The National Gallery of Art (Washington, D.C.) and Tintoretto: A story 500 years in the making

To celebrate the 500th anniversary of the birth of Tintoretto, Venice Civic Museums Foundation began preparation as far back as 2015 for a monumental exhibition of his works. The result was a collaboration with the National Gallery of Art of Washington DC, and cooperation with local and international art galleries and collectors, which yielded two exhibitions. The first, Tintoretto 1519 - 1594, was divided between the Doge's Palace and Gallerie dell'Accademia in Venice, with the latter locale featuring works from the artist's youth. A selection from the works exhibited at those two locations were then merged into a single exhibition -- Tintoretto: Artist of Renaissance Venice -- currently on show at the National Gallery of Art. This exhibition will end on July 7th.

I was fortunate enough to have visited on May 17th. I arrived prior to the museum opening and was among the first to enter. My transit through the exhibition was smooth.

The exhibition is distributed through 10 rooms of Gallery 74 on the museum's main floor while the painting Saint Martin in Glory with Saint Peter and St Paul is exhibited by itself in the hallway of Gallery B. Attendees are directed to this painting after completing the tour of the main exhibit.

Saint Martial in Glory with Saint
Peter and Saint Paul
Jacopo Tintoretto, 1549

The exhibition is organized chronologically for the most part and even though there are broader themes, they slotted in well with the overall chronological schema. The themes are shown in the table below.

Table 1. Organization of the exhibit.

Theme	Explanation
The Mark of the Brush	Tintoretto’s painting technique
Breakthrough	Miracle of the Slave (1548) was his breakthrough effort. This section features paintings dome just before, during, and just after that recognition
Drawings from Sculpture	Tintoretto drew sculptures as a way to understand 3-dimensional forms
Heroic Bodies	Muscular, dynamic figures inspired by his study of the works of Michelangelo and other sculptors from antiquity
A Great Portraitist	One of the greats of 16th-century portraiture
Officeholders	Portraits of Officeholders
Storyteller	Supreme narrative painter of his day, especially as it related to religious subject matter
Tintoretto at Work	Planning the composition and his use of mannequins
The Mantle of Titian	Seeking to appeal to the old master’s clientele with scenes from classical mythology
Sacred Meditations	Religious works in his closing days

Reinforcing the chronological theme is a pair of self-portraits of the author. The first, painted in 1546 - 47, is located in the first room of the exhibit and shows a confident, forthright Tintoretto staring over his right shoulder at the viewer. The second, located at the end of the program, shows a 70-year-old Tintoretto looking glumly out at the viewer, his face and demeanor clearly reflecting the passage and travails of time. This was an artful bookending of the exhibition.

Self-Portrait
Jacopo Tintoretto, c. 1546/1547

Self-Portrait
Jacopo Tintoretto, c. 1588

In my post on the life of the artist, I mentioned him coming into fame after painting St Mark Freeing the Slave (1548). All of the paintings in the first salon, and most of the ones in the second, were completed prior to this "coming out." For me though, his Venus and Mars surprised by Vulcan could have easily been the launchpad (except maybe for the subject matter). The painting tells a great story with elements of humor and danger interwoven. The purity of Venus' skin is contrasted with her musculature and with the textured treatment of Vulcan's body. This is a captivating picture.

Venus and Mars surprised by Vulcan
Jacopo Tintoretto, c. 1545/46

Viewers of this exhibition are treated to robust and statuesque individuals in varying contortionate poses; many of the subjects are airborne. His treatment of the hands and arms of the subjects are especially interesting. Bodies are reminiscent of Michelangelo and female subjects appear unnaturally muscled.

The Last Supper
Jacopo Tintoretto, c. 1563/64

The room showing the portraits is an oasis in the turbulence that is the totality of the exhibition. The subjects are still and, for the most part, looking directly at the viewer. The eyes are captivating.

Portrait of a man with a white Beard
Jacopo Tintoretto, 1555

A Procurator of St Mark's
Jacopo Tintoretto, c. 1575/85

The organization and flow of the exhibition is complemented by overarching documentation in each room and painting-side documentation for each piece of artwork.

