TitleThe Broken Mirror
Artist
Paul Russotto
(American, 1944 - 2014)
Date1982
MediumOil on canvas
DimensionsUnframed: 20 × 16 in.
Framed: 21 1/4 × 17 1/4 × 2 in.
SignedSigned upper left: "Russotto"
Credit LineNational Academy of Design, New York, Gift of Paul Resika, 1998
Object number1998.5
Label TextAs a direct artistic descendant of the New York School painters, Paul Russotto's work fits squarely into the lineage of post-war American abstract painting. Born in New York, Russotto was a student in the early 1960s, at a moment when the pervasive dominance of Abstract Expressionism had waned considerably, and many artists were exploring alternatives to gesture-based abstract painting. He enrolled at the Art Students League and followed a traditional art curriculum based on figurative representation with Frank Mason and Raymond Breinin, studying there for less than one year. Russotto's true education however, was conducted, as he described it, "on the road," as he met and became close with many artists of the Abstract Expressionist generation such as James Brooks, NA and Esteban Vicente, NA. Nevertheless, Russotto was working in a representational style and in 1967 he exhibited Still Life with Apples and Eggs in the National Academy's Annual. Throughout the 1970s his work continued to be representational, but would take a dramatic turn in the coming decade.In 1980 Russotto began to work on a series of abstract collages exclusively in black and white. He was grappling with his own understanding of color and in an attempt to allay this problem, he eliminated it entirely from his work. As one writer observed, "Denial of color served as a right of passage [for the artist]; at the same time, a long meditation on color itself." Russotto also began exploring automatic techniques of drawing and painting in the manner of the Surrealists. The works that emerged from this period were, not surprisingly, predominantly abstract and sometimes referential, but all were characterized by a strongly improvisational feel. By 1982, the artist had returned to working with color and continued to pursue automatic techniques. Russotto is very much interested with the notion of mark making on a fundamental level and how it operates within the larger context of a universal abstract language. His interest includes Prehistoric painting, and he has identified an abstract vocabulary of three basic types of marks: a point, a line, and a mass.
While some of his work from the 1980s shows similarities to the concurrent Neo-Expressionist movement, it is essentially antithetical to it. One of Russotto's primary aims is to eliminate the premeditated composition and rid himself of the conscious mind during the creative process. "The Broken Mirror" dates from the period of the artist's career when he reintroduced color into his painting. The ground is punctuated with areas of blue and red overlaid with frenetic gestural brushstrokes of white, highlighted with black within a circular motif in the central portion of the painting. The artist's interest in Prehistoric mark making is evident in "The Broken Mirror" and he has incorporated the three basic types of marks. These are the elements of his abstract vocabulary, and, as he noted, "In many ways, it seems to me, nothing much has changed since the beginning of time. I guess you can say that I represent the return to the original necessity of art."
MNP
