Joanna Pousette-Dart is the talented daughter of the well-known early New York School Expressionist Richard Pousette-Dart, who was making work as soon as the middle of the previous century. Joanna is presenting a fine show of paintings linked to each other by a size that moves from moderate to large (there is a room with smaller works that mimic the forms of the larger ones), by broad belts of a single color that sit on top of each other horizontally, with bouquet-like and sometimes sharp gestures that offer a noticeable embellishment in their intricacy of design. 

​

It must be noted that these paintings form a tight series, in which the centering motif of the works forms an unusual constraint. If one were asked to indicate influences, beyond their minimalist poise, the colors and shape of the panel-like stretches of paint do remind viewers of the shapes placed on totem poles made by Indigenous people on the Northwest Coast. The meeting between Native practice and late modernism and abstraction results in a change in which nothing is forfeited. One of the unusual, often inspired aspects involving today’s aesthetic is our willingness to use an eclecticism that is, for many, free of political implications. Thus, social points become secondary to the strength of the composition, Pousette-Dart, who feels like there is an agreement with many who look to abstract-expressionist times for earlier inspiration, seeks both the lightness of the gesture and the weight of a large expanse of color. It may be said that these qualities have been central to contemporary art, remaining near what we still do for some time. As we might have imagined, beyond the historical references, we see Pousette-Dart find freedom within close mimicry, which is often similar from one work to the next. Within likenesses, though, there are subtle sets of change, which alter our reading of what the artist has done. Subtlety thus engenders unusual change. 

 

You can see this in Pousette-Dart's painting Untitled (6) (2023), which yields remarkable effects in the face of being studied. It consists of three layers, broken up by different colors and shapes The top layer, on the left, consists of a yellow form raised on thin yellow legs and standing over a center of dark blue. Next to this form is a very light blue, a color best described as blue-white. Set against this whitish/cerulean color is a white crescent. Beneath the two weighted layers, is the lowest stripe; It is formed by one of Pousette-Dark's signature forms: a kind of comb, without teeth, rising a bit in the middle of the top ridge. This open comb form contains a very dark blue, while in the middle, we see a dark green, much narrower comb form. 

​

The painting is terrific, and with the faint resonance of Indigenous art, it cannot be seen only as single-cultured. Instead, the work resonates as an item of culture in its own right, as well as changing a vision incorporating other arts. In another structurally similar painting, Pousette-Dart has changed the colors: Here a kind of blue claw goes up the overt edge and then bends sharply to the right. The top horizontal is taken up by what can best be described as an upside-down dark green canoe, a form echoed by the crescent shapes beneath it. On the left column-like green space, there is an orange crescent, upright and facing the left, against a lighter background, we see two creases, in considered placement, with one on top of the other. They are orange on top and white against a very light blue. The crescents suggest natural forms, which would decorate the firm beams, often of blue that the artist regularly uses. We find here, as with the other works in the show, a willingness to change big and small elements essential to the composition.

 

A beautiful study of an architectural structure not so different from the overall shape of the Guggenheim Museum rises into a brightly lit sky. The outlines of the building, consisting of blue lines constraining large open spaces, create a simple scaffolding that poetically maintains volumetric space The openness of the work, filled with color, argues for a light touch, which exists in Pousette-Dart's art, along with them weightier bands of color. 

The major question facing the artist and her audience concerns the originality of the form. This architectural shape, a kind of inverted ziggurat, bears witness to something primal and ancient and something very nicely new. The tension is excellent, even if Pousette-Dart's hand strays toward the current moment. All artists work against time, but in this case, the old and new may bond together. It is an interesting consideration if we note the artist's lineage, beginning with her father's lineage longer ago than we would imagine in the past century.​

​