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Abstract Elements
Abstractionists play with the elements and principles of design to create art works that interpret the everyday world into the language of colour, form, line and texture. Art from this genre expresses abstract ideas that can include realistic, recognizable elements to complete abstraction of the inspiration for the piece. Scott Garant, Sann Sann Lam and Richard Manilla share their interpretations of the everyday world, playing along the continuum of abstraction in their show, Abstract Elements.
Gladstone’s The Art Bar (named after a weekly figure drawing class ongoing since 1957) is our storefront room with large windows facing Queen Street West. It is an intimate space for parties, meetings, conferences or exhibitions.
Photos by: Ann Gagno
Abstract Elements
Abstractionists play with the elements and principles of design to create art works that interpret the everyday world into the language of colour, form, line and texture. Art from this genre expresses abstract ideas that can include realistic, recognizable elements to complete abstraction of the inspiration for the piece. Scott Garant, Sann Sann Lam and Richard Manilla share their interpretations of the everyday world, playing along the continuum of abstraction in their show, Abstract Elements.
Gladstone’s The Art Bar (named after a weekly figure drawing class ongoing since 1957) is our storefront room with large windows facing Queen Street West. It is an intimate space for parties, meetings, conferences or exhibitions.
Photos by: Ann Gagno
Abstract Elements
Abstractionists play with the elements and principles of design to create art works that interpret the everyday world into the language of colour, form, line and texture. Art from this genre expresses abstract ideas that can include realistic, recognizable elements to complete abstraction of the inspiration for the piece. Scott Garant, Sann Sann Lam and Richard Manilla share their interpretations of the everyday world, playing along the continuum of abstraction in their show, Abstract Elements.
Gladstone’s The Art Bar (named after a weekly figure drawing class ongoing since 1957) is our storefront room with large windows facing Queen Street West. It is an intimate space for parties, meetings, conferences or exhibitions.
Photos by: Ann Gagno
Abstract Elements
Abstractionists play with the elements and principles of design to create art works that interpret the everyday world into the language of colour, form, line and texture. Art from this genre expresses abstract ideas that can include realistic, recognizable elements to complete abstraction of the inspiration for the piece. Scott Garant, Sann Sann Lam and Richard Manilla share their interpretations of the everyday world, playing along the continuum of abstraction in their show, Abstract Elements.
Gladstone’s The Art Bar (named after a weekly figure drawing class ongoing since 1957) is our storefront room with large windows facing Queen Street West. It is an intimate space for parties, meetings, conferences or exhibitions.
Photos by: Ann Gagno
Abstract Elements
Abstractionists play with the elements and principles of design to create art works that interpret the everyday world into the language of colour, form, line and texture. Art from this genre expresses abstract ideas that can include realistic, recognizable elements to complete abstraction of the inspiration for the piece. Scott Garant, Sann Sann Lam and Richard Manilla share their interpretations of the everyday world, playing along the continuum of abstraction in their show, Abstract Elements.
Gladstone’s The Art Bar (named after a weekly figure drawing class ongoing since 1957) is our storefront room with large windows facing Queen Street West. It is an intimate space for parties, meetings, conferences or exhibitions.
Photos by: Ann Gagno
Located in Sugar Hill District adjacent to 71 Garfield.
For 30 years, G. R. N'Namdi Gallery has been internationally recognized as one of the most influential American contemporary abstract art galleries. The Gallery, established in 1981, by George N'Namdi in Detroit, Michigan, maintains its mission of increasing awareness of abstract art, inspiring a new generation of art collectors and engaging collectors to develop an appreciation for the historical value of the fine arts.
With a gallery in Chicago and an 16,000 sq. ft. art complex in Detroit, G.R. N'Namdi Gallery has led the way in exhibiting modern abstractionists. The gallery has built prestigious private, corporate and institutional collections, enriching homes and museums of around the world. G. R. N'Namdi Gallery's clientele include highly acclaimed museums such as: The Art Institute of Chicago; The Detroit Institute of the Arts; The Metropolitan Museum, NY; The Studio Museum of Harlem, NY; The Museum of Modern Art, NY; major private and corporate collectors; and individuals interested in building a taste for abstraction.