In examining the sources of the paintings in the collection, I noticed that three were from the Gallerie dell'Accademia, two were from the Doge's Palace, and three from the National Gallery. Beyond that, the exhibition pieces were sourced from a who-is-who of museums around the world, with a couple drawn from private collectors.

The Virgin Mary in Meditation and The Virgin Mary Reading were sourced from the Scuola Grande di San Rocco, the organization wherein Tintoretto placed in excess of 50 paintings over a 24-year period. This is the first time that these two paintings have ever left Venice. It should also be noted that the relationship of subject to landscape that is observed in these paintings is directly at odds with the norm for a Tintoretto piece.

The Virgin Mary in Meditation
Jacopo Tintoretto, c. 1582/83

The Virgin Mary Reading
Jacopo Tintoretto, c. 1582/83

This exhibition is extensive and comprehensive but does not include some of the artists greatest works. For example, St Mark Freeing the Slave and the Crucifixion of Christ are not included, the latter, I am sure, because of its size. The show does not suffer as a result of these missing works as the artist's style and range of work can be comprehended by a viewing of the works on display. I am now fully motivated to travel to Venice to see the works which could not make the trip over.

©EverythingElse238

Tintoretto: A Venetian Master

The artist that we know as Tintoretto was born Jacopo Comin in 1518 in Venice. His father gained the nickname Robusto after the manner in which he manned the ramparts during the course of a battle. His father's profession was that of a dyer (Tintore in Italian) so Jacopo took Tintoretto (little dyer) as his surname.

The young Tintoretto showed artistic tendencies in his youth such that, at 12 years of age, his father sought to apprentice him to Titian. His tenure with Titian lasted all of 10 days, with the resulting ill-will lasting until Titian's death.

Bereft of a master, Tintoretto worked diligently to hone his painterly skills. In addition to working in the world of fine art on canvas, he worked with fresco and furniture painters, areas which required rapid painting, one of the hallmarks of his future career.

Tintoretto's technique embraced the very nature of oil paint itself: slow-drying and easily reworked, the medium allowed the artist to devise the composition directly on the canvas and make changes as he worked. Foregoing the goal of capturing the illusion of reality, Tintoretto delighted in shortcuts, using broad strokes and strong contours to define forms, as if drawing in paint. His bold and energetic brushwork, left thick and visible on the surface, make his pictures look startlingly new -- and continues to inspire painters today (National Gallery of Art).

Self-Portrait
Jacopo Tintoretto, c. 1546/1547

The first works which brought him critical acclaim, and established him as one of the finest young artists on the Venetian scene, were the paintings done for Scuola Grande di San Marco in 1548 and between 1562 and 1564. The 1548 effort was The Miracle of St Mark Freeing the Slave which, according to museothyssen.org, featured elements such as daring foreshortening, artificial poses of the figures, and brilliant chromatic range. The painting created a sensation and made him the most talked-about painter in Venice with a number of commissions from churches and confraternities resulting (National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC).

The Miracle of St Mark Freeing the Slave
Jacopo Tintoretto, 1548

The works completed in the 1562 - 1566 timeframe were The Finding of the Body of St Mark and St Mark's Body brought to Venice.

The next major cycle of work involved the Scuola Grande di San Rocco. The Scuola leadership had asked that five artists submit drawings for the rotunda ceiling, with the promise that the artist of the winning drawing would be invited to paint the said space. Rather than submitting a drawing, Tintoretto painted the space in full, revealing his effort when all the parties had gathered together. Further, knowing that the Scuola could not refuse a donation, he gifted the painting to the organization. This infuriated the other painters who were "outraged by his aggressive marketing."

Bad feelings notwithstanding, he signed a contract to decorate the walls and ceilings of San Rocco, an effort which ran between 1564 and 1588. The series of large-format canvasses that comprise the San Rocco works are characterized by "daring and innovative effects of color and light." The Crucifixion of Christ, taking up an entire wall in the Sala dell' Albergo, is considered one of Tintoretto's greatest works.

In conception and execution, Tintoretto's Christ on the Cross is one of the most unusual and compelling scenes of the crucifixion of the 16th century. Instead of focusing on the individuals directly involved in the event, the artist provides us with a panoramic scene of Golgotha, populated by an astonishingly varied throng -- including soldiers, executioners, horsemen, tradesmen, onlookers, thieves and apostles -- engaged in all sorts of different activities and movements with almost insect-like urgency (visual-arts-cork.com)

The Crucifixion of Christ
Jacopo Tintoretto, 1565

During the time that he was involved with the San Rocco effort, Tintoretto was also engaged (along with Veronese) in the redecoration of the Doge's palace (1574 - 1577).

