This week in Newly Reviewed, Andrew Russeth covers Léon Spilliaert’s brooding pieces, Betty Parsons’s restless forms, Adriana Ramic’s beetles and Ho Tam’s barbers.
Betty Parsons
As an artist, Betty Parsons (1900-82) has long been underrated. She is in the history books as a venturesome New York art dealer, championing Abstract Expressionists, a role that overshadowed her art practice. This taut show of nine paintings from the 1960s reveals another obstacle Parsons has faced: She was a restless talent, never settling into a major, signature style, like Barnett Newman, Jackson Pollock or her other luminaries. That makes her hard to market, but easy to identify with, and to admire.
Some of the pictures here are astonishing. “Reverberation” (1968) is a vertical wonder, nine feet tall, of loose, hesitant organic forms, with strange repetitions, asymmetries and hints of the body. A jazzy, amoeba-like small gouache, “Palm Beach Xmas” (1960) has Elizabeth Murray’s exuberance, while “Without Greed” (1960) is a deep burgundy field holding peculiar forms. The best work may be the rough-hewed “Sand With Shapes” (1966), populated by spectral beings or architecture.
“I’m always changing,” Parsons said the year before she died, referring to her art. “I never know what I’ll say or do next.” Her works exude a profound commitment to intuition. At a time when many artists (and dealers) chase trends, it would be nice to see a Parsons survey — including the charming painted driftwood pieces she made later in life — in a blowout retrospective, ideally at a museum in her hometown.
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