Critical Archive of the Visual and Related Arts
Mary Abbott
American; 20th-century
Chicago, IL: EXPO Chicago (McCormick Gallery’s Booth)
70%
Untitled. No date. Gouache on paper
This looks like a Matisse cut-out that's been put through sparagmos, in a good way. What's convincing about it has something to do with how the largest of the several limb-forms, which is angled downwards to the right, seems to lie on top of the line it's intersecting while also existing on the same plane as it. That is, there are two spatial registers at simultaneous work here, a virtual one involving the strokes-as-shapes in pure relation to each other and a literal one involving their collective relationship with the off-white ground they're placed upon. Abstraction 101, yeah, but it's all very subtle and suggestive without being coy. The movement from smaller marks in the top left corner to larger, bolder forms down below does a nice job giving the composition dynamism, but ambiguously so (to its credit). If the piece suffers from anything besides humbleness, it's its overreliance on bodily shapes (rather than just shapes) and on that precise shade of Matisse lapis blue, which can't help but seem derivative even if it does put Abbott in direct conversation with the master. (2025)