Jack Tworkov: Against Extremes: Five Decades of Painting
by John Yau
UBS Gallery August 13 – October 27, 2009
In 1957, Jack Tworkov (1900-1982) wrote in his journal: “My hope is to confront the picture without a ready technique or prepared attitude—a condition which is nevertheless never completely attainable; to have no program and, necessarily then, no preconceived style. To paint no Tworkovs.” He was in his late fifties and hadn’t quite made the defining paintings of his career and more than likely knew it. “Pink Missippi” (1954), “Blue Cradle” (1956), and “Transverse” (1957-58) are very good, but it is in “Idling” (1970) that he really comes into his own—around the same time as Philip Guston, who was always the more seductive painter. Tworkov seemed to distrust this aspect of paint throughout his career. It was also in 1957 that he had an exhibition at the Stable Gallery, New York, and a group of his paintings was presented by the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis. Jackson Pollock was dead and Jasper Johns hadn’t yet had his first one-person show at Leo Castelli, which opened in January 1958.
Jack Tworkov, “Transverse†(1957). Collection of Ambassador and Mrs. Donald Blinken.
A year later, on March 3, 1958, in another journal entry, Tworkov wrote about the shows he had seen that day and singled out two younger artists, Joan Mitchell and Robert Rauschenberg, because he felt their work was the strongest. After writing that Rauschenberg’s work has nothing to do with “dadda” [sic], he concluded: “Our aesthetics admits that anything is possible.” These entries could only have been written by someone who wasn’t afraid, who understood the complex times he happened to be living in, and chose not to succumb to external pressures and seek refuge in a fashionable means of production or aesthetic agendas such as formalism. Being just on the outside, and refusing to cozy up to critics, cost him, but the exchange was worth it in the end, as the last decade of paintings amply prove.
At the core of Tworkov’s project was a belief in freedom. And this belief in freedom not only constitutes an integral part of his legacy, but it also clues us in as to why he and his work have long flown under the radar. In contrast to his far better known Abstract Expressionist peers, Tworkov never developed a signature style or motif, which is not to say that certain particularities and dispositions don’t recur in his work, because they do. Recognizing that he wanted “[t]o paint no Tworkovs” meant that he would repeatedly come up against, as well as discover, his own limits. He was a maker, but he was not omnipotent—that’s the humbling lesson that Tworkov never shied away from.
This exhibition, which includes work from five decades of Tworkov’s career—I would call it a tantalizing historical survey—makes a strong case that we have yet to come to grips with the fullness and breadth of Tworkov’s achievement. In the mid 1930s, he met de Kooning, and considered himself “almost a disciple.” And yet, as the portraits and figure paintings he made in the late 40s attest (because of the war, he chose to work as a tool designer from 1942 to 1945), Tworkov understood that difference and deference are not the same. His use of browns and grays is cool and unseductive next to de Kooning’s hot pinks and lemon yellows. The problem of course is that the art world focuses on similarity, and seldom takes the time or has the patience to discern difference, which is why style and mannered gestures are so highly valued; they make commerce easier.
Also, during the late 1940s, long after many of his peers committed themselves to abstraction, Tworkov focused on the still-life because it was, as David Anfam writes in his perspicacious essay in the exhibition’s accompanying brochure, “a genre associated with dispassionate pictorial observation.” Dispassionate observation has its roots in Modernism’s origins, in particular Edouard Manet, who never developed a motif (as did Claude Monet), and was often accused of being “inconsistent” by his harshest critics. It is a disposition that seems foreign to almost everything said about the Abstract Expressionists, who are routinely presented as a bunch of tormented, writhing souls right out of Gustave Dore. Of course clichés don’t die; they are resurrected by succeeding generations with predictable regularity. In this regard, Tworkov and his work stand out as exemplary.
For Tworkov, the dream of freedom was rooted in one thing: you banked everything on putting paint on canvas. At the end of his life, knowing that mortality was about to knock on his door for the last time, he used a geometric vocabulary full of solid and transparent diagonal planes to explore the aptly titled “Compression and Expansion of the Square” (1982). The desire to overcome one’s limits never subsides. Movement, as the diagonals evoke, could not be stilled, even when the individual ceases to exist. As Tworkov recognized right up until the end, we live in a world marked by what Anfam rightfully calls “chance and purposefulness.” That Tworkov, who was in his seventies, made it visible with a calmness that speaks volumes is telling; he did not avert his eyes or look for a way out.
It would be convenient to believe that Tworkov is simply a historical figure, and that his legacy remains frozen in time now that painting is dead. It is easy to understand why philosophers (if that is what they are) hate painting and keep trying to preside over its passing. Tworkov’s dream of freedom critiques all restrictive or institutional agendas: by existing, it quietly and unforcefully reminds us that there is an alternative to the worldview perpetuated by would-be-kings and queens (Ivy League professors and fearful curators) who demand that artists exchange their freedom for academic certification. But Tworkov’s motto—“To paint no Tworkovs”—remains alive in the work of Merlin James, Thomas Nozkowski, Catherine Murphy, Chris Martin, Amy Sillman, and Dana Schutz, as anyone with eyes can see.
Jack Tworkov’s Contribution to the New York School: An Interview with Jason Andrew
Jason Andrew is the curator and archivist for the Estate of Jack Tworkov and was the mastermind behind the recent retrospective of Jack Tworkov’s work — the final show at theUBS Art Gallery.
A prominent figure in the Bushwick art scene, Jason Andrew is also the founding director ofNorte Maar, which encourages, promotes, and supports collaborations in the arts.
