Angels, Demons, and Savages: Pollock, Ossorio, Dubuffet

After WWII, three artists who converged in New York City defined the anti-representational movement that became Abstract Expressionism. By 1951, when Jackson Pollock's revolutionary Black Pourings debuted at the trend-setting Betty Parsons Gallery, he was heralded as the greatest living painter in the United States. About that same time, Jean Dubuffet, whose "mud-and-rubble" work provoked violent reactions from French critics in 1946, set up his studio in the Bowery. The third artist, Alfonso Ossorio, a close friend of Pollock's and a Dubuffet collector, was equally influential, though less well known, and his 60-acre estate in East Hampton, NY, the Creeks, became an ad hoc gallery for their paintings. Kosinski and Ottman, both of the Phillips Collection in Washington, DC, do well to reflect the scope, if not the scale, of the works selected for an ambitious exhibition there that focuses on the trio's output between 1948 and 1952. They include a series of essays featuring "The Initiatory Paintings of Alfonso Ossorio," a laudatory analysis by Dubuffet, appearing for the first time in English thanks to Richard Howard's elegant translation. This catalogue provides a comprehensive account of the period when Paris Art transplanted to New York. 84 color + 16b/w illus. (Mar.)