Against extremes: Jack Tworkov at UBS Gallery

Jack Tworkov, “Thursday," 1960. Oil on canvas. Hirshhorn
Museum and Sculpture Garden at the Smithsonian Institution,
Washington, DC. Joseph H. Hirshhorn Purchase Fund, 1988 (88.2)

In the frenzy of postwar American painting, as artists jockeyed for position and Time magazine asked if Jackson Pollock was the greatest living painter in the United States, a lot of reputations were inflated and a lot of good painters obscured in the shuffle. Artists became known by their signature styles: Pollock had his drips, Barnet Newman his zips, and Mark Rothko his rectangles.

Among the artists lost in the shuffle was Jack Tworkov, who was a shape-shifter over five decades, changing his artistic approach according to his evolving intellectual and emotional engagements. A new survey of Tworkov's work at UBS Gallery makes the case that the artist's restless, inventive searching for forms elevates him to a special place in the history of postwar American painting.

Click here to see a slideshow of Jack Tworkov's work

Like Myron Stout and Alfred Jensen, two other painters who followed their own paths through various postwar -isms, Tworkov wrote insightfully about art. He was enmeshed in the art of his time but always independent. From social realism in the 1930s to Abstract Expressionism in the 1950s and minimalism in the 1970s, Tworkov made his own way through the journey and his art was not about producing a signature product. In one gallery statement, Tworkov wrote that his goal was "to paint no Tworkovs."

Born in Poland in 1900, Tworkov moved to New York with his family when he was 13 years old. He studied English at Columbia College and maintained his writing throughout his life (a volume of his writing was published by Yale this year called The Extreme of the Middle). He studied at the Art Students League with stops in Provincetown and the National Academy of Design.

His early work shows an artist in dialogue with the work of Picasso, Braque, and Beckmann. Looming over it all is Paul Cezanne, whose 1921 show inspired Tworkov's first foray into painting. With their elongated and exaggerated figures, single-color outlining, and skewed perspectives, these paintings wear their influences on their sleeves. But the signs of later Tworkov themes--geometric space and the signature embedded in this gesture--are there, too.

During his time at the WPA Federal Art Project, Tworkov met Willem de Kooning and later, had a studio next door to the Dutch artist. The two would frequently talk, with Tworkov later saying he was "almost a disciple" of de Kooning's. 

There is a duality in Tworkov's work from the late '40s and early '50s of Tworkov arguing with the painters around him. While de Kooning was working on portraits of women, Tworkov too was painting seated women. Tworkov wrote in his journal in 1947 about the need to focus on the strength of his painting, saying, "You must make no sacrifices for the subject," but his portraits of women paled next to de Kooning's precisely because of their fidelity to reality. Tworkov had a problem. How much does his abstraction owe to life and how much does it owe to the canvas?

Jack Tworkov, “Pink Mississippi,” 1954. Oil on canvas.
Rockefeller University, New York

By 1952, Tworkov has found a rhythm independent from subject but all the more brimming with life for that.  In "House of the Sun Variation" and "Nausica," his strong stroke, scratchy but elegant, wispy yet bold, has come to maturity. The red, white, and blue forms almost predict de Kooning's triumphant late paintings in their graceful, curved forms.

In 1954's "Pink Mississippi," Tworkov's canvas is aflutter with a thick pink and red thicket of vertical brushstrokes fighting off cobalt blue diagonals to mass at the margins. The picture is ecstatic, moving in both its deep structure and its light details. Touches of orange and ochre set it ablaze.

Tworkov began to branch out from the language of Abstract Expressionism by the end of the fifties. The generous selection of sketchbooks from the 1960s shows him searching for different ways to create a painting. One page could have many studies for one painting, and his painting "Variable II" actually looks like a gallery of at least seven paintings on one canvas. This is an artist trying to make his canvasses come alive.

Coming through Abstract Expressionism, Tworkov saw the canvas as having its own life. But as an artist, his calling was to bring life from outside to animate the work. This tension between authorship and independence became fruitful ground for Tworkov's later work, which combines geometric structure and the uniqueness of his brushstrokes.

In work like "Variables II" (1964-1965) and "Crossfield I" (1968), Tworkov measures rectilinear forms and variations on the grid but applies his loose brush to create human variations on abstract geometry. Like the work of Agnes Martin, these paintings depend on the fragility and imperfection of the hand to complement mathematical notions of structure. These paintings dig into classical earth and emerge covered with dirt but still beautiful. "The painter is the medium," Tworkov wrote in his journal at the time.

In the later paintings, the geometry is atmospheric as Tworkov carves through space with straight lines forming planes that seem to tilt, overlap, and converge. Through it all is the human hand.

These incredible later paintings, such as "Roman XI" (1981) and "Indian Red Series #1" (1979) show Tworkov embracing worked surfaces and traces of the process. Although geometry helps plans the painting, the actual work is so much more than the planning. Geometry describes non-human physical space but is a human creation. This is the aspect of life Tworkov captures on canvas. He is physically discovering how imagination and the mind can inhabit a physical space.

The last painting in the show, "Compression and Expansion of the Square" (1982), appears to be a pale yellow triangle layered over two long rectangles. Tworkov varies the design three times over a long horizontal canvas, with a compressed version on the left, a less slightly stretched version in the middle, and an elongated version on the right. The painting is reminiscent of Edward Muybridge's motion studies. It's as if Tworkov is trying to animate a design through the painting.

As I read the canvas from left to right and back again, I realized that at 82 years old Tworkov was still tackling ideas at the foundation of modern painting. How much of a canvas is the artist's and how much is the viewer's? How important is the idea and how important is the painter's hand? How does a painting create space? For anyone who cares about these questions -- and painting generally -- this show cannot be missed.

"Jack Tworkov: Against Extremes" at UBS Gallery, UBS Building at 1285 Avenue of the Americas, through Oct. 27, 2009. The exhibition is organized by Norte Maar and curated by Jason Andrew.