THE INDEPENDENT MILTON AVERY
by Joan K. Yanni
The realists said he was too abstract; the abstractionists thought he was too realistic. His independent vision and vibrant colors became the bridge between the Social Realists and the Color Field painters. Milton Avery’s refusal to conform made him unique in the art world of his time.
Avery (1889-1965) was born in Altmar, New York, near Lake Ontario, the youngest of four children born to a tanner and his wife. The family moved to a town outside of Hartford, Connecticut, in 1898, and Avery lived and worked in that area until he moved to New York City at the age of 35. His interest in the art world was accidental. He went to work as a factory hand at the age of 16, and moved from job to job in East Hartford factories. An ad in a magazine promising that one could make money by lettering caught his eye, and he decided to try it. The lettering class was at the Connecticut League of Art Students, and it was cancelled a month after Avery enrolled. In place of the lettering class, the League’s founder talked Avery into shifting to a life-drawing class for the remainder of the term, and he was hooked. He began going to the league for classes in the evening after work. By the time he was 26 he was listed in the Hartford City Directory in 1911 as an artist.
But art did not support the family. His father and older brother had died and Milton became the only male adult in an extended family of 11. To continue with his art studies, he worked nights so that he could attend classes at the School of the Art Society in Hartford during the day. He also managed to spend summers in Gloucester where he sketched.
The turning point in his life came during a visit to Gloucester in 1924, when he met Sally Michel, a young art student .He moved to New York City to be near her, and they were married in 1926. The marriage was an ideal one. Sally decided from the beginning to support them both so that Milton could spend all his time painting. She became a freelance illustrator, then got a job illustrating the weekly “Child and Parent” column in the New York Times Magazine. Since she worked mainly at home and could do her work during their summer travels, she and Milton were together almost every day of their lives. Their daughter March was born in 1932.
Their days revolved around art. Milton would get up every morning, look through his summer sketches, decide what he wanted to paint, put up a gessoed canvas and begin. If he did not find anything inspiring in his drawings, he would do a self-portrait. Unlike those of some artists, his self-portraits were unpretentious and whimsical rather than narcissistic.
Their social life, too, revolved around artists. Milton had met Mark Rothko when they both exhibited in a city-sponsored Opportunity Gallery exhibit, and Mark had introduced him to Adolph Gottleib and Barnett Newman. The artists would get together for dinner at Avery’s, then discuss the latest work they were doing. It is noted that Avery said little during their conversations—he was a quiet man, preferring to listen rather than talk.
Avery’s training was in academic art, but when he saw an exhibit of Matisse’s work in New York City, he was drawn to it. By 1930 the influence of Matisse could be seen in his flattened forms and clear, bright color.
The 1930s were trying times for the Averys. In 1935 Milton had been asked to join the prestigious Valentine Gallery, and his work was exhibited there. Though Dr. Albert Barnes purchased one of his paintings, Avery sold little. Academics found him too modern, and the avant-garde now considered Cubism to be the cutting-edge in art. Avery persisted in painting lyrical images, delicate yet powerful arrangements of flat color shapes. Although his paintings always involved a recognizable subject, they were highly abstract in impact. The subject was never dominant; the painting was about color relationships. He parted from the Valentine Gallery in 1943, and the Gallery sold its inventory of 35 of Avery’s paintings to collector Roy Neuberger, who donated Haircut by the Sea (63.21) to MAG.
The Phillips Memorial Art Gallery in Washington organized Avery’s first one-man show at a museum in 1944. He had become a bolder colorist, eliminating the last traces of naturalism in favor of simple shapes and color that was often independent of the subject matter. He thinned his pigments to the consistency of watercolors, so that color lay on the canvas as a transparent veil that floated over the surface. It was this effect that members of the Color Field school—Morris Louis, Kenneth Noland and others—admired.
In 1949 Avery had a major heart attack. He emerged from the hospital weakened but determined to continue his art. For two years he created monotypes, which must be done quickly, with little detail. These prints are remarkable in themselves, but their effects could be seen in the even simpler forms and fluency of color in Avery’s work. His dealer at the time, Paul Rosenberg, severed their relationship and sold Avery’s remaining paintings in a package deal—again to collector Neuberger. (Many of these pictures as well as those sold by the Valentine Gallery are now in the collection of the Neuberger Museum at the State University of New York in Purchase.)
Abstract Expressionism became the vogue in the 1950s, but Avery again ignored the trend of the decade and went on to paint some of his finest pictures. He significantly enlarged his paintings, and his forms became abstract, yet universal. His pictures were built around color rather than form, and the color acquired a vibrancy not seen before. In 1957 the critic Clement Greenberg wrote an article praising him, and the Whitney mounted a retrospective of his work in 1960; but still widespread acclaim failed to come. He suffered another heart attack in 1964 and died in 1965.
Mark Rothko spoke at his memorial service, acknowledging the debt that he and his generation owed to the “sheer loveliness” of Avery’s work. Younger painters, such as Helen Frankenthaler, acknowledge a comparable debt. Today Avery is being honored as an American master, a color poet.
See Grant Holcomb (2001) Voices in the Gallery: Writers on Art.
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