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Hollis Taggart
Alfred Leslie
Noah's Collage
24 x 30 in. (61 x 76.2 cm)
description
Born in New York City, multidisciplinary artist Alfred Leslie gained notice in the postwar period on the strength of his early abstract paintings, later figurative works, and independent films. An outgoing personality with close ties to Abstract Expressionist artists, Leslie turned his studio into a lively gathering place for New York’s avant-garde.
After serving briefly in the U. S. Coast Guard, Leslie studied art from 1946 to 1947 with Tony Smith and William Baziotes at New York University on the G. I. Bill and, later, at the Pratt Institute and the Art Students League. His early work—forceful abstractions, ranging from large canvases to small collages—soon made his name as a second-generation Abstract Expressionist (1), part of a group of young New York School artists that also included Grace Hartigan, Norman Bluhm, Michael Goldberg, Al Held, and Joan Mitchell.
Leslie worked in this vein throughout the 1950s. He participated in the seminal, artist-organized Ninth Street Show in 1951 and had his first solo exhibition at Tibor de Nagy Gallery in 1952, followed by additional shows there in 1953, 1954, and 1957. In 1959, he was included in the 16 Americans show at the Museum of Modern Art. In 1960, reviewing a show at the Martha Jackson Gallery for the New York Times, Dore Ashton considers Leslie’s work in the context of his Abstract Expressionist forerunners: “While Mr. Leslie has taken the foot-wide stroke and casual way of applying paint initiated by Mr. de Kooning, he has lately sought to endow his huge canvases with a calm enforced by horizontal and vertical structures.” (2)
Noah’s Collage, an oil and collage work from 1960, is a wonderful example of Leslie’s multimedia, abstract expressionist works. The artist divided the canvas into rough quadrants, delineated top from bottom with bold strokes of deep red and yellow and left from right with the sharp, precise edge of cut paper. Each quadrant is unique: bright red with deep red lines, mustard yellow with a greenish-white drip of paint, and black with graphic white lines executed in Leslie’s characteristic thick brushstrokes. There are passages of other colors, either from gaps left while Leslie energetically applied his paint to the canvas, as with the green showing through at top left, or when he mixed his pigments wet–on–wet, as with the yellow visible behind the black square at top right. A single blue curve near the center of the upper register completes the triumvirate of primary colors. The canvas conveys a sense of controlled chaos. It is structured around a formulaic grid, but this structure is relaxed with the artist’s confident and robust brushwork. The canvas is dynamic, with the colors drawing the eye over its surface and the collaged elements providing an added textural interest, as well as a slight three-dimensionality.
Comparable works include his Untitled (1957, oil and collage with staples) at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; Teruyko (1960, oil on canvas) at the Smithsonian American Art Museum; and Number 8 (1960, oil and collage) at the Buffalo AKG Art Museum.
In recent years, Leslie’s Abstract Expressionist work has been the object of renewed appreciation, with the shows Action/Precision: The New Direction in New York, 1955–1960 organized by the Newport Harbor Art Museum in 1985 and Alfred Leslie 1951–1962: Expressing the Zeitgeist at Allan Stone Gallery in 2004.
In 1966, just before a planned retrospective at the Whitney Museum, a studio fire upended Leslie’s life and artistic practice by destroying everything from canvases to film footage for works in progress. In the aftermath, Leslie decided to focus exclusively on painting. He did not complete another film until The Cedar Bar (2002), an exploration of the heated discussions between artists and critic Clement Greenberg that took place in the heyday of Abstract Expressionism. Also in 1966, poet Frank O’Hara, Leslie’s close friend and collaborator, died in a car accident. The loss inspired The Killing Cycle, a series of five major paintings in the manner of Caravaggio and hundreds of studies created between 1967 and 1981.
Leslie’s work was the subject of a traveling retrospective organized by the Boston Museum of Fine Arts in 1976. A series of monochromatic landscapes, 100 Views along the Road: The Watercolors of Alfred Leslie, toured nationally in 1986. Now in his eighties, Leslie continues to live and work in New York City.
After serving briefly in the U. S. Coast Guard, Leslie studied art from 1946 to 1947 with Tony Smith and William Baziotes at New York University on the G. I. Bill and, later, at the Pratt Institute and the Art Students League. His early work—forceful abstractions, ranging from large canvases to small collages—soon made his name as a second-generation Abstract Expressionist (1), part of a group of young New York School artists that also included Grace Hartigan, Norman Bluhm, Michael Goldberg, Al Held, and Joan Mitchell.
Leslie worked in this vein throughout the 1950s. He participated in the seminal, artist-organized Ninth Street Show in 1951 and had his first solo exhibition at Tibor de Nagy Gallery in 1952, followed by additional shows there in 1953, 1954, and 1957. In 1959, he was included in the 16 Americans show at the Museum of Modern Art. In 1960, reviewing a show at the Martha Jackson Gallery for the New York Times, Dore Ashton considers Leslie’s work in the context of his Abstract Expressionist forerunners: “While Mr. Leslie has taken the foot-wide stroke and casual way of applying paint initiated by Mr. de Kooning, he has lately sought to endow his huge canvases with a calm enforced by horizontal and vertical structures.” (2)
Noah’s Collage, an oil and collage work from 1960, is a wonderful example of Leslie’s multimedia, abstract expressionist works. The artist divided the canvas into rough quadrants, delineated top from bottom with bold strokes of deep red and yellow and left from right with the sharp, precise edge of cut paper. Each quadrant is unique: bright red with deep red lines, mustard yellow with a greenish-white drip of paint, and black with graphic white lines executed in Leslie’s characteristic thick brushstrokes. There are passages of other colors, either from gaps left while Leslie energetically applied his paint to the canvas, as with the green showing through at top left, or when he mixed his pigments wet–on–wet, as with the yellow visible behind the black square at top right. A single blue curve near the center of the upper register completes the triumvirate of primary colors. The canvas conveys a sense of controlled chaos. It is structured around a formulaic grid, but this structure is relaxed with the artist’s confident and robust brushwork. The canvas is dynamic, with the colors drawing the eye over its surface and the collaged elements providing an added textural interest, as well as a slight three-dimensionality.
Comparable works include his Untitled (1957, oil and collage with staples) at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; Teruyko (1960, oil on canvas) at the Smithsonian American Art Museum; and Number 8 (1960, oil and collage) at the Buffalo AKG Art Museum.
In recent years, Leslie’s Abstract Expressionist work has been the object of renewed appreciation, with the shows Action/Precision: The New Direction in New York, 1955–1960 organized by the Newport Harbor Art Museum in 1985 and Alfred Leslie 1951–1962: Expressing the Zeitgeist at Allan Stone Gallery in 2004.
In 1966, just before a planned retrospective at the Whitney Museum, a studio fire upended Leslie’s life and artistic practice by destroying everything from canvases to film footage for works in progress. In the aftermath, Leslie decided to focus exclusively on painting. He did not complete another film until The Cedar Bar (2002), an exploration of the heated discussions between artists and critic Clement Greenberg that took place in the heyday of Abstract Expressionism. Also in 1966, poet Frank O’Hara, Leslie’s close friend and collaborator, died in a car accident. The loss inspired The Killing Cycle, a series of five major paintings in the manner of Caravaggio and hundreds of studies created between 1967 and 1981.
Leslie’s work was the subject of a traveling retrospective organized by the Boston Museum of Fine Arts in 1976. A series of monochromatic landscapes, 100 Views along the Road: The Watercolors of Alfred Leslie, toured nationally in 1986. Now in his eighties, Leslie continues to live and work in New York City.
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