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Four Abstract Classicists
''Four Abstract Classicists'' was a landmark exhibition organized by Jules Langsner in 1959. The show featured the work of Karl Benjamin, Lorser Feitelson, Frederick Hammersley, and John McLaughlin. The term “abstract classicists” was coined in 1959 by Langsner to define these four southern California painters. __TOC__ Exhibition The exhibition opened at the San Francisco Museum of Art (now the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art), and then travelled to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in Exposition Park (prior to LACMA's existence as an independent art museum). Renamed ''West Coast Hard-edge'', the revised version later traveled to the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London and Queen's University in Belfast, Northern Ireland. In the exhibition catalog, Langsner described Abstract Classicist painting as "Hard-edge painting" in which "color and shape are one and the same entity. Form gains its existence through color and color its being through form." "Four Abstrac ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jules Langsner
Jules Langsner (19111967) was an American art critic and psychiatric social worker. Born in New York City in 1911 and died in 1967 in California. Although born in New York, Langsner did not grow up in New York. He and his family moved to Ontario, California shortly after his birth. HardEdge Colorforms Langsner has become associated with the term that he coined, along with Peter Selz, ''"hard-edge painting Hard-edge painting (also referred to as Hard Edge or Hard-edged) is painting in which abrupt transitions are found between color areas. Color areas often consist of one unvarying color. The Hard-edge painting style is related to Geometric abstra ...."'' http://www.oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/kt5v19r00h/ It was in 1959 that Langsner and art historian Peter Selz originated the phrase "hard-edge painting" to describe the colors, shapes and style of abstract expressionist painting on the West Coast. References * Social Security death index. Accessed August 2, 2010. the-A ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Karl Benjamin
Karl Stanley Benjamin (December 29, 1925 – July 26, 2012) was an Americans, American painter of vibrant geometric abstractions, who rose to fame in 1959 as one of four Los Angeles–based Abstract Classicists and subsequently produced a critically acclaimed body of work that explores a vast array of color relationships. Working quietly at his home in Claremont, California, he developed a rich vocabulary of colors and hard-edge shapes in masterful compositions of tightly balanced repose or high-spirited energy. At once intuitive and systematic, the artist was, in the words of critic Christopher Knight (art critic), Christopher Knight, "a colorist of great wit and inventiveness." Early life Benjamin was born in Chicago in 1925. He enrolled at Northwestern University in 1943, but dropped out to join the U.S. Navy during World War II. In 1946, after three years of military service, he moved to California to study English literature, history, and philosophy at the University of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lorser Feitelson
Lorser Feitelson (1898–1978) was an artist known as one of the founding fathers of Southern California–based hard-edge painting. Born in Savannah, Georgia, Feitelson was raised in New York City, where his family relocated shortly after his birth. His rise to prominence occurred after he moved to California in 1927. Feitelson, along with his peers Karl Benjamin, Frederick Hammersley and John McLaughlin (artist), John McLaughlin, was featured in the landmark 1959 exhibition ''Four Abstract Classicists'' at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and later at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Curated by Los Angeles–based critic and curator Jules Langsner, the exhibition introduced the general public to the dazzling visual language created by a revolutionary group of painters. A revised version of this exhibition re-titled ''West Coast Hard Edge'' was presented in London at the Institute of Contemporary Arts and then in Belfast, Northern Ireland at Queens Court. The painting ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Frederick Hammersley
Frederick Hammersley (January 5, 1919 – May 31, 2009) was an American abstract painter. His participation in the 1959 ''Four Abstract Classicists'' exhibit secured his place in art history. Early years Frederick Hammersley was born in Salt Lake City, Utah. His father, a Department of the Interior employee, moved the family to Blackfoot, Idaho and eventually to San Francisco, where the young Hammersley first took art lessons. His studies later took him back to Idaho, at Idaho State University in Pocatello from 1936 to 1938 and then to Los Angeles for the Chouinard Art Institute starting in 1940. There he studied everything from figure painting to lettering and his instructors included Rico Lebrun. His artistic training was interrupted by a stint in the U.S. Army Signal Corps and Infantry as a graphic designer. His World War II service in England, Germany, and France was from 1942 to 1946. Fortuitously, he was stationed in Paris near the end of his service, and he took the opp ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
John McLaughlin (artist)
John Dwyer McLaughlin (May 21, 1898 – March 22, 1976) was an American abstract painter. Based primarily in California, he was a pioneer in minimalism and hard-edge painting. Considered one of the most significant Californian postwar artists, McLaughlin painted a focused body of geometric works that are completely devoid of any connection to everyday experience and objects, inspired by the Japanese notion of the void. He aimed to create paintings devoid of any object hood including but not limited to a gestures, representations and figuration. This led him to the rectangle. Leveraging a technique of layering rectangular bars on adjacent planes, McLaughlin creates works that provoke introspection and, consequently, a greater understanding of one's relationship to nature. Life John McLaughlin was born in Sharon, Massachusetts. His father was a Massachusetts Superior Court judge and he had six siblings. His parents instilled in him an interest in art, most specifically Asian art. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
