The Asian in American Art

Franz Klein (1910-62): Post-War abstractions
Mary Cassatt (1844-1926): Japanese composition and printing techniques
Ad Reinhardt (1913-67): Estatic minimalism seeking trancendence through abstraction


The Guggenheim Museum in New York City has a fascinating exhibit on display Jan30-Apr19, 2009 called The Third Mind: American Artists Contemplate Asia, 1860–1989.

This exhibition traces how Asian art, literature, and philosophy were transmitted and transformed within American cultural and intellectual currents, influencing the articulation of new visual and conceptual languages.

I happened upon an advertisement for this exhibit reading New York Magazine, a guilty pleasure for sure. When the website loaded, I was not impressed with the formatting in particular and the text blocks were squeezed on the left side. After reading the narrative, I craved pictures, slideshows, videos of the things they were sharing. I wanted to SEE Ezra Pound's manuscript of his translations of Chinese poet, Li Bai, written despite his total inability to read or speak Chinese. I enjoyed the Martha Graham video of her collaboration with Japanese sculptor Isamu Noguchi in the work, Frontier. I was happy to see Georgia O'Keefe and Arthur Dove who played with the concept of landscape, fuseing the pastoral or natural with the patterns of the mind.

The artists of Asia have spiritually-realized form rather than aesthetically invented or limited form, and from them I have learned that art and anture are Man's environment within which we can detect the essence of man's Being and Purpose, and from which we can draw clues to guide our journey from partial consciousness to full consciousness. -- Morris Graves

Then, scanning my friend Kat's company newsletter, RedBox News, I came across a review of the exhibit by Brooklyn-based author Ellen Pearlman. She does a great job tracing the outlines of the exhibit.

Some catchy lines:

...The Third Mind proposes a new art-historical construct––one that challenges the widely accepted view that American modern art developed simply as a dialogue with Europe...

...To truly understand China’s role requires a separate show focusing on the origins of Chinese influence in Japanese art and tracing it all the way to up through modern times...