“Jay Robinson seeks to engage the vital aesthetic
issues of his time in his art.”
Paul Manoguerra - Curator of American Art at the Georgia Museum of Art (2001 -2012)
Paul Manoguerra - Curator of American Art at the Georgia Museum of Art (2001 -2012)
Around the time of
his 80th birthday, the American abstract artist Jay Robinson’s studio burned to
the ground with only one of his earlier unsold works surviving. Undeterred the octogenarian artist rebuilt his studio
and continued on with his life’s work although the influence for his work
changed from an earlier interest in jazz music and the lives of his people to
his later interest in molecular
physics and constellations.
As the curator for his
current exhibition, William U. Eiland,
told ARTFIX
daily “This exhibition celebrates a long life devoted to art and things of
the spirit. The works on view literally ‘rose from the ashes’ of a terrible
studio fire, a time when the artist changed direction and rediscovered his
muse. We are fortunate, indeed, that he never despaired of art’s power to
restore and to provoke, in short, to complete life.”
Robinson had his first New
York solo exhibition in 1948, about which the New York Times reviewer
Aline B. Louchheim is said
to have written, “[he had] a facility which allows him to move from a
simplified realism in landscaped views to an imaginative semi-abstraction for
his interpretation of jazz themes."
About these works
Robinson wrote in a 1987 letter to the collector Jason Schoen “Many times I made sketches --
mainly of the players, the surroundings of the place where they were playing,
and the instruments; but mainly it was all in my mind and memory. Then I could
compose the scene as I got to painting and let everything take a natural course
so as to be spontaneous, like the music itself."
In 1950 Robinson traveled to
Africa on Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Fellowship and upon his
return concentrated his efforts in depicting the life in his native Kentucky.
As can be seen from his 1954 painting The Coal Miner (see below) his interest in abstraction
had taken a firm hold.
About
the works from this period he has said “This
composition is not intended as a chart but as semi-description, a semi-abstract
scene of an aspect of life." And of another “It
is strictly a mood piece, trying to convey the somber mood of the hills and
people way back in."
As Paul Manoguerra wrote
about Robinson’s work from this time “His works proclaim his fundamental
concern with conveying meaning through constructive order and abstraction.
Robinson's paintings, drawings, mixed media constructions, and sculptures
reflect his instinctive feeling for his environment and enrich our experience
with the genuine aura of Africa, small Kentucky towns, and the New York jazz
scene.”
Robinson’s current, post
studio fire, works are more in touch with the cosmos although the influence of
Paul Klee is clearly evident.
Jay Robinson: Quarks, Leptons
and Peanuts exhibition
is currently on show at the Georgia
Museum of Art until the 21st of June.
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