San Francisco Museum Of Modern Art
The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) is a modern art, modern and contemporary art museum and nonprofit organization located in San Francisco, California. SFMOMA was the first museum on the West Coast devoted solely to 20th-century art, and has built an internationally recognized collection with over 33,000 works of painting, sculpture, photography, architecture, design, and media arts.Collection at sfmoma.org. The collection is displayed in of exhibition space, making the museum one of the largest in the United States overall, and one of the list of largest art museums, largest in the world for modern and contemporary art. In 2024, SFMOMA was ranked 14th in the Washington Post's list of the best art museums in the U.S. The museum was founded in 1935 with galleries in the San Francisco War Memorial and Performing Arts Center, Veter ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Los Angeles County Museum Of Art
The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) is an art museum located on Wilshire Boulevard in the Miracle Mile vicinity of Los Angeles. LACMA is on Museum Row, adjacent to the La Brea Tar Pits (George C. Page Museum). LACMA was founded in 1961, splitting from the Los Angeles Museum of History, Science and Art. Four years later, it moved to the Wilshire Boulevard complex designed by William Pereira. The museum's wealth and collections grew in the 1980s, and it added several buildings beginning in that decade and continuing in subsequent decades. LACMA is the largest art museum in the western United States. It attracts nearly a million visitors annually. It holds more than 150,000 works spanning the history of art from ancient times to the present. In addition to art exhibits, the museum features film and concert series. History Early years The Los Angeles County Museum of Art was established as a museum in 1961. Prior to this, LACMA was part of the Los Angeles Museum of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hard-edge
Hard-edge painting (also referred to as Hard Edge or Hard-edged) is painting in which abrupt transitions are found between color areas. Color areas often consist of one unvarying color. The Hard-edge painting style is related to Geometric abstraction, Op Art, Post-painterly Abstraction, and Color Field painting. History of the term The term “Hard-edge painting” was coined in 1959 by writer, curator, and ''Los Angeles Times'' art critic Jules Langsner, along with Peter Selz, to describe the work of several painters from California who adopted a knowingly impersonal paint application and delineated areas of color with particular sharpness and clarity. This style was a significant reaction to the more painterly or gestural forms of Abstract expressionism, one of the United States’ primary painting movements at the time. The “hard-edge” approach to abstract painting became widespread in the 1960s, though California was its creative center. Other earlier art movements have ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Institute Of Contemporary Arts
The Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA) is an modernism, artistic and cultural centre on The Mall (London), The Mall in London, just off Trafalgar Square. Located within Nash House, part of Carlton House Terrace, near the Duke of York Steps and Admiralty Arch, the ICA contains galleries, a theatre, two cinemas, a bookshop and a bar. History The ICA was founded by Roland Penrose, Peter Watson (arts benefactor), Peter Watson, Herbert Read, Eric Craven Gregory, Peter Gregory, Geoffrey Grigson and E. L. T. Mesens in 1946. The ICA's founders intended to establish a space where artists, writers and scientists could debate ideas outside the traditional confines of the Royal Academy. The model for establishing the ICA was the earlier Leeds Arts Club, founded in 1903 by Alfred Orage, of which Herbert Read had been a leading member. Like the ICA, this too was a centre for multi-disciplinary debate, combined with avant-garde art exhibition and performances, within a framework that empha ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Queen's University Belfast
The Queen's University of Belfast, commonly known as Queen's University Belfast (; abbreviated Queen's or QUB), is a public research university in Belfast, Northern Ireland, United Kingdom. The university received its charter in 1845 as part of the Queen's University of Ireland and opened four years later, together with University of Galway (as ''Queen's College, Galway'') and University College Cork (as ''Queen's College, Cork''). Queen's offers approximately 300 academic degree programmes at various levels. The current president and Chancellor (education), vice-chancellor is Ian Greer (obstetrician), Ian Greer. The annual income of the institution for 2023–24 was £474.2 million, of which £105.2 million was from research grants and contracts, with an expenditure of £345.9 million. Queen's is a member of the Russell Group of research-intensive universities, the Association of Commonwealth Universities, the European University Association, Universities UK and ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Peter Plagens
Peter Plagens (born 1941) is an American artist, art critic, and novelist based in New York City.Online Archive of CaliforniaPeter Plagens papers, 1938-2014 Retrieved January 18, 2018.Smith, Roberta''The New York Times'', February 7, 2018. Retrieved January 18, 2018.Wilkin, Karen. "Peter Plagens," ''The Hudson Review'', Spring 2018. He is most widely known for his longstanding contributions to ''Artforum''Newman, Amy New York: Soho Press, 2000. Retrieved January 17, 2018. and ''Newsweek'' (senior writer and art critic, 1989–2003),Newsweek"Peter Plagens,"Authors, ''Newsweek''. Retrieved January 21, 2018. and for what critics have called a remarkably consistent,Pagel, David. "Push It to the Edge," ''Los Angeles Times'', December 1, 2004. five-decade-long body of abstract formalist painting.Hickey, Dave. "The Jabberwocky and the gorilla in the Corner," ''Peter Plagens: An Introspective'', Los Angeles: Fisher Gallery, University of Southern California, 2004, p. 16–25. Plagens has w ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
