AVOID OF VOIDS

Colby College Museum of Art shines a spotlight on the enigmatic works of Gertrude Abercrombie

- By James D. Balestrieri

When an artist's work is elusive, when it doesn't fit the received wisdom of art history, two things can happen. One, the artist is ignored. I'd love to give you examples, but I can't. Ignored here means unknown, and unknown comprises the greatest part of the current of the arts that runs through history. I'm not talking about “Anonymous.” Plenty of artworks by Anonymous are part and parcel of the vernacular of human culture. I said “two things can happen.” The second is that the artist was known, and may have even had a career, a reputation, enjoyed fame. In this instance, the artist's elusiveness isn't in the life of the artist; it's in the work. When this is true—and it is true in the truest sense of true when it comes to the art of Gertrude Abercrombie—the artist is rediscovered, time and again, defined and redefined, claimed and reclaimed. In these cases, the art world, like the proverbial goldfish whose memory is so short that every time it sees the little porcelain bridge in its bowl, it exclaims, “O, look, a bridge!”

Want an example? Frida Kahlo. Here's the kicker: with Kahlo and Abercrombie, their biographies are quite open and available. In fact, you might say that Gertrude Abercrombie is, or is soon to be, the American Frida Kahlo.

If you read the excellent essays in the catalogue for