Charlotte Park (artist)
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Charlotte Park, also known as Charlotte Park Brooks (1918–2010) was an American abstract painter. She began work as a professional artist soon after the close of World War II, working in studios first in Manhattan and then in eastern Long Island. She was associated with and drew both support and inspiration from her husband James Brooks and other first-generation
abstract expressionist Abstract expressionism is a post–World War II art movement in American painting, developed in New York City in the 1940s. It was the first specifically American movement to achieve international influence and put New York at the center of the ...
artists, including particularly her neighbors,
Jackson Pollock Paul Jackson Pollock (; January 28, 1912August 11, 1956) was an American painter and a major figure in the abstract expressionist movement. He was widely noticed for his " drip technique" of pouring or splashing liquid household paint onto a hor ...
, and
Lee Krasner Lenore "Lee" Krasner (born Lena Krassner; October 27, 1908 – June 19, 1984) was an American abstract expressionist painter, with a strong speciality in collage. She was married to Jackson Pollock. Although there was much cross-pollination betw ...
. During most of her career she neither sought nor received praise from critics and collectors, but late in life was celebrated for the quality of her artistic achievements and had her work shown in prestigious solo and group exhibitions. At the end of her life a critic said, "Hers was a major gift all but stifled by a happily embraced domesticity and by the critical bullying of a brutally doctrinaire art world."


Early life and training

Park was born in Concord, Massachusetts on March 11, 1918. She graduated from the
Yale School of Fine Arts The Yale School of Art is the art school of Yale University. Founded in 1869 as the first professional fine arts school in the United States, it grants Masters of Fine Arts degrees to students completing a two-year course in graphic design, painti ...
in 1939 but put off a career in art until after the close of World War II. In 1945 Park moved from Washington, D.C. to Manhattan and there took night classes from with the
Cubist Cubism is an early-20th-century avant-garde art movement that revolutionized European painting and sculpture, and inspired related movements in music, literature and architecture. In Cubist artwork, objects are analyzed, broken up and reassemble ...
painter Wallace Harrison who taught a geometric style of flat patterns.


Career in art

Park met James Brooks a fellow artist in Washington, D.C. while working for the
Office of Strategic Services The Office of Strategic Services (OSS) was the intelligence agency of the United States during World War II. The OSS was formed as an agency of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) to coordinate espionage activities behind enemy lines for all branc ...
(OSS). After moving to Manhattan in 1945, Park shared studio space with Brooks, and married him two years later. Brooks obtained the studio space when his friends,
Jackson Pollock Paul Jackson Pollock (; January 28, 1912August 11, 1956) was an American painter and a major figure in the abstract expressionist movement. He was widely noticed for his " drip technique" of pouring or splashing liquid household paint onto a hor ...
and
Lee Krasner Lenore "Lee" Krasner (born Lena Krassner; October 27, 1908 – June 19, 1984) was an American abstract expressionist painter, with a strong speciality in collage. She was married to Jackson Pollock. Although there was much cross-pollination betw ...
, vacated it on moving to East Hampton, Long Island. In 1949, Park and Brooks set up a studio in Montauk, Long Island and in 1954, when a hurricane blew the building off its foundation, they moved what remained of it to an area of East Hampton called Springs and there set up a pair of adjoining studios now known as the ''Brooks-Park Heritage Project''. In 1949, Park began teaching at Leonard School for Girls and subsequently became an instructor first at the
Dalton School The Dalton School, originally the Children's University School, is a private, coeducational college preparatory school in New York City and a member of both the Ivy Preparatory School League and the New York Interschool. The school is located in ...
then, between 1955 and 1957, at the People's Art Center of the
Museum of Modern Art The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. It plays a major role in developing and collecting modern art, and is often identified as one of ...
. In 1952 she participated in a group show at the Peridot Gallery and the following year she had a painting in the Annual Exhibition of Contemporary American Painting at the
Whitney Museum of American Art The Whitney Museum of American Art, known informally as "The Whitney", is an art museum in the Meatpacking District and West Village neighborhoods of Manhattan in New York City. It was founded in 1930 by Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney (1875–1942), ...
. In 1954 she participated in a group show at the Guild Hall in East Hampton. The Tanager Gallery in Manhattan presented her first solo show in 1957. Park showed often during the later 1950s, particularly in group exhibitions at Eleanor Ward's
Stable Gallery The Stable Gallery, originally located on West 58th Street in New York City, was founded in 1953 by Eleanor Ward. The Stable Gallery hosted early solo New York exhibitions for artists including Marisol Escobar, Robert Indiana and Andy Warhol. His ...
. She showed infrequently during the 1960s. Records show only that her work appeared in Manhattan at group shows at the Tanager Gallery (1959), the James Gallery (1960), and the Alonzo Gallery (1969) and, on Long Island, in group shows at East Hampton Guild Hall (1960), Setauket Gallery North (1965), and Southampton Parrish Art Museum (1970). She showed more frequently in the 1970s, including solo exhibitions at the Benson Gallery (1973 and 1976) and the Guild Hall (1979) as well as group exhibitions in those and other Long Island galleries. Her work was also included in a 1979 group show at the American Cultural Center in Paris. In the 1980s Charlotte's output declined and most of the exhibitions of her work from this time until her death in 2010 were retrospective in nature. These shows include a 1981 joint exhibition with Brooks at Himelfarb Gallery, East Hampton; a 1985 show called Hampton Artists at the Arbitrage Gallery in Manhattan; a 1991 show of works on paper from members of the New York School at Elston Fine Arts in New York; a 1995 show of Women in the Fifties at the Anita Shapolsky Gallery in New York; and solo exhibitions at the Parrish Art Museum (2002) and Sanierman Modern (2010). She was given a major retrospective at the Berry Campbell Gallery in 2016.


