SEPTEMBER–OCTOBER 2012 www.galleryandstudiomagazine.com VOL. 15 NO. 1 New York GALLERYSTUDIO
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Kusama with latest paintings at Tokyo 2011, Musashi University, Tokyo. Collection Yayoi Kusama. Image courtesy Yayoi Kusama Studio Inc.; Ota Fine Arts, Tokyo; Victoria Miro Gallery, London; and Gagosian Gallery New York
Huntington Hartford and Me: Brothers in Profligacy a new excerpt from Ed McCormack’s HOODLUM HEART pg. 10 2Wa;I^QTTM ;\QTT ¹.ZIOUMV\[WN :HVWWK6W1<& 7XHV6DWSP ZZZQRKRJDOOHU\FRP GALLERYSTUDIO SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2012 JESSICA FROMM THE FIGURE: Drawings & Monoprints Curated by Judith Landsman 6HSWHPEHU6HSWHPEHU :HVWWK6W1<& 7XHV6DWSP ZZZQRKRJDOOHU\FRP ´8QWLWOHG)LJXUHµ [ Sudnya Shroff and the Silent Language of Pure Feeling ndia has recently emerged as a major player on Indeed, here the artist’s exquisite sense of spatial Ithe world art map, with modern Indian masters apportionment and use of strategic “emptiness” is such as F.N. Souza and M.F. Husain commanding splendidly reminiscent of that in Chinese classical prime prices on the international auction circuit. scroll painting, albeit skillfully translated into the Something of their vivid colors and high spirit can more physical conventions of Western painting. be seen in the paintings Sudnya Shroff, a recently Shroff pulls out all the stops both coloristically naturalized (2006) American citizen born in Pune, and in tactile terms in “Surf Boards,” a India, now living and working in Los Altos and magnificently sumptuous work consisting solely San Francisco, California. After experimenting of vertical stripes of juicy color. Then there is freely with various mediums and techniques, “Smitten,” another large canvas in slightly more including brushes, palette knives and other tools, muted and milky, red, green, and pale blues. Shroff discovered that she expresses herself best by Here, the mellow hues are contained within a manipulating acrylic paint on canvas with her bare composition in which the central shape flows hands. As opposed to standard artist pigments, out from the center like Fourth of July fireworks her preferred medium is Sherwin Williams acrylic or a huge blowup of the stamens in a flower. It wall paint and what she calls “controlled physical is difficult to remember any painter in the past movement of the canvas” to produce certain who gave such warm resonance to the emotion effects. In this regard she seems a spiritual ancestor of infatuation without stooping to sentimental of Jackson Pollock, who also often favored house allegory. paints over the usual art materials, possibly for their Sudnya Shroff is a marvelously uninhibited, yet more freely flowing quality. consummately disciplined self-taught talent. Which Certainly Shroff’s literally “hands on” technique “Surf Boards” is to say: She obviously gained a great deal of produces dynamically visceral effects that enhance allusions to natural forms, such as floral contours expert knowledge regarding the qualities of paint the drama and power of her work, lending her that flow and swell to the very edges of the canvas and how they can be exploited most effectively in compositions a directness that she describes as in graceful curves. In other works, such as “My the long apprenticeship to which she subjected “snapshots of my internal emotional state at the Field,” and “Renewal,” the flowers become more herself. And now she employs them with perfect time that I make them.” In an art world often specific without, however, sacrificing the formal control within her energetically extemporaneous dominated by deliberately contrived methods, integrity that underlies all of Shroff’s compositions. approach to visual composition to share innermost she just may be one of the very last true “action The floral imagery ranging over several feelings with which any person of refined sensibility painters,” to borrow the great art critic Harold joined panels in “My Field” is painted in soft should be able to identify. Her viewers will be all Rosenberg’s term for the early innovators of the yet vibrant pastel pinks, blues, and greens that, the richer for it. –– Maurice Taplinger Abstract Expressionist movement. although less harsh, could almost remind one of Although Shroff’s aggressive forms are as the Day-glo silkscreens of Andy Warhol, while Sudnya Shroff, Agora Gallery, 530 West 25th St., adamantly abstract and filled with conviction the more delicately delineated green stems and September 15 - October 5, 2012. and movement as those of any of the New York yellow blooms set against a subtle blue ground Reception: Thursday, September 20, 6 - 8 pm. School pioneers, her compositions often contain in “Renewal” show an consummate sensitivity. Inspiration and Process Meld in the Paintings of Roberta Dixon oberta Dixon says that she imagined the very seemingly disparate focus on balance and control” Rfirst brushstroke of her very first painting for and claims to paint “with abandon, as if I have almost thirty-five years before she actually began erased time and gone back to true innocence,” work on it. With that first stroke, however, it would Dixon is a sophisticated artist who has assimilated appear she opened a floodgate of spontaneous varying traditions. Unlike more conservative creativity in which, as she puts it, “With each painters, however, she does not show a nostalgic painting comes a new beginning, infused with desire to “return” to tradition, but rather to possibility.” employ it as a springboard to discovery. The sense Indeed, rather than striving for the superficial of adventure, of journeying into new territory, that appearance of what is commonly called a animates her paintings comes across in the contrasts “signature style,” Dixon employs a wide variety between two of her most diverse compositions: of markmaking techniques to make every new “Molecular Dynamics” and “Dragon Day.” beginning a departure as well. Swirls and skeins “Molecular Dynamics” is a coloristic and tactile of painting that convey an all pervasive sense of tour de force, comprised of many thick circular movement and energy figure prominently as the gobs of acrylic impasto build up to an almost dominant forms in compositions such as “Haiku” relief-like texture in an all-over composition. That and “Coney Island.” In the former acrylic on all of these elements are approximately the same a vertical canvas, the gracefully intermingled size does not create a sense of monotony, however, black, white, and yellow linear shapes, in keeping given the brilliant harmonic spectrum the artist with the title, suggest Asian calligraphy. In the employs in this veritable cosmos of hues. “Dragon latter painting, a horizontal composition, the Day,” on the other hand again suggests an Asian rhythmically flowing lines and neon-like colors influence, particular of one of those dancing evoke the serpentine curves of the rollercoaster dragons that, amid a rain of firecrackers, adds to ride at Steeplechase Park. Indeed this painting, the festivity to Chinatown New Year’s celebrations. “Breaking Free” reminiscent for its dynamic energy of Futurism, is However, as with the aforementioned “Haiku,” the mood of the moment translated into a fresh as close as Dixon ever comes to depicting specific Dixon makes a fresh painterly statement with this aesthetic statement about the act of painting itself. subject matter. composition, employing it to make a vigorous Process is the final truth in the paintings of Roberta More characteristic of Dixon’s generally abstract gestural statement with a variegated and vigorously Dixon and sufficient of itself to imbue her work direction are paintings such as “Lost in Time” and executed central form set monolithically against a with its own unique life and value. “Breaking Free,” with their densely knit all-over dramatic black ground. –– Byron Coleman strokes and freely floating forms seemingly as Here, as in all of her paintings, the interplay of schooled in the intimate Impressionism of Bonnard gesture, movement, and color transcends subject as in the “push and pull” of Hans Hofmann. For matter. For while she states that she often begins Roberta Dixon, Agora Gallery, 530 West 25th St., although she is apparently self-taught and speaks of “with a seed of an idea –– “an obscure image or October 9 - 30, 2012. her paintings as a way of “embracing chaos with a phrase, or fleeting memory” –– her true motor is Reception: Thursday, October 11, 6 - 8 pm. 2 GALLERYSTUDIO SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2012 Jessica Fromm Gets Where She Wants to Go hrough all shifts of style, technique, and draftsperson and her figurative drawings, every bit of its bare arms and striped legs. In both, Fromm Tsubject matter, the concerns of serious artists as much as her abstract paintings, are invariably toys playfully with the viewers’ perceptual facility, remain more or less constant. Like Willem de richly informed by what de Kooning referred to seeming to make the point that seeing requires Kooning, Philip Guston, Alfred Leslie and others as “slippery glimpses” of art historical references. extra effort when things are not always what they before her, Jessica Fromm does not see her recent But if her previous figures seemed almost devoid initially appear to be. Less ambiguous, however, turn from abstract to figurative compositions as a of eroticism for their emphasis on the mortal frailty are the monoprints designated “Untitled 4” and defection from or disavowal of her earlier work. of the human body, the grain of the very charcoal “Untitled 5,” in which more voluptuously defined Rather, Fromm’s newest series of drawings and itself suggesting the phrase “dust to dust,” the female forms suggest, respectively, aggressive monoprints is a further exploration and extension opposite is true of her newest ones. woman-above coitus and wildly abandoned rear- of this vigorous painter’s graphic side, in which the Despite their relatively modest scale, a group of entry sexual surrender. Indeed, compared to the human figure is often stretched previously discussed images, to its formal limits by virtue of the latter two demonstrate the muscular plasticity of her the not so subtle difference forms and the fluid movement between sensuousness, with of her whiplash line. its predominantly aesthetic That said, the most connotations, and down to earth noticeable difference between sensuality. the works in Fromm’s present By contrast in another series exhibition and those in her of untitled monoprints on rice previous foray into figuration, paper to which Fromm has featured in her January 2011 added acrylic and pastel colors, exhibition (both showes curated the surfaces are worked up by Judith Landsman), is the in a manner that approaches absence of an implied narrative. mixed media painting more Among those earlier works, than drawing. Here, too, the one recalls her haunting image, imagery is alternately clearer and inscribed roughly in charcoal, more obfuscated by complex of an emaciated, gape-mouthed mark-making, palimpsests, figure in a hospital bed, pentimento, and frenetic gestural flanked on one side by a tall, activity. authoritative figure in a long In a review of the drawings “Untitled 5” white physician’s coat, and on she exhibited in 2011, Fromm the other by a huddled couple, made a statement that I felt was clinging in an area of shadow, significant to quote at the time who appear literally naked and believe bears repeating here: –– or at very least emotionally “For perhaps the first time in my denuded by their angst over the career I walked into my studio fate of their ailing loved one. As with some images half formed in darkly delineated as an etching my mind. In a very short while by Goya, the humanistic I backed away from the easel, content of these drawings in no convinced that I would not get way distracted from the formal where I wanted to go in paint...” qualities that Fromm has always It would appear that she insisted are first and foremost has finally arrived at that among her concerns. point in this latter series of As early as her solo exhibition monoprints, which hover so in 2004, however, Fromm tantalizingly between specific titled an adamantly Abstract graphic representation and Expressionist canvas “Thoughts painterly abstraction. Particularly of Siquerios,” in honor of intriguing is “Untitled 10,” the Mexican muralist, who where the areas of bare flesh and along with Orozco, influenced red and white candystripes are so Jackson Pollock. And of the complexly convoluted that one semiabstract works in her is at a loss to determine whether present exhibition she states, “Untitled 8” the composition contains a tellingly, “I am here employing single figure in contorted the human body as a springboard to probe at voluptuous rear views of female nudes in ink on motion (ala Duchamp’s descending nude) or two primal forces of energy, of chaos and of their paper achieve a sense of the monumental, calling figures merged in a manner suggesting the multiple underlying structure.” to mind the bronze amazons of Aristede Maillol or limbs of a centipede. Tellingly, one points out, because the curved Gaston Lachaise. Even more erotically evocative, Either way, Jessica Fromm’s recent drawings strokes of the black or red striped stockings however, are Fromm’s monoprints on rice paper and monoprints suggest several directions in which circling some of her freely drawn figures’ legs do –– some monochromatic and linear, others her work might go from here. And one can be indeed suggest tightly coiled springs, lending the incorporating areas of acrylic colors and pastel certain that whichever she chooses will provide her compositions dynamic visual tension, even while –– in which the aforementioned striped stockings next exhibition with yet another embarrassment simultaneously evoking the feminine frippery and are prominent motif. In one such work, “Untitled of riches. fetishism of a Toulouse Lautrec cancan. At the 6,” a female figure, decapitated by the top edge of –– Ed McCormack same time, however –– particularly in the black the paper, could resemble an exotic plant, given and white works in the series –– they also conjure the sensuous contours of its frilly negligee and the up subliminal visions of skeletal rib-bones that sinuous patterns and the stamen-like repetitions of add a hint of mortality to the fleshy sensual mix in the stripes encircling the figure’s splayed legs. In a manner less literal, yet just as disconcerting, as another black and white monoprint on rice paper, Jessica Fromm, Noho Gallery, Egon Schiele’s nude self-portraits and drawings