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Alan Davie at ACA
Art in America, Jan, 2005 by David Ebony
Fresh on the heels of Alan Davie's well-received retrospective at Tate St. Ives early last year, this New York gallery show of 49 paintings and works on paper was a surprisingly comprehensive and satisfying overview of the Scottish artist's 60-plus-year career. Now 84, Davie early on produced exuberant abstractions that represent a vital link between the New York School and European art informel. While his formidable achievement is widely recognized in Britain, and his influence is observable on a host of younger painters ranging from Carroll Dunham to Fiona Rae, Davie is hardly a household name here. He made an initial impact in the U.S. in the 1950s and '60s, and, as part of the circle around Peggy Guggenheim, an early supporter, he was associated with Pollock, Rothko and Motherwell. But his position was overshadowed by the New York School, and his later output, focused on non-Western imagery, was less well understood by American audiences. A few more exhibitions of this quality, however, could change all that.
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The show began with some classic pieces from the mid '50s, which have been largely absent from previous U.S. Davie surveys. Study for Temple (White) #4 (1956), about 4 by 4 feet, for instance, shows blue, red and yellow geometric shapes--a triangle, square and circle--outlined in black and set against a stark white ground. The forms are feverishly but not crudely painted. Accompanied along the sides by frantic black squiggles, the shapes seem to pulsate. In a long, narrow, horizontal oil on paper, Snake Sensation (1959), wriggling black lines emanating from each side traverse large magenta blobs to collide with a vertical orange band bisecting the composition. Davie, who is also a poet and musician, makes the shapes and lines in each work appear spontaneous, but they are, in fact, finely calibrated to convey a maximum amount of rhythmic energy and movement.
Wintering for many years on the Caribbean island of St. Lucia, the artist began in the mid '70s to paint fanciful landscapes and interiors in which he embeds a personalized system of signs and symbols inspired by numerous cultures and religions, including Carib, Ancient Egyptian, Hinduism and Buddhism. Large works in this show, such as Hallucination in Desert Landscape (1984) and Magic Village #2 (1993), are key examples of the period. Some of the most exciting works on view feature a merger of refined iconography and expressive gesture. One example, Yoga Pie (1978), shows on the left what could be either a yellow umbrella with a red frame or a gold Buddhist prayer wheel hovering above a crescent moon outlined in black. At the right, a turquoise orb rises above a glyphlike marking of black diamond shapes with arm-like appendages set against a purple ground. At the center of the composition, frenzied brushstrokes and splatters of pink, white, red and yellow disrupt the illusionistic space while activating the entire surface. Davie's later works are progressively less abstract and gestural, but they are no less enigmatic and enchanting than his early landmark pieces.
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