On Nov. 22, the Oklahoma City Museum of Art (OKCMOA) welcomed dilettantes to its newest exhibition, “Paul Reed: An Exhibition.” The exhibit, which will run until April 12, showcases the art that characterized the life work of the abstract artist.
Organized chronologically, OKCMOA patrons are guided through the work that characterized his early, mid, and late career.
Beginning in the early 1950s, Reed’s early paintings set the stage for his love of artistic experimentation and involvement in Abstract Expressionism. He toyed with mediums, like the then novel acrylic paint, to create the abstract effects that were becoming popular in the mid-twentieth century. He also experimented ideologically. “Manet’s Vase After Pollock” (1958), which looks exactly like what the name suggests, illustrates his reverence for art theory and his obsession with pushing its bounds.
His mid-career, which constitutes a large portion of the collection, is filled with amorphous and geometric swaths of color. These pieces chart the beginning of Reed’s distinctive interest in color experimentation.
A striking piece entitled “No. 14D” (1964) features a mist-blue background with four semi-opaque purple petals arranged in a flower-like shape and four bright orange squares layered on top of them. It is bright and soothing, yet also dark and unnerving, reminding the viewer of how malleable their feelings are in the hands of color theory.
“No. 14D” also straddles a binary for Reed, sitting at the juncture between the amorphous shapes that defined his early mid-career and the geometric themes that would dominate his later style. His “Disc” (1965) series is a prime example of the latter, in which Reed juxtaposes a monochrome circle with a bright background and different colored triangles placed in alternate corners.
Some of the most remarkable pieces in the collection, the “Shaped Canvas” series pushes the limits of Reed’s geometric style. The abnormal canvas shapes hold a level of dynamism that, when combined with their color-based visual effects, make them extraordinary.
“Margem” (1968) was painted on a misshapen rectangular canvas and has a little square cut out from its middle. The bold colors—inlcuding orange, pink, yellow, green, blue, and brown—form panels around the cut out to make it feel like you’re looking into an abstract depiction of a room. The piece distorts your perception, making it feel near impossible to decipher whether it is two or three dimensional.
The gallery provides much needed context to the pieces, while still allowing the viewer to form their own thoughts about each painting. Their commentary on Reed’s shaped canvas period provides insight into the ideology fueling the artist’s career in the late sixties and early seventies: “The shaped canvases best represent the totality of Reed’s theories, abilities, and the pure excitement of representing and deconstructing the architectural nature of three dimensional painting.”
Further necessary context for the Paul Reed exhibition is provided by the neighboring exhibit, “The Legacy of the Washington Color School.” The Washington Art School was an abstract expressionist movement born in Washington, D.C. and active from the 1950s until the 1970s. Reed, alongside Kenneth Noland, Morris Louis, Gene Davis, Howard, Mehring, and Thomas Downing, were the formative members of the movement.
The gallery brings together pieces by the other artists in the Washington Art School, displaying the bold colors and experimental patterns that compliment the similar artistic focus that inspired Reed. Additionally, OKCMOA opened its walls to other contemporaries of the Washington Color School whose work often gets overlooked in conversations about the abstract movement. “The Legacy of the Washington School of Art” is a fascinating collection of diverging and converging art styles that is impressive as both a counterpart to “Paul Reed: An Exhibition” and as a standalone curation.
The Reed exhibit ends with a selection of works from his later career, which stretched from the 1970s to 2010. While the quantity of Reed’s work shrinks as he grows older, his commitment to experimentation remains. Oil pastel abstractions, textured gouache impressions, and photo collages complete the extensive retrospective.
The impressive exhibition’s appearance in the Oklahoma City Metro should be no surprise. In 1968, the museum acquired the Washington Gallery of Modern Art’s collection, as the museum that showcased the art of the Washington Color School was closing. Following a 2016 feature of one of Reed’s paintings, the Paul and Esther Reed Trust gifted 125 of Reed’s works to OKCMOA. As the museum said in its press release for the exhibition, it was “a donation that made OKCMOA the definitive home of Reed’s work.”
The pleasing colors and satisfying shapes can satiate any museumgoer, making the exhibit a perfect destination for any cousins, grandparents, grandchildren, or in-laws that may be visiting you this holiday season.
On the gallery’s opening day, a young family walked amongst the brightly colored and uniquely shaped canvases. The youngest, a boy about five years old, turned to his mom and said “can you take a picture of these, so I can draw them when I get home?” It was the sort of organic curiosity that was delightfully apt for a Paul Reed retrospective.