American art before Pollock and Warhol is murky territory for most of us, a blurry fug of provincial post-impressionism and dirty social realism over which the shadow of the great depression looms large. Grant Wood’s American Gothic is the one work from this era that just about everybody knows – bald farmer with pitchfork and wife in front of gothic-windowed barn – though it’s as much for the innumerable spoofs, by the likes of The Simpsons, as for the painting itself.
Milton Avery (1885-1965) stands out against this grim background as a notable American modernist. This substantial exhibition projects Avery as a great colourist, a pivotal influence on mega-names like Mark Rothko and Barnett Newman, who paved the way for the unstoppable rise of American art in the post-war era. Yet he was also, as the show itself concedes, something of a maverick; an artist who interacted with many important movements and moments, without becoming fully involved with any of them.
