Milton
Avery painted inimitably from the beginning of his career to the very
end. Although the influences that affected his development can be
seen without difficulty, there is throughout a basic simplicity of
vision that is peculiarly his. First there was the Impressionism of
Ernest Lawson and John Twachtman, then the figurative realism of the
Art Students League, then the impact of Matisse and Picasso, and in
each instance Avery made of these influences something that was unmistakably
his, paintings in which style and color were primary elements. From
the first, his idea of picture making was a matter of organizing visual
experience. He has said, "I try to construct a picture in which shapes,
spaces, colors, form a set of unique relationships, independent of
any subject matter. At the same time I try to capture and translate
the excitement and emotion aroused in me by the impact with the original
idea."1
If
we look at Offshore Island in such terms we can see at once
the rightness
of such a method. The canvas is divided into four bands of
color that mark the progression of space from the horizon to
the foreground at
our feet. Superimposed like some ponderous amphibious monster
on the upper darker bands of color, which are the sky and the
sea, is the
island. Against the distance and weight of these elements is
counterpoised the foamy evanescence of the breaking surf and
the velvety texture
of the beach. All the areas of color, which are the sky, the
sea, the island, and the beach, are firmly placed and almost
opaque in
quality, but the breaking surf, with its diffuse upper edge
of blue has a transparency that reveals the tints of underpainted
color.
Avery
is a master of the twentieth-century notion of a painting as a flat,
two-dimensional object, and yet in his disposition of shapes and colors
he achieves a simultaneous sense of space which is intrinsic to the
work itself. Abstraction and representation have achieved a new kind
of unity. Milton Avery never painted a pure abstraction, but it is
of some interest to note that among his closest friends were Mark
Rothko, Adolph Gottlieb, and Barnett Newman, and a considerable number
of younger painters who have chosen to translate their experience
abstractly on the strength of his example.
References:
1 Milton Avery quoted by Robert Warnick in "A Quiet
American Painter Whose Art Is Now Being Heard," Smithsonian
(October 1982): 113.