Artistic style and critical reception

Park was a first-generation abstract expressionist who favored both geometric and gestural forms. Although she drew inspiration from natural objects, her paintings are non representational. She liked to visit other East Hampton artists in their studios and picked up ideas from seeing their work. Park worked on both paper and canvas. She made gouaches, oils, collages, and acrylics. Her paintings tended to be smaller than those of other abstract expressionist artists. In the early 1950s she often made black and white as well as colored gouache paintings on paper and also made gestural drawings in this period. A critic said of this work, in general, that "Ms. Park effortlessly reconciled painting and drawing, deriving a lively formal vocabulary from clusters of loops and spheres." Of the work on paper in particular, another critic wrote: "Complex interactive layering animates the painted surfaces, which often conceal as much as they reveal. Organic and calligraphic shapes jockey for position, yet are held firmly in place by implicit structure." Later in the decade she made some larger oil paintings mostly employing subtler color choices than before. Her handling of oils at this time included use of a palette knife to apply and scrape off pigment. Discussing this technique, a critic for the ''New York Times'' said she scraped, built up, and revised to create "a varied, sensuously appealing surface." At the end of the decade she made collages, often cutting up and re-assembling parts of earlier paintings. During the 1960s she leaned toward square shaped paintings having softer colors than previously. Park's untitled gouache in black and gray, painted about 1950 (shown at right) shows her handling of this medium in the absence of colors at this time. Her painting entitled Aztec of about 1955 (shown at left) is an example of her early use of oil on canvas while the untitled painting of about 1960 (shown at right) is an example of her later use of the medium. In the 1970s she made acrylic drawings on paper and canvas that gave the effect, as a critic said, of a geometric pattern in which "form and space can be made to seem interchangeable in the eye." During the next decade and until Alzheimer's forced her to retire from painting she created relatively small paintings and drawings having areas of bright color offset by areas of white. A critic saw in these works echoes of
Piet Mondrian Pieter Cornelis Mondriaan (), after 1906 known as Piet Mondrian (, also , ; 7 March 1872 – 1 February 1944), was a Dutch painter and art theoretician who is regarded as one of the greatest artists of the 20th century. He is known for being ...
and
Paul Klee Paul Klee (; 18 December 1879 – 29 June 1940) was a Swiss-born German artist. His highly individual style was influenced by movements in art that included expressionism, cubism, and surrealism. Klee was a natural draftsman who experimented wi ...
. Another critic described them at some length: "There is a special kind of refinement in the way Charlotte Park's paintings and drawings stretch the eye and increasingly absorb the mind with gentle, abstract color delineations and their subtle, lost and found, dissolving echoes. These echoes establish soft, engaging visual complexities... Part of the unusual effect is in the feeling of participation in visually completing the suggested connections, or associations. Some lines meet in ways that invoke illusions of structures; others curve and float independently, offering a more abstract engagement. The sense of boundless white infinity is important as a field for reflections and vibrancy." Park's Gypsophilia of 1973 (at left) shows her late use of acrylic on canvas and her untitled painting of about 1985 (shown at right) shows her use of acrylic on paper at an even later date. She did not ordinarily give titles to works and when she did she used terms that evoked feelings rather than natural objects. She once said that she drew inspiration for a group of paintings she made about 1955—ones entitled Aztec, Initiation, Parade, and Lament—from the
