Buffalo: where the artists roam

There's actually something going on in Buffalo. On now at the city's Albright-Knox Art Gallery is "Action/Abstraction: Pollock, de Kooning, and American Art, 1940-1976," which outlines a watershed period of American art - Abstract Expressionism - through a survey of its major artists and championing critics. The exhibit runs from February 13th through June 10th at the Albright-Knox. During Reading Week, a friend and I decided to stray from the usual and see something new. Not Buffalo wings or outlet shopping. We went to see art. On display is a wide range of works: massive canvases, mixed media collage, and some sculptures. Special attention is given to Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning, held as pillars of Abstract Expressionism. The exhibit also displays lesser known members, whose disdain for commercialization nearly saw them overlooked, like Clyfford Still and some equally celebrated constituents:, including Arshile Gorky, Mark Rothko and Ad Reinhardt.

In an unusual but fitting style, the artists are presented through the lens of their adoptive critics - two critics whose analysis of the movement's ethos and world-view resulted in full-blown endorsement, furious rivalry, but also admiration. The exhibit highlights Clement Greenberg and Harold Rosenberg whose respective emphasis on Abstract Expressionism and Action painting stand as the exhibit's organizing theme.

"Action Abstraction" defines and wrestles with an artistic movement that ran amok in 1940s and 50s America. These New York artists smashed the easel and shook the foundations of recognized forms of expressionism in reaction to a radically changing society. As Cold War politics hit full swing, an atmosphere for new artistic technique opened up. As Pollock said, "the modern painter cannot express his age - the airplane, the atom bomb, the radio - in the old forms of the Renaissance or any other past culture. Each age finds its own technique."

To the uninitiated, Abstract Expressionism involves this technique: wildly applying paint to larger canvases set on the ground in an energetic and gestural manner. The brush-strokes are fast and heavy-handed, if there are brush strokes at all; otherwise, paint is thrown or dripped directly onto the canvas. Essentially, the method of painting itself becomes as important as the result.

The first room of the exhibit stands to fill in necessary contemporary details: political paradigms, attitudes towards art, and the role of the critic. What's most striking is an edited clip from Hans Namuth's film of Pollock furiously splashing paint over an oversized canvas lying on the floor of his New York studio loft.

Now on to the paintings themselves. A quote from Greenberg introduces Pollock: "it is the tension inherent in the constructed, recreated flatness of the surface that produces the strength of [Pollock's] art. Pollock points a way beyond the easel, beyond the mobile framed picture." Convergence, 1952, is a captivating and massive canvas spattered with brilliant primary hues, contrasting blacks and raw canvas. There's a certain presence that a painting maintains which pushes it well beyond "the flatness of the surface." Seeing a painting on a gallery wall is far more involving than any colour plate in a coffee-table book, there's a definite transference at play here.

In closing, this is a fitting exhibit inside the Albright-Knox. The gallery nurtured a reputation for collecting contemporary works in the late 1950s and has remained resilient ever since. Gordon M. Smith, gallery director at the time, fought to acquire works by artists while they were making history, not after they had made it. This to-the-moment objective closely parallels the "Action/Abstraction" exhibit: the moment and the expression count the most. The gallery was well worth the motor down Upstate, a healthy alternative to the usual.