Betty Parsons: Abstract Expression, Spiritual Intervention
VICTORIA KINGHAM
The 1913 Armory Show in New York was an exhibition which brought to America, for the first time, the Modern Art that we now see as seminal: Matisse’s Blue Nude, Duchamps’ Nude Descending a Staircase, Fauvists and Cubists of all kinds. It was largely ridiculed and rejected by representatives of the innate ultra-conservate American culture, but one or two inspired collectors recognised that these contemporary and mainly European trends were the shape of Arts to come; hence a couple of decades later, American museums in New York and Chicago came to house some of the most iconic modernist works of the early twentieth century.
Among the visionaries was the then 13-year-old Betty Parsons. Inspired by what she saw as ‘the world she wanted’, she enrolled in an Art School, married, fled to Paris, and divorced, and was subsequently disinherited by her wealthy and conventional parents. Returning to America after the Great Depression and moderately well-known as a painter and sculptor, she became a gallery manager, then curated a collection in her own gallery, opening in Manhattan in 1946. Incredible as it now seems, she was the only dealer who would represent Jackson Pollock; a little later she showed, against the tide of popular opinion, Mark Rothko, Barnett Newman, Clyfford Still, Robert Rauschenberg and others.
INVISIBLE QUALITIES
She is still possibly better remembered as a dealer and collector rather than an artist, but alongside this commercial activity she actively painted and sculpted throughout her life. Having begun by painting in a largely figurative, impressionist-influenced style, soon after opening the gallery she rapidly became interested in representing not that which was apparent on the outside, but the emotional qualities inherent in her surroundings, the ‘invisible presence’ in a situation. This change went hand-in-hand with her long involvement with the meditative organisation Subud, which emphasises an idea of spiritual guidance received from the Great Life Force.
In 1960 when Parsons was already 60 and had travelled a great deal, she worked in her beach-side studio to capture the ever-shifting interplay of light and colour in this environment, which was far removed from the world of the commercial gallery. She attempted to render on canvas the ‘invisible truths, that are in our bones, like the earth and the sun and the sky.’ She began at this time to make sculptures from found objects – a commonplace enough technique now, but this was 1965. She painted pieces of discarded, weathered wood with bold forms and colours influenced by her extensive travels, and the results are whimsical, sometimes strange, but extraordinary. She painted, sculpted, and wrote poetry consistently until her death in 1982.
THE CURRENT EXHIBITION
You can view the evolution of her work for the first time in the UK, here at the De La Warr Pavilion. Carefully curated by their head of exhibitions, Joseph Constable, the exhibition is arranged to cycle through her body of work, to elucidate the ‘sheer energy’ and the quality of ‘life itself’ which she was always at pains to capture. Apart from the vivid colours, there’s humour and a deceptive simplicity about many of the works, but shown over the two floors of the De La Warr gallery they indicate an unusually consistent approach, a dedication to her stated principles, and a sometimes irresistible spontaneity.
The American Art world is overtly commercial, and American artists have recognised this: in a curious contradiction, the work of the Abstract Expressionists (Pollock, Rothko, De Kooning for example) was intended to be anti-establishment, to challenge commercialism by focusing on raw emotion and expression, but has resulted in some of the most highly-valued art works in the world. Thus occurs the interesting and largely inevitable process of monetisation that eventually surrounds, and institutionalises, artistic attempts to escape from the capitalist treadmill. People like Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein simultaneously satirised and embraced this culture. It happens with music too: while the Sex Pistols’ Anarchy in the UK began as the ultimate societal protest, the band have sold almost 2,500,000 albums. Never mind the bollocks, that’s good money in anyone’s terms. Betty Parsons may have been privileged, but that privilege placed her in a unique position to remove herself from everyday commercial necessities and to explore her perception of the purely spiritual.
Betty Parsons: Sheer Energy is on show at the De La Warr Pavilion until 18 January 2026 dlwp.com/exhibition/betty-parsons
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