During this year’s 57th Venice Biennale, the Peggy Guggenheim Collection will be presenting a comprehensive retrospective of the American artist Mark Tobey. ‘Mark Tobey: Threading Light’ will be his first major solo museum exhibition in almost 20 years.

1. Jeff Greenstein
THE FIRST OF MANY?
Mark Tobey in his studio – 1949. Photo by Larry Novak - Courtesy Arthur Lyon Dahl
Mark Tobey showing in Venice during the 2017 Biennale
by Jeff Greenstein

2. THE OLYMPICS OF THE
ART WORLD
The Wall Street Journal recently
anointed the Venice Biennale and
the concurrent fairs throughout the
city as “The Olympics of the Art
World.”
Over the course of six months
every two years, approximately
half a million visitors, including the
who’s who of curators, collectors
and dealers, visit this bustling city
that is briefly transformed by an
influx of contemporary art.
© "Support" by Lorenzo Quinn,
Venice Biennale 2017,
Courtesy of Stefano Rellandini/Reuters

3. In the heart of the city sits one of the
world’s foremost modern and
contemporary museums,
The Peggy Guggenheim Collection.
During this year’s 57th Venice
Biennale, the Peggy Guggenheim
Collection will be presenting a
comprehensive retrospective of
the American artist Mark Tobey.
‘Mark Tobey: Threading Light’ will
be his first major solo museum
exhibition in almost 20 years.

4. As a visionary collector, one of
Peggy Guggenheim’s defining
moments was her early and
stalwart support of the pioneering
abstract expressionist artist
Jackson Pollock.
Tobey's signature and ground breaking
‘White Writing’ paintings involved
detailed lyrical and flowing white
calligraphic-like lines fully covering an
abstract or dark solid canvas.
These beautiful, complex, but immensely
calming works emerged from the deep
spirituality of his Baha’i Faith, meditative
practices, and study of Eastern
philosophy and Chinese calligraphy.
Mark Tobey "White Night" (1942)
© Seattle Art Museum
Courtsey of Paul Macapia

5. “…[Tobey’s] dense web of
white strokes, as elegant as
Oriental calligraphy,
impressed Jackson so much
that in a letter to Louis Bunce
he described Tobey, a West
Coast artist, as an ‘exception’
to the rule that New York was
‘the only real place in America
where painting (in the real
sense) can come thru'”
- Jackson Pollock

6. THE
PEGGY GUGGENHEIM
COLLECTION
In choosing to organize and
exhibit a comprehensive
retrospective of Tobey’s work, the
museum has provided an
opportunity to re-examine
Tobey’s influence and place in the
history of abstraction. Perhaps
once and for all, this exhibition will
debunk the damning critical essay,
“‘American-Type’ Painting”
published in 1955
Mark Tobey "Flame of Colors" (1974)
Courtsey of Wikiart.org

7. Why did the museum choose
to showcase the relatively
forgotten work of Tobey,
particularly given all the
eminently recognizable
artists at their disposal?
I cannot profess to know their
reason, but can speculate and hope
the museum felt the currently
accepted narrative of art history had
marginalized and forgotten Tobey’s
profound influence on an important
movement and individual painters
like Jackson Pollock.

8. THE OLYMPICS OF
THE ART WORLD
I applaud the decision and think
this positive review is a harbinger
of many forthcoming in the months
and years ahead.
I believe visitors to the
Guggenheim’s show will have the
same reaction one experiences
when immersed in The Lab’s much
smaller Tobey exhibition – a deep
sense of beauty, tranquility, flow
and inner peace similar to the one
that Tobey sought in life.
© Mark Tobey/Seattle Art Museum,
Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
Courtesy of Peggy Guggenheim Collection

9. WWW.GREENSTEINLAB.COM
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