James Brooks

James Brooks was primarily an abstract painter, fascinated by the painterly accidents yielded by diluting oil paint with glue, enamel, and other household products. An early Abstract Expressionist and friend of Jackson Pollock, he experimented with Automatism and free brushwork after discarding the Social Realism of his early career (during which he created one of his most famous works, Flight(1942), a mural at LaGuardia Airport). Brooks was a pioneer in the use of staining, dilution, and accidental deterioration of canvases to create uncontrolled abstraction; he often applied his mixtures of commercial products and paints directly from the tube to create thick, deep surfaces, before adding in fluid lines and abstract shapes. His later works moved towards a purer exploration of color and form.

Albright-Knox Art Gallery. Buffalo, New York. USA.
Art Institute of Chicago. Chicago, Illinois. USA.
Brooklyn Museum. Brooklyn, New York. USA.
Carnegie Institute. Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. USA.
Corcoran Gallery of Art. Washington, DC. USA.
Dallas Museum of Art. Dallas, Texas. USA.
Detroit Institute of Arts. Detroit, Michigan. USA.
Fordham University. Bronx, New York. USA.
Grey Art Gallery, New York University. New York, New York. USA.
Guild Hall Museum. East Hampton, New York. USA.
Harvard University Art Museums, Fogg Museum. Cambridge, Massachusetts. USA.
Hirshhorn Museum And Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution. Washington, DC. USA
Krannert Art Museum, University of Illinois. Champaign, Illinois. USA.
Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York, New York. USA.
Munson-Williams-Proctor Arts Institute. Utica, New York. USA.

Museum Of Art (Ft. Lauderdale). Ft. Lauderdale, Florida. USA.
Museum of Fine Arts (Houston). Houston, Texas. USA.
Newark Museum. Newark, New Jersey. USA.
Pennsylvania Academy of The Fine Arts. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. USA.
Portland Museum of Art (Maine). Portland, Maine. USA.
Rose Art Museum, Brandeis University. Waltham, Massachusetts. USA.
Sheldon Museum of Art, University Of Nebraska-Lincoln. Lincoln, Nebraska. USA.
Smithsonian American Art Museum. Washington, DC. USA.
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. New York, New York. USA.
The Montclair Art Museum. Montclair, New Jersey. USA.
The Parrish Art Museum. Southampton, New York. USA.
The Rockefeller University. New York, New York. USA.