of “Untitled 8,” the figure deconstructs in a manner 530 West 25th Street, hollow-eyed lovers. that initially appears altogether abstract, until the September 4 - 29, 2012 For Fromm is a consummately sophisticated viewer pieces it together by noting the location SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2012 GALLERYSTUDIO 3 The “Ties” That Bind Pure Aesthetic Pleasure to Meaning are Plentiful in the Mixed Media Works of Suzanne Blaustein o a viewer encountering her work for Tthe first time, a gallery filled with the fabric sculptures on canvas of Suzanne Blaustein could suggest the den of a female hunter. Only here, rather than stuffed animal heads, the trophies lining the walls are neckties, the most phallic (and nonfunctional!) item of all male attire. In the ‘60s, when the Pop artist Jim Dine made a series of collage paintings in which paper neckties were presented hanging straight down, like impotent penises, it was difficult not to interpret them as a bohemian male artist’s sly putdown of businessmen as limp dicks, given how the art world was so rife at that time with cynical fly-by- night entrepreneurs eager to cash in on the spanking new movement of which he “Le sang est rouge” was a part. Today, if a female artist were to present neckties the same way it would be seen as a not so covert feminist statement. Suzanne Blaustein, however, has no political axe to grind; her use of neckties is simply a means to a purely expressive end. She can’t help smiling wryly when a critic suggests a symbolic, not to mention feminist, angle in her work. “I create fabric sculptures on painted canvas,” Blaustein says in an artist’s statement regarding her most recent exhibition at Montserrat Contemporary Art Gallery in Chelsea. “My fingers move the fabrics around the canvas, arranging them side by side and layering them. I twist them and paint them to create a celebration of colors, textures and patterns. I imagine something and go after it until I “Uninhibited Orange” see it materialize. In essence, it is a dialogue between my thoughts, the fabric, and the painted canvas.” In fact, Blaustein sees her work as “Art Informal” and is pleased when a critic compares her to Antoni Tapies, the contemporary Spanish master of that style, who felt that art should be made from simple things and made a sculpture in his native Spain of a monumental sock with a hole in its heel. Like Tapies, one of the true pioneers of mixed media who not only mixed clay and marble dust into his paints but incorporated detritus such as discarded paper, string, rags and (in his later work) substantial 3-D objects such as furniture parts in his compositions, Blaustein uses whatever comes to hand and strikes her “Lemons and Lemonade” fancy. In an older work wittily titled “Spaghetti” cubist construction of Picasso and Braque. her paints, as seen in one especially striking (she is one of those artists who sees no Texture continues to be an important work where it is mixed in with silver metallic reason that titles should be pretentious or element in her latest assemblages, although pigment, the rough granules suggesting pseudo-profound) she employed rough color is now heightened and along with trampled diamonds. shards of wood along with softly shredded those in the sinuously curving, sometimes Like Ad Reinhardt –– and sometimes materials to create dynamic tactile contrasts. almost serpentine permutations of the ties. Jasper Johns –– Blaustein favors a single In this work, too, the colors tended toward Additional tactile appeal is added by coarse overall color for many of her most earthy hues reminiscent of early forays into pumice grain crumpled and mixed into recent works, such as the one she calls 4 GALLERYSTUDIO SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2012 “Uninhibited Orange,” a diptych of two connected square-shaped canvases in which only the fine paisley-like patterns in the ties saturated in this brilliant, semi translucent hue, interrupted the color scheme. Here, too, the pointed tips of the painted and folded ties protrude off the edges of the canvases –– albeit at different parts of each square to avoid the kind of monotony that a perfectly symmetrical arrangement might cause. This “shaped-canvas” effect that Blaustein’s use of the ties as 3-D elements can create is especially dynamic in the single canvas called “Purpura Purple,” where ties and scarves are draped in a manner suggesting a hanging shroud, its hem running off the lower edges of the composition . Here, too, a greatly diluted purple hue washes semi-trasparently over the ties and scarves covered with an intricate filigree of fabric patterns and further dotted with strategically placed black-headed pins. The background hue is also expressively streaked with variegated pale and darker shades and unevenly spaced lengths of fine string running vertically from the top to the bottom of the canvas in a manner suggesting thin rivulets of dripped paint, creating a trompe-l’oeil illusion of the “stain painting” style of Abstract Expressionism in the manner of Helen Frankenthaler or Norman Bluhm. And if this painting gives the appearance of being among Blaustein’s most viscerally affecting , perhaps it is because in this work, the ties and scarves not only evoke a feeling of the aforementioned shrouds but also of the ventricles of the heart. It is instructive to consider, in terms of comprehending the multiple, subtle meanings that can be read into this artist’s “Nesting” work (even as she insists on purely plastic intentions) that the term “purpura” refers opposite affinity for the spare, austere Remarkably, Blaustein makes the color just in medical jargon to hemorrhaging (or purity of Minimalism. In “Lemons and as seductive in her own way, producing bleeding) into the skin in a manner that Lemonade,” Le sang est rouge” and an effect as lyrical as the Duke Ellington results in the purplish –– or what lay people “Indigo Mood” yellow, red, and blue jazz symphony for which her diptych is call “black and blue” –– marks on the outer overall color schemes, respectively, pay presumably named. surface of the skin. tribute to the power of the primaries as In this exhibition Suzanne Blaustein Although ties also play a role in another they completely cover the composition, emerges as an artist who can move easily intriguing mixed media work by Suzanne submerging the undulating waves of between contrasting modes of expression, Blaustein called “Nesting,” they are all but neckwear, lending pinheads the opacity uniting them by virtue of a strong engulfed by a thick and intricate configured of buried paint-coated rivets, and giving overriding aesthetic vision that is probably network of interwoven orange and beige areas of coarse grain pumice dust the attributable to her primary concentration strings that cover almost the entire canvas, tactile palpability of raised islands on a on the purely visual and tactile components accented by multicolored round-headed pins topological map. of her paintings. If, at the same time, her that suggested stations on a subway map, The diptych “Indigo Mood” is compositions also evoke a multitude of targets on a war map, or any number of particularly evocative in this manner, with other, more submerged subjects for the other diagrammatic charts. Here again, an its two adjoining canvases covered in a rest of us, this is cause for even further attentive viewer can not only appreciate this hue every bit as sumptuous as “Yves Klein celebration. –– Byron Coleman artist’s compositions for their linear, tactile, Blue,” that color with which that showy coloristic, and other aesthetic attributes but French artist used to cover his nude models Suzanne Blaustsein, Solo Show, Montserrat also for their infinite and, even often poetic, before employing them as human paint Contemporary Art Gallery, 547 West 27th suggestiveness. rollers on huge unstretched canvases laid Street, October 23 - November 10, 2012 Other works, however, suggest an out on the gallery floor for his Happenings. SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2012 GALLERYSTUDIO 5 Future Art Stars in the N.A.W.A’s Latest Annual he 123rd Annual Exhibition of the historic Hart Benton. Likewise, Pea Wright demonstrates TNational Association of Women Artists, Inc. is the eternal freshness of the watercolor medium as a huge survey, including work in a variety of media, a vehicle for landscape in “The Other Side,” the awarding over ten thousand dollars in prizes and heavenly allusion in that title justified in her poetic including far too many exhibitors to do true justice vision of wet-into-wet clouds hovering over golden here. The most one can hope to do is present fields, verdant foliage, and distant blue mountains. a sampling of works in several categories and Sheila Cappelletti also employs a wet-into-wet encourage the reader to experience this major art technique, albeit in a more Impressionistic manner, season event for her or himself. in her buoyant aquarelle “Cherry Blossoms,” an Mixed media and collage, always a lively area of ethereal explosion of pink-spattered buds and experimentation in the contemporary art scene is slender limbs enlivening a misty grove of saplings represented in works by Debbie Lee Mostel, Erin like youthful ballerinas in tutus. Equally lyrical in its Stukey Johnson, and Ruth Terrill. own manner is “Birch Tree Quilt,” another highly Mary Bell Steffen Debbie Lee Mostel original arboreal interpretation by shows an assemblage called Jean Goddeau, intricately wrought “Nobel in Oslo,” juxtaposing in the unusual medium of batik dynamic blue painterly swirls on rice paper and embroidery in a with a photo image of the manner that makes the distinctive head of the Statue of Liberty patterns of the bark strike the eye with 3-D elements including like a herd of palomino ponies what appear to be computer galloping by. parts, as well as a statuette A fine representation of the of a heroic male figure in a contemporary tendency called loincloth holding aloft a laurel painterly photography is Danielle in one hand and a scroll in the Austen’s “Daisy Dome,” in which other. Erin Stukey Johnson the yellow flowers, blurred like also makes a strong statement flying saucers, seem to sail through with “Gender Dance,” a a forest scene, the trees and tall boldly tactile figure in an grasses creating textures one feels Expressionist landscape given Jacqueline Lorieo it would be almost possible for palpable weight with thick earthy impasto scored a viewer to reach out and touch. The opposite with textures resembling corrugated cardboard. In tendency, photorealism, comes to the forefront a collage entitled “Eternity at Work,” Ruth Terrill in Corin Wagner-Brown’s technically meticulous puts a surreal spin on the majesty of antiquity with a oil on canvas “Dead Trees Grow No New Leaves sweeping vista of a dreamlike atmospheric landscape II,” with its dead-on depiction of one such leaf in which radiant mountains and clouds take on turning from green to blue on a blackened bough, strange shapes and huge flowers sprout from classic as stark an image of mortality in its own way as Ivan columns and stems emerging from piles of rock. Albright’s painting of a dark funeral wreath on a Sculpture, all too often slighted in major group dark door, “That Which I Should Have Done I Did Lolita Bronzini exhibitions, is also given proper prominence here. Not Do.” Amy Puccio counterbalances rugged textures Almost psychedelic in its intensity, Callie Hirsch’s with light pastel hues and sprightly abstract forms acrylic on board “Nature’s Pulse” does indeed in her abstract piece in wood mosaic “We Meet seem to evoke the vital signs and essences of nature, Again.” Gracefully furled forms stained with with its vibrant colors, jewel-like auras, and intricate translucent pinks, yellows, and blues appear to float patterns of sinuous green fronds flowing as though like colored smoke in “Venus’s Shell,” a wall relief in a night wind against a black background. Then by Jane Notides-Benzig. A lovely, quirky, oddity there is Leah K. Tomaino whose “Climbing Mt. distinguishes Elizabeth Miller McCue’s “Nesting,” Rainer” evokes a glorious vista of snow capped a delicate yet funky concoction of patinated peaks from here to tomorrow with such stunning bronze wire perched on a bark-textured pedestal. verisimilitude that one must check the medium By contrast, Jacqueline Lorieo finds smooth, several times: collage with recycled bags! immaculate white marble the perfect medium for Figurative painting in this show ranges from the two totem-like sculptures featuring tiny human fantasy to gritty realism. A delightful example of nudes merging fantastically with eggplants. Then the former is Lolita Bronzini’s oil on linen “Strange there is “Now Voyager,” a witty stoneware clay Rain,” a detailed image of two anthropomorphic camel by Priscilla Heep-Coll who invariably has bird-people in striped period outfits resembling a wild and woolly way of integrating unexpected especially dapper jester suits standing under a shared negative spaces into the anatomy of her whimsical yellow umbrella in what appears to be a storm animal figures to lend them semiabstract originality. of mothballs. Just as compelling in the opposite Ruth Terrill Another fine sculptor, Phillis Rosser, displays an direction is “Love Act” by Linda Lippa, a neon-lit exquisite ability to suggest an entire nocturnal oil on canvas capturing an impassive transaction for uniquely layered chromatic effects to simply scenario with a few skillfully gathered, combined, between a furtive male customer and a somewhat spread the emotion for which it is named. and finely sanded natural wood forms in her younger woman cashier at the ticket window of Over the years important woman artists have poetically titled piece “Low Hanging Moon.” a Times Square porno theater, the picture’s title been associated with the N.A.W.A, among them Landscape imagery, ranging from realism to (also glowing in neon on the window) taking on an Mary Cassatt, Isabel Bishop, Alice Neel, Audrey stylized visions of nature transformed, also makes almost poignant irony in context. Flack, Faith Ringold, and many others. One would a strong showing among several painters in the A more historically distanced but no less not be surprised if some of the contemporary show. Belonging to the first category, Mary Bell engaging image, rendered in pen and ink by Ethel artists in the present exhibition joined that exalted Steffen demonstrates how scenic wonders will never Kipnes, “The Russian Ghetto –– The Sky is Falling company in the future. –– J. Sanders Eaton go out of style with her oil –– intriguingly named Down” is pregnant with ominous portents, even “Don’t Angels Fall?”