Curating trend alert. The American Folk Art Museum is the latest institution to exhibit the “mix and match” concept of juxtaposing artists from different eras. When will collectors catch on to this? In what looks to be a beautiful selection of work, “The Seduction of Light..” pairs the glowing palette and eerily flat forms of 19th century American folk artist Ammi Phillips with the brooding tones of Mark Rothko. At first, this pairing has the feel of a rudimentary museum parlor trick.(Yes, both of the paintings above are really red!) Formalism aside, however, there is a deeper connection going on here. As Ken Johnson wrote in his review of the exhibition:
“Rothko’s painted surfaces give way to ambiguous, illusory depths implying ethereal realms of mind and space. Phillips’s portraits have a timeless, ghostly quality; they’re like pictures of undying, archetypal souls. This direct connection between the terrestrial and the transcendental, unmediated by complicated symbolism, is also in the American grain.”
