Modernisms: Abby Weed Grey Collection at the Block Museum

Bedri Eyüboğlu , “Full Moon” (detail)

Sixty years ago, Abby Weed Grey began travelling to Iran, Turkey, and northern India to collect art. A childless, recently widowed St. Paul housewife, she used her late husband’s small fortune to establish a foundation for “the encouragement of art through the assembling of international collections of art for cultural exchange programs” Such programs may have been inspired by the tours of “New American Paintings” throughout Europe, sponsored by the C.I.A. in the late 1950’s. She focused on those Middle-Eastern artists who were “breaking with the past to cope with the present” - much like modern artists in Europe and America had been doing for half a century. It does not appear that she had any aesthetic or ideological requirements - except that, like the mainstream artworld of her day and ours, she must have considered beauty, naturalism, and idealism to be outdated relics from another era You will not find representations of places you would like to visit, people you would like to know, or many feelings you would like to share. In the work selected for this exhibition, contemporary life is more like a problem than an opportunity.

The title of her comprehensive 1972 exhibition, “One World Through Art”, suggests that she was more interested in national similarities  than differences among the artworks she collected. It’s not surprising that the wife of a professional army officer throughout the Second World War would advocate for international mutuality.  It’s not difficult for us, however, fifty years later, to identify national differences -- as suggested by the plurality in the title of this exhibition, “Modernisms”.

The Iranian artists tend to be the most conceptual. For many of them, especially Parviz Tanavoli, the artist whom Mrs. Grey brought back with her to Minnesota, painting appears to have been a species of writing. Ernst Gombrich would have approved. Mostly in their twenties, these young Iranians, echoed the then-ruling monarchy that sought to connect itself to ancient Persia and the middle-eastern cradle of civilization. Not many years later, after the 1979 revolution, both the Shah-of-Shahs and most of these artists, had to flee the country. The Armenian, Marcos Grigorian, became one of the most celebrated of these refugees. You might not guess it from his modest pieces in this show, but he was a pioneer in land art, so his work is in the permanent collections of both MOMA and the Met.

Self discovery and spirituality are the  soft-focus of the Indian artists in this exhibit. Among my favorites is the printmaker, Krishna Reddy (1925-2018). His “Seed Pushing” has that seed-germ energy that Louis Sullivan exemplified in architectural ornamentation - yet it also presents a human torso - inviting the viewer to look inward. Perhaps because Islam is not dominant in India, it’s only among Indian artists that explicit religious images can be found. Francis Newton Souza (1924-2002) was born to a Christian family in Goa - yet his depiction of three Hindu deities in “Trimurti”makes me wish that earlier Hindu artists might also have been just as familiar with Abstract Expression.

There are two kinds of Turkish artists in this exhibit - the well-born and those with a politically conscious, blue-collar background.  Neither show much interest in either the spiritual or intellectual concerns that engaged the artists mentioned above.  The woodcuts of Nevzat Akoral (b. 1928) exemplify a gruff, unsentimental strain of social realism. Much different are the works of the painter/poet Bedri Eyüboğlu (1911- 1975), the son of a provincial governor. Like so many other young modern artists from around the world, he went to Paris and studied with Andre Lhote ( as did the Chicagoans, Leon and Sadie Garland. ) There’s a cheerfully immanent violence in his “Full Moon” that sets it apart from the Color Field paintings of his American contemporaries. Other favorites in the show are the lithographs of Princess Fahrenissa Zeid (1901-1991). The daughter of an Ottoman pasha, and the wife of an Iraqi prince, her work has a riveting formal intensity and sensuality.

The exhibition catalog argues “for the importance of nonwestern art as a component of modernity—and defies the long-held belief that other forms of modernism can only be second-rate.” Very little of the work in this collection, however, would substantiate such an assertion.  The collector’s self-stated motivation was geo-political, not aesthetic. Most of the artists were associated with some local group of progressive artists, like Saqqakhana in Iran, Group D in Turkey or Delhi Silpi Chakra in India. Most pieces, however, feel as tired, ordinary, and hygienic as a faculty show at a community college. Indeed, many of the artists were teachers at the art schools visited by Mrs. Grey.

Which is not to say that all of the artists involved should be called second-rate. Much more promising examples of their work can often be found online, and a few have become quite collectible for public museums as well as individuals. Unlike a major museum, Mrs. Grey had neither the experience, inclination, or possibly even the funds, to acquire the best examples.

Over the past decade, the Art Institute of Chicago has shown two Twentieth Century artists from India, Rabindranath Tagore and M.F. Hussain (who also has a piece in this show). Modern art from Iran and Turkey has yet to appear. Perhaps this show is a step in that direction. All it really takes is the enthusiasm of one museum trustee  - like Thomas J. Pritzker who recently sponsored an exhibition of the contemporary Chinese painter, Xu Longsen.