Although the CliffsNotes version of postwar American art trumpets the antagonism between macho abstract expressionists and later generations of artists, there were actually a number of affinities across the stylistic divides. James Brooks (1906–92) was a seminal ab-ex painter whose carefully considered, collage-like placement of forms led to more contemplative compositions than the visual Sturm und Drang expounded by his colleagues Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning. The drippy grid in a 1974 acrylic drawing by Brooks segues from dense cobalt to pale blue to cool white against buff paper, a marriage of the nebulous and the evocative that resonates with the work of Terry Winters and... More >>>