This exhibition reveals a rare cross-cultural artistic dialogue among three prominent artists—American painter Jackson Pollock, American artist and patron of European and American postwar art, Alfonso Ossorio, and French painter Jean Dubuffet.
Stop 1 Ossorio's Full Mother and Dubuffet’s Corps de Dame reflect the artists’ belief that, according to Dubuffet, “Painting is a more immediate and direct vehicle than verbal language, much closer to the cry.”
Stop 2 In Perpetual Sacrifice, an extraordinary array of individual elements and distinct layers is combined into a harmonious yet disconcerting unison.
Stop 3 Pollock’s Collage and Oil and Number 2, 1951 contain torn, wrinkled fragments of Japanese paper soaked in glue that had been splattered with orange gouache and black paint or ink.
Stop 4 Ossorio returns over and over to the motifs of mother and child, family, angel, crucifix—the traditional iconography of Catholicism, the faith of his childhood.
Stop 5 Bought by Alfonso Ossorio in 1951, Lavender Mist exemplifies Pollock’s interest in experimentation and in expanding the language of traditional easel painting.
Stop 6 In Reforming Figure there is tremendous detail and layering; Ossorio creates an incredible sense of veils, forms, and color.
Stop 7 The Child Return is one in a series of highly personal paintings made by Ossorfio during his visit to the Philippines, filled with references to his Catholic faith and themes of birth, childhood, family life, and death.
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