Tibor de Nagy Gallery
Jane Freilicher: Early New York Evening, 51 1/2 x 31 3/4 inches, 1954
Freilicher’s work speaks to me. Her “Early New York Evening” seems like a mirror image of O’Hara’s “A Step Away From Them.” Her paintbrush and his pen seem to yield the same result—frame by frame moments in time. One can just as easily imagine Jane sitting with her easel by the window as one can imagine Frank walking about on his lunch hour. Both manage to convey unique perspectives from solidly personal places, but with a seemingly effortless attention to imagery. We see New York from that one window out of thousands and we see the city block O’Hara saunters down through the clarity of his eye—almost like a movie. His poem and her painting both seem to be saying, art just “is”…it’s you, it’s me, it’s this particular second in time and it’s just as important as anything that has come before or will come again. Her painting with its cubist type structure, its frame within a frame container, and its off-center forefront perspective says, “it’s a new time, a new way to look at life, and a new way to ‘see.’” His poem says the same thing. Art is in the little things, the tiny moments, ordinary life, random views from windows, solitary walks, and random thoughts. The rules are gone. Anything goes. The imagination can go wherever it wants. As David Lehman says in The Last Avant-Garde, these poets believed that you could “make a statement without making a statement.” This New York School of Poets and Painters proved this in everything they created. How can anyone read about, “hum colored cabs,” “laborers feed[ing] their dirty/ glistening torsos sandwiches,” “cats playing in sawdust,” and “several Puerto Ricans” that make it “beautiful and warm” and not get a vividly clear picture of that particular street in New York in the 50s? Rapid-fire images chase each other but in a mesmerizing—meandering way. Nothing pops or jolts, it all floats…but at the end you have been somewhere special, you have been inside someone’s head—and they have let you in and you didn’t even have to knock.
Freilicher uses soft, almost subliminal colors that evoke peace amid the chaos of a big city. The grey smoke coming from the chimney stacks merge with the clouds in an almost surreal, but real blending. Though there are no distinct or definitive lines in the buildings, the images are no less clear. The careful placement of light in splashes across the painting somehow evokes a comforting tone, a homey feeling, a quiet softness one feels at the twilight of the day. The opposition of the detail in the vase of flowers (with their lavender and green) juxtaposed with the endless, concrete buildings magnifies that same feeling.
I had to include Freilicher's “The Painting Table” in this blog. It just seems to underline everything these poets and painters were saying. Even the tools used to create art can ultimately be, in and of itself, the subject of art. The art supplies carelessly strewn across the table speak of action, though no one is there. There is a potent air of possibilities. The atmosphere is expectant, waiting, pregnant with limitless imagination. The painter will be right back…in just a moment.
As Holland Cotter said of the recent “Poets and Painters” exhibition, “I don’t believe in golden ages, but I do believe in golden moments.” And that’s what they gave us.
