Visiting Diagrammatic Mysteries at 125 Newbury offers an immediate encounter with Alfred Jensen’s work. The title seems to be an allusion to the universal mysteries that the artist conveyed in his work, but might also imply its notorious resistance to legibility. ‘It’s only expected of the Jensen viewer to be heavily curious upon encountering his art,’ I ascertained, while observing some visitors wandering in the exhibition and others asking the gallery’s employees questions, trying to comprehend the work. The artist resisted being firmly associated with any particular movement. Nonetheless, his ability to translate conceptions of truth into abstract art renders him one of the great abstract artists of his time, even though he did not receive the same attention as his contemporaries.
Born in 1903 in Guatemala City, Jensen developed a distinctly cosmopolitan outlook early in life, shaped by moving between Europe, the United States, and Central America. After studying in San Diego and Munich under Hans Hofmann, he continued his training in Paris before settling in New York in the early 1950s. Jensen’s work drew on a wide range of cultural, philosophical, and scientific sources, including Goethe’s Zur Farbenlehre, and was informed by sustained dialogue with artists across national and stylistic boundaries. Throughout his career, he produced a body of work shaped by transnational experience and intellectual exchange.
Jensen’s cosmopolitan point of view was likely key to the genesis of an ideology of human universality. The exhibition pays close attention to this, featuring works with mysterious geometric shapes accompanied by numbers, abstract textile-like formations, and shapes that resemble a physics student’s notebook. It is unlikely that the artist’s oeuvre was a simple representation of internalized imagery he found appealing, but rather an allusion to a universal consciousness. If Mondrian was seeking to create harmony through his work, Jensen had already located harmony in science, math, and pre-existing material cultures, and sought to express this through his painting.
In the exhibition, works such as A Glorious Cycle and Physical Optics dominate the larger room. The size of these works and their geometric designs emphasized the artist’s preoccupation with color and his abstract leanings. Other, smaller pieces are treated as parts of the mosaic that constitutes Jensen’s oeuvre. The curation focused on the artist’s personal history, as well as the variety in his work. The artist was, in fact, so diverse in his production that it would be impossible in the somewhat limited space of 125 Newbury to create anything but a longing for more. What is cleverly conveyed about Jensen’s work is that he relied on existing abstract concepts and motifs, as taken from multiple civilizations that he admired.
Similar to the abstract expressionists, Jensen’s work is notoriously difficult to dissect. His work is often contextualized as abstract expressionist, due to his relationship with other abstract expressionists such as Mark Rothko, as well as his tendency toward the abstract. While Jensen’s saturated palette also occasionally invites comparison to Pop, his dense impasto and conceptual rigor resist Pop’s emphasis on surface and immediacy, situating his work closer to philosophical inquiry than cultural commentary. Here lies another point that is evident in the exhibition: the artist’s multitude of different academic influences, the often conflicting schools of Paris, Germany, and America. In effect, his visual language was a result of his own experimentations and meditations. Interpreting, or even the means of liking Jensen’s art, is a highly personal thing. Donald Judd, perplexed with the ambiguity of meaning and the impossible nature of deciphering his esoteric language, was an admirer of his usage of color.
Leave a Reply