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6/9/2006

Jean Miotte

Chelsea Art Museum, New York

Spirit of Defiance

The Chelsea Art Museum, Home of the Miotte Foundation, is pleased to announce the opening of its Fall season with the exhibition, Miotte: Spirit of Defiance, organized on the occasion of the artist’s eightieth birthday. The exhibition, which spans all three floors of the museum, charts the chronological and formal development of Miotte’s work in its impressive variety. From his early figurative works, to the first explosions of color that marked his early abstraction, to the more minimal black and white works, to the haunting beauty of the calligraphic strokes on raw canvas- the selections reveal an artist constantly expanding the thresholds of discovery within his chosen practice. Works have also been included to show his experimentation in different media including sculpture, ceramics, graphics and tapestry as well as his set designs for the ballet with which his gestural strokes have such affinity.

Jean Miotte’s vocation as an artist began in the aftermath of World War II. The new paradigms of perception that transformed the landscape of art in the second half of the twentieth century have been well documented. With social institutions discredited as enablers of nothing but chaos (and given our current political climate we sadly again are faced with similar disillusion) the artist - be it painter, writer, philosopher- moved into a somewhat shamanistic role. An existentialist, inner, private response, radically replaced the Western rationalist traditions of social organization and a progressive view of history. Authenticity and meaning could only be located, provisionally and unstably, in the individual, fought for continually in each creative act of self-realization.

Within this context, the artist as creator and painting, by and in itself, now seemed more potent, more capable of moral meaning than the external realities of landscape, politics and society. There emerged, almost simultaneously on both sides of the Atlantic, a vindication of the gestural in painting. The gesture was the existential equivalent to the action that led to self-awakening. A contemporary of such artists as Shiraga Kasuo, Jean-Paul Riopelle, and Emil Schumacher, Miotte championed the individual freedom of the artist as expressed through gestural brushstroke and thick pools of color. As Miotte has commented, “My painting is a projection, a succession of acute moments where creation occurs in the midst of spiritual tension and as a result of inner conflicts."

The Spirit of Defiance of the exhibition’s title has continued to inform Miotte’s artistic trajectory. Refusing to conform to the changing demands of the art market, he has worked to express the limitless possibilities of the gestural line and color. In the spirit of the jazz improvisations, which have always inspired him with its spirit of freedom and improvisation, Miotte has sounded in his painting the full range of human emotion, ranging from despair to an utter wonder at the beauty of creation. The deep sense of humanity which his works evoke cross the boundaries of race and geography, an appeal which is chronicled in his international exhibition history. Miotte’s paintings have been shown extensively throughout the Far East including one-man shows in the national museums of Tokyo, Hong Kong, Singapore, Taipei, and Manila. Indeed, Miotte was the first western artist invited to show in post-Mao Beijing in 1980. Miotte continues to be widely exhibited in Europe. Most recently an exhibition of some 80 works has travelled to museums in Spain, Belgium, Finland, the Netherlands, Hungary, Switzerland and Germany.

Miotte has exhibited regularly in New York since 1962 and is included in many important private and public collections including the Guggenheim Museum. In 2002 the Miotte foundation was established at the Chelsea Art Museum. The foundation, as well as housing substantial holdings of Miotte’s work, supports both a continued historical investigation of the trans-national movement of art autre, and a venue for innovative exhibitions which testify to Abstraction’s continued relevance and power in postmodern vocabulary.

A new monograph on Miotte will be published on the occasion of the exhibition.

Chelsea Art Museum
556 West 22nd Street, New York, NY 10011
open Tuesday through Saturday Noon to 6 pm
Thursday Noon to 8 pm - $3 after 6 pm
closed Sunday and Monday
$6 adults, $3 students and seniors, free for members and visitors 18 and under

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