One of a number of works inspired by the work of the 20th century English abstractionist Ben Nicholson.
Thompson, Bob (1937–1966)
Judgement of Paris
Oil and graphite on canvas
10 1/8 x 8 inches
1963
In his brief but prolific career, Robert Louis Thompson rejected traditional expectations of the African American artist to create narrative genre scenes descriptive of Black life in the United States. He was equally uninterested in pure abstraction as a means of expressing universal experiences, a common objective of modern artists. Instead, Thompson followed the examples of Romare Bearden and Sam Gilliam in his exploration of aesthetic, rather than sociopolitical issues. Often described as a figurative abstractionist, Thompson’s simplification of forms and manipulation of color to convey emotional intensity has inspired comparisons with Gauguin’s Fauvist style.
Thompson developed an interest in the arts as a teenager growing up in a middle-class family in Louisville, Kentucky. When Thompson’s father was killed in a car accident in 1950, the thirteen-year-old was sent to live with his sister and her husband, Robert Holmes. A painter, Holmes cultivated young Thompson’s artistic inclinations, offering guidance and encouragement. Following graduation from an academically rigorous all-Black high school in 1955, Thompson enrolled as a pre-medicine student at Boston University. He quickly realized, however, that painting—not science—was his true passion and transferred to an art program at the University of Louisville. During these years, Thompson’s early abstractionist style gave way to a more figural approach, a shift the artist credited to a summer spent in Provincetown, Massachusetts in 1958. There, Thompson met a group of emerging artists—including Red Grooms, Emilio Cruz, and Gandy Brodie—who, in contradiction to prevailing New York trends, embraced the figural in their work. Deeply influenced by these artistic rebels, Thompson likewise modified his own style.
Thompson relocated to New York City in 1959, where he encountered an artistic atmosphere that matched his own boundless energy and appetites. He settled in a dilapidated tenement building on the Lower East Side near Benny Andrews's residence and became a regular at the Five Spot, a local jazz café frequented by artists and writers. These creative forces helped Thompson refine his signature mature style. By appropriating and adapting the compositions of European masters, Thompson transformed familiar scenes—now modernized by faceless forms rendered in deep, vibrant colors—into exuberant contemporary allegories. The colorful and symbolic intensity of his paintings captivated viewers when they were exhibited in 1960, first at the Delancey Museum and later at Zabriskie Gallery.
On the heels of these exhibitions, Thompson won a series of notable awards which financed travels through Europe from 1961 to 1963, including extended studies in Paris and Spain. Upon his return to New York in 1963, Thompson was welcomed with a series of solo exhibitions at various galleries in both New York and Chicago, attracting the patronage of influential private collectors such as Walter P. Chrysler Jr. and Joseph H. Hirshhorn. Public collections have since followed suit, and the artist’s works are today represented at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Museum of Modern Art, Whitney Museum of American Art, Art Institute in Chicago, and Detroit Institute of Art. Tragically, Thompson died shortly before his twenty-ninth birthday and so did not live to see the impact of his career on the American art scene. His oeuvre continues to command attention and, in 1998, was the focus of a Whitney Museum traveling exhibition of over one hundred works.
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All the Small Things
TJC Gallery, Spartanburg SC
February 19, 2025 – April 4, 2025
thejohnsoncollection.org/all-the-small-things/
Size matters in art. The scale of a work when seen in person can be an essential ingredient in its visual impact. And the received canon of fine art in the West has a clear bias for BIG things—from the monumental statuary of antiquity to the massive canvases in the contemporary art scene. Indeed, for the past four hundred years, artists have been highly incentivized to “go big,” as larger works commanded more prestige. Within the hierarchy of art genres inherited from the seventeenth century and the standardized measurements that evolved in the art industries of the nineteenth century, the largest canvases and commissions have traditionally been reserved for imposing landscapes and full-length portraits. Against this grain, the present exhibition celebrates the wondrous world of small art—in this case, paintings of no more than twenty inches.
