THE NEW YORK TIMES
By Roberta Smith
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| Agnes Pelton, Mother of Silence, 1933. Oil on canvas. Private Collection.
Credit: Agnes Pelton, Mother of Silence, 1933. Oil on canvas. Private Collection. |
A few years ago, I interrupted a panel discussion at the Guggenheim as it moved toward the dead-horse question of whether painting was still viable. Hindsight arrived one or two years later, when a largely unknown sector of that past was emphatically, unforgettably heard from — at the Guggenheim. This divine noise was the full-rotunda exhibition of the paintings of Hilma af Klint. A similar jolt — if not of that magnitude — can now be felt in “Agnes Pelton: Desert Transcendentalist,” an exhibition at the Whitney Museum. This career-spanning survey of 45 paintings offers a reminder that the history of modernist abstraction and women’s contribution to it is still being written. [
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The museum announced late Thursday that it was temporarily closing over concerns about the coronavirus.)
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| AAgnes Pelton’s “Star Gazer” (1929). A bud stands like a pilgrim, offering itself to an azure vase, behind which brilliant red hills soften. “The tension of unity in formation is the template of Pelton’s best work,” our critic says. |
