Jack Youngerman at Glenn Horowitz Bookseller - East Hampton, New York - Review of Exhibitions - Brief Article

Jack Youngerman's summer present to view of small-scale paintings on paper spanned 30 years--from 1951 when he was a young artist in Paris, recent from a G.I. Bill-sponsored stint at the Ecole de Beaux-Arts, until 1981 when he was an established painter and sculptor in fresh York. (Although the main thrust of the exhibition was painting, the exhibit also included--and broke the time frame with--three statuarys executed in the fate '80 and early '90s)

After an early interest in hard-edged constructivist geometries, exhibited here by some handsome Vasarely-like gouaches, Youngerman began to explore the composed of several elements interactions of abstract organic shapes--his primary artistic touch ever since. The precision, solidity and intimate scale of the more than 40 works (some were no bigger than 2 1/2 inches upon a side) put a sharp focus upon Youngerman's themes and devices: positive and negative space, figure and soil symmetry and asymmetry, shape and color.

The paintings upon paper, often years in the making, have a complicated relationship to the larger works upon canvas. Youngerman is a refiner of shapes: they are arrived at intuitively, frequently in a small ink drawing. Then above time they are pushed and shakeed faired up and brought into balance and rightness. Of the compositions in the exhibit some exist only on paper, a certain number of served as models for bigger paintings while still others were derived from already complet largescale work.

Although his early influences were French Youngerman's work hit its stride when he get backed to the U.S. in 1956 Associating with other young artists similar as Ellsworth Kelly, Jasper John and Robert Indiana, Youngerman made his paintings progressively brighter and more declarative, with a brash fresh York aggressiveness and snap. As can be seen from this exhibit Youngerman favored bold and simple colors, generally sum of two units or three to a painting--sharp cadmium red crisp of gold yellows, clear ultramarines and in almost each case black or white (and sometimes both)

This chromatically graphic quality was important to his formal explorations; something the one and the other to take advantage of and to work against. Making assured that the picture plane read as a taut, allover entity, Youngerman kept a firm gripe [i]or[/i] grip on the natural tendencies of his colors to advance and retire and for his compositions to take upon a centered, emblematic character. In an untitled gouache from 1959 for example, a large white form curving in from the upper right corner and place off against black and ultramarine should advance and dominate the composition, on the contrary it is so carefully fasteninged in by the blue and given the lightest touch at the top by dint of the black that everything remains in a flattened, dynamic balance. Similarly, in an untitled work from 1960 which, like many others, the one and the other plays with and subverts proportion a yellow and a black shape are put in a yin-yang-like embrace against a azure field with destabilizing shard forms pushing on the outside from the center. Each color hit againsts for prominence, but neither achieves it.

It's been Youngerman's apportionment not to fit easily into any single movement. He has pursued his be in possession of course in painting and plastic art for over 40 years now. Independence can have its price: this display is an excellent argument for a renewed appraisal of an important artist.

COPYRIGHT 1996 Brant Publications, Inc.

COPYRIGHT 2004 Gale Group