Why might an artist work on a small scale? For some the motivation may be economic. Larger paintings mean more material costs, from more paint to bigger frames and heftier shipping prices. Thus, the size of an artwork potentially reveals unequal financial challenges faced by, for instance, women artists, self-taught artists, or artists of color. At the same time, the cheaper costs of smaller works make them well-suited for preliminary studies (as with Aaron Douglas’s The Toiler) or for trial efforts with new styles and techniques (such as Theodoros Stamos’s experiments with abstraction in Flow). Smaller art is more portable, making it ideal for artists working in the plein-air tradition or those working rapidly for tourist markets. Finally, although petite paintings have historically been relegated to subjects considered mundane or insignificant, these small works can instead confer an intimacy and humanity for the artist and viewer alike.
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See also: www.flickr.com/photos/ugardener/albums/72177720322921517/
THE JOHNSON COLLECTION - A Private Collection for Public Good
thejohnsoncollection.org/the-collection/
Sharing the art it stewards with communities across the country is The Johnson Collection’s essential purpose and propels our daily work. Much more than a physical place, TJC seeks to be a presence in American art, prioritizing access over location. Since 2013, the collection’s touring exhibitions have been loaned twenty-five times, placed without fee in partner museums with a combined annual attendance of over 1.2 million visitors. In its showcase of over 1,000 objects, TJC’s website functions as a digital museum, available anywhere and anytime.
What began as an interest in paintings by Carolina artists in 2002 has grown to encompass over 1,400 objects with provenances that span the centuries and chronicle the cultural evolution of the American South.
Today, The Johnson Collection counts iconic masterworks among its holdings, as well as representative pieces by an astonishing depth and breadth of artists, native and visiting, whose lives and legacies form the foundation of Southern art history. From William D. Washington’s The Burial of Latané to Malvin Gray Johnson’s Roll Jordan Roll, the collection embraces the region’s rich history and confronts its complexities, past and present.
.The contributions of women artists, ranging from Helen Turner—only the fourth woman elected to full membership in the National Academy of Design in 1921—to Alma Thomas—the first African American woman to have a solo exhibition at a major national museum in 1972—are accorded overdue attention, most notably in TJC's most recent publication and companion exhibition, Central to Their Lives: Southern Women Artists in the Johnson Collection. Landmark works by American artists of African descent such as Benny Andrews, Romare Bearden, Elizabeth Catlett, Aaron Douglas, William H. Johnson, Leo Twiggs, and Hale Woodruff pay homage to their makers' barrier-defying accomplishments. Modern paintings, prints, collages, and sculpture created by internationally renowned artists associated with the experimental arts enclave of Black Mountain College, including Josef Albers, Ruth Asawa, Ilya Bolotowsky, Elaine de Kooning, Robert Motherwell, Kenneth Noland, and Robert Rauschenberg highlight the North Carolina school's geographic proximity to the collection's home.
Hailed by The Magazine Antiques as having staged a "quiet art historical revolution" and expanding "the meaning of regional," The Johnson Collection heralds the pivotal role that art of the South plays in the national narrative. To that end, the collection's ambitious publication and exhibition strategies extend far beyond a single city's limit or a territorial divide.
Since 2012, TJC has produced four significant scholarly books—thoroughly researched and beautifully illustrated investigations of Southern art time periods, artists, and themes: Romantic Spirits: Nineteenth Century Paintings of the South (2012); From New York to Nebo: The Artistic Journey of Eugene Thomason (2014); Scenic Impressions: Southern Interpretations from the Johnson Collection (2015); and Central to Their Lives: Southern Women Artists in the Johnson Collection (2018). These volumes are accompanied by traveling exhibitions that have been loaned without fee to partner museums with a combined annual attendance of over 1.7 million visitors.
