Janet Sobel

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Janet Sobel
Photo of Janet Sobel.jpg
Born
Jennie Olechovsky

May 31, 1893
Ukraine
Died1968 (aged 73–74)
Plainfield, New Jersey
NationalityUkrainian, American
Known forDrip painting, all-over painting
Notable work
Pro and Contra (1941), Through the Glass (1944), Milky Way (1945)
MovementAbstract Expressionism
Spouse(s)Max Sobel

Janet Sobel (May 31, 1893 – 1968) was a Ukrainian-American Abstract Expressionist painter whose career started mid-life, at age forty-five in 1938. Sobel was the first artist to use the drip painting technique that directly influenced Jackson Pollock.[1] She was credited as exhibiting the first instance of all-over painting seen by Clement Greenberg, a notable art critic.

Early life[]

Janet Sobel was born as Jennie Olechovsky in 1893 in Ukraine. Her father, Baruch Olechovsky,[2] was killed in a Russian pogrom. Sobel along with her mother, Fannie Kinchuk, a midwife,[3] and siblings moved to Ellis Island in New York City in 1908.[2]At sixteen years of age, she married Max Sobel, with whom she had five children.[3]

She was the mother of five children when she began painting in 1937. She produced both non-objective abstractions and figurative artwork.[4] Upon recognizing Sobel's talent, her son helped her artistic development and shared her work with émigré surrealists, Max Ernst, André Breton, as well as John Dewey and Sidney Janis.[5]

Career[]

Effect of inspiration[]

Her belief in the ethics of self-realization in a democracy led to Sobel's encounter with philosopher John Dewey. Dewey championed Sobel by writing about her in a catalogue statement at the Puma Gallery in New York in 1944. In this catalogue he states:

Her work is extraordinarily free from inventiveness and from self-consciousness and pretense. One can believe that to an unusual degree her forms and colors well up from a subconsciousness that is richly stored with sensitive impressions received directly from contact with nature, impressions which have been reorganized in figures in which color and form are happily wed.[4]

Sobel used music for inspiration and stimulation of her feelings into her canvas. Sobel's works exemplify the tendency to fill up every empty space, sometimes interpreted as horror vacui. She often depicted her feelings through past experiences. Her depiction of soldiers with cannons and imperial armies, as well as traditional Jewish families, reflected the experiences of her childhood. Her figures often demonstrated the time of the Holocaust, where she relived the trauma of her youth. Overcoming those youthful traumas, Sobel found a safe realm for her imagination through art.[5]

Effect of art critics[]

An art authority during Sobel's time, Clement Greenberg, wrote on avant-garde painting. Although he had not addressed her during the three years her professional works circulated in New York galleries, he eventually positioned "Sobel as a forerunner of Abstract Impressionism". Generally, he only framed Sobel's work relative to Abstract Expressionism or to Pollock, and especially in relation to Pollock's career. He consistently described Sobel's work as inferior to that of Pollock by characterizing it as "'primitive'" and that of a "'housewife'".[6] In certain circles, the effect of his influence was a failure of recognition of her work during her career.

Nonetheless, Peggy Guggenheim included Sobel's work in her The Art of This Century Gallery in 1945, and the influence of her work has been recognized by the artists who were touted highly in critiques by Greenberg.

As described, some of her work is related to the so-called "drip paintings" of Jackson Pollock, who "'admitted that these pictures had made an impression on him'".[6][7] Sobel's work was seen in 1946 by Pollock and the same critic.[8] In his essay "'American-Type' Painting" the critic cited Sobel's works as the first instance of all-over painting he had seen, but attributed the style to appropriated female nature rather than to artistic creativity. Greenberg went on to say that her art evolved from recognizable figures to a more abstract style of paint dripping.[9]

Returning to Pollock: one might see how, in his tacit assumption of the position of the woman—the decentered and the voiceless, the one who flows uncontrollably, the one who figures the void and the unconscious—he remained on some level, a man using his masculine authority to appropriate a feminine space. In fact, one woman had tried to articulate that space before Pollock did, in a similar way—not Krasner but Janet Sobel, who made poured, all-over compositions that unmistakably made an impact on Pollock. Greenberg recalls, Pollock (and I myself) admired [Sobel's] pictures rather furtively" at the Art of This Century gallery in 1944; "The effect—and it was the first really 'all-over' one that I had ever seen... —was strangely pleasing. Later on, Pollock admitted that these pictures had made an impression on him. When Sobel is mentioned at all in accounts of Pollock's development, however, she is generally described and so discredited as a "housewife" or amateur, a stratagem that preserves Pollock's status as the unique progenitor, both mother and father of his art, a figure overflowing not only with semen but with amniotic fluid.[10]

"Sobel was part folk artist, Surrealist, and Abstract Expressionist, but critics found it easiest to call her a 'primitive'." As Zalman summarizes, her title of "primitive" was "a category that enabled her acceptance by the art world, but restricted her artistic development". Grouping Sobel as a 'primitive' painter was part of a greater movement to try to form a unique American form of art, distinct from European art, while still trying to maintain a hierarchy of 'us and them'. Sobel was grouped as inferior due to being a housewife, while other painters could have been dismissed as being mentally inferior in some way.[6] In a way, Sobel also serves as a representative of this conflict. Due to the attitudes of some of the critics of her day, Sobel became known as a suburban housewife who, working professionally as an artist, inspired the feminist conversation around domestic roles of women.

Notable Works[]

Sobel's initial works show a flair for a primitivist figuration reminiscent of early Chagall and serves to herald early Dubuffet. The abundant floral motifs recall Ukrainian peasant art. In addition, the need to exploit media of all sorts is very evident (including sand). If her drip paintings weren't vivid enough, she would opt to outline them in ink in order to compensate. Aiding in inventing Abstract Expressionism did not conclude her imagistic work. Her main goal was visual intensity, which she attained with impressive regularity.[citation needed]

Milky Way, created in 1945, is currently displayed in the Museum of Modern Art.[11]

References[]

  1. ^ https://monoskop.org/images/c/ce/Greenberg_Clement_1955_1961_American-Type_Painting.pdf p. 218}
  2. ^ Jump up to: a b "Will the Real Janet Sobel Please Stand Up?". www.janetsobel.com. Retrieved 2018-04-12.
  3. ^ Jump up to: a b Blackstone, Maya (August 2, 2021). "Janet Sobel". The New York Times. Retrieved 5 August 2021.
  4. ^ Jump up to: a b John Dewey, Janet Sobel, Puma gallery, leaflet catalogue, New York, April 24 to May 14, 1944.
  5. ^ Jump up to: a b Levin, Gail (2003). Inside Out: Selected Works by Janet Sobel. New York: Gary Snyder Fine Art. pp. 5 and 6.
  6. ^ Jump up to: a b c Zalman, Sandra (2015). "Janet Sobel: Primitive Modern and the Origins of Abstract Expressionism". Woman's Art Journal. 36 (2): 20–29. ISSN 0270-7993. JSTOR 26430653.
  7. ^ "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 2011-07-12. Retrieved 2011-03-15.CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
  8. ^ Bob Duggan. "Mother of Invention". Big Think.
  9. ^ Pollock, Jackson (1999). Jackson Pollock. ISBN 9780870700378.
  10. ^ Pollock, Jackson (1999). Jackson Pollock. ISBN 9780870700378.
  11. ^ "Janet Sobel. Milky Way. 1945 | MoMA". The Museum of Modern Art. Retrieved 2018-03-29.

External links[]

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