The public interest in art on Long Island was sparked recently by the movie, Pollock, the Hollywood depiction of the life of Jackson Pollock released in 2000. The film introduced general audiences to the pastoral stretch of eastern Long Island where Pollock and Lee Krasner settled after marriage, leaving the lofts and tenements of New York’s Greenwich Village behind for a fresh start in the “country,” which was how Krasner referred to The Springs, a section of East Hampton. The presence of Pollock and Krasner drew other New York artists to summer and even take up year round residence in the area. In the 1950s and 1960s, while New York City established itself as the world’s leading cultural capital, the now glitzy “Hamptons” was being transformed into a wonderfully inclusive bohemian gathering place.

The combination of reasonable proximity to the city, yet sufficient distance from the urban fast-pace, and the availability of inexpensive housing and land, enticed artists, dealers, art critics, museum curators, and collectors to Long Island. There they found that people from all walks of life could interact and exchange ideas, allowing artists the freedom to be as reclusive, private, outgoing, or competitive as they wanted to be.

Elaine De Kooning’s Cave #54, Sand Wall (1985) is a monumental painting from a late major series inspired by the artist’s visits to Lascaux and Altamira in Europe. Created in East Hampton, the painting reflects critical elements of Abstract Expressionist art, including sweeping gesture and expansive color and scale. De Kooning masterfully applies these modes to maximize the dreamlike impact of the emblematic images of animals in this impressive composition, evoking the exhilarating vitality and the brilliant atmosphere of one of the bright sunny days particular to Long Island’s East End.

While many artists did indeed respond to the extraordinary environment of the East End with nature-based abstractions, others continued to explore other facets of expressionism, creating works informed by powerful emotive and psychological undercurrents. Ibram Lassaw, best known for his open space welded sculptures in bronze, steel, and other alloys, created poetic, ordered statements inspired by Taoist and Zen ideas, Jungian psychology, and other sources. His lyrical sculpture Sidereality (1961), along with his paintings 85/04 (1985) and 85/13 Black Cohites (1985), display a characteristically elegant sense of order and calm. Lassaw, who maintained a commitment to abstraction throughout his career, continued to produce work in his Long Island studio until his death in 2003.

Different ways of treating nature reductively are approached in the work of Betty Parsons, the prominent dealer whose prescience in promoting Pollock and Abstract Expressionism was due at least in part to her talent as a painter. The ways in which the power and intensity of nature on Long Island can inform shape, line, and color can be seen in the geometric canvases of Della Weinberger as well as in a variety of other recent examples by Dan Christensen, Mike Solomon, and Frank Wimberley, among the artists associated with Minimalist, Color Field and Post-Minimalist tendencies. Inspired by the crystalline waterways, sandy beaches, and hamlets of the South Fork, Wimberley’s forceful, richly textured abstractions draw from the improvisational quality of jazz music.

The strong individualistic visions of John Alexander, Richmond Burton, Perry Burns, Dan Rizzie, and Gary Komarin demonstrate how the distance from urban distractions afforded artists possibilities of reinventing their work and expanding the language and history of abstraction. Trained in architecture, Burton stressed visual order in his early paintings, characterized by hard-edged geometric forms; in more recent work such as Solex (2003), a more fluid and organic patterning has come to the fore. Living and working in the former home of Elaine de Kooning, and sustained by the unspoiled surroundings of East Hampton, he has turned to a more biomorphic abstraction. Rizzie’s exquisitely crafted abstractions appear disarmingly simple and minimal; it is only on close examination that his meticulous concern for detail becomes apparent. He works in a variety of media, incorporating elements such as newspaper and wax, as well as coffee grounds and dirt, into his compositions to create an aged, layered effect. His vocabulary of forms includes lettering, vines, tree branches, and ancient vessels. While the poetic title of Komarin’s A Suite of Blue Sea, Amagansett (2006) alludes to place, the painting also speaks compellingly of personal experience. The Suite of Blue series has its genesis in repeated trips made over the years to Sag Harbor, East Hampton and Amagansett, and the artist’s fondness for watching the “endlessly fascinating ebb and flow of the waves.” Komarin observes that “Even the name Amagansett, with its Native American origins, has a very simple and beautiful musicality. This, in concert with the beauty of the town and neighboring beaches gave rise to the title of this particular painting.”

Bringing a fresh perspective to Pollock’s statement, “I am Nature,” Long Island Abstraction: 1950 to Present celebrates the unique history and continuing rich contribution of Long Island to American art. The exhibition, which remains on view at Spanierman Gallery, LLC at East Hampton until December 4, was seen earlier this fall at Spanierman Modern, a new division of Spanierman Gallery, LLC in New York City.