–– of winding mountain as it depicts a pleasant enough peasant scene in a National Association of Women Artists, Inc., streams, pristine trees, and violet flowers in a style rural hamlet. By contrast, “Joy,” a bold, luminous 123rd Annual Member’s Exhibition, of idealized magic realism reminiscent of masters colorful abstraction by Edith Rae Brown takes Sylvia Wald and Po Kim Gallery, 417 Lafayette St., of Americana such as Grant Wood and Thomas skillful advantage of that ancient medium’s capacity September 4 - 29, 2012. 6 GALLERYSTUDIO SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2012 Two Exhibition Spaces Bring Art to the Cultural Desert of Upper York Avenue n an economy where both artists and high Iprofile galleries must struggle harder than usual to survive, alternative and more intimate exhibition spaces are especially important. Owned and curated by bow-tie sporting former seminarian H. Harris Healy III, Logos Bookstore, at 1575 York Avenue, between 83rd and 84th Streets, is one of the best known of such venues on the Upper East Side. Paul Morin Although Logos offers perhaps the most comprehensive selection of religious texts in town, it also stocks current bestsellers, literary fiction and poetry, nonfiction, history, psychology, and books for children and young adults, as well as greeting cards and music CDs. As open-minded and diverse in his artistic tastes as he is as a bookseller, Healy recently featured a two-parson show by New York abstract painter Paul Morin and Russian born neoimpressionist Sonia Grineva. Perhaps it is because Paul Morin is a composer as well as a painter and calls one numbered series “Movements,” that his compositions, comprised of soft, variegated vertical strokes and streaks of vibrant color, strike one as notes in a kind of visual Sonia Grineva music. By contrast, Grineva’s Manhattan cityscapes capture brownstones in a blizzard and verdant, sun-splashed Central Park views with a breezy painterly vivacity. Although their approaches to subject matter differ greatly, both painters share a Judith Gwyn Brown vigorous and exhilarating gestural brio. In past exhibitions at Logos, we were especially drawings and large oils on canvas. Her favorite impressed with works by Upper East Side artists subject appears to be rendezvous between romantic Peter G. Pereira and Judith Gwyn Brown. couples in dim restaurants or outdoor urban Also a painter and graphic artist with a raunchy settings, such as Bethesda Fountain on an overcast take on mythological subjects that harks back to winter day under the stone angel and naked trees. Picasso’s Minotaur series, albeit with a clean supple In contrast to the genteel patrician demeanor line more in the manner of Matisse, Pereira most of H. Harris Healy III, his neighbor down the recently showed a group of computer art pieces street, big bearded Jim Horton roars in from inspired by the wide variety of botanical species his home in northern New Jersey to Gallery in nearby Carl Schurz Park. Multiplying the floral of Graphic Arts Ltd, 1601 York Avenue, like a Peter G. Pereira forms in repeated patterns, Pereira transformed civilized Hell’s Angel on a BMW motorcycle. them into compositions suggesting psychedelic Horton, who took over as director of GoGA, as it color pencil drawings combine a nostalgic social mandalas. is sometimes known, from Eleanor (Ellie) Seibold, realism reminiscent of Edward Hopper and Brown, an illustrator of more than forty books who opened the gallery in 1963. Although no Reginald Marsh with brilliant comic strip colors for major publishers as well as a painter, is best exhibition space so venerable could be accurately and a Pop pizzazz reminiscent of Roy Lichtenstein. known for her moodily atmospheric figurative ink termed “alternative,” Horton supports the gallery We are also fans of Bucky Pizzarelli, who besides by offering custom archival picture framing for being a well known jazz guitarist (featured along both private collectors and organizations such as with his cabaret star son, John Pizzarelli, on Paul prestigious as The Whitney Museum. McCartney’s wryly named new album of old Although formally a limited edition print gallery, standards “Kisses on the Bottom”) is also one of in recent years Horton has extended GoGA’s our liveliest self-taught painters. Pizzarelli’s “World scope to include oils, acrylics, and other one of Series,” with its red white and blue banners draped a kind original works of art. One of our favorite over the stands and multitude of cheering fans, is a frequent exhibitors is veritable classic of sophisticated primitivism. Joe Chierchio, whose Equally impressive in their own manner are the meticulously executed crystalline realist still life paintings of the Chinese artist Yin Yong Chun, with their exquisite mastery of light and Yin Yong Chun shadow on various surfaces; and the abstractions of Warren Kloner, whose many circular forms within interlocked linear structures as muscularly sinuous as those of Brice Marden, suggest a veritable universe of swarming cellular activity. Sandwiched in among the laundromats, delis, hardware stores, and hair salons of the Upper East Side, Gallery of Graphic Arts, like Logos Book Store, is a welcome oasis for neighborhood aesthetes. –– The Editors Bucky Pizzarelli Joe Chierchio Warren Kloner SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2012 GALLERYSTUDIO 7 Marie-Hélène Beaudry’s New Solo Show Signals a Bold New Departure t takes great courage and conviction for an artist Ito drastically simplify his or her iconography (especially when the earlier, more complexly configured subject matter has been favorably received by critics and collectors), although it is almost always a sign of growing aesthetic authority and what we generally refer to as a “mature style.” There is, after all, the danger of throwing the baby out with the bath water, to use a well worn cliché that may apply a little more aptly than usual here, since the first works that I ever saw and reviewed by the celebrated Quebec artist Marie-Hélène Beaudry, in her solo show at Caelum Gallery in Chelsea in 2007, depicted a bad little girl who dangles her “mini me” doll into the waves of the sea in a series that could, according to one’s mindset, suggest either a baptism or a drowning. That first series, with its nonlinear narrative immediately captivated me, as did the second exhibition by Beaudry that I saw in the same venue, entitled “Impulse to Run,” which revolved around the allegory of a sprinting schoolboy set against the apparent map of a city that transformed with closer inspection into home tailoring patterns of the type women use to make clothes for themselves and their children. Here again, there was a story, however submerged; just as there also was in Beaudry’s 2010 New York solo show at Caelum, this time in which the different stages of life from early childhood were depicted in a gender- blending procession (again set against patterns for home-tailoring) much in the manner of an evolutionary chart. What all three shows shared in common was that not only was the narrative partially submerged under a array of intriguing symbols and subtexts, but the imagery was as well, under Marie-Hélène Beaudry’s characteristically succulent washes, and drips of semitransparent veils of diluted the gods and the heavens; in Hindu mythology on the significance of an amulet on an improvised oil pigment, which lent each series a layered they refer to the qualities of kindness, patience, altar, suggesting one of those rituals that artists, like complexity, a depth of tone and color that greatly and good fortune; the Buddhists associate them latter-day shamans, create spontaneously. enriched her compositions with qualities as subtle with openness, and regard feathers of the peacock The subdued palette of pastel blues and as those in any abstraction. –– a bird capable of subsisting on poisonous greens that Beaudry here employs also suggests a Indeed, Beaudry’s combination of intriguing plants –– as symbols of the ability to thrive in the deconstructed pastoral realm, as if the blue skies imagery and semitranslucent color areas face of suffering. In Christianity white feathers, in and verdant green foliage of Impressionism had (predominantly pale earth tones and grays particular indicate ascension and purity of the soul. been shattered into Cubist planes, softened by interspersed with bursts of brighter hues) reminded And in dream analysis, they indicate innocence and the forms of the virginal white feathers with their one of the contrasts between image and palette in a fresh start in spiritual terms. serrated edges. the paintings of Robert Rauschenberg, although Beaudry brings the resonance inherent in all The exhibition also includes two majestic Beaudry’s manner of melding those elements of these various meanings combined in the suite installations that the artist refers to as “mosaics,” was, from the start, considerably more enigmatic, of seven large (5 feet and 7 inches in diameter) each comprised of some twenty-eight smaller verging as it always was, on a staggered narrative oil paintings on circular canvases which she calls circular oil paintings mounted within a grid that could seem influenced by the sequential flow “Handle with Care,” after the stickers that are and covering two gallery walls. As with the of cinematography. routinely placed on fragile packages for shipping. larger paintings, each circle contains a discrete Aside from Beaudry’s characteristic painterly The hardly arguable implication is that our world composition filled with a remarkable variety of panache, which is still very much present, all is presently in an endangered state of fragility and colors, tones, and forms with their own distinct of this has changed in her most recent series of must be handled with the greatest care to assure character. tondos. The round shape of the canvases is not its survival and that of our species and all the other This exhibition amounts to a giant step for only evocative of the shape of the planet earth but life forms familiar to us. This simple yet profound Marie-Hélène Beaudry, who has turned away from projects an impression instantly more boundless message takes on a striking impact in Beaudry’s the entertainment value of the narrative mode and infinite-seeming than even a perfectly compositions, which possess a presence both and all the movement that it implies to make symmetrical square. The new works, although imposing and serene. Although enlivened here emblematic statements of enduring and iconic suggestive of a multitude of things, appear at first and there by dripped rivulets that flow somewhat stillness. glance adamantly abstract. On closer inspection, unsettlingly upward rather than down, the artist –– Ed McCormack however, it becomes clear that the large, gracefully has provided rectangular spaces within the outer configured white forms floating weightlessly yet circles of some of the paintings in a neutral value prominently amid the intersecting areas and linear that, as she puts it, “invites one to stop and reflect.” strokes of pale blue, deeper blue, green, pink, In a much different mood but with a similarly actually represent giant white feathers. sacred feeling as the large stately canvases that Mark Marie-Hélène Beaudry, Caelum Gallery, Feathers, after all, have long been universally Rothko created for a nondenominational chapel in 508-526 West 26th Street, potent images in many cultures. The ancient Houston, Texas, Beaudry’s newest works project a October 9 - 20, 2012 Greeks saw them as symbols for the wisdom of sense of secular spirituality. The feathery forms take Reception: October 11, 6 - 8pm 8 GALLERYSTUDIO SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2012 “Freedom” Personified: The Paintings of Nélida Diaz de D’Amato n the series of paintings that she titles “The immaculate home. IDrama of Being Free,” the Latin American Here, de D’Amato emerges as an especially artist Nélida Diaz de D’Amato takes inspiration vibrant colorist in the harmonies she achieves from the writings of the German philosopher with brilliant yellow and orange hues set against Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling. But rather purple-violets and blues in her evocation of this than slavishly following Schelling’s themes, she optimistic woman’s orderly little domestic realm. demonstrates the principle of freedom in art by Yet, notice those glowing yellow liquidic areas on virtue of her creative interpretation of them. the neat cement walkway: Are they puddles of “I think art is the culminating point of piddle left by the dog that appears to be slinking Schelling’s philosophy,” she writes in an artist’s somewhat sheepishly away in the direction of its statement. “It is the highest manifestation of the little house? And if so, do they slightly sully the absolute. Between human nature and art lies a woman’s notion of the ideal? And also look closely subconscious creative force. I take art as an active at the folds in this mild, dowdy little lady’s bright principle, capable of engendering unconscious orange skirt: Do you see the slender, graceful tilted spiritual life. Human beings strive for freedom and outline of the lower torso of a youthful nude that it is in esthetic activity where unity occurs.” does not connect to the actual inelegantly stocky Like Schelling’s eclectic theories, de D’Amato’s calves emerging from under her hem? Could this style ranges over a wide gamut of expression. In a anatomical detail, comely as a sculpted fragment painting she calls “Identity,” primarily in tones of from antiquity, be a vestige of the matron’s Venus- pale blue and gray, two angular figures that look like youth? “Identity” carved out of stone pose as though for a formal Like any good artist (or philosopher for that brilliant formal statement even while introducing portrait in a photographer’s studio. ironically, matter), de D’Amato poses questions rather than a note of satire into a picture. It’s all about as much as they obviously wish to project an attempting to provide pat answers to them. Indeed, “Freedom,” after all, a subject she personifies in individual persona, their faces are featureless. as close as this gifted painter comes to editorializing a painting of that title, depicting a rear view of a By contrast, in de D’Amato’s “Human Nature,” is in the oil and acrylic on canvas that she calls beautiful blond nude stretching her arms above her three almost ghostly white figures emerge from “Hollow,” the title itself a kind of indictment. head in a gesture of exhilaration, that just may be a luminous