From the archive: 45th Anniversary of RISD exhibition
Installation view: “Jack Tworkov: Paintings,” Rhode Island School of Design, Providence, April 8-28, 1980. Image courtesy archives at RISD
Jack Tworkov by Arthur Munes, c. 1975. Courtesy Tworkov Family Archives
April 2025 marks the 45th anniversary of a critical exhibition of paintings by Jack Tworkov at the Rhode Island School of Design. The exhibition featured a close curation and debut of paintings from the artist’s “Alternative Series” dating from 1977. Tworkov’s exhibition followed an honorary degree awarded by RISD the year prior (other honored in the May 26, 1979 ceremony included photographer Harry Callahan, an expert of Eskimo Art historian James Houston, and patron of the arts Selma Pilavin Robinson).
Notes made by Tworkov in his journal on the April 22, 1980 train ride to RISD are insightful and some of the most contemplative thoughts the artist would make. The notes were written in preparation for a lecture presented in tandem with the exhibition and in them he wrestles with the efficacy of contemporary painting to go beyond an “isolated individualism” and address the world at large. For Tworkov, art has the potential to be a meaningful reflection of the status quo, but it faces challenges such as the average contemporary person’s disengagement with art and the sociological conditions that produce such disengagement.
In spite of these reservations, Tworkov's studio practice buoyed his sense of purpose and provided a remedy for his misgivings about the state of humanity. His expansive thinking and measured writing are perfectly reflected in the 1980 exhibition's spontaneous marks bounded by forms drawn with mathematical exactitude.
“Alternative VI (OC-Q1-78 #2) [CR 775],” 1978, oil on canvas, 54 × 54 in (137.2 × 138.2 cm) Private collection
“Art Saves My Life”
Notes Made on the Train to Providence, RISD, April 22, 1980
"[...] I have doubts, worries about my present work. It’s true, system does not exclude spontaneity and fresh invention. But it does include an element of the mechanical, the predictable.
My earlier work, although it also tended to resolve itself into a predictable style or method, nevertheless each painting was preceded (at least at the start) by a void, by the absence of any ascertainable direction.
In contrast, the present paintings begin with exact drawings, almost equivalent to an architect's drawing, and the paintings follow the exact surface divisions, proportions and the arrived shapes and forms; Only the actual painting, the work with the brush, and the development of the color and surface are left to the spontaneous decision of the moment.
I have (especially in the last year or two) wanted to go back to the freer, more spontaneous methods of my earlier work without necessarily repeating the imagery and style of the ’50s. Last summer I made a series of oils on paper, trying to work without the systems that have dominated my work in the last ten years or so. But the work looked less interesting, less inspired than the systematic work I was simultaneously engaged in.
Also, [looking at] the work that I’ve seen recently in the galleries by older artists who have continued to this day the free, gestural Abstract Expressionism of their earlier years, or the work of younger artists who have adopted this style and which is now quite prevalent in New York, I find, whether I like or dislike the work, that none of it does for me what work does that really captures me, that it starts off new feelings, new emotions in me that induces me to try new searches in the studio. So that work mostly leaves me indifferent.
Nevertheless doubts and worries persist in my attitude towards my present work. What I said above is one example. The other is a very deep concern that lies perhaps in the back of my everyday consciousness. A subliminal worry. This concerns the relation, the meaning of my painting to the world at large, the world outside myself, outside my studio. I’m not ashamed to confess that I've seen my work primarily, not merely as a “way of life” but as a way to save my life. Although I believe that every art, regardless of the artist's aims and conscious purpose, ultimately is a reflection, a mirror of the times in which it was created, I nevertheless feel some inner deprivation, some sorrowful regret that my art is not more explicitly some expression of existence outside and beyond myself as it was true of the greatest art of the past. It is only in our time, beginning with the Impressionists and more explicitly with the development of abstract art, that it became apparent that art has retreated, or been forced to retreat, to an isolated individualism.
Jack Tworkov “Alternative VII (OC-Q1-78 #3) [CR 774],” 1978, oil on canvas, 54 × 54 in (137.2 × 137.2 cm) Private collection
This aspect of art in the twentieth century requires much more than merely art historical notice. It is both an esthetic and sociological issue of the utmost importance. Because this trend towards the utmost individualism was not entirely an artist’s choice, it was forced on the artist by the whole development in society of the technological, political and class revolutions of our time. Art, which had connections to social elements outside of itself, such as religion, national history, myth and class distinctions found itself expelled by the new developments in society. The growth of sociological, political and technical progress found art too insignificant a medium to influence events. The artists in turn turned to revolt, to negativism, to cynicism and bohemianism. It is the artist's negativism, the conscious and unconscious protest that shaped art, especially abstract art and which became symbols of our age, the mark of its culture. So that abstract art became the icon of our time, the icon of its negativism.
Today in spite of the vast number of artists in our society, the vast number of art schools, museums and the long lines at the museums, I feel with some despair, that the middle classes, the only classes even marginally concerned with art, merely use art as decoration, to decorate their houses and themselves. They are involved in preening themselves, in saying, “how cultured we are” while really and truly art plays no important role in the true center of their lives, even if they have such centers. Granting that there are significant exceptions, I believe what I have said is the prevalent truth. Art plays no significant role in the larger life of the nation, of the people. Measure the charitable and tax deductible contributions of the giant corporations to the arts against their economic and political roles in our society to get the view that supports my point.
Installation view: “Jack Tworkov: Paintings,” Rhode Island School of Design, Providence, April 8-28, 1980. Image courtesy archives at RISD
I have no idea what artists can individually do to change the situation. Individual efforts in that direction too often lead to anti-art strategies otherwise compromise the esthetic elements too much. But I believe that it is important for every artist, every student, to at least become strongly aware of our present world even as we perceive it in the distorted forms in the newspapers, television and other media. If we cannot express our concern about the world directly, let alone influence it in the slightest degree, we can at least learn what not to paint.
Two aspects of the world constantly stand before me. One, the genuine progress in science, even the miraculous progress, the incredibly imaginative inventions in technology, electronics and space exploration, and the democratization of the masses.
And the other, the dissolution of spiritual values with the dissolution of cohesive cultural communities.
Looking beyond the present to man’s whole history, of wars, persecutions, exploitations, violence and oppressions, a feeling of despair overtakes me. Perhaps the creation of man was a mistake. I have often dreamt that I would rather be a creeping, crawling creature than man—to go back to the very beginning, to start again, to give evolution a second chance. Only in the studio I wake from this despair, only in the studio does my life take form. This is what I mean when I say “art saves my life.”
— Notes made on the train to Providence, RISD, April 22, 1980, reprint in Extremes of the Middle-Writings of Jack Tworkov. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009), p. 405-407.