Broad-Brimmed Art: Bob Thompson revived
by MELISSA STERN on Dec 19, 2011 • 1:12 pm
Painter Bob Thompson (1937–1966) straddled several artistic worlds. From Old-Master Europe, to hipster 1950s Provincetown, to the Beat poetry and bebop jazz scene of New York City, he was there, absorbing all that he could of these seemingly disparate universes. His artistic mentors and friends ranged from Red Grooms and Lester Johnson to LeRoi Jones and Charlie Haden. Thompson lived and worked in that most interesting transition period in American art: from post-WWII to the very beginnings of Pop Art.
Europe was still the primary influence on American painters, but along with the evolution of jazz and Beat poetry, a unique and totally American visual vocabulary was developing. Thompson played an underrated but crucial role in this journey. Traveling from hipster Provincetown to Europe, Thompson remained rooted in the present but immersed himself in great art of the past, and developed his unique vision and style.
I was thrilled to hear of the current show of Thomson’s work at Steve Harvey Fine Art Projects on the Lower East Side. This show consists solely of Thompson’s drawings, most of which have never been shown before. The wait, though far too long, was worth it. This illuminating and serious exhibition provides a view into Thompson’s development from brilliant novice to self-assured master. Images that were to become iconic for Thompson as a painter—the artist as shadow observer in a broad brimmed hat, the nude in a primeval forest—show their genesis in these drawings.
There are some stunning beauties: “Untitled (Figure with Balloon)” is the simplest of compositions and executions, yet it is as rich and moving as a drawing can be. Loose, but not casual, swaths of watercolor define the figure in a classical but wholly original way. “Portrait of Nina Simone,” a simple pen and ink line portrait of the singer, conveys all the complexity and richness of both artists, the portrayed and the portrayer.
This exhibition begins to fill in the gaps of what we know about Bob Thompson. Seeing his drawings and preparatory sketches for future large paintings rounds out our understanding of how this brilliant painter approached his work. The exhibition whet my appetite for a full-scale retrospective of Thompson’s work, painting and drawings. For fans of Thompson’s work and those interested in mid-century painting, this is a critical exhibition to see.
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Thursday, December 29th, 2011
Looking to Poussin: Bob Thompson’s Drawings by David Carrier
Bob Thompson, Charlie Hayden, 1960, ink on paper, 15 x 20 inches.
How amazing is the diversity of the modernist American art world, and how limited are the traditional official histories! In 1958, Bob Thompson (1937-1966) drew Untitled (Man in Forest)– almost good enough to be by Georges Seurat, if we could imagine that the Frenchman had lived to look at and learn from German expressionism. In his time, the abstractions of Willem de Kooning and Mark Rothko dominated the New York galleries. Thompson made his pastel Study for Expulsion and Nativity in 1963, conjoining the scenes of Eve’s Fall and Christ’s birth in a high art version of a comic strip that juxtaposed images riffing on Masaccio’s Expulsion from the Garden of Eden and Piero della Francesca’s Nativity. By then, Andy Warhol’s pop art had emerged and Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg’s Postmodernism had to be reckoned with by Americans. But while New Yorkers experienced this amazing transition, as if in a parallel universe, Thompson, who moved to Europe in 1961, was looking to Poussin and Italian Renaissance painters for inspiration.
Nowadays, Thompson is displayed at MoMA, but I have the sense that his manner of figurative art, which was influenced by Red Grooms, Grady Brodie and Jan Müller, remains hard to fit into our narratives of American Modernism. This show of more than twenty works on paper, most not previously displayed, reveals an amazing variety of art. Charlie Hayden (1960) and Portrait of Nina Simone, Provincetown (1965) are marvelous linear ink images resembling David Hockney’s drawings from the 1960s. Waiting Figure #4 (1958), a watercolor, darkly brooding, maybe owes something to Northern Symbolist painters. Untitled (Seated Nude) (1959), a pastel in pink and grey, is a mysterious female figure, whose sources, if any, elude me. And the big Last Painting (1966), oil with ink on canvas, inspired by Titian’s Venus and Adonis, transforms the colors and compositions of its Venetian source in a radical way that I admire but don’t understand.
Thompson is a deeply mysterious artist. After seeing Cézanne’s female bathers, he reportedly said: “I paint a woman that is real for me . . . and then I am going to put her right beside a tree and I relate her to the sensuality of the tree.” That’s clear enough, but I don’t comprehend how in Untitled (Nude in Forest) (1958) the sensuality of the trees, drawn in charcoal relate to the white figure of the female nude in the distance. Nor do I grasp its relationship to Untitled (Landscape) (1958), a watercolor revealing very different trees, and, so it seems to me, a very different artist. Furthermore, these drawings are done in a different style than the two ink-on-paper images after old masters, Christ’s Sermon on the Mount (1961-63) and Entombment (1961). Steven Harvey Fine Art Projects seems to be presenting a small group show, including at least five draftsmen, each one excellent but all very different, a prismatic reflection of an excited painter exploring several different paths at once, an artist whose death precluded a fuller integration.
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BOB THOMPSON
DRAWINGS
NOVEMBER 30 – JANUARY 8, 2012
Steven Harvey Fine Art Projects and Martha Henry, Inc. present Bob Thompson Drawings an
exhibition of drawings by Bob Thompson (1937-1966) that date from the late 1950s to the
mid 1960s and includes Thompson’s last known work, a large drawing in oil paint on canvas
after Titian.
On view are more than 20 works on paper representing Thompson’s favorite themes executed
in a variety of mediums including ink, charcoal, pastel, oil and watercolor. The show covers
the artist’s full career beginning in 1958 in Provincetown, MA to his premature death in 1966
in Rome, Italy. All of the drawings are from private collections, and most of them have never
been seen in public. We are pleased to present the first comprehensive exhibition in over 35
years devoted to Bob Thompson’s drawings in SHFAP’s new Lower East Side gallery located
around the corner from Thompson’s former Clinton and Rivington Street studios.
In the summer of 1958, Bob Thompson arrived in the artist colony of Provincetown, where
he was befriended by a number of contemporary figurative painters including Red Grooms,
Lester Johnson and Gandy Brodie. He also discovered and was inspired by the work of the
recently deceased Jan Müller. There the younger artist developed two of his earliest themes.
One, a man wearing a broad brimmed hat is a symbol for the artist. As Paul Mocsanyi wrote in
a 1969 New School catalog, “The silhouette of a black observer stands far away from the action…
in the background, always watching, sometimes threatening. By his posture, his hat, his
gesture, one can identify him as being the artist himself.” A second theme is nude women in
a forest. Jeanne Siegel interviewed Thompson who said after seeing Cezanne’s Bathers at the
Barnes Foundation; he became fascinated by women and trees: “I paint a woman that is real
for me…and then I am going to put her right beside a tree and I relate her to the sensuality of
the tree...” The exhibition includes drawings from 1958 that establish both of the motifs in
the artist’s oeuvre.
Thompson had been encouraged to study Old Masters by painter Dody Müller, Jan’s widow,
and he heeded her advice after he moved to Europe in early 1961. Living for extended periods
of time in France, Spain and Italy, Thompson immersed himself in art history, drawing upon
Poussin, Goya and Italian Renaissance artists for inspiration and instruction.
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