Martoc

Description

James Brooks’s place among the first generation of Abstract Expressionists has sometimes been overlooked because he was absent from the New York art scene for three years of military service during a critical period in the development of the movement. Most of his paintings from the late 1940s and 50s are composed of dense surfaces. Neither his forms nor his titles give any indication of specific subject matter, but his organic shapes, suggestive of movement, growth, and decay, evoke the natural world. Brooks persistently pursued the Abstract Expressionist ideal to seek, as he put it, "the freedom of doing something more on impulse...being irresponsible, in a sense . . . using the medium in a new way, an accidental way, if possible."
This sense of "accidental" or "impulse" painting was an important characteristic of the work of the first-generation Abstract Expressionists. The spontaneous aspects of Martoc can be seen in the direct and visceral application of paint and in the dynamic and somewhat frenetic brushstrokes. The resulting composition is one of raw energy and the pure, uncontrolled hand of the artist.
Jamina Ramírez, Intern for Modern and Contemporary Art, on the occasion of the exhibition The New York School: Abstract Expressionism and Beyond, July 20, 2002 – January 19, 2002