Early painting (1974–1992)

Ken Johnson has described Pousette-Dart's early artwork as focused on a dualistic tension "between the architectonic, rectilinear structure of the panel and grid and the freely expressive, space-evoking possibilities of painting."^[35] Her large-scale, mid-1970s paintings employ expressive paint handling, velvety sand-textured surfaces, and soft-edged, interwoven rectangular areas of dark, close-valued grays, purples and dark reds; Roberta Smith and Hilton Kramer likened their atmospheres to the work of artists such as Klee, Rothko and Braque.^[36][26][27]

In the 1980s, Pousette-Dart turned to a more gestural mode of painting.^[37][38][27] In her 1983 exhibition at Susan Caldwell, she introduced an architectonic element to her work with a freestanding, screen-like painting and rectangular canvasses arranged in tau, lintel-like and other relationships, which related to the multiple panels in Greek and Russian icons, friezes, and early Italian narrative painting.^[39][27][40] These works utilized an uninhibited mix of mediums, adapting Abstract Expressionist techniques to serial and temporal ends, with paint flowing uninterrupted from one surface on to the next; Art in America particularly noted a monumental, two-sided, freestanding untitled work featuring metallic pigment veiled in passages of dark oil.^[27][40]

Pousette-Dart's late 1980s work featured medium-large polyptychs with stacks or rows of three or four panels whose layered, painterly passages alternately obscure, deny, or reinforce their structures.^[35][39][41] These paintings, which draw on encounters with medieval frescoes and mosaics and early Mozarabic manuscripts, include the "Beatus" series (1985–9), named for an eighth-century monk and manuscript author.^[25][14] They are unified by recurrent bright, calligraphic forms with vague intimations of figuration and landscape.^[35][39][42]

Early shaped canvasses (1993–2002)

In the early 1990s, Pousette-Dart's perceptions of the space and light of the American Southwest inspired her to abandon painting within a rectangular format.^[25] Her first exhibition of this work (Tenri Gallery, 1995) featured delicately balanced diptychs of irregular curved and angular shaped canvasses that interlock like puzzle pieces.^[42][43] Untitled, Dark Edge diptych (1993–6, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston) is a representative and transitional work of this period, featuring two curved-side-down hemispheres, thickly painted grounds and Japanese calligraphy-like gesture.^[25][44]

In addition to changing her format, Pousette-Dart softened her expressionistic tendencies, instead adopting delicate washes and nuanced variations in hue and tone; Art in America's Robert Edelman wrote that the washes hovered above and activated her surfaces to create spatial complexity and an effect of "quietude with an inner turbulence."^[42] For example, Gold Diptych (1994) featured one gently curved canvas atop another larger one, their interaction enhanced by a palette of metallic gold, earth tones, low-key ochres and green-golds, with washes of blue, violet and silver.^[42][43] Green Diptych (1994–5) inverted the spatial relationship and mingles deep warm and cool greens that lighten at the edges with centers of swirling circular brushstrokes that suggest empty vessels or voids; New York Times critic Pepe Karmel wrote that this work “reveals a subliminal affinity with Gorky and de Kooning," and likened it to "a landscape lifted into the sky."^[43][42]

Mature shaped canvasses (2003– )

Pousette-Dart's mature shaped canvasses were first exhibited in New York in shows at Charles Cowles (2004), MoMA PS1 (2007) and Moti Hasson (2008).^[3][15][45] They feature configurations of curved panels with interior forms that can evoke both natural and manmade forms.^[3][10][5] These shapes are sometimes likened to objects such as canoes, boat hull and windshields, or the art of Northwest Coast indigenous peoples, but derive from her earlier hemisphere shapes, in elongated and compressed form.^[25][4]

The paintings generally feature two or three interlocking or nesting planes, conjoined horizontally and stacked large-to-small or small-to-large, whose dynamic arrangement suggests a world never fully at rest (e.g., Untitled (Cañones #3), 2007–8).^[3][46][47] They are overlaid with swooping, sinuous linear elements that define shapes and contours, which critics note for their graphic assuredness and compare to Arabic calligraphy or Native American art.^[48][6] Together, the panels and interior shapes imply senses of gravity (e.g., Untitled (Cañones #2), 2007–8) or buoyancy, containment or expansiveness, sequence (Untitled (Blue, Black, Red), 2011/3) or disruption, movement and panorama;^[5][4][25] John Yau writes that through these relationships, Pousette-Dart renders her abstract, flat surfaces responsive to nature without resorting to perspective or pictorialism.^[10]

She furthers these effects with her use of thinly applied, subtly modulating colors within shapes and across panels—light to dark or warm to cool—which suggest a relationship between light and form associated with the natural world rather than formalist or decorative concerns (e.g., Plateau, 2019).^{[25][1][49][48]} Critics describe her color sense as bright, idiosyncratic and offbeat, with a stark, relentless, arid luminosity they identify with the American Southwest—or Iberia and the Mediterranean—rather than her native New York (e.g., 3 Part Variation #7, 2012–3);^[7][3][5] Ken Johnson describes her paintings as having "lovely, slightly dry eggshell surfaces" that appear to be made with "a caressing touch that suggests thoughtful spontaneity."^[2]

Pousette-Dart's later exhibitions have been held at the Texas, Locks and Lisson galleries (2014–20) and Wiesbaden Museum (2019), the latter a wide-ranging show of work done over a 12-year period, arranged in a non-chronological dialogue.^[50][51][1] The Brooklyn Rail's Barbara MacAdam characterized that show's work as visceral, cerebral and widely allusive, conveying cultural references to the American Southwest, Europe, the Far East, and ancient and modern art without specifically describing anything.^[8]