His crowning achievement was the The Last Supper, done for the Basilica di San Giorgi Maggiore and painted between 1592 and 1594. This composition differs drastically from that of the more traditional composition as represented in Leonardo's effort directly below.

The Last Supper
Jacopo Tintoretto, 1594

The Last Supper
Leonardo da Vinci, 1490s

The table is at a diagonal and the central point is the people serving and clearing the table. There is a mix of darkness and light with the light sources being the lamp above and Jesus' aureola. Angels hover above the somewhat spectral scene which is populated with muscular bodies and unnatural Tintoretto poses. According to Gardner (cited in Wikipedia), "The ability of this dramatic scene to engage viewers was well in keeping with Counter-Reformation ideals and the Catholic Church's belief in the didactic nature of religious art."

Self-Portrait
Jacopo Tintoretto, c. 1588

Tintoretto died in 1594 and was survived by his wife and eight children, three of whom were active in the workshop which their father had established.

As viewed by the  National Gallery of Art (Washington, DC), "With Titian and Veronese, Tintoretto (c. 1519 - 1594) was one of the three great painters of the golden age of Venetian art, a bold innovator whose works overwhelmed and sometimes outraged his peers." Giorgi Vasari described him as "swift, resolute, fantastic, and extravagant, and the most extraordinary brain that painting has ever produced." Henry James, considered among the greatest English-language novelists, called Tintoretto "The biggest genius who ever wielded a brush."

©EverythingElse238

The Mannerist School (1530 - 1600)

In its description of the subject of its exhibition Tintoretto: Artist of Renaissance Venice, the National Gallery of Art states "With Titian and Veronese, Tintoretto (c. 1519 - 1594) was one of the three great painters of the golden age of Venetian art, a bold innovator whose works overwhelmed and sometimes outraged his peers." His contemporary (and chronicler of the lives of the great artists) Giorgi Vasari described him as "swift, resolute, fantastic, and extravagant, and the most extraordinary brain that painting has ever produced." Henry James, considered among the greatest English-language novelists, called Tintoretto "The biggest genius who ever wielded a brush."

Venice born and bred, Tintoretto painted according to the precepts of the Mannerist school. Before discussing the artist, and the aforementioned exhibition, I provide an overview of Mannerism.

Mannerism, as described herein, is distinctly different from the Antwerp Mannerism that I have previously described. It emerged at the end of the High Renaissance and manifested as a "stylized twist" on Renaissance classicism. The name derives from the Italian word maniera which translates as "style" or "manner." Mannerism is viewed as a bridge between High Renaissance and Baroque. The chart below shows both the context and geographic distribution of the Mannerist school.

As stated by the Tate Museum,

Rather than adopting the harmonious ideals associated with Raphael and Michelangelo, Mannerists went a step further to create highly artificial compositions which showed off their techniques and skills in manipulating compositional elements to create a sense of sophisticated elegance.

Characteristics
The characteristics of Mannerism are as follows (mymodernmuseum.com, visual-arts-cork.com):

• Exaggerated figures -- this school rejected realistic proportions and, instead, rendered figures with impossibly elongated limbs and oddly positioned bodies. Two examples are shown below. Note the extended neck of Parmigianino's Madonna and some of the unnatural contortions in Tintoretto's The Last Supper.

Madonna of the Long Neck
Parmigianino, 1530 - 33

The Last Supper
Tintoretto, c. 1563/1564

• Elaborate decoration wherein the canvas is covered in an overwhelming abundance of decorative elements

Vertumnus
Giuseppe Arcimboldo, c. 1590 - 91

• Artificial color -- some of the mannerists abandoned the naturalistic colors of the high Renaissance painters and employed garish tones. See below, for example, Pontormi's Deposition from the Cross.