blue ground, enacting what appears This stringently organized composition depicts a the signature image of this splendid series. to be a triangular drama in a manner as fluidly rigidly stylized figure, drawn in a style that parodies –– Peter Wiley ethereal as rain running down a windowpane. certain early modernist clichés (a nose that tilts Then there is “Ideal,” in which de D’Amato turns in two directions at once, etc.) and posed beside Nélida Diaz de D’Amato, Agora Gallery, up the chromatic frequency in a more complex and geometric rectangles in primary reds and blues, as 530 West 25th St., detailed image of a humble lady and her dog, both well as more muted secondary hues. September 15 - October 5, 2012. seen outside their respective abodes –– the canine’s Like the American artist George Condo, Nélida Reception: Thursday September 20, 6 - 8 pm little A-frame kennel, and woman’s brightly-lit and Diaz de D’Amato has that rare ability to make a The Concrete Epiphanies of Kozo Takano s the delightfully ironic poems of Billy Collins projects a strong sense of heat. Amake clear, verse that makes us smile is not A similar theme is evoked just as always “light.” This point is also well demonstrated economically in another painting by in visual terms in the paintings of Kozo Takano, an Takano called “Sunrise,” comprised of artist who currently lives and works in Yokohama, a thick stripe of black acrylic running Japan, and states, “I am particularly influenced across an off-white background. The by the works of Picasso and Klee, and also by the stripe bends slightly toward the left Japanese painter Morikazu Kumagai. What unites side of the composition to form an these greats of art history, I think, is the witty angular pocket containing just a hint humor which is expressed in their paintings. This of brilliant cadmium red light. Filling extra element enlivens the works and makes them in the blank spaces in his or her mind, instantly relatable as well as engaging.” the receptive viewer visualizes the sun The epiphany that made Takano himself a rising over the brackish black water of painter occurred when he was 17 years old. a vast panoramic landscape. Walking along a gravel road, he was inspired to Considerably more complex, draw, and was amused when one of the pieces of however, is another composition by gravel that he drew appeared as if it had floated Takano called “Zebras are Running.” up from the ground. Thus, apparently, began his Here, a welter of dark horizontal fascination with the slightly off-center elements dashes bordered at the top and by which the every day world takes on a kind of “Square Wave” bottom by an earthy brown terrain, unexpected magic. and the simplicity of its composition as any ancient suggests a wide road along which the Even now, Takano says, much of his inspiration Japanese Zen literati ink on rice paper scroll. Yet animals of the title (or perhaps just their detached comes when he is walking or relaxing in some way, Takano translates it into the incongruous idiom of black stripes!) race in a wild kinetic flurry. and a “concrete impression of the external world contemporary geometric abstraction with a jocular In a way that words rarely do for abstract passes [through] the ideological process of the flair worthy of the great humorous draftsman Saul paintings, their fanciful titles add an imaginative heart.” Steinberg. dimension –– an element of concrete poetry, if you What makes his work most remarkable is how Equally succinct in conception is another acrylic will –– to the formidable formal configurations of much wit he manages to convey within the context on board that Takano calls “The Sun and the Kozo Takano. of a relatively austere abstract style. One acrylic on Moon.” It consists of two more or less equally –– J. Sanders Eaton board by Takano, for example, consists simply of spaced black squares not exactly centered against a thick black bar running along the bottom edge a tan ground as smoothly and even as a freshly of the composition, with a dark gray rectangle painted wall. The only difference between the two Kozo Takano, Agora Gallery, resting on it at a slightly askew angle to the right squares, when one inspects them closely, is the 530 West 25th St., October 9 - 30, 2012 of center. Entitled “Square Wave,” this painting is thin line of red emerging from the top of the one Reception: Thursday October 11, 6 - 8 pm as pared down in both its monochromatic palette on the left, which, given the title of the painting, SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2012 GALLERYSTUDIO 9 Huntington Hartford and Me: Brothers in Profligacy an excerpt from HOODLUM HEART: Confessions of a Test-Dummy for the Crash and Burn Generation a memoir by Ed McCormack “Could you get that, luv?” Given her superior cunning it the Razorblade Heiress called would not have surprised me to out from the bathroom on learn that Veronica was taking Thompson Street, after the phone Hunt for more than Alice ever rang several times. had. In fact, for all I knew it could Like the hygiene-obsessed have been him, rather than her wife of the Impressionist painter dead father, who had been footing Bonnard, whose perennial the bill for me all along. Either bathing became her husband’s way, it was all the same to yours favorite subject, she would soak truly. for hours –– especially when Still, I balked when she got she was crashing from speed –– off the phone after returning his reading and smoking in the tub. call and asked me to accompany “Could you please pick up the her to “an intimate Memorial phone, ducks?” Day weekend celebration” of As much as I resented being the then sixty-three-year-old interrupted when I was working multimillionaire’s recent marriage on my long-overdue book to his fourth wife, Elaine Kay, a project “New York Satyricon” twenty-two year old ex-beautician –– or at least leafing through the from Fort Lauderdale, Florida. manuscript, thinking about maybe Since Fort Lauderdale was also starting work on it again –– I where Veronica herself had grown finally reached across the glass- up, and since she was clearly even topped table in the kitchenette for more “wily” than she claimed the receiver. Alice was, I wondered what the “Hello, is Ronny there?” said a connection between Veronica nasal male voice on the other end and Elaine, both of whom were of the line. around the same age, might be. “She’s in the bath. Can she call Perhaps it was my curiosity to you back?” see if they were involved in some “Yes, of course, would you tell conspiring vixen con together (as her, please, that Hunt called?” well as the opportunity to strut “Hunt” turned out to be around in the white linen suit that Huntington Hartford, a name Veronica had recently designed I had not heard spoken aloud for me), that made me finally give since my childhood in the 1950s, in and agree to be her date that when it was almost interchangeable with that ––– with love from the very intellectual weekend. of another society playboy, Conrad “Nicky” author, Huntington” and dedicated: “To * * * Hilton. Like Hilton, the hotel heir, Hartford, Diane, who refuses to read it”), but couldn’t Although the celebration would take place scion to the A&P supermarket fortune, was get past its simplistic “Emperor’s New at Hartford’s farm in New Jersey, where famous mainly for “squiring starlets,” to Clothes” blanket dismissal of modernism he and his new bride were honeymooning, use a tabloid columnist’s term of that time, and banal lines like, “In the busy world of some of the guests assembled beforehand to posh nightclubs like Delmonico’s or El contemporary art, what has happened to in his sun-drenched penthouse at Number Morocco. Except as someone I occasionally the old-fashioned belief in the existence of One Beekman Place, a veritable museum of heard my parents mention in relation to some beauty?” contemporary realist paintings, including gossipy newspaper item of a type that enables I wasn’t even sure if Hartford was still some excellent Dalis, photographs of Hunt working people to feel momentary sour- alive; but now here was Veronica, as she with an eclectic collection of luminaries grapes scorn for those born with far greater brushed her hair after her bath, referring ranging from Dwight D. Eisenhower means than themselves, his name meant to him in the present tense as “an old and Richard Nixon to the Beatles, and nothing to me. sweetie who, unfortunately, is easy prey for a sundry other memorabilia of a fortune well I didn’t know, for example, that besides constant parade of bimbos who take financial squandered. girls Hunt collected art, until the late Sixties advantage of the poor dear.” “Did any of you see yesterday’s Daily when I read an uncharacteristically flattering “One of them was Alice, who actually News?” a post-deb type in a little black –– almost fawning –– profile of him by Tom introduced me to him,” she added with a minidress asked. “There was the wedding Wolfe. But it made sense because, while wicked little grin, referring to her former picture of Hunt and Elaine –– the smiling Wolfe was one of my early New Journalism roommate Alice Alias. “I eventually warned newlyweds you know –– and the caption said: heroes, his anti-abstract art diatribe “The him about her wily topless dancer ways, and A&P Heir and His Bride –– ‘Did they say Painted Word” was as rabidly reactionary, if now he calls me instead of her. Like you, Wee-oo!’...You know, like in those A&P TV not as witless, as Hartford’s own philistine he’s one of the people who, in her paranoid ads?” tract, “Art or Anarchy?” little mind, she blames me for ‘stealing away’ “I liked the caption in People magazine,” I once picked up a used copy of the latter from her...Of course with Hunt and me said her preppy-looking date: “ ‘Huntington book at one of the dollar stalls outside the it’s a purely platonic friendship. He just got Hartford and his A&P Tomato!’ ” Strand Book Store (autographed “For Laura married, after all.” Hartford’s daughter, Cathy, who 10 GALLERYSTUDIO SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2012 was around the same age as her newest get frantic with worry, and then –– it was the goblet and waved it toward his host. stepmother, was leaning over a coffee table damnedest thing! –– someone spots her pants “I wish to propose a toast,” he announced. rolling joints for everybody. up at the top of the big apple tree down by “To Hunt ... if you live...” “Do you think Elaine will change Hunt’s the lake! So they run to tell Hunt and right Hartford choked momentarily on a ways?” someone asked her. away he says, “Her pants! Oh, my God!” mouthful of spaghetti, and the toastmaster “Are you kidding?” she said, licking the “No relax, Hunt,” they tell him, “Elaine is leaned over and started pounding him on the gummed edge of a Bambu paper. “Daddy still in them!” back. Someone giggled nervously, and all the considers a party a disaster if he doesn’t get Hunt goes running down to the lake and, goblets suspended in midair dropped back the phone numbers of at least three new sure enough, there’s his impish young bride down onto the table. girls.” sitting up at the very top of this huge apple “I think I’ll just think the rest of it,” A noisy welcoming committee of Muscovy tree, calmly reading a movie magazine ... the chuckled the dude with the Afro, draining ducks surrounded the stretch limo when it damnedest thing! his glass and reaching across the table for one rolled into the driveway of the neocolonial “I couldn’t get her to come down for of the crystal wine decanters. mansion that someone joked had probably anything in the world,” he said, chuckling “This reminds me of the dinner scene in been in the family since Hunt’s people arrived and scratching his shaggy gray thatches like Andy Warhol’s ‘Frankenstein,’ ” a guest with on the Mayflower. We all piled out and Ozzie Nelson in “Ozzie’s Girls” befuddled slicked back black hair who claimed to be an were led by Hartford’s Man Friday, Mark, over some nutty thing one of his adopted actor and called himself Dorrian Laser Beam a dapper young guy in a silk shirt decorated daughters did. said, breaking the silence. “We need some with tennis rackets, through a big country “I’m standing down there at the bottom rock and roll in here to liven things up.” kitchen and into a wood-paneled den to meet of the apple tree, saying, ‘But Elaine, you He jumped up from the table and the other guests, among them a pair of wan, must come down! What will my guests think? went into the den to turn on the stereo. Quaalude-eyed girls who looked like refugees I’ve invited a whole bunch of people down A heavy metal machine shop wail vibrated from an East Village crash pad and a young from New York!’ But she wouldn’t budge... the silverware on the dining room table. black dude with a huge Afro, lounging in an the damnedest thing! It was like she was...a Huntington Hartford put down his fork. He armchair in a dashiki-styled dressing gown, as cat or something!” knitted his bushy brows like he was coming though he had moved in permanently. Mrs. Huntington Hartford the Fourth down with a terrific Excedrin headache. “Wha’s happenin’?” he said, pulling his did not put in an appearance until several “Dorrian,” Hunt honked, “that’s loud glazed gaze away from the TV screen. hours later, after all the rest of us had been enough.” “What are we all drinking?” asked Mark, seated at the long table in the dining room The heavy metal screech accelerated its rubbing his hands together. for a late dinner. A slender, kittenish blond, pitch. “I’ve got some boss blotter acid, too, she stormed in wearing a semitransparent “Dorr-i-an!” if anyone wants to get really fucked up,” Frederick’s of Hollywood-style nightgown “Hey Hunt, he heard you already, man,” offered the dude in the dashiki, before gluing over a pair of bikini panties, her disconcerting snapped the dude with the Afro. his attention back to the adventures of combination of physical comeliness and “Just think,” Veronica leaned over and “Ozzie’s Girls.” mental imbalance reminding me of Andrea whispered in my ear, “once upon a time, Presently our host, his thatchy white hair in Warhol Whipps going into one of her “Show people must have lived with a certain disarray, shuffled into the den in a plaid shirt, Time” routines in the Back baggy khaki slacks, and bedroom slippers. It Room at Max’s Kansas City. was difficult to reconcile this shambling figure “Is everyone here happy?” with the legendary tabloid playboy famous she demanded. “Is there for his affairs with Elizabeth Taylor, Lana enough wine? Are all my Turner, Ava Gardner, and scores of other guests amused? Well, if you’re Hollywood glamour girls. not, wait until you see the “Well, I really must congratulate myself,” sleeping arrangements we’ve he said in that “Eastern boarding school made!” honk,” as Tom Wolfe described his accent, After dropping this little “on being able to put together such an bon mot on the table like one attractive, congenial group of people on of the soggy meatballs that such short notice –– especially on a holiday were being passed around weekend.” to go with the vast platter of “Right on,” chimed the dude with overcooked pasta that Mark, the Afro, without looking away from the the all-around man, had television screen. whipped up, the mistress of “I’ll have you know,” added Hartford, the house broke into a fit of “that I finally managed to talk Elaine into giggles and took her place coming down from the apple tree.” beside her husband, who was He launched into a long story about bent over his plate shoveling how Elaine had disappeared earlier in the food into his face with the afternoon and was gone so long that he oblivious concentration of an began to get concerned and organized a inmate in a nursing home. search party to comb the property. Here was The dude with the Hunt and his ragtag band spread out all over Afro (whom Veronica had the whole damned one-hundred-and sixty whispered to me was Elaine’s acre spread, searching the stables, beating latest boyfriend) had seated the bushes, yelling like banshees...and Elaine himself at the head of the doesn’t answer. By now Hunt is beginning to table. He picked up his wine SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2012 GALLERYSTUDIO 11 semblance of elegance and grace in this lovely new stepfather “in nothing but our cute little altogether, Veronica was confused: In her old house.” candy-colored panties, streaking back and one or two previous experiences with girls, * * * forth from our bedrooms to the bathroom she had been the passive partner; but Sandy When I first started staying with the two the minute we heard his plodding footsteps was the first girl she really wanted to go down roommates in the apartment they shared then coming up the stairs,” then claim he was on, which convinced her even more that she on the Upper West Side, and our menage coming on to them like Humbert Humbert, must be gay herself. a trois was still more or less harmonious, the pedophile protagonist of “Lolita.” Then she met this beautiful boy who some nights while Alice Alias was dancing in They’d hoped to turn their mom against worked on a truck delivering Lone Star Beer the topless club in Times Square, Veronica him, “but the bitch was so hooked on to The Alamo. His name was Lyle and he and I would sit up late in her workroom. Doctor Rug’s magic vitamins” that she stood was having the same kind of doubts about We’d wash white crosses or black beauties behind her second husband when he wearied himself, until they humped each other down with a bottle of Smirnoff that we’d of their constant cock-teasing and ordered insensible in the back of his delivery truck. pass back and forth; I would smoke grass, the older sister out of the house. “It was mutual tea and sympathy more and she would regale me like a latter-day That whole summer after graduation, than anything else,” Veronica said. “But Scheherazade with tales of her teenage years, Veronica slept on her real father’s old army somehow Sandy, who had a reputation for before she arrived in New York. cot out in the garage. During the day she being hotheaded found out about it. And Growing up in an affluent suburb of Fort dealt nickel and dime bags of smoke that when one of the girls from The Alamo told Lauderdale, the daughter of a successful used the family’s hip young maid Pilar scored by me she was looking for me with a god-actual car dealer who had become a local celebrity the pound in Fort Lauderdale’s Panamanian six-gun, I knew it was time to make one of by doing his own manic TV commercials ghetto. Her mom knew that she was slipping my famous fast getaways!” (much like those of the goofy New York into the house to raid the refrigerator during This time she split for New York City, home appliance king Jerry Rosenberg, I the day and made sure to replace whatever where she resolved to stop being a fugitive imagined), speed had been a significant part she ate –– lunch meat, yogurt or whatever and continue her education. She waitressed of her family legacy. Her mother, a beautician –– by the next day. She and Pilar would sit nights at Phoebe’s, the off-off Broadway –– yes, just like Hunt’s new bride Elaine around in the afternoon smoking these big theater hangout on the Bowery, and The (another too neat coincidence, it would later fat bombers of dope, listening to music, Bottom Line, the popular music venue on seem to me) dispensed amphetamines to and sometimes dancing together between West 4th Street, while studying design and Veronica and her younger sister Samantha on greeting customers. illustration at the School of Visual Arts. She a daily basis, both for weight control and so By the end of summer, even after splitting lived in a funky S.R.O hotel in the East 20’s, they’d excel in school. half the proceeds from the grass sales fifty-fifty near the school, until she met her gay friend As a consequence of her mom being with Pilar, Veronica was ready to leave Fort Randy in one of her classes and he invited her “a firm believer in The Breakfast of Lauderdale. She fled first to Aspen, Colorado, to stay with him in the Village. Champions,” as Veronica put it, she and where she knew some people who found her “Randy had a lot of friends, so it was lovely Samantha became, “the best students, the a job tending bar in a ski lodge. In Aspen, to wake up on a Sunday morning to the most spastic cheerleaders, the most popular just when she was getting tired of making smell of fresh coffee and bacon and find the girls in the whole motherfucking school! We drinks for customers who were obviously kitchen crowded with naked boys cooking got the best grades, dated the coolest guys, having a much better time than she was, she breakfast,” she recalled. “For awhile, it was gave the best head, beat the other girls at just met a moderately successful rock guitarist like being May West! But as gracious a host about everything that mattered. I guess you who took her on the road with him. She as Randy was, I started feeling like I might could say we were your quintessential prom traveled and partied on his band’s tour bus be impinging on his social life, so I found queens, even though we wouldn’t be caught for about a month, before he took up with a cheap little studio apartment down on dead at anything as corny as a prom!” some scuzzy groupie who came backstage in Avenue B.” It was her mom, too, who, while dyeing this funky country and blues club where they She had always drawn well anyway and their long tresses, drummed into both girls played a gig and left her stranded in El Paso, in less than a year she was making enough the old advertising slogan “Blonds have more Texas. as a freelance illustrator to quit waitressing fun.” But the amphetamines that fueled the “I was so fed up with men at that point,” even before her real father passed away and family’s American dream began to take their she told me, “that I stopped the first butch- left her a fortune in Johnson & Johnson toll when their dad freaked out and turned looking woman in a Stetson that I saw and stocks, inspiring her new friend Alice Alias to into a “religious berserker,” as Veronica asked her where the local dyke bars were.” nickname her the Razorblade Heiress. characterized him, going into restaurants She lucked out and got hired as a waitress “I was fascinated with Alice,” she said. with a toy gun and ordering sinners down on at a place called The Alamo, where the “She was the first topless dancer and real rock their knees to pray for salvation, even as his women all swaggered around in ten gallon and roll groupie I ever met –– not a rank car business boomed and he opened more hats and cowgirl boots, slapped her on the amateur like me, who gets herself dumped lots around the state. butt, treated her like a piece of fluff, and in a distant state on her first try! She had Veronica was in her senior year of high sometimes even got into barroom brawls. all these great music business connections school and Samantha was a sophomore when They were a real hoot and made her feel like –– people I got to know after I moved into their mom finally divorced him and married Miss Kitty on “Gunsmoke.” She really liked this apartment with her. That’s how I first got her diet doctor. They both hated their new them and almost began to feel like she was into designing costumes and stage stuff for stepfather, with his mustard or burgundy- cut out to be a full-time lesbian herself –– bands.” colored sport jackets, his loud plaid “wild and especially after she fell for this tough little girl Veronica’s whole history struck me as crazy guy” slacks, and that grotesque moth- called Sandy. your more or less classic all-American neo- eaten toupee that he plopped on his head Sandy tried to act as butch as she could decadant teenybopper’s mutant coming every morning. Compared to Doctor Rug, but she came off delicate and feminine of age story –– until she claimed to have as they called him, their real dad was “a cool despite herself. In fact, Sandy was so femme once made love to her own sister –– and on gun-totin’ cowboy.” Behind their mom’s and pretty that in the beginning, before Christmas Eve yet! back, they’d parade around in front of their they agreed to do away with role-playing Neither she nor Samantha, who had 12 GALLERYSTUDIO SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2012 moved with a boyfriend to Seattle back really unpleasant memories. after graduating from high school, At one point when I was in the had been home for the holidays kitchen making coffee I overheard in years. But when Samantha who you in the other room being snide had stayed more in touch via long and sarcastic to her, just like you distance with both parents, called used to be with me. All I could with the news that their real father think was: thank goodness I don’t had recently been diagnosed with have to put up with that any a terminal illness, they agreed more!” to meet for the holidays in Fort “She must have been Lauderdale, at the house where provoking me in some way,” he now lived with his second wife, I said. “Believe me, she’s very Liz. clever at it ... Besides, you never “Our dad and Liz were upstairs had to put up with anything. You sleeping and Sam and I were were always good at defending sitting by the Christmas tree yourself.” in our pajamas wrapping the She laughed again. “Is that presents we had bought for them, what a relationship with you is all just like when we were innocent about: knowing how to defend little girls –– before I, the evil oneself?” older sibling, turned her on to the “Not at all,” I protested. “But libertine writings of the Marquis listen, the only reason I even de Sade and all kinds of other bad bother bickering with Veronica is things,” Veronica said. “It was so to create the illusion of some kind nice to see my baby sister again of involvement, other than, like, and she looked so fresh and pretty you know, she’s just ... supporting that it just made me feel warm me... With you it was always all over. Without even thinking and Jeannie could have been anywhere, I real.” about it, I reached over, put my arms around was happy to find her at home when I called “Am I supposed to feel flattered by that? her and kissed her on the lips. And she must from the pay phone at Doctor Generosity’s, What was real –– the nastiness?” have felt the same way, because she kissed my favorite uptown bar, right across Second “No, the love.” me back just as hard, and before we knew it, Avenue and down the block from the If that’s what you call love, all I can say is well...one thing just led to another...” tenement to which she moved after she left it’s truly fucked up!” Visions of sugarplums dancing over their me. (Well, at least, I thought, we’re heads, I thought; but only said, “It had to be “I’m right here with Veronica at Dr. G’s,” communicating again.) weird, though, right? I mean, with your own I said casually when she picked up, “and I Meanwhile, Veronica claimed that the way sister... wasn’t it?” thought it would be nice if we could stop I had been courting Jeannie since she got “You’d think so, wouldn’t you?” she said. over for a bit.” back from her stay in San Francisco made her “Before it happened I would have thought, There was a long silence on the end of feel “superfluous,” repeating her increasingly ‘Ugh incest, how really repulsive, like a snake the line and I panicked, saying, “Say hello, frequent mantra, “You treat her like a eating its own tail or something!’ I would Veronica.” mistress and me like a wife.” have thought that was a bridge that not even “Hi Jeannie!” said the Razorblade Heiress And once again, I had no answer because I an intrepid adventurer like me would ever into the receiver. knew she had a point. Off and on, for almost cross. But believe it or not, with Sam it felt My wife had been raised on the manners a year, for better or for worse, she had been completely natural –– like, just sweet and ... of the Virginia horse country where you turn the dubious young wet-nurse who bore my sisterly, you know?” someone away socially, even on short notice, breakfast beer to the bedside; who fluffed This was the first thing she told me that only at risk of mortally offending them. Add fragrant pillows of expensive pot smoke about I found almost impossible to believe. But in the contradictory but equally strict etiquette my whacked out head, and propped me up another way, it might be even worse if she against acting “uptight,” even about the most with coke and a rainbow array of pills. She had made the whole story it up. For what perversely inappropriate social situations, by had even gone so far as to hint that she would would it say about me, I wondered, if she felt the freewheeling mores of hip New York in be willing to support a heroin habit should I obliged to fabricate such a perverse fantasy the early ‘70s, and I don’t suppose I left her see fit to add smack to my already exorbitant strictly for my entertainment? much choice. menu of vices. Having already rendered me * * * It wasn’t until the next time I visited idle by asking outright if I would like to try Some time later, during that period in her alone that Jeannie said, “Why did you being “a kept man” at a time when I had our separation when my wife and I were put me on the spot like that? It was very all but stopped writing anyway, it seemed trying, perhaps a little too hard, to be super inconsiderate, you know.” she was now ready to render me helpless as sophisticated –– or perhaps I should say “If you want the honest truth I just wanted well. Just so masochistically eager was she, when I was trying, since Jeannie always to see you, like I always do now that I can’t apparently, to claim what was left of me, claimed that I presumed to know what she be with you any time I want to. And I guess even if further demoralization of said carcass was thinking when I really didn’t have a clue I hoped seeing me with someone else would proved necessary. –– I once brought Veronica over to my wife’s make you wish we were together again.” But it wasn’t until months later, when apartment for a Saturday afternoon visit on “Actually, it had exactly the opposite we were holed up in the little apartment on the spur of the moment. Since it was one of effect.” “What do you mean? I thought it Thompson Street and I felt myself sinking those weekends when our son Holden was was all quite civilized.” deeper and deeper into my destructively away visiting my parents on Staten Island “I’m glad you did. For me, it brought subsidized addictions, that I finally realized SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2012 GALLERYSTUDIO 13 my very life was in danger as long as I Wenner at Rolling Stone. in their little pastoral cottage in the English remained in the crippling care of a classic One thing about Jann: Tough as he countryside where, I read somewhere, they “enabler” like the Razorblade Heiress. From could be with mild mannered reporters who made their own little Eden and people where I stood, on the trapdoor threshold of copped out for the reasons he considered sometimes glimpsed them through the my thirtieth year, it seemed suddenly clear wimpy (“See you around the daycare center, foliage romping as naked as Adam and Eve. that I had to “publish or perish” in a much schmuck!” was how he famously dismissed We had too many nearby neighbors in the more literal way than what tenure-track one writer who requested a leave of absence cramped little streets of our blue collar beach academics meant when they embraced that to get acquainted with a newborn offspring), community for that, but still we were as slogan. he understood freakouts and flameouts happy as we would ever be again. So I cut back on the beer and vodka, as only an editor of our generation could. Kerouac! Blake! It was so like me to amped up my amphetamine intake; and Having occasion to drop out and check always be impressionably likening myself to typing away nonstop on the glass-topped himself into rehab from time to time, he my artistic heroes! But my wife was right: I dinette table for several weeks, I completed discreetly refrained from mentioning the had nothing in common with this newest the first half of “New York Satyricon,” and Geraldo Rivera fiasco, and resumed assigning member of my pantheon, Thoreau. With was able to collect the second installment me pieces to write as though nothing had little capacity for true solitude, when I wasn’t of the advance from The Viking Press. It happened. either frantically racing a deadline or on the wasn’t a huge sum and I had to share it Suddenly I had all the work I could road with Alice Cooper, Aerosmith, or any with my collaborator, the photographer and handle. Sequestered down in my parents’ number of other rock and roll bands for video artist Anton Perich, many of whose basement, clacking away through the quiet Rolling Stone, I was still staying here and outrageous pictures of Warhol “superstars,” suburban nights on the huge black antique there in Manhattan and still spending most regulars at Max’s Kansas City, and other Remington manual typewriter I bought in nights at Max’s Kansas City. outrageous downtown scenemakers a pawnshop on the Bowery when I was still It didn’t surprise me in the least on one complemented my text. in high school and living at home on the of those nights in the rear dining room But at least it was escape money, and since Lower East Side, surrounded by old books, when I ran into Pearl, a glitter tot and part- I had never hidden my desire to eventually sleds, boxing gloves, a Jon Gnagy TV art time seamstress who used to come over to reunite with Jeannie from Veronica, our instruction kit, and other resonant remnants Thompson Street to help out when Veronica parting –– even while affording her an of earlier enthusiasms, I felt like that other had a lot of extra sewing to do on deadline, occasion for sighs of self-pity and minor wandering Catholic mama’s boy Kerouac, and she latched onto me and said, “Did you histrionics of a type no true drama queen when he would come off the road and hear? Ronny moved in with Hunt; Elaine could resist –– was relatively amicable. Much recuperate on his dear “Memere’s” hearty moved out and she moved in! A few nights to her credit, she was nothing if not a realist Canuck cooking in old Lowell. ago, I ran into her and she invited me over and a survivor –– of even worse than me, it True, I was still running on speed that I to that fabulous apartment on Beekman was comforting to tell myself –– and I was scored from one of Veronica’s diet quacks on Place –– what a palace! She even showed sure she would be better off in the long run. my trips into the city and, to take the edge me a clipping from the Daily News by some * * * off, washing Valium down with beer I kept famous old gossip columnist, she said he Hoping to impress Jeannie once and for in a little extra refrigerator my mother had was. I don’t remember it exactly, but it said all that I was ready to stop catting around down there. But at least I was psychologically something like, ‘A little birdie whispered to and get back to work, I had retreated to more capable of writing, now that my us that as soon as the A&P heir’s divorce the modest house on Staten Island that my attempt to impress my wife with how I had from Number Four goes through, a parents had recently mortgaged after years changed seemed to be succeeding and we statuesque blond bombshell named Veronica of living upstairs from my uncle Georgie and seemed to be cautiously feeling our way is slated to become the fifth Mrs. Huntington aunt Delores in the two-family rental nearby, toward a reconciliation. Even though she Hartford...’” where almost ten years earlier Jeannie and I still insisted that she needed her “own space” It was at Max’s, too, not long after, that had begun our marriage in the attic. The next –– that irksome Chick Lib term! –– and was I finally saw her again, when she made an thing I did was got back in touch with Jann not quite ready to live with me again, we entrance on Hunt’s arm, looking very much occasionally spent the night together, either the sudden socialite in pearls and an elegant in her place on 73rd Street or in a summer black dress. When she spotted me, she ran bungalow I eventually rented in a leafy cul- over, greeted me with a big demonstrative GALLERYSTUDIO de-sac down at the end of my parents’ block, hug, and insisted I accompany them to the An International Art Journal when being back under their roof began to opening reception for something called The PUBLISHED BY feel depressingly regressive. Erotic Circus, where the porn star Marilyn Although Jeannie, a longtime meditator Chambers, of “Behind the Green Door” ©EYE LEVEL, LTD. 2012 who knew more of solitude than I ever fame was supposed to be featured in “a ALL RIGHTS RESERVED would, was amused when I said that being special live performance. Still having “no alone in this bungalow made me feel like direction or home,” to quote the Dylan line 217 East 85th Street, PMB 228, New York, NY 10028 Thoreau, she had to admit that our being that had most resonance for me at the time, I (212) 861-6814 E-mail: [email protected] there together reminded her, as it did me, agreed to tag along. of those innocent and carefree days before “Well here I am with the two last loves I EDITOR AND PUBLISHER Jeannie McCormack anything bad had ever come between us, ever hope to have in this life,” the Razorblade when our son was newborn and a similar Heiress declared, squeezing in between Hunt MANAGING EDITOR Ed McCormack little house on Staten Island was our first real and me in the back seat of the limo, “and SPECIAL EDITORIAL ADVISOR Margot Palmer-Poroner home after spending the first year or so of our do you know something? You guys have DESIGN AND PRODUCTION Karen Mullen marriage living like incestuous siblings in my one thing in common: Neither one of you CONTRIBUTING EDITOR Maureen Flynn family’s attic. knows his ass from his elbow when it comes Back then, for one enchanted summer, I to money!” www.galleryandstudiomagazine.com felt we were like Mr. and Mrs. William Blake A sexagenarian billionaire and an 14 GALLERYSTUDIO SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2012 impoverished thirty-year-old writer looked Beekman Place, “where we can relax in more of his who wrote “The French Connection,” across her at each other and both grinned conducive surroundings.” and if he agreed about my potential, he wryly –– whether at her drama queen * * * would even consider sending me to London, audacity or 21-year-old wisdom neither may “See, Ronny, I can dress like him, too,” where they still had the best drama coaches, have been sure. said Hunt, having just changed from his suit to study. As the chauffeur cruised around looking pants into a spanking new pair of designer I couldn’t decide if he was simply putting for a parking spot, Veronica explained that jeans, pointing to me, where I sprawled on me on, or if he was eager to get me out of she had put Hunt on a serious austerity the sofa in his den in my studded denim the country because he was paranoid and program, and parking lots were now out jacket and faded Landlubber bellbottoms. saw me as a possible rival for Veronica’s of the question. (Not only that; she had “How do I look?” affections. I wanted to tell him that he had convinced him to sell one of his cars to a “Cool, Hunt,” Veronica cooed, placing a nothing to worry about in that regard; I had former chauffeur.) To hear her tell it the man tray with a tall tumbler of Southern Comfort never thought of her as anything more than was down to his last paltry few million after on the rocks for me and a glass of milk and a temporary benefactress and, as she herself sinking a fortune into bad investments and a plate of cookies for him on the low coffee always knew, I was still very much in love ill-fated projects: Paradise Island, his resort in table. with my wife. But of course I could not; it the Bahamas, was failing; his former Gallery When the old William Bendix movie we would have been anything but gallant with of Modern Art in that strange sliver of a had been watching was over, Hunt, who had her right there in the room. building on Columbus Circle now housed written a book on graphology called “You Anyway, he kept insisting that I should at the New York Cultural Center; his Show Are What You Write” offered to analyze my least give acting a try. And just when I was magazine had recently gone belly up. On top handwriting. beginning to get annoyed with the inference of all this, unwanted boarders and hangers He handed me a pen and pad and asked that my talent lay elsewhere than in writing, on were raiding his refrigerator for years me to write a simple sentence, so I wrote, and to wonder if Veronica had ever actually before she evicted them. Various business “Neither one of us knows his ass from his showed him any of my work, Hunt seemed associates had been losing boodles every elbow when it comes to money.” He studied to get suddenly drowsy and his head dropped year and pocketing the rest. His lawyers and and squinted at it for awhile, scratching his onto his chest. Poor old bastard, I thought, accountants were robbing him blind before thatchy white head. Then he told me that when he began to snore loudly. she stepped in to purge some advisors, evict a my handwriting confirmed an impression “I crushed a quaalude in his milk,” few boarders, derail some schemers, and work he got right away when he first met me: Veronica whispered. “He likes them at night Kissinger-like miracles of diplomacy between that I should be an actor. I told him acting anyway. Most people they make horny, right? ex-wives and girlfriends. had never interested me –– as a little kid the but for him they work like knockout drops! “Now I’m trying to get him interested first thing I wanted to be was a cowboy; as He’ll be out like a light for the rest of the in reading the Wall Street Journal and an older child, a newspaper cartoonist; as night.” Business Week, but he still prefers Playboy an adolescence, a Beat poet; then a painter, She extended a hand to me. “There are and Penthouse –– don’t you, ducks?” she then a prose writer; and now I knew Truman about nineteen more rooms here. Come, let said, elbowing him in the ribs, making him Capote was right when he said “Beware of me give you the Grand Tour.” chuckle. answered prayers.” “You’ve already given me the Grand After we finally had found a spot (having Still Hunt insisted that first his intuition, Tour,” I joked, meaning it in more ways than circled so long that I was tempted to reach then my handwriting, told him I should one. “Don’t you remember?” into my own tattered pocket for a lot) and be an actor. He had eye for talent, he said, “Yes, I do indeed, ducks,” she said, slummed through the Erotic Circus only having in fact produced some films many reverting to the Brit accent she sometimes long enough to see that it was just another years ago, starring actors such as Robert liked to affect. “How could I ever forget? But dark, crowded, sweaty, noisy disco with Preston, Frederic March, and one of his let me give it to you again. Just for old times’ perhaps more nudity and partial nudity than former wives, the actress Marjorie Steele. He sake.” usual, Veronica suggested we go back to said he would like to introduce me to a friend * * * Catharine Lorillard Wolfe Art Club, Inc. Hey Ho–The Wind And The Rain JD Morrison & Janice Wood Wetzel, curators October 3 - 21, 2012 116th Annual Open Exhibition 2FWREHU²2FWREHU JD Morrison • Janice Wood Wetzel Jean Prytyskacz • Livia Monaco %HQHILW5HFHSWLRQ )ULGD\2FWREHU 30 Francois Ilnseher • Lucinda Prince National Arts Club, 15 Gramercy Park South, NYC et al Benefits the Metropolitan Museum of Art 'RQDWLRQ %URDGZD\0DOO&RPPXQLW\&HQWHU *DOOHU\+RXUV %URDGZD\# 6W 1<& &HQWHU,VODQG 0RQ)ULSP *DOOHU\+RXUV :HGSP6DW6XQSP 6DW 6XQSP [email protected] 212-316-6024 www.wsacny.org 6FXOSWXUH*DOOHU\RSHQGDLO\30 SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2012 