April is a huge month for visual art in D.C. Friday marks the beginning of the twofive-week-long Artomatic, while later this month we’ll be treated to the first ever international art fair in the city with artDC, both of which we’ll tell you more about as they come closer.
You’ve got plenty to keep you busy in the meantime. Believe it or not, Paris and New York don’t hold the monopoly on influential visual art movements; D.C. is the home of the Washington Color School, a group of painters deeply attuned to the Color Field movement, who brought their own twist to the burgeoning genre in the early 1960s. The Color Field painters wanted to rid their art of unnecessary subtext and context, letting their bold abstract works speak to the nature and psychology of the colors they used. Artists like Mark Rothko and Clyfford Still helped define the movement as it created an entirely new form of abstract expressionism; but here in D.C., Washington Color School painters like Paul Reed (at right) and Gene Davis (below) took the bold colors but left behind the expressionism, creating intense works with strong movement that each stood as its own piece, without the emotion.
Over the next few months, more than thirty local galleries and art supporters will be showcasing the way the Washington Color School put D.C. in the international art scene through the Color Field movement. We can thank the Kreeger Museum for ColorField.remix, sponsored along with Cultural Tourism D.C., the D.C. Commission on the Arts and Humanities and the Washington, D.C. Convention & Tourism Corporation. Gallery shows, lectures, public art programs, and other events will run from April all the way through July, in what they’re calling the “largest celebration of painting ever held in the Washington area.”
Participants include some of the city’s largest museums, like the Smithsonian American Art Museum, which will feature work from the Washington Color School painters already in their permanent collection, and The Phillips Collection, which presents the works of Morris Lewis, Gene Davis and Kenneth Noland in Lyrical Color, an exhibit that opens this weekend. But take the time to stop in our local contemporary galleries to see how the movement has affected today’s artists: Hemphill opens this Saturday with three exhibits featuring Jason Gubbiotti, Leon Berkowitz, and Portia Munson, while the tiny Curator’s Office brings us a fascinating take on Color Field work with an installation by Alberto Gaitán the same night.
Check out the ColorField.remix web site for all the event listings — take note of not just the gallery shows, but the numerous lectures and workshops being held around the city, particularly at the Kreeger, the Textile Museum, and VisArts — many are even geared towards children. Summer is usually a slow time for the visual arts scene, but ColorField.remix has enough to keep you busy as the mild days turn to steamy ones. Wow your friends at all your summer barbeques with your intimate knowledge of the art movement that happened in our very own backyard.
Images of Paul Reed’s No 22A and Gene Davis’ Black Flowers courtesy of The Phillips Collection, which will have them on display in Lyrical Color.