The Deposition from the Cross
Jacopo Pontormi, 1525 - 28

• Pictorial space filled by foreground figures (see Pontormi's Deposition above)
• The use of light from a single source sometimes abandoned in favor of contrasting effects of light and dark

Origins
The figure above (Mannerism in Context) shows a Florentine origin for the school and associates some of the greatest masters with Mannerism. The figure below shows examples of works by Raphael (The Transfiguration) and Michelangelo (The Last Judgment) which are considered Mannerist or Mannerist-leaning. The accompanying Fiorentino effort (Descent from the Cross) is clearly Mannerist and was also created in Florence. Note the similarities between Michelangelo's Last Judgment in the Origins figure and Tintoretto's oil sketch for his Paradiso painting that immediately follows.

Paradise
Tintoretto, c. 1583

But it was in Rome that Mannerism truly blossomed with Parmigianino and many of Raphael's students collaborating to push the genre forward. The success of the movement in Rome led to later Florentine painters such as Vasari (with limited success) and Salviati (much more so) adapting the style. The Rome school also inspired Mannerism's adoption in many major European cities.

Mannerism never conquered the art space in the way that the Renaissance did. Rather, many artists continued to paint in the High Renaissance style alongside the Mannerist painters. Further, Mannerism was viewed with a jaundiced eye by the Catholic Church which was in the midst of the Counter Reformation battle and did not view the style as advancing its goals. In that the Catholic Church was the leading fine-art patron, its skepticism eventually led to the demise of the school.

©EverythingElse238

The Antwerp Mannerists (1500 - 1530) painting style

With the death of Charles the Bold in 1477, many of the early Netherlandish painters lost the main source of their patronage. Further, their center of operations -- Bruges -- had begun to lose out to the city of Antwerp in the battle for economic dominance, further depleting the pool of patrons.

By the turn of the century, Antwerp had become the main trading and commercial center of the Low Countries. This economic vibrancy attracted many artists and resulted in increased membership in art guilds and the establishment of a large number of painting and sculpture workshops.

The acclaim of the early Netherlandish works had created a demand for paintings from the Low Countries and the Antwerp painters exploited the city's burgeoning export infrastructure and the multitude of workshops to meet those needs.

The style of painting emerging from this period (1500 - 1530) was first called Antwerp Mannerist by the art historian Max Friedlander in 1915 and the nomenclature has stuck. These paintings were most likely mass-produced to meet market demands:

1. Except in a few cases, the paintings are not associated with a specific, named artist. "The very anonymity of these artists point to their participation in mass production and formulaic repetition of figures, settings, motifs, and favorite subjects." Some of the known artists are Jan de Beer, Master of 1518, the early works of Jan Gossaert, and Adriaen Isenbrandt.
2. Subject matter is tightly circumscribed with Adoration of the Magi and Nativity scenes being dominant.

Some characteristics of the style are as follows:

• Attempts to incorporate both Flemish and Italian traditions into the composition
• Dramatic gestures and figural arrangements
• Lavish costumes
• Vivid, sometimes abrasive, coloristic effects
• Night scenes 
• Scenes crowded with figures.

A few examples of this style are provided below for illustrative purposes.

The Adoration of the Magi

Netherlandish (Antwerp Mannerist) Painter

Adoration of the Magi

Anonymous Antwerp Mannerist

The Nativity

Jan de Beer

King Solomon receiving the Queen of Sheba

Antwerp Mannerist

While Antwerp has been central to this style, its presence has also been observed in France, Germany, and Southern and Northern Netherlands. It should be noted that this style is unrelated to the Mannerist style associated with the High Renaissance in Italy.

©EverythingElse238

The underpinnings and characteristics of the Early Netherlandish painting style

After developing the historical context for Early Netherlandish painting, I now turn to a discussion of the underlying movement. What exactly is Early Netherlandish painting? According to artandpopularculture.com:

Early Netherlandish painting (also known as Flemish Primitive or Late Gothic) refers to the work of artists active in the Low Countries during the 15th and early 16th century Northern Renaissance, especially in the flourishing Burgundian centers of Bruges and Ghent. The period began approximately with the careers of Robert Campin and Jan van Eyck in the early 1420s and continued at least to the death of Gerard David in 1523. The end of the period is disputed, many scholars extend it to the death of Pieter Bruegel the Elder in 1569, or to the start of the Dutch Revolt in 1566 or 1568, or to the start of the 17th century.

