Perle Fine. “Tantrum II,” gouache and fold-over collage on paper, 1959
Though presented as separate exhibitions, the two concurrent shows at Thomas McCormick Gallery offer a brief history of abstract painting in its transition from an avant-garde to a traditional practice. Perle Fine (1908-1988) covers the first fifty years all by herself. A more complete retrospective would demonstrate how she was influenced by one artist after another, picking up whatever innovation fascinated her, from geo-form to bio-form, from tight to loose, from simple to complex, from whimsical to angry. She seems to have had a modest, if iron-willed, personality, that was far more interested in the potential of painting than she was in herself. This exhibition is limited to works on paper, from 1942 to 1959, beginning with a very economical Bauhaus linear design and eventually arriving at the post-climactic exhaustion of abstract expression. Along the way, she did a dead-on tribute to Miro, and several variations on the cut-paper figurations of Matisse. An art business consultant might have advised her to spend more time building a personal brand, but Fine was clearly more devoted to leaving behind excellent artifacts of twentieth-century culture.
Lisa Nankivil. “The Beginning of Yes,” oil on Arches huiles paper on wood panel, 2014
Born fifty years later, Lisa Nankivil is less interested in art history than in self-expression. Like some pioneering artists of the 1950s, she has chosen to confine that expression within a field of painted lines, all of them straight, all of them parallel. But there’s no feeling of either Modernist perfection or post-Modernist tedium. With a mastery of paint and color, she has discovered a world of endless personal feeling between the lines. As their titles suggest, some of the pieces feel as atmospheric and earthy as a landscape (“Distance and Elevation”), while the restrained assertiveness of others suggests the psychological (“The Beginning of Yes”). As casually perfect as a Zen teacup, each of her paintings seem to take us no further than the moment, as if to say: “I enjoy life; I enjoy life RIGHT NOW!”
As in the best examples of traditional art, neither artist offers a new, confrontational aesthetic. But their pieces have so much energy, who cares? (Chris Miller)
Through June 14 at Thomas McCormick Gallery, 835 West Washington.
