AMERICAN ABSTRACT ARTISTS
50TH ANNIVERSARY CELEBRATION 1936 – 1986
David Reed [foreword]
Original edition. Slim quarto. Printed stapled wrappers. 72 pp. 8 color plates and 66 black and white illustrations. Essays, membership rosters, exhibition checklist. A fine, fresh copy.
8 x 9.75 softcover catalog with 72 pages, 8 color plates and 66 black and white illustrations for the show originating at the Bronx Museum for the Arts, February 6 – April 20, then travelling to the Hillwood Art Gallery, Long Island University, C.W. Post Campus, from October 1 – 24, 1986. Includes essays by Judy Collischan Van Wagner and Philip Verre.
“This organization’s oft-recounted origins . . . can be considered pivotal to a concentrated emphasis on abstract art in this county, to the evolution of New York City as a center for art, and to the recognition of American art on a par with that of Europe.”— Judy Collischan Van Wagner
Includes color plates by John Opper, Balcomb Greene, Gertrude Greene, Byron Browne, Alice Trumbull Mason, Werner Drewes, Vaclav Vytlacil, and Esphyr Slobodkina.
And black and white plates by George [Giorgio] Cavallon, Hananiah Harari, Albert Swinden, Rosalind Bengelsdorf, Louis Schanker, Carl Holty, Josef Albers, Charles G. Shaw, George L. K. Morris, Ibram Lassaw [X 2], Herzl Emmanuel, Ilya Bolotowsky, George Mcneil, Esphyr Slobodkina [X 2], Susie Frelinghuysen, Jene Highstein, Doug Sanderson, Gary Golkin, Lewin Alcopley, Tom Doyle, Merrill Wagner, Ruth Eckstein, Alice Adams, Paul Heald, Alan Kleiman, Jeremy Gilbert-Rolfe, Mac Wells, Roger Jorgensen, Ward Jackson, Robert Goodnough, Naomi Boretz, Leroy Lamis, John Goodyear, James Juszcczyk, Richard Anuszkiewicz, Oli Sihvonen, Ce Roser, Hiroshi Murata, Robert Conover, Nikolai Kasak, Jerry Kajtenanski, Nassos Daphnis, Leo Rabkin, Irene Rousseau, Jeanne Miles, Lucio Pozzi, Budd Hopkins, Raquel Rabinovich, James Seawright, Oscar Magnan, Harold Krisel, Vincent Longo, Judith Rothschild, Judith Murray, Jean Cohen, Susanna Tanger, Vivienne Thaul Wechter, David Reed, Joan Webster Price, Marcia Hafif, Racelle Strick, James Gross, and Louis Silverstein.
“The late forties and early fifties are marked by the group’s effort to disseminate [abstraction] on an international level. The first foreign tour of AAA works took place in 1950 with presentations in Paris, Copenhagen, Rome and Munich. An exhibition in Tokyo’s Museum of Modern Art was organized in 1955. The AAA also arranged for abstract artists from other countries to show with the group in America . . .Activities of this type culminated in the 1957 AAA publication, The World of Abstract Art [which is] to this date not only a major research tool but a seminal art document of the 1950s.” — Philip Verre
American Abstract Artists was founded in 1936 in New York City, at a time when abstract art was met with strong critical resistance. During the 1930s and early 1940s, AAA provided exhibition opportunities when few existed. Its publishing, panels and lectures provided a forum for discussion and gave abstract art theoretical support in the United States. AAA was a predecessor to the New York School and Abstract Expressionism, and contributed to the development and acceptance of abstract art in the United States. American Abstract Artists is one of the few artists’ organizations to survive from the Great Depression and continue into the 21st century.
Here is the Editorial Statement from American Abstract Artists 1938 Yearbook:
By the fact of their active existence and production, the American Abstract Artists express the authenticity and autonomy of the modern art movement in the United States. The word abstract is incorporated into our title as a provisional gesture so that we can be identified as a particular group in our effort to clarify growing and actively significant concepts of art.
Abstract, like so many other words, is too often used as an idiosyncratic suggestion, rather than as a concept which defines particular values. To understand abstract art is, in reality, no more a problem than understanding any and all art. And this depends upon the ability of the individual to perceive essentials, to perceive that which is called universally significant, and to evaluate the unity and relationship that is contained in any work.
As the first and only comprehensive organization of its type in the United States, we are faced with the familiar problem of a largely unsympathetic and biased criticism, a criticism which merely negates, condemns, or ridicules. There is, however, a more encouraging response to our exhibitions and lectures, a response that could be especially experienced only by the form and action of a representative and authentic organization. Individuals working and studying against the odds of isolation can now be articulate and related to others working in similar directions.
The membership of this group is homogeneous to the extent of its recognition of the mutual problems and limitations, and in its willingness to cooperate in the presentation and solution of these problems. We are, as in any group, heterogeneous and diverse in our concepts.
To place artistic, or any cultural effort on the level of a competition is to negate the method and meaning of knowledge. American Abstract Artists dedicates itself to the problems of the artist and student, presented in the terms of method and activity that define the artist; and limits itself accordingly for the purpose of clarification. As to the question of which aspects of life affect the artist in his effort, this is demonstrated by the character and efficacy of his activity and production; for this we present the individual artist.
No educated intelligence can draw the so-called line of national culture as an ambition and objective, without discerning its ambiguity. Beside being impossible, such a misconception is a negation of the very essence of cultural effort; the general heightening and application of knowledge. To make this negation may be politically expedient but it serves only to preserve and sway ignorance. While knowledge belongs to no nationality, particular nations do exist, and each nation has, and is, a peculiar and limited cultural development.
Considering the tempo of present political history and the importance of the various fields of knowledge in relationship to it, we can do nothing better than emphasize tha the contemporary must respect the interpretation and concatenation of all culture. True culture is recognizable when established from the standpoint of scientific thought and effort. For us it is established through the freedom to develop facilities and to maintain their proportional distribution, as civilized achievements, toward the enlivenment of existence—an unequivocal application toward the physical and psychic benefit of all humanity.
For these reasons, American Abstract Artists was formed in November of 1936. It has now attained a national scope and is more active in 1938. —The Editors