I will use the 1420 - 1523 dates as the frame for this post.

Home of Early Netherlandish Art
A number of factors dictated that Flanders be the center of Netherlandish art. First, Bruges was the favored residence of the Dukes of Burgundy during their 15th-century rule. In 1446 the large court was based in Brussels but the duke traveled extensively, resulting in patronage being widely distributed. The potential for patronage attracted many talented artists. For example, Bruges was home to van Eyck (appointed Court Painter by Philip the Good), Petrus Christus, Hans Memling, and Gerard David while Rogier van der Weyden provided services to the Burgundian court at Brussels. Both Philip the Good (1419 - 1467) and Charles the Bold (1467 - 1477) were celebrated art patrons.

Portrait of a Man (Self-Portrait?)
Jan van Eyck, 1433

Second, Flanders was the most urbanized region of northern Europe in the 14th and 15th centuries and the nodal point for merchants from England, the Baltic, Italy, and France (Dr. Andrew Murray, Introduction to Fifteenth-century Flanders, Smarthistory, 8/23/17).

Third, Flanders had a thriving domestic economy. Wool was the fundamental commodity at that time and the best wool came from England. The cloth towns of Flanders -- Bruges, Lille, Bergues -- were closely linked to the English raw wool which was spun into yarn and woven into cloth by the highly skilled resident craftspeople. Dyeing and fulling operations were also conducted in these towns. This cloth was either sold in Bruges or exported to other European cities.

The dynamism of the urban environment (especially in the towns of Bruges and Ghent), plus the domestic and trade economies, served as the perfect crucible for the flowering of artistic production:

• Newly wealthy merchants became patrons of art
• Being at a trade hub made it easier to procure raw materials and ship finished goods out
• Urbanization allowed for the attraction of skilled craftsmen who could power the workshops that were critical to the production of work at scale.

Transition Zone
Let us travel back in time to the transition between the International Gothic and Early Netherlandish styles. The Limbourg brothers (three of them) were manuscript illustrators who worked for Philip the Bold and, after his death in 1404, his brother, John, Duke of Berry. Classic examples of their work are an illustration of the Bible (Bible moralisée) and the books of hours (Belles Heures (1405 - 1409) and Très Riches Heures du duc Berry (unfinished in their lifetime)).The latter of these books of hours is considered the greatest example of the International Gothic style in an illuminated manuscript. The brothers were the first to render landscape scenes with great accuracy (see picture below) and rendered elements in minute detail, characteristics which would become defining characteristics of the Early Netherlandish movement.

Limbourg Brothers
Très Riches Heures du Duc Berry
1409 -1549

Another key transition figure was Melchior Broederlam, court painter for Philip the Bold. One of the few works directly attributable to him are the Dijon Panels (shown below). The panels display International Gothic (and in the case of the left panel, Romanesque) sensibilities but also display naturalistic landscapes, utilize light and shadow to create a sense of depth, and provide a realistic, folksy depiction of Joseph. Further, these panels are painted with oil.  These panels, painted in the final year of the 14th century, are truly a portal into the world of the early Netherlandish movement.

Early Netherlandish Period

The work of Jan van Eyck in the 1420s signaled the beginning of the Early Netherlandish period. Great names in this period included Robert Campin, Rogier van der Weyden, Dierick Bouts, Petreus Christus, Hugo van der Goes, Hans Memling, and Gerard David but, by far, the most prominent of these was Jan van Eyck, one of the earliest. 

According to the History of Art Research Portal, what was painted did not change much. As in the Gothic era, religious topics on wood panels dominated along with standalone portraits or portraits woven into religious scene. Examples of these two subjects are shown in the charts below.

What did change, however, was how the subjects were painted, as well as how the audience was addressed. The "Eyckian" mode of painting was characterized by (hoaportal.york.ac.uk):

• New representational effects achieved by particular blends of oil and pigments applied in specific ways to the panel surface
• Attention to light, shadow, texture, and spatial setting
• An all-encompassing impression of naturalism permeates the entire image
• A sudden disappearance of the gold backdrop on panels and replacement by naturalistic interior or exterior settings.