GALLERYSTUDIO 15 “The Cauldron” Bubbles Effervescently at New Century Artists Gallery urated by participating artist Basha who combines aspects of East and West in favors subtly scumbled earthy acrylic hues CMaryanska, the group exhibition her paintings on “antique” glass, where in her strongly composed compositions “The Cauldron,” amounts to a celebratory exquisitely delicate blades of grass and informed by a wide range of art historical gathering of aesthetic kindred spirits. other images of nature worthy of an Asian sources. A consummately sophisticated Maryanska herself obviously values master emerge from an abstract context. painter, Goodman, who also draws from evocative subject matter over all else, In Mandelbaum’s “Martinique,” an entire mythology and images from our collective painting poetic visions of landscapes and Caribbean beachscape is evoked with swift unconscious, gives us an especially haunting cityscapes that are every bit as magical strokes that combine Eastern lyricism with image in her composition “They’re Not as those of Loren McIver. In her acrylic Abstract Expressionist brio. There Anymore,” depicting figures from on canvas “Connected,” a bridge spans a Painting approaches the heft, weight and antiquity lined up on pedestals. luminously reflective river like a golden depth of sculpture by sheer virtue of the Employing techniques reminiscent of the necklace stretching to a skyline shrouded amount of pigment that Kathryn Hart piles Old Masters, Elizabeth Castonquay evokes in mists. By contrast the skyscrapers, onto the rugged, thickly encrusted surfaces an interior realm as eerily imaginative as billboards, pedestrians, and traffic in of her compositions, along with roughly that of the modern Norwegian symbolist Maryanska’s delightful “Times Square” are ripped pieces of corrugated cardboard, Odd Nerdrum. While, in an artist’s evoked in a colorful shorthand as succinct bits of wire and other elements that lend statement, Castonquay cites humanistic as that in an abstraction by Paul Klee or a further textural interest. But even their and ecological concerns, her symbolism watercolor by John Marin. considerable tactile appeal is upstaged by is anything but obvious. Her painting Howard Miller is a painter who employs the imagery that Hart conjures up, with “Beyond Time,” combines, shadowy color with a special power reminiscent universally generalized neoprimitive figures figures, and what appears to be a burning of Expressionists such as Emil Nolde. that have been likened by more than one skeleton of a teepee; while another However, his sensibility appears more critic for the raw emotional power to the work juxtaposes a kneeling male nude, a serene, replacing violence with serenity, as existential Everymen of Alberto Giacometti. tiny human and butterfly hybrid, and a seen in his brilliantly colorful yet peaceful Widely exhibited in Sweden, Helena procession of white polar bears. landscape featuring a simple red house Blomljus also employs texture, albeit of a Mysterious imagery also figures and lush verdant trees set against a vibrant more whimsical variety, adding strings of prominently in the paintings of Linda orange sky. But Miller also demonstrates beads, frilly bits of fabric or lace, and other Richichi, who often merges the phantom an ability to evoke nocturnal scenes feminine accouterments to compositions, outline of a vase with expressionistic atmospherically in a manner reminiscent dominated by red, pink, and baby blue landscapes in a strikingly successful of Albert Pinkham Ryder in another impasto that come across as loving synthesis. Richichi regards painting as “a composition featuring sailboat emerging Valentines to all humanity. Indeed, it is pilgrimage –– a journey into the mystery of from between two darkly looming hills by their combination of delicacy and vigorous creation,” and her vibrant colors laid down the light of a big fat full moon. painterliness that makes Blomljus’ mixed with energetic strokes do indeed come The human face becomes a symbol for media abstractions so engaging. across as gestures of reverence within the deep emotive states of being for Cindy Recycled glass is the medium that sacred context of a spiritual path. Silvert, looming mountainously to fill another inventive mixed media artist, In Cynthia McCusker’s paintings and her compositions to the brim. In Silvert’s Renee Radenberg employs, along with mixed media works, the dominant forces “Whisper,” a pink visage appears to be bangles, pieces of metal, and other found appear to be luminous color and sweeping literally deconstructing in an etheric blue materials and trinkets, to create sculptures, formal rhythms. In some of her more haze; while only the brow, aquiline nose assemblages, and mobiles with their own abstract compositions, baroque shapes swirl and deep cave-like eye sockets emerge unique charm. Like her great kindred like animated arabesques, while in one from the surrounding darkness, delineated spirit Alexander Calder, Radenberg misty landscape in soft pink and yellow hues by light, in the portrait head called combines an intuitive formal sense with a what appears at first to be a sandy stretch “Rosemary,” a tour de force of chiaroscuro. fanciful imagination in sculptures such as of land bordered by dry grasses suddenly By contrast, the sculptor Bonnie Shanas “Dragon,” a fanciful creature covered with metamorphoses before one eye’s into the depicts the full-length human figure in her blue scales fashioned from found stained distinct outline of a human profile. familiar nudes in wire mesh, anatomically glass and a dazzling abstract mobile called The final artist, Patricia Winsong, accurate even when partial; classically “Clear Essence.” also includes figurative imagery within beautiful when entire, as in the seated nude There is also a decidedly lighthearted an abstract context in paintings such as she calls “On Thoughts,” in which the soft touch to the floral watercolors of Neela “Angel of Light,” where a kind of Neo- curve of the model’s hair is as graceful as Pushparaj, a retired hospital pathologist Art Nouveau ornateness is combined with that of her back and buttocks. turned watercolorist. Featured in this precise rendering and detailed design akin Another gifted sculptor Renée Weiss show are buoyant compositions of colorful to Eastern mandalas. By contrast, Winsong Chase is also a fashion designer who made blooms and graceful stems and branches adopts a looser technique for the vibrant a smooth transition from cloth to clay. Her that have been digitally transferred from whirlpool of forms swirling around a pretty pieces take the form of freestanding gowns Pushparaj’s original watercolors to silky, female profile in another painting called and dresses from which the actual figure gossamer fabrics to be worn as scarves, “Goddess of the Moonlight.” is absent. It’s flowing contours, however, making a strong case for combining fine art Once again Basha Maryanska has curated are very much present, which lends her and applied crafts in utilitarian objects of an exhibition in which highly original sculptures a palpable phantom sensuality surpassing aesthetic beauty. individual visions transcend art world that is complemented by their elegant “Romantic Surrealist” Mildred Kaye fashions. ceramic surfaces, often embellished with wittily updates Grant Wood’s folksy floral or abstract motifs suggesting fabric classic for a new era in “American Goth,” design. Peggy Landrum is a ceramic artist substituting contemporary hipsters with –– Byron Coleman as well as a potter partial to matriarchal and piercings and tattoos sporting black leather Goddess themes through which she shares for the familiar farm couple of yore. Kaye the wisdom gained through her spiritual transforms the rustic setting as well, sojourns to an ashram in the Himalayas. endowing the church like structure in Eggs are primary forms symbolic of fertility the background with angelic wings rather in her deeply reverent wall pieces alluding than a steeple and the sky with brilliant The Cauldron, New Century Artists Gallery, to shamanic symbolism. psychedelic swirls. 530 West 25th Street, September 11 - 29, 2012. Ellen Mandelbaum is another artist Bonnie Goodman, on the other hand, 16 GALLERYSTUDIO SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2012 A Visionary Vitality Animates the “Pulse” Series of Chicago Artist Carol Brookes ike Josef Albers’ “Homage to the square canvas and wood boxes of identical suggest the folds of the outer labia, while LSquare,” Carol Brookes’ “Pulse” series dimensions arranged in rows or grids, show the tiny ballbearing-like objects deep within explores a single geometric form. In Brookes’ the influence of Minimalism, they are actually the interior darkness simultaneously evoke case, however, the primal shape is the “maximalist” in a manner more likely to glittering silver stars afloat in a miniature hemisphere, constructed in contoured relief remind one of Joseph Cornell or Louise cosmos and seeds nestled in a pod. within mixed-media wall sculptures inspired Nevelson (whom she acknowledges as an By contrast, each same-size panel in by what the artist calls “ordinary forms we see important inspiration) than of Carl Andre. Brookes’ triptych “Pulse Trinity” consists each day in their many of three regularly incarnations, such as spaced spheres in hues an egg, a pod, an eye, of copper, silver and the earth, planets, and brass surrounded by domes.” intricate configurations In other words, of epoxy, cut nails, unlike Albers, a former and washers that Bauhaus student and appear to take on teacher who chose the a wiggling organic square as his prime life with prolonged motif because he contemplation. believed that among Conversely, the forms the geometric shapes within the identical it best distances a work squares that make up of art from nature, Brookes’ four-panel emphasizing rational undersea fantasy and “man made” “Pulse Hydra” are qualities of design, of irregular sizes and Brookes embraces shapes, their billowing, this natural form in all undulating organic its diversity. Indeed, forms bathed in a she also differs from palette that shimmers Albers in that she with a chromatic obviously regards the radiance as complex constructions and and subtly modulated handiwork of human as one of Jules Olitski’s beings as much a part celebrated Color Field of nature as the hives canvases. of bees. Growing up, Also including first in Newark, New among other works Jersey, and then in in this exhibition Miami, Florida, in are “Hive Genesis,” the late 1940s, as the in which four daughter of a real estate hemispheres tightly developer who built “Pearl Iridescence” bound in cotton housing subdivisions, rope appear to be she has vivid childhood memories of A resident of Chicago for close to thirty in a process of unraveling to merge with a “walking with my father up a plywood ramp years her work also shows an individualistic “honeycomb” ingeniously fashioned from into the skeleton of a half built home, and vitality suggesting a spiritual kinship with industrial insulation materials and rubber seeing giants –– men on stilts with trowels, the eccentric Hairy Who School and the bath mats; and a major nine panel grid slathering plaster on walls. This was the most consummate craftsmanship of the windy entitled “Pearl Synergy” (still a work in amazing thing I had ever seen. I wanted city’s most revered sculptor, William T. Wiley. progress when the show was previewed). to run up to those mud covered walls and The “Pulse” series, however, featured All prove Carol Brookes, whose work squeeze the plaster in my hands. It was a in Brookes’ New York solo exhibition in has been widely exhibited in numerous totally visceral reaction.” Chelsea, was inspired by a recent trip to group and solo shows, an artist possessed The residue of that primal experience can Hawaii with her archeologist husband, of of a unique aesthetic vision and an almost be seen in the tactile qualities so present in which she recalls, “I was awed by the raw, alchemical ability to transform commonplace her work today, often achieved not only with untamable power emanating from the earth. materials and familiar objects into beautifully thick paint, modeling paste, and sculpting It was both powerful and serene, a spiritual crafted and highly imaginative formal epoxy, but also with ruggedly textured and energy. The spherical cinder mounds and statements. layered found materials, including nails, volcanic forms gave a sense that the earth was washers, rope, tubing, wire, and rubber pulsing and pushing to form new life.” –– Ed McCormack mats among other industrial objects that This sense of profound pregnancy, so magically metamorphose into the natural auspiciously suited to the shapes with which elements of “imaginary worlds” like the Brookes works, is especially powerful in Carol Brookes, “Pulse,” ones she created in her bedroom as a child. the work she calls “Pulse Iridescence.” For Viridian Artists, Inc., 548 West 28th St., Although her pieces, in which the protruding here the flowing, furling forms folding out September 25 - October 13, 2012. central hemisphere is invariably framed by of the circular center of the composition SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2012 GALLERYSTUDIO 17 Yayoi Kusama at the Whitney: More Than Just Another Naked Polka-Dot Lady didn’t know until I started flipping through the living room and almost as much paint on the carpet heard of the exhibition we were actually looking Icatalogue of her retrospective at The Whitney, as on the walls. for, Jeannie and I took pity on their cluelessness, that Yayoi Kusama had her first New York solo I never had the nerve to set foot in the Gertrude told them not worry about it, and bumbled exhibition in 1959 at The Brata Gallery, the same Stein Gallery after that. But soon Kusama was so unguided into the first gallery at the Whitney. cooperative on East Tenth Street where I would ubiquitous that you didn’t have to go looking for Convinced we knew all there was to know about have mine some five years later. The difference her; she’d come to you –– usually with a bunch of Kusama and not being all that keen to review was that, from the very beginning of her artistic naked, polka-dot covered hippies in tow. In 1968, another Pop novelty act –– especially such a blast career, Kusama had a sense of destiny. While I light years before it became a movement, they from the past as the naked polka dot lady that the would send out a few invitations to family and even “occupied” Wall Street in a Happening called tabloids sometimes called “Queen of the