Mother Nature may have been in on a conspiracy to keep Ray Spillenger’s paintings unseen, with a foot of snow dropping for their first unveiling since 1960. The paintings harken back to Black Mountain College’s famous Summer of 1948, and breathe fresh life into the abstract expressionist movement now embedded in the canon of art history. Ray Spillenger: Rediscovery of a Black Mountain Painter celebrates the work of an artist in league with Franz Kline and Willem de Kooning. The difference? Ray just never got around to finding critical acclaim before Andy Warhol redefined the “avant-garde,” and abstract expressionism stepped aside for Pop Art to claim the cultural zeitgeist. But now, unearthed from his 10th Street apartment, cleaned and framed on the wall of our gallery at 56 Broadway, Ray Spillenger’s paintings are finally shining. And an impressive group of hearty souls even braved the storm to welcome them!
At the exhibition opening on January 22, curator Dr. Theodore Stebbins Jr. discussed the joy and excitement of discovering Spillenger’s paintings, relishing the fresh perspective Ray offered to a movement so widely known. He explains that for “the Club” of 10th Street painters that were the lifeblood of the movement, abstract expressionist painting was “an inevitability.” Many even believed that the style was the culmination of modern art – that for decades, painting was moving farther and farther away from intellect and narrative, instead toward a ‘purity’ of material and expression (“Let the paint be paint!”). Abstract expressionism is about as pure as it gets in this regard, with the artist wholly engaged in the process, responding to the material directly, with no intention, manipulation, or instruction in mind. (For more on this theory, look up Clement Greenberg’s writing). When you think about abstract expressionism as epitomizing the ideals of modernism, it’s no wonder Pop Art and postmodernism came next – there was no where else to go! Watch as Stebbins relates the bigger ideas of abstract expressionism to his unique experience of curating Spillenger’s work.
The following day Stebbins participated in a panel with Spillenger’s son, Paul, and BMCM+AC’s program director, Alice Sebrell. Paul provided a rare and rich account of someone growing up in the throes of the Abstract Expressionist movement – the highs and lows of being raised by people who dedicated their whole selves to painting, who fed off of each other’s creative processes. Alongside his personal account, Stebbins provides a clear and accessible historical context while Sebrell draws connections back to the roots of it all at Black Mountain College. It was, after all, the summer session at BMC that introduced Spillenger to de Kooning and acted as the springboard (or “hotbed”, as Stebbins says) to his career as an AbEx painter. It is a dynamic discussion of Spillenger’s work and the Abstract Expressionist movement as a whole.
If the snow kept you inside the weekend of the opening, please enjoy our footage and be sure to stop by to see the work in person. The show will be on view Monday-Saturday from 11:00-5:00 until May 21, 2016. We’d love to hear what you think!
By Joey Barrett + First photo by David Huff
All photos and videos in this post c/o Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center except where noted. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
