Museum of Modern Art
San Francisco
Works of some Artists
Rags & Old Iron II
Artist: Noah Purifoy
The grid like composition includes reclaimed materials including burlap, burnt wood & fragments of fabric. In the wake of the Watts Rebellion of 1965- that erupted in response to police brutality against Black residents of Los Angeles-Purifoy began making found-object assemblages that reflect his socially charged aesthetic and commitment to art activism
Polar Stampede
Artist: Lee Krasner
Polar Stampede roars with intensity. Though its title evokes Nature's extremes, the surface reveals Krasner's painting process.- we can imagine her flexing her brush to the point it snaps and sprays white paint instead of sweeping across the canvas.The work is a part of a series called Umber Paintings, which features a distinctive palette of brown, blacks and creamy whites.
Bracket
Artist: Joan Mitchell
Mitchell painted Bracket quite late in life (1989) but she imbued it with all the vigour and colour that she first deployed in her works of 1950s. In an interview she said that 'what excites me when I paint is what one colour does to another and what they do together in terms of space & interaction.'
Crimson Spinning
Artist: Adolph Gottlieb
This is Part 1 of Bursts, a group of paintings that merge planes of colour and gestural brushwork-two hallmarks of American paintings from the 1950s. Crimson spinning is composed of an ethereal circular form and a dense mass of brushstrokes
No 24 (brown, Black & Blue)
Artist: Mark Rothko
Three forms, softened & enlivened by their flickering, brushy edges, appear to hover over a deep cadmium-red ground. The hues act in concert with the weight of the forms, the application of the paint and the size of the canvas to suggest a hazy, enveloping environment. This painting shows how he continued to explore the seemingly simple three-part composition and push it to increasingly dramatic & evocative ends.