For those unaware of Tworkov’s life and work. He was born in Biala, Poland, and made his mark as a leading Abstract Expressionist, though he painted in other styles during his long career. He was a founding member of the legendary Eighth Street Club (1949), where he was a key proponent of abstraction. Tworkov was also an art educator, and he held teaching positions at Yale University, Queens College, Black Mountain College, Pratt Institute, and the American Academy in Rome.
Andrew and I recently exchanged emails about Jack Tworkov’s contribution to New York’s art scene in the 1940s, 50s and 60s.
In Tworkov's Fourth Avenue Studio: Studies on the wall are for House of the Sun, on the easel in foreground. In the far room, also on easel, is one of the four versions. Photo: Rudy Burckhardt, via jacktworkov.com (click to enlarge)
Sharon Butler: I’m interested in learning more about Tworkov in the context of his time and fellow painters. It becomes clear reading Tworkov’s writing that all the painters back then were keenly aware they were changing the course of art history, and they all wanted it to move in their direction. What was Tworkov’s position in the debate that was taking place during his time?
Jason Andrews: I don’t believe Tworkov and the artists of his immediate generation (i.e. artists associated with the Eight Street Club) believed that they were changing the course of art history. Tworkov marked 1949 as the year when “you began to see that there was something going on … There was suddenly hope after the war. People suddenly began working hard. It was the shows at [Peggy] Guggenheim, [Betty] Parsons, [Charles] Egan and [Samuel] Koots that created real excitement. Suddenly we realized that we were looking at each others work and talking to one another, not about Picasso and Braque. We had created for the first time an atmosphere where American artists could talk to American artists.”[i]
As far as Tworkov’s participation in the ‘debate’ that was taking place, Tworkov was one of the most intellectual of the group, and as a founding member of the The Club, was very active in the discussions and panels. Tworkov said that, “The most important thing in the conversation then was to talk for yourself, not to quote other people. For a while in The Club people were telling you what they were thinking and not what they were reading. This made The Club exciting. People were giving their authentic ideas. They were speaking for themselves and this made the atmosphere intense and unique.”[ii] I think these kinds of conversations and debates are happening now in Bushwick. Artists regularly engaging in each other’s work.
SB:Who were his closest friends both in terms of his personal and artistic life?
Jack Tworkov in his Provincetown studio. Photo by © Arnold Newman, for an article written by Robert Hatch, "At The Tip Of Cape Cod," July 1961 issue of Horizon. Via the Provincetown Artist Registry. (click to enlarge)
JA: I’m sure Tworkov considered de Kooning, Guston, Kline, and Rothko friends. But his sister, the painter Biala, and her husband Daniel Brustlein were his closest friends. Although Biala and Daniel spent most their time in Paris, they maintained a remarkable correspondence over five decades. I’m sure it was also very interesting for Tworkov to learn from Biala about how American painting was being received in Europe.
Tworkov was also close to the young generation of artists such as Robert Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns, Merce Cunningham, and John Cage. And later in life while Chairman at Yale, there was Chuck Close and Jennifer Barlett among countless others.
SB: Did he have enemies? Any famous feuds?
JA: Enemies. If it’s possible to acknowledge, I believe that Tworkov was himself, his greatest enemy. Anyone reading his recently published journals can see the struggle to find ‘self’ in paint. “To paint no Tworkovs,” was somewhat his mantra.
Tworkov made it obvious that was “against extremes.” In this regard, certainly Tworkov had a problem with programs (i.e. Albers / Reinhardt ). “You paint picture out of your life, and style develops in relation to your life. To this day picture are not judged on their meaning … Reinhardt’s ideas are terrible—his philosophic absolute. This turns art into politics and philosophy not picture making which is like poetry. Style and movement come after.”[iii]
Tworkov told Franz Kline, “The artists I like best are the ones who have stopped playing the esthete-people who do not live other artists biographies .”[iv] I think this statement applies to many artists working today. Which is why I encourage all my young artists to isolate studio time. My grandfather worked in a coal mine in Utah and there is a great analogy of working in studio as if laboring in the mine. You can walk the tunnels made by the guys on an earlier shift, or you can dig, and digging takes time but yields the greatest reward. I’m for the artist that likes to get dirty.
The first comprehensive publication of the writings of Jack Tworkov.
SB: What did the other artists make of his writing?
JA: It was Tworkov’s review of the 1950 retrospective of Chaim Soutine’s work at the Museum of Modern Art that had the largest impact and lasting effect. Richard Armstrong wrote that Tworkov’s article “was one of the earliest attempts to characterize the emerging expressionism of the New York painter in light of other twentieth-century painting.”[v]
SB: Did they think less of him as a painter because he was also drawn to writing?
JA: As far as painters thinking less of him because of his writing, I think exactly the opposite. Tworkov had an elegant way of recording his thoughts. During his lifetime, Tworkov was only known as a writer through about half-a-dozen published articles which ranged from Soutine to Cézanne, Process in Art, Flowers and Realism. Thankfully today we have Mira Schor’s published compilation of his writings that includes his diaries and journals.[vi]
SB: Ideally all members of an art community contribute in some way to make the community a more robust, vital place. What was Tworkov’s contribution to the art community of his time?
JA: Obviously Tworkov’s greatest contribution is his art, which spans five decades. But Tworkov is also recognized as an influential teacher and so I think this makes his contribution even greater. A lesser-known fact about Tworkov is that he was one of the great vocal advocate for abstraction and avid supporter of experimental art and cross disciplinary practices. And he promoted his ideas everywhere he went. “I am in favor of the experimental,” he told a reporter for the Milwaukee Journal in 1960, “We needn’t be shocked by […] experimental art. No one can tell now what is significant. It could be the experimental or the nonexperimental.”[vii] I cite the Milwaukee Journal as an example as how far reaching Tworkov’s ideas were. He remains one of America’s great painters.
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