American Expressionism
Columbus Museum of Art
480 East Broad Street
May 23–August 31, 2003
Block Museum of Art, Northwestern University
40 Arts Circle Drive
January 30–May 9, 2004
Portland Art Museum
1219 SW Park Avenue
September 26, 2003–January 4, 2004
Will the ever-turning wheels of revisionism soon replace AbEx with AmEx? If cultural historian Bram Dijkstra has his way, the answer may be yes. Dijkstra has come up with something called American Expressionism, a mood of anxiety and despair that agitated the works of countless artists from the ’20s through the ’50s. Complementing the usual historical accounts (the ascendancy of abstract art, the collective faith in social and technological progress, the flight into regionalism), this new version offers a grim panorama of America’s underbelly. Some names are familiar, but dozens of others should have even specialists reaching for their reference books.
