To mention the name William Baziotes (1912–63) is to conjure up images of indeterminate spaces populated by enigmatic forms. If it can be said that a purposeful ambiguity informs Baziotes’s work, “ambiguous” might also suffice as a description of the artist’s reputation. While his paintings are usually associated with those of the Abstract Expressionists, a group of artists with whom he exhibited and fraternized, they don’t quite fit the label. His work isn’t “action painting”: the patient scumbling of oils hardly constitutes the stuff of gestural bravado. And while he took an interest in the spiritual side of Abstract Expressionism (epitomized by painters like Mark Rothko and Clyfford Still) Baziotes’s affiliation with it is, at best, tenuous.

Most significant, Baziotes was never really an abstract artist.

Most significant, Baziotes...

 

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