Vasari, in his writings on the great artists, had credited van Eyck with the discovery of oil painting but that is inaccurate. Its beginnings were recorded as far back as the 12th century but van Eyck's use of the medium on panel contributed to the acclaim of his paintings and the eventual widespread adoption of oil as the medium of choice across Europe in the 16th century. The main attributes of oil paint is shown in the charts below.

The leading artists of this period sought to "make the painted image vividly present and to render the unseen palpable."  Works by masters such as van Eyck and van der Weyden were "prized for their remarkable qualities  of versimilitude, their technical and coloristic virtuosity, and their heightened expressive power."

After the death of Charles the Bold in 1477, many of the Netherlandish artists lost their patronage. The city of Antwerp began to compete with Bruges and Brussels economically as did the Antwerp-focused Northern Mannerists as a competing painting style.

I will cover the Antwerp Mannerists in a future post. Below please find some Early Netherlandish paintings I found at the National Gallery in Washington when I visited there for the Tintoretto exhibit.

Saint Jerome Penitent
Jan Gossaert, 1509/1512
Oil on panel

The Rest on the Flight into Egypt
Gerard David, c. 1510
Oil on panel

The Baptism of Clovis
Master of Saint Giles, c. 1500
Oil on panel

The Saint Anne Altarpiece
Gerard David and Workshop, c. 1500/1520
Oil on panel

©EverythingElse238

Historical painting context for Early Netherlandish period in the Low Countries

In my ongoing program to describe the art of the Low Countries, I have provided the Burgundian and early Habsburg historical contexts for early Netherlandish paintings. I now provide some context on the art that preceded it.

As shown in the figure below, the Gothic period immediately preceded the Italian and Northern Renaissances, and itself was preceded by the Romanesque period.

Gothic art told a narrative story through pictures and differed from Romanesque art in the way that figures became more animated in pose and facial expression and were arranged more freely in the background space. In addition, with the patronage moving from kings and emperors to knights and noblemen, the purpose of the art moved from acts of piety to private use and these new patrons were demanding " a different, more realistic style of painting to record its transitory, earthly riches for posterity."

The primary painting surfaces in the Gothic period are shown in the table below.

Table 1: Primary painting surfaces in the Gothic era.

Medium	Observations
Panel Painting	Began in Italy in the 13th century and then spread through Europe By 15th century had become the dominant medium
Stained Glass	Art of choice until the 15th century
Frescoes	Main pictorial narrative image Used on church walls in Southern Europe Could not be used in Northern Europe because of drying issues
Illustrated Manuscripts	Religious works created in cloisters by monks Secular works created in workshops and guilds Miniature representation of the world in which the artist lived Landscapes first appeared in this medium Killed by the invention of the printing press

Today illustrated manuscripts represent the most complete record of Gothic paintings. Some examples of gothic artworks are shown below.

French late Gothic frescoes
(By MOSSOT - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=10686187)

Illustrated manuscript
(Hours of Jeanne d'Evreux by Jean Pucelle, Paris, 1320s)

I will transition to the discussion of the Northern Renaissance and Early Netherlandish painting in my next post.

©Everythingelse238

Abstract Expressionism: A Social Revolution (At the Tampa Museum of Art)

Approximately four decades before the Basquiat-era Neo Expressionism movement shone a spotlight on New York City's East Village, the area had birthed an earlier art movement -- Abstract Expressionism. And that movement is the subject of a current Tampa Museum of Art exhibition titled Abstract Exhibitionism: A Social Revolution, Selections from the Haskell Collection (I found the title a tad clunky).

Abstract Expressionism
In the early 1940s, the East Village became the stomping grounds for a number of artists who congregated there, sharing ideas in a manner akin to the Impressionists in Montmartre. These artists shared "an interest in using abstraction to convey strong emotional or expressive content" and a "characteristic messiness and extremely energetic application of paint." These artists eschewed narrative and symbolism in their work exploring, instead, "the literal act of applying paint to the canvas."

The figure below presents a graphical overview of the key characteristics of the movement.

Phoebe Hoban, in her book Basquiat: A Quick Killing in Art, compared the Abstract Expressionism movement to the later -- but geographically co-located -- Neo-Expressionism movement:

... while the first movement shifted the tectonic plates of the art world from Paris to New York and shaped Western culture for the second half of the twentieth century, the second movement was merely a trendy fashion statement, a bleep on the radar ... The Abstract Expressionists came together to promote a cause, while the East Village artists came together to promote themselves.