Smaller curated presentations rotate at the collection's hometown exhibition space, TJC Gallery. Individual objects are regularly made available for critical exhibitions such as La Biennale di Venezia, Afro-Atlantic Histories, Outliers and American Vanguard Art, Leap Before You Look: Black Mountain College, 1933-1957, Alma W. Thomas: Everything is Beautiful, Riffs and Relations: African American Artists and the European Modernist Tradition, and Bold, Cautious, True: Walt Whitman and American Art of the Civil War Era and featured in important publications and catalogues, including The New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture: Art & Architecture, and The Civil War and American Art.
In 2016, the state of South Carolina honored The Johnson Collection with the Governor’s Award for the Arts, its highest arts distinction. The commendation paid tribute to the Johnson family's enduring contributions: "Equally dedicated to arts advancement and arts accessibility, the Johnsons generously share their vision, energy, passion and resources to benefit the arts in South Carolina."
"Who can say what ignites a passion? Was it those three red roses frozen in blue? An awakened connection to one's geographical roots? Perhaps the familiarity of the road to Nebo? The nucleus of what was to become our collection was formed by such seemingly unrelated catalysts. Looking back, it was always the sense of place that drew George and me to beautiful pictures—pictures that capture not only the glorious landscape of the South, but that also enliven its unique culture and dynamic history." ~Susu Johnson, Chief Executive Officer.'
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"If you’re looking for a vibe, this is where you’ll find it. Spartanburg is one of South Carolina’s most established, respected, progressive, and diverse art communities with everything from the fine arts—ballet, symphonies, and opera—to the cutting edge—street performers, graffiti, and dance mobs.
Experience the Cultural District
Downtown Spartanburg has even been designated as a cultural district by the South Carolina Arts Commission. Within the cultural district, you can walk to and enjoy world-class art galleries, studios, music venues, breweries, culinary arts, local literature publishers, coffee shops, libraries, museums, and more. Regardless of when you visit, you’re likely to encounter live music in the streets, featuring jazz, rock ‘n’ roll, or beach music.
Come experience how we put the art in SpARTanburg."
The side of a walking bridge over a wide expanse of water at the Sugarloaf Marina in Port Colborne.
Though it's a reflective work (because most of us could guess what this is), it's tending to be abstractionist ('cause some of us wouldn't have a clue).
Steve Wheeler was an American abstractionist who was influenced by modernists. He did a lot of his work in cities such as Chicago and New York where he went to school and also teached later on. He created “ The Messenger” in 1942 using tempera on paper. He used a variety of textures as you can see, which gives the piece look very interesting visual effect and draws the viewers eye all over rather than to one exact section. When you look closely you can see a person running, just as a messenger would be. There is a cloud of smoke coming out of the persons mouth, this may represent cold weather which would explain his use of darker colors, as if the person was running in the winter time. I also like how bits of red and yellow are put into the mix of white, black and grey, it makes the picture a bit more creative, not to say black and white work can not be creative.
early to mid-20th-century American abstractionists
De Young Museum, San Francisco
1 April 2014
cameraphone
2014.04.01 107
Abstract Elements
Abstractionists play with the elements and principles of design to create art works that interpret the everyday world into the language of colour, form, line and texture. Art from this genre expresses abstract ideas that can include realistic, recognizable elements to complete abstraction of the inspiration for the piece. Scott Garant, Sann Sann Lam and Richard Manilla share their interpretations of the everyday world, playing along the continuum of abstraction in their show, Abstract Elements.
Gladstone’s The Art Bar (named after a weekly figure drawing class ongoing since 1957) is our storefront room with large windows facing Queen Street West. It is an intimate space for parties, meetings, conferences or exhibitions.
Photos by: Ann Gagno