black paintings The ''Black Paintings'' (Spanish: ''Pinturas negras'') is the name given to a group of 14 paintings by Francisco Goya from the later years of his life, likely between 1819 and 1823. They portray intense, haunting themes, reflective of both his ...
of
Francisco Goya Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes (; ; 30 March 174616 April 1828) was a Spanish romantic painter and printmaker. He is considered the most important Spanish artist of the late 18th and early 19th centuries. His paintings, drawings, and ...
. Park achieved critical recognition late in life. Writing late in her career a critic thought she was probably better known as the wife of James Brooks than as an abstract expressionist artist. Writing in 2010 a critic for the ''New York Times'' said "It is probably too late for Charlotte Park, now over 90 and suffering from Alzheimer's disease, to witness her ascension into the ranks of widely known Abstract Expressionists. A natural painter and gifted colorist, she is as good as several of the artists—both men and women—in the Museum of Modern Art's current tribute to the movement, which was drawn almost entirely from its collection." An East Hampton artist who knew her well said that Park believed her husband was too introverted to become successful without active management on her part. He says "it was clear that it would take a huge effort just to keep Jim’s career alive. Charlotte knew how things were slanted, and that only he really had a chance at that point in time, so she put her weight behind him so they both could survive as artists. Unfortunately, there really was no better choice at the time."


Personal life and family

Park was born in Concord, Massachusetts on March 11, 1918. At the time the local registrar recorded her surname as Parke. However, other official contemporaneous records give the spelling she used. Her father, George Coolidge Park, died five months before her birth. Her mother, Harriet Maybel Hawkes Park, first brought Park and her brother, George, to live with her own parents, Frank W. and Hattie A. Hawkes, in their home in Concord. Later, after remarrying, she brought them to Washington, D. C. to live with her and her new husband, Harold Blaisdell Shepard. In 1941, while living in Washington, D.C., Park worked as a volunteer for the
Federal Public Housing Authority The United States Housing Authority, or USHA, was a Alphabet agencies, federal agency created during 1937 within the United States Department of the Interior by the Housing Act of 1937 as part of the New Deal. It was designed to lend money to th ...
. She subsequently took a position in a graphics unit of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS). An OSS colleague introduced Park to her future husband, James Brooks, in 1945. Wishing to become a professional artist, she moved to Manhattan where she took an apartment in Gramercy Park. Brooks, who had lived in Manhattan prior to the war, returned there, and the two were married in 1947. They had no children In 1949, they moved to
Montauk, New York Montauk ( ) is a hamlet and census-designated place (CDP) in the Town of East Hampton in Suffolk County, New York, on the eastern end of the South Shore of Long Island. As of the 2020 United States census, the CDP's population was 4,318. The ...
. Park died on December 26, 2010, at her home in East Hampton.


Notes


References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Park, Charlotte 1918 births 2010 deaths Abstract painters American women painters 20th-century American painters Painters from Massachusetts Abstract expressionist artists Burials at Green River Cemetery 20th-century American women artists 21st-century American women