Disconnected
Bishop, Hantaï, Marioni

Nov 6, 2014 - Jul 31, 2015

The contemporary art world has abandoned modern art. How could anyone be so disconnected as to state the obvious? In its place, it has installed a New Academy.

Maybe modern art should never have come to America! But it did with Newman, Pollock, Rothko and others. With the arrival of modern art in the New World came the wisdom of the Old: Giacometti, Picasso, Matisse, Bonnard, Gauguin, Cézanne, Monet, Manet, Courbet, Géricault. The names run backwards. Modern artists of the future.

Out of the ruins of twentieth century world war, modern art in America tried to discover a New World of human thought and experience. A grand new myth of modern culture might have been born.

Today, we have a Museum of Modern Art in New York where the Cut-Outs of Matisse are currently on display. Cut Out of What? This question may appear, on first glance, to be facetious. It is not so intended.

This exhibition presents three exceptional paintings by three modern artists who have looked closely at Matisse and all the other great modern masters who have preceded them, in order to answer this and the other questions of modern art. Their answers, of course, are to be found in their paintings.

How has it been possible for these three contemporary, modern artists to make this work in the hostile context of the New Academy? They disconnected.