The Magnificent
Richard Pousette-Dart
RICHARD POUSETTE-DART, 1951. OIL ON CANVAS.
Creating abstraction on so monumental a scale that it obscures meaning into emotion with each approaching glance, Pousette-Dart was a founding member of the New York School of painters, poets, dancers, and musicians and one of the seminal figures of American modern art. Trained as a stone-mason and a sculptor, his work retains a physicality to it and a violence to his technique that comes with working with raw materials. The Magnificent displays this in all of its glory. From afar, it appears almost like a stain glass, shining with colour and smooth on its surface, its composition and form akin to the pleasing geometries of religious decoration. Yet as you move closer, its surface reveals itself to be scarred and haggard, thick with paint and deeply carved lines. Pousette-Dart began the piece by inscribing totemic, graphic images, inspired by the African, Oceanic, Native American, and Northwest Indian art he saw in the Natural History Museum in New York. Atop these sacred symbols, he layered thick paint so that their meanings became buried and obscured, though not destroyed. Pousette-Dart’s work rewards deep looking, it offers its treasures only to those willing to dig.