‘Storyville’: Intersection of abstraction, allusion and depiction on display at Sheldon

The footsteps of Philip Guston, literally and inspirationally, hang over “Storyville: The Intersection of Abstraction, Allusion and Depiction,” the striking new exhibition of large paintings at the Sheldon Museum of Art.

The show, drawn from the museum’s collection, isn’t a recycling of old favorites. Rather, nine of its 19 objects are recent acquisitions that have never been exhibited in Lincoln, and four more have only been shown once.

The idea behind the show is embodied in Guston’s “Pit II,” a red-saturated 1976 piece that shows shoes and legs and a ladder sticking up out of the pit of its title.

“Abstraction, while it may always seem as if there is no subject matter, there’s always subject matter,” said Sheldon Director and Chief Curator Wally Mason. “There’s narrative story embedded, there’s autobiography, there’s something else there.”

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That might not be the case for pure abstraction, be it geometric or abstract. But narrative of some kind can be found in all the pieces in the show, all of which have some kind of representation.

Perhaps the best illustration of that is Jonathan Borofsky’s “Untitled, Man with Blue Tungsten Light Bulb,” one of the new acquisitions. Leaning against a wall as it has always been shown, the 11-foot-tall 1981 painting appears to be a study of log-like shapes connected by lines. Except a face, with a lightbulb in the center of the forehead, turns the painting autobiographical.

The influence of Guston, whose “Pit II” is a Holocaust painting, can be seen across “Storyville,” as in, stylistically, the face of the fisherman depicted with heavy block lines hawking his products in David Bates’ 1994-95 “Bait Shop.”

Guston began his career as an abstraction expressionist. So it’s no surprise that a Guston-like hand turns up in Peter Saul’s “Abstract Expressionist Still Life,” a 2016 piece that critiques the mid-century movement of its title from the piece of cheese sitting on a chair that represents Paris, the center of the pre-World War II art world, to the crashed car at the right, representing the vehicle driven by drunk AbEx master Jackson Pollock, who was killed in the 1956 crash.

Another direct connection to the New York school of the ’40s, ’50s and early ’60s is Robert Moskowitz’s “Teapot,” a 1976 painting that is largely a brown, abstract study in brush marks and movement. But at its center is a teapot with a golden band descending to another – an allusion to a relationship that brings in pop art as well.

The other artist whose influence and inspiration pervades “Storyville” is Elizabeth Murray, whose three-dimensional 1991 wall piece “Wishing for the Farm” is being shown for just the second time since it was acquired in 2018.

A strong example of the work of Murray, who is regarded as one of the most inventive American abstract artists of her generation, is “Wishing for the Farm,” which blurs the distinction between abstraction and representation with its “landscape” depicted on a shaped canvas that challenges what is or is not a painting.

That challenge continues in other pieces in the show, most notably with Leslie Wayne’s ”Burning Down The House.” The 2018 oil-on-wood piece has three dimensions with a door, opening to an undulating cascade of a rainbow of paint that moves down to a thick pile of paint that could have been scraped off a palette – perhaps representing opening the door to the artist’s studio, or mind.

Several of the exhibition’s paintings show how an artwork can resonate far differently when presented in a new context.

Fritz Scholder’s 1981 “American Portrait with Dog,” for example, is almost always shown as an example of Native art, reflecting his identity as, and destruction of, the mythos of the American Indian.

Here, however, Scholder’s painting works by blurring the figure into a background, burying its autobiographical narrative into the abstract.

Two of the new acquisitions also stylistically challenge narrative/abstraction depiction with distinctive style.

Robert Yarber’s 1985 “Casino Drop” takes 1950s melodrama director Douglas Sirk’s lighting style from film to canvas to create the drama of a roulette table, then finds a strange figure surrealistically floating above the scene.

Derek Boshier’s 1984 “Corporate Business,” which not coincidentally also includes a Guston hand, is a critique of painting inside its now-dated depiction of men in suits, one with an early desktop computer.

The most complex and compelling of the newly acquired works – and one of the pieces that is most illustrative of the “Storyville” theme – is British artist Dexter Dalwood’s 2010 “White Flag.”

That piece takes its name from the blown-up reproduction of Jasper John’s iconic “White Flag” that cuts across the center of the painting, blocking off a view from the controversial video game “Six Days in Fallujah,” which was pulled from release and is only coming out this year.

In the front corner of the painting is another reproduction – of a piece of French painter Eugene Delacroix’s “Women of Algiers,” pulling out a hookah, slippers and rug from the original. In the center is a cracked gray “floor” which, taken alone, is pure abstraction.

The newest painting in the show is JoAnne Carson’s “Night Blossoms,” a 2022 piece that arrived in Lincoln in early August, pulled out of a show at New York’s Washburn Gallery to make it to its new home in time for “Storyville.”

A “tree” that explodes with other botanical forms, filled with bright colors and pop culture hints, the painting is, to use the New York Times description, one of Carson’s works that “if Charles Burchfield had worked with Walt Disney, he might have come up with these.”

If viewers care to unpack the paintings by examining the ideas of abstraction, representation, modes of depiction and narrative, “Storyville” is a challenging, ultimately rewarding thematic exhibition.

But it’s also one of the strongest shows of “contemporary art,” if that term can extend as far back as 1976, ever drawn from the Sheldon collection, thanks in large part to the previously unseen and rarely exhibited work.

“Storyville” will be on view at Sheldon through Dec. 22.

Reach the writer at 402-473-7244 or kwolgamott@journalstar.com. On Twitter @KentWolgamott  

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