Long before it was colonized by mansions on postage stamps of land, the Hamptons were an artists’ bohemia. While its most famous residents were the Pollock-Krasners (who took up residence in Springs in 1945), the community quickly blossomed with many of the most famous painters of the day, many of whom (at least of the female cohort) are in Kasmin’s Painters of the East End. (It’s worth mentioning, however, that Kasmin blessedly does not make a note of the gender of these painters in the title of the show, nor in the press release.) Many of the big names are here (Lee Krasner, Helen Frankenthaler, Joan Mitchell), as well as some of the ones who have faded from history (like Perle Fine, Mary Abbot, and Charlotte Park), and in light of Mary Gabriel’s book Ninth Street Women, which takes as its subject five of the eras most prominent women painters, it is a pleasure to get to know some of the more minor characters who populate their stories.
But most interesting, perhaps, is the influential gallerist Betty Parson’s work from 1965 in which float irregular geometries on a green-grey field. Set apart from the show’s other paintings at the gallery entrance, it is removed, sophisticated, and a little mysterious––not unlike the bohemia which sprouted in rural Long Island those decades ago.
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