By KAREN BLOOM
"Four Originals: Cassatt, O'Keeffe, Nevelson, and Frankenthaler," is an exhibition that explores the individualistic, groundbreaking work of these four major women artists. It opened last week and remains on view through January 4, 2004, with 70 works of art represented.Spanning four generations and more than one hundred years, each of these artists-Mary Cassatt, Georgia O'Keeffe, Louise Nevelson, and Helen Frankenthaler-have made a major contribution to the art field. Despite the obstacles of a male-dominated art society, they ultimately emerged as powerful, influential personalities. "The exhibition will show how each of these four artists pioneered a fresh, new vision, and in so doing, asserted their unique identities," explained director Constance Schwartz. "To see the four of them together is an exciting visual experience."She further noted that "they have never before been seen in this context." From Cassatt and O'Keeffe's naturalism to the abstraction of Nevelson and Frankenthaler, these artists, all stylistic innovators, evolved within a culture that did not easily grant women autonomy, or particularly equal opportunity with men. In an age that was dominated by conventions and prejudices of Victorian society, Mary Cassatt, a young Philadelphian from a conservative upper class family, went to Europe and became the only American artist to play a formative role in the French Impressionist movement taking place in Paris. In spite of public derision, Cassatt became devoted to the "new realism," and play a crucial role in its evolution. Her preference for figure painting with psychologically charged themes of women and childhood was unique in Impressionism.Georgia O'Keeffe, a pioneer of American Modernism, differed from her contemporaries in that she combined her own idiosyncratic system of design principles-enlargement, cropping and linear precision-while rejecting European stylistic trends, especially, Expressionism or Cubism. Her primary subjects-the city, majestic and mystical western landscapes, and images of flowers-became not simply objects of contemplation, but visions of an alternative world.Unlike her Abstract Expressionism contemporaries, Louise Nevelson found the formal means to convey the movement's impulse through the discarded refuse of city streets. Lumber, boxes, architecture, and constructed objects became her palette, freely composed, in the cubist fashion, into monochromatic painted wall sculptures (a technique as radical as Pollock's "drip and splatter"). She created a radical new look by uniquely embracing the mystery of light and shadow.Helen Frankenthaler, taking her cue from Pollock, moved formalist abstraction towards its next logical state of development. Her distinctive innovation of color field painting, combined with her use of texture served as inspiration for several other artists. Despite a resurgence of Realism since the Pop-dominated '60s, Frankethaler's influence enabled Abstract art to continued to be relevant.In conjunction with the exhibit, and a museum tradition, NCMA will present lectures, demonstrations and workshops to enhance the experience of viewing the works of the show. On Thursday afternoons in October, November and December, Senior Curator Franklin Hill Perrell and Director Schwartz will present a series of six afternoon teas and exhibition tours that offer an overview of the exhibition. Also in October, the museum presents a one-women dramatization, "Artful Lives: Living Portraits of Women Artists Georgia O'Keeffe and Mary Cassatt." Actress-writer-producer Robin Lane acts out the artists' personalities and offers insights into their lives and work.