According to Phoebe, the Abstract Expressionists put themselves on the map with a show on Ninth Street in 1951. Sixty-one artists displayed 61 pieces of art, the first time that the general public had had an opportunity to see the full scope of the movement's coverage. The below reproduction of the 9th Street exhibition poster by artist Franz Kline is included in the current Tampa Museum exhibition.

Haskell Collection
Preston Haskell is Chairman of the Haskell Company, a Jacksonville- (FL) based international design/build. His personal and corporate collections amount to 300 pieces of art work representing abstraction in Post-War and Contemporary Art. This exhibition is based on 25 pieces drawn from his collection.

The Exhibition
The exhibition was divided into three sections -- Abstraction and Revolution, Abstraction and Repitition, and Abstraction and its Legacy -- each endowed with significant information about its intent and, at the individual painting level, copious amounts of information on the artist and the work.

Abstraction and Revolution
This section showcased works by some of the artists who had exhibited at the seminal 9th Street show as well as works of some second-generation artists. The works are primarily esthetically pleasing action paintings that force the viewer to take a deeper look at the method of paint application.

One of the works that I found especially interesting was Franz Kline's Untitled. In the figure above which describes key influences for the Abstract Expressionists, I mentioned the role of chance in the contours of the final product. And other action painters like Willem de Kooning and Jackson Pollock were dyed-in-the-wool improvisationalists. Kline's approach, however, "was methodical and meticulously planned before execution. His paintings started as drawings, which he projected at a larger scale onto canvas."

Franz Kline
Untitled, 1960
Oil on paper

The other works that I found appealing in this section are shown below.

Hans Hoffman
Composition #3, 1956
Oil on canvas

Jean Miotte
Untitled, 1958
Oil on canvas

Willem de Kooning
Woman II, 1961
Oil on paper mounted on canvas

Helen Frankenthaler
February's Turn, 1979
Acrylic on canvas

Michael Goldberg
The Keep, 1958
Oil on canvas

Jack Tworkov
Bond, 1960
Oil on canvas

Jean-Paul Riopelle
Terre Promise (Promised Land), 1960
Oil on canvas

Karel Appel
Dans la Tempête (In the Storm), 1960
Oil on canvas

Joan Mitchell
Aire pour Marion (Space for Marion), 1975-76
Oil on canvas

Mark Rothko
Untitled, 1968
Oil on paper mounted on canvas

Theodoros Stamos
Sentinel, 1962-64
Oil on canvas

Expressionism and Repetition
Wherein the artists in the prior section reveled in spontaneity, chance, and improvisation, the artists spotlighted in this section were focused on symmetry and bounding colors within geometric shapes. The work by Richard Anuszkiewicz has a somewhat hypnotic look to it, with the green distinctly separated from the red. On closer examination one can be sucked in to the myriad, connector-like lines that constitute that outer red layer. A truly complex construct.

Josef Albers
Study for Homage to the Square, 1964
Oil on blotting paper

Richard Anuszkiewicz
Temple to Royal Green, 1983
Acrylic on canvas

Frank Stella
New Caledonian Lorikeet, 1980
Mixed media on Tycore Board

Kenneth Noland
Summer's Gold, 1983
Acrylic on canvas

Abstract Expressionism and its Legacy
I would have liked to see more pieces dedicated to this section and more time spent showing me exactly how/why some of the shown pieces were truly linked back to the original movement.  For example, the Rosenquist piece shrieked Pop Art to me but is considered an offshoot.

Gerhard Richter
Abstract Painting (613-3), 1986
Oil on canvas

James Rosenquist
Shriek, 1986
Monotype, lithograph, and collage

Sam Francis
Untitled, 1988-89
Acrylic on canvas

Paul Jenkins
Phenomena Magnetic Octaves, 1981
Acrylic on canvas

************************************************************************************************************************
This is a truly meaningful exhibition in that it not only shows pieces of the works of most of the leading figures in the Abstract Expressionism movement but, through its detailed descriptions of the pieces, the methods used to construct them, and the artists, provided a rewarding experience for novice and accomplished viewer of this movement alike.