By Ben Davis, March 13, 2020 Share This Article, Read the full article →
A survey of the spiritual-abstractionist painter's oracular art brings an offbeat brand of enlightenment to New York.
Consider two paintings. One is Mother of Silence (1933), by the early 20th century spiritual-abstractionist painter Agnes Pelton. She is the star of a show that has just arrived at the Whitney Museum, part of a wave of recent interest in experimental art by previously unsung or undersung female artists working in esoteric or occult traditions, a vogue that is currently rewriting how museums approach the history of modern art.
Mother of Silence centers on a cluster of numinous blobs in pale lavender, pink, and turquoise pastels, set off against a red and black background and wreathed by precisely organized whorls of energy. It suggests the form of a seated Buddha. Read the full article →
Installation view of Agnes Pelton, Mother of Silence at the Whitney. Image: Ben Davis.
