Gottlieb at Pace Gallery is the Daily Pic by Blake Gopnik
The Daily Pic: Adolph Gottlieb's abstraction isn't afraid to smile
© Adolph and Esther Gottlieb Foundation/Licensed by VAGA, New York, courtesy The Pace Gallery
Daily Pic: Vintage paintings by Adolph Gottlieb, in a show at Pace Gallery in New York, are unfailingly appealing and attractive and covet-able. They are also very often funny. It’s hard to imagine chuckling at works by other Abstract Expressionists such as Mark Rothko or Jackson Pollock, let alone Clyfford Still. (Those last two would have decked you for laughing; Rothko might have burst into tears.) But a broad smile, at very least, seems the right reaction to many Gottliebs, since his abstractions are so often so anthropomorphic, and the anthropos in them seems cheerful. Barnett Newman’s abstraction showed us ourselves as fine, upstanding and stiff – as men heroic and sublime, in the words of his most famous title. In this 1962 painting, called “Ochre and Black,” Gottlieb shows us pulling a face.
For a full visual archive of past Daily Pics visit blakegopnik.com/archive.
See more of our coverage in your search results.
Got a tip? Send it to The Daily Beast here.
Register below to read this article for free or subscribe
to unlock unlimited access to The Daily Beast.
Monthly
$1
First month then $5.99/month
Annual
$35
First year then $59.99/year
Premium
$79
First year then $119.99/year
*Substack access provided by the next business day, using your subscription email. Choosing the Premium plan constitutes your permission to share your subscription email with Substack and your agreement to Substack’s Privacy Policy.
Already have an account? Sign In
Looks like you already have a subscription!
You're all set!
Thanks for subscribing.