The Armory Show

In a journal entry in 1978, the artist Michael (Corinne) West recalled a memory of Jackson Pollock and Peggy Guggenheim visiting West at her studio. “Peggy,” she jot down, “thought I was painting ‘life.’” Indeed, West’s palpitating, gestural paintings catch life on the wing without petrifying it. At Armory this year, we are thrilled to present West along with two other post-war artists, Norman Carton and Albert Kotin, in booth 426. These three first-generation Abstract Expressionists—though highly-regarded in their own time and well-represented in important exhibitions and galleries—were largely forgotten over time, as all three artists sidestepped the end games of the commercial art world and its endless demands for self-promotion. Their exuberant canvases split between chaos and structure, between spontaneity and judgement, all while transmuting the thick of life into aesthetic form. Their works possess a sense of energy rising, or exploding, up to the surface from some imaginary depth below the canvas.

Supplemented with unique ephemera from the artists’ lives, our booth proposes a fresh look at Abstract Expressionism through one of its oblique side alleys—a respite from the repetitive, orthodox names that come up again and again in the history of this important artistic movement. 

For more information on the gallery's booth presentation please contact us at +1 212.628.4000 or info@hollistaggart.com.