex Katz, Robert Rauschenberg, and others.

New York Cool surveys Lower Manhattan's disparate art world in the 1950s and early 1960s. While this era witnessed tremendous creative ferment in the New York art scene, it has been largely overshadowed by the heroic accomplishments of the Abstract Expressionists.

By the late 1940s, New York had clearly seized the leadership of the avant-garde, and American artists felt confident in the [global] significance of their work. This new assurance encouraged New York School artists to take risks, experiment, and reject accepted styles, including those of their immediate predecessors.

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Kenneth Noland, Spread, 1958, Oil on canvas, 117 x 117 in., Grey Art Gallery, New York University Art Collection, ©Kenneth Noland.

By 1965, two new movements—Pop and Minimalism—coalesced out of the ferment of the previous decade. The power and clarity of both have tended to obscure the richness and complexity of the art that came before.

"For too long, the later 1950s and the early '60s have been seen as a mere parenthesis between Abstract Expressionism, on one hand, and Minimalism and Pop Art, on the other," says Karmel. "What we're going to show is that most of the key innovations of the postmodern era actually emerged in this in-between period.

"You get the new diaristic collages of Robert Rauschenberg and the poem-paintings of Norman Bluhm and Frank O'Hara. You get the radical simplification of the grid in the work of Agnes Martin and Frank Stella. You get the anti-form randomness of Yayoi Kusama's infinity nets. You get the sexual imagery of Louise Bourgeois and the hidden religious symbolism of Louise Nevelson.

"Everyone thinks these were the years when Abstract Expressionism was sinking into senility. Actually, it was a period when a thousand new ideas were being born. Everything that comes afterwards—in the 1970s, '80s, and '90s—is already there in the late '50s and early '60s."

As a whole, New York Cool demonstrates how a new kind of personal sensibility developed in tandem with a seemingly impersonal geometric style. Allusive instead of expressive, understated rather than declarative, it sets the stage for what art critic and former NYU professor Irving Sandler has dubbed the new "Cool Art" of the 1960s.

Special Events

  • Apr. 15: Reading by former poet laureate Mark Strand, 5 p.m., Lancaster Lounge, Moulton Union
  • Apr. 16: "A Lesson in Looking," a lecture by former poet laureate Mark Strand, 7 p.m., Kresge Auditorium, Visual Arts Center
  • Apr. 16: Museum Open House, 7:30 p.m. to 9 p.m.

New York Cool is presented at Bowdoin with the support of the Stevens L. Frost Fund.

The Bowdoin College Museum of Art is open Tuesday through Saturday 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.; Thursday until 8:30 p.m.; Sunday 1 p.m. to 5 p.m.; and is closed Mondays and national holidays. Admission is free. For more information call 207-725-3275.

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