Hippies” friends, most of whom would show up out of “Anatomic Explosion on Wall Street.” –– we had come to check out “Signs & Symbols,” obligation or for the free wine, she wrote to a When I stopped painting and started writing, a group survey of early works by Mark Rothko, magazine back in her native Japan: “I am planning one of the other publications I wrote for was Andy Jackson Pollock, Adolph Gottlieb, and other artists, to create a revolutionary new work that will stun Warhol’s Interview. If you were hanging around created during the period immediately predating the international art world ... [and will show] the The Factory and asked Andy what he thought of Abstract Expressionism. New York art world a decisive new direction for Kusama, he probably would have said, “Uh, she’s “Finally –– this must be it!” I said, leading the future.” (In retrospect, it reminds me of a ... uh ... grrreat...” my wife by the elbow over to the largest, most then struggling writer named Patti Smith who, That was what Andy said about everything. striking oil in the gallery, a surreal vision of in the early ‘70s, when I wrote for Rolling Stone Still, there was no question that the petite Japanese monstrous wilted and twisted sunflowers with and complimented her on a record review she lady who had posed for a poster as adorably naked visceral red tangled stems set against a horizon like had published in the same magazine, answered, as the New Year baby, covered in polka dots and a “flatlining” medical monitor showing no vital “Ackshully, I’m a poet.”) sprawling on her belly on a mattress of soft- signs. Then I noticed the signature and date in the And while it may not have been the profound sculpture phalli, was gaining on him... lower right corner of the canvas: Y. Kusama, 1949. response Kusama had hoped for, at least Donald If Andy had his court designer Tiger Morse, We went from this painting, “Lingering Judd, then an art critic rather than a visual artist, Kusama had a whole boutique selling polka dot Dream, to another more abstract composition, had high praise for the huge “Infinity Net” dresses with peepholes to bare breasts, buttocks, “On the Table, 1950,” with dark slashing strokes paintings she showed at the Brata. and genitals, which were also sold in chic converging with violently swirling energy on a The first time I personally became aware of department stores, including Bloomingdale's. ruggedly impastoed ground; and on to yet another Kusama, however, was in 1963 when she had She even got on the front page of the Daily News striking oil called “Earth of Accumulation,” from a show of her “Accumulations,” real furniture by staging an avant-garde guerilla action called the same year. In 1963, at the very onset of her covered with stuffed cloth phallic forms, at the “Grand Orgy to Awaken the Dead at MoMA,” in fame, Kusama would title some of her furniture Gertrude Stein Gallery uptown. I never saw the which her troupe of hippie acolytes stripped naked show, but the gallery was much on my mind, and invaded the fountain in the garden of the since Gertrude Stein (her real name!) had recently Museum of Modern Art. And long before Andy bought a small collage called “Not at the Drake” started a relatively tame film and gossip journal that I had made by gluing and doodling on one called Interview, Kusama published an all-out porn of the envelopes I was supposed to pass on with a tabloid called Kusama’s Orgy. returned letter in my “day job” as a copy boy for Then came 1973 –– and poof! –– like Peter Women’s Wear Daily. Pan’s muse, Tinkerbelle, she vanished. While I was in the gallery to bring her the * * * picture and pick up my check, I overheard her One thought of Kusama as being so inseparable telling someone that she needed her apartment from the Sixties that it was hardly surprising when painted. By then, having deliberately got myself she seemed to go the way of Flower Power. But fired from WWD and needing extra money to what her present show makes clear is that she supplement my unemployment insurance (a actually did some of her best work before the mere “government grant” we 10th Street artists called decade or so in New York that made her famous, as it), I told the gallery owner it just happened that I well as after she went back home to Japan to stay. Yayoi Kusama (b. 1929), Self-Obliteration did that kind of work. Ackshully, I never had, but One never would have guessed. In fact, that we No. 1, 1962—7. Watercolor, ink, graphite, and having read that de Kooning once painted walls for ended up reviewing this show was initially a case photocollage on paper, 15 7/8 x 19 13/16 in. (40.4 a living, I was inspired and enlisted the help of a of mistaken artistic identity promptly followed x 50.4 cm). Collection of the artist. © Yayoi close friend and fellow artist named Jim Hans. by unexpectedly arrested attention. When, after Kusama. Image courtesy Yayoi Kusama Studio Unfortunately, Ms. Stein came home late from drawing a blank with two (2!) museum guards, Inc.; Ota Fine Arts, Tokyo; Victoria Miro Gallery, an evening out to find dead beer cans all over her Sleepy and Dopey, who seemed never to have London; and Gagosian Gallery, New York 18 GALLERYSTUDIO SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2012 Yayoi Kusama (b. 1929), An Encounter with a Flowering Yayoi Kusama, b. 1929, Accumulation, c. Yayoi Kusama (b. 1929), Late-night Chat is Filled Season, 2009. Synthetic polymer on canvas, 51 5/16 x 63 1963. Sewn and stuffed fabric, wood chair with Dreams, 2009. Synthetic polymer on canvas, 3/4 in. (130.3 x 162 cm). Collection of the artist. © Yayoi frame, paint, 35 1/2 x 38 1/2 x 35 in. (90.2 63 3/4 x 63 3/4 in. (162 x 162 cm). Collection of Kusama. Image courtesy Yayoi Kusama Studio Inc.; Ota x 97.8 x 88.9 cm). Whitney Museum of the artist. © Yayoi Kusama. Image courtesy Yayoi Fine Arts, Tokyo; Victoria Miro Gallery, London; and American Art, New York; purchase 2001.342. Kusama Studio Inc.; Ota Fine Arts, Tokyo; Victoria Gagosian Gallery, New York © Yayoi Kusama. Photograph by Tom Powel Miro Gallery, London; and Gagosian Gallery, N.Y. with penises pieces “accumulations.” But this Hoping for a better life in the U.S., instead she interest in sex (like that of Andy Warhol, come to modest-sized early oil of the same name, painted encountered anti-Japanese prejudice left over from think of it) apparently being primarily voyeuristic. while she was still in Japan, teaching herself about the war years, and in the New York art world in * * * avant-garde European and American art from particular, a male chauvinism to rival anything in One can only speculate that it was less a matter images and information in foreign magazines was the country she had left behind. She describes her of burnout from media overexposure, or of her an abstract landscape with scythe-shaped forms first years here –– freezing in an unheated loft with art going out of fashion when the mood of her reminiscent of those in Tamguy's surreal boneyards broken windows, barely having enough money adopted country darkened, than of her own inner swaying like stalks of wheat under a sky as tawny as to eat, feeling alienated by her sex and race even demons, that caused Kusama to abruptly flee back the earth below. In a hybrid style also suggesting among other artists –– as “a living hell.” to Japan in 1973. But if she hoped to duplicate Jean Dubuffet’s tactile Art Informal works, like Alone in her studio, she was plagued by her American success on the home front, she was Kusama’s other early oils it showed the influence hallucinatory episodes of “self-obliteration,” in disappointed when her attempt at staging a naked of diverse modernist masters incongruously yet which she imagined her entire environment being Happening scandalized a conservative Tokyo ambitiously merged. “enveloped in an infinite web of polka dots” audience and she was denounced in the press as a The second gallery, however, was filled with and felt her individual identity “dissolving and “national disgrace.” small gemlike mixed media works on paper, also accumulating, proliferating and separating.” Such from the 1950s. In these intimate compositions episodes, as she describes them, vindicate her most in ink, pastel, watercolor, gouache and tempera, familiar artistic motif as something more than while favorable comparisons could still be made frivolous, arbitrary flower power confetti; especially to European and American predecessors ranging when she describes compulsively painting the dots from Paul Klee to Arthur Dove (perhaps filtered not only on the canvases of her “Infinity Net” through Miro and Georgia O’Keeffe), the young series but all over the floor and furniture in her Japanese artist came truly into her own. Abstract studio, as well as on her body. yet filled with allusions to plants, planets, and a It was not the first or the last time she had been plethora of organic elements, compositions such as overwhelmed by dots. She attempted more than “Phosphoresce in the Daytime, 1950,” “Rain in a once over the years to replicate the creepy sensation City, 1952,” and “An Eye, 1953” lit up the gallery of such an obsession for the viewer in large scale with a unique visionary vibrancy. room environments. In “Infinity Mirror Room * * * –– Phalli’s Field, 1965” myriad soft sculpture “Staying in Japan was out of the question,” penises covered with venereal-looking red polka Kusama writes of her decision, in 1957, to come dots are infinitely multiplied by mirrors. In “Dots to the U.S. in her autobiography, “Infinity Net,” Obsession, 1998” large red vinyl balloons covered named for that first series of paintings she showed with white dots are rendered almost invisible by at the Brata Gallery and published this year by identical backgrounds suggests naked human the University of Chicago Press. “My parents, the bodies when you apply protective camouflage to house, the land, the shackles, the conventions, the them that blends with the surrounding psychic prejudice...For art like mine –– art that does battle swarm... at the boundary between life and death, questioning (The theme of relentless proliferation is also what we are and what it means to live and die –– this explored in works such as “Accumulation of country was too small, too servile, too feudalistic, Stamps,” a familiar large collage canvas from 1962 and too scornful of women. My art needed a more consisting of scores of airmail stickers, as well as in a unlimited freedom and a wider world.” series of much smaller collages on paper from 1967, Born in 1929 in Matsmoto, her life in Japan in which the artist surrounds photographic images had been unbearable since childhood, growing of herself with multicolored painted polka dots.) up in a dysfunctional home with a father who was Among Kusama’s few happy memories of those a womanizer and an abusive mother who sent first years in the U.S. are a supportive friendship the child out to spy on him when he was with his with Georgia O’Keeffe, who inspired her to persist Yayoi Kusama (b. 1929), Self-Obliteration mistresses, then beat her when she came back in a as an independent woman artist, and a sustained (original design for poster), 1968. Collage with classic “kill the messenger” scenario. She speculates romance with Joseph Cornell that she remembers gouache and ink on paper, 18 1/8 x 11 in. (46 x in the book that her “mental illness” and morbid as passionate but platonic. 28 cm). Collection of the artist. © Yayoi Kusama. fascination with sex (in childhood she drew pictures Indeed, although some of her nude group Image courtesy Yayoi Kusama Studio Inc.; Ota of “dog-chewed vaginas and dung-smeared performances turned into public orgies, she usually Fine Arts, Tokyo; Victoria Miro Gallery, London; penises”) may stem from such punishment. remained clothed and did not participate, her and Gagosian Gallery, New York SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2012 GALLERYSTUDIO 19 where she has resumed the daily production of ambitious artworks that has preoccupied her since the 1940s. There she returned to large scale painting in acrylics, creating intricate, precise abstract compositions with clear, pure colors and repetitive patterns suggesting the rhythms of nature, such as “Sprouting (The Transmigration of the Soul), 1987,” where white forms suggesting eggs and traveling spermatozoa are set against a verdant green ground; “Gentle are the Stairs to Heaven,” with its bright red and green hues intertwined like leaves and flames; and “Weeds, 1996,” a majestic green triptych, its all-over composition as dizzyingly busy as the “Infinity Nets” she showed all those years ago at the Brata Gallery. Then there is “Fireflies on the Water, 2002,” a glittering, glowing room installation, created with mirrors, plexiglass, lights and water, which is clearly the show’s ethereal ooooing and ahhhhing crowd pleaser. But perhaps the biggest surprise of all are Kusama’s most recent series of large acrylic paintings from 2009 and 2010. For hanging salon style all over the walls in their own spacious gallery at the Whitney, these buoyant compositions, with their brilliantly colorful mixture of playful figurative and abstract forms, simultaneously call to mind the Jazz series Yayoi Kusama, b. 1929, Fireflies on the Water, 2002. Mirror, plexiglass, 150 lights and water, Overall: of Matisse, certain works by Alexander Calder 111 x 144 1/2 x 144 1/2 in. (281.9 x 367 x 367 cm). Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; and the gaily colored “Nanas” of the eternally purchase, with funds from the Postwar Committee and the Contemporary Painting and Sculpture upbeat French sculptor Niki de Saint Phalle. Committee and partial gift of Betsy Wittenborn Miller 2003.322. © Yayoi Kusama. Photograph courtesy Indeed, if titles such as “Joy I Feel when Love has of Robert Miller Gallery Blossomed” and “Once the Abominable War is Considering how disorienting “Kusama’s compositions combining figurative fragments with Over, Happiness Fills our Hearts” can be believed, Self-Obliteration” (the apt title she chose for a landscape elements, such as “I Who Committed Yayoi Kusama may be making peace with her polka disjointed 1967 film included in the survey at the Suicide.” Since this work was created the very year dot demons at long last. Whitney) episodes had to be, it seems no wonder she committed herself to the psychiatric asylum, that in 1977 she finally checked herself into a it’s difficult not to apply a perhaps too literal –– Ed McCormack psychiatric hospital in Tokyo, where she has lived interpretation to its doleful title and image of big ever since. sorrowful eyes peering over stylized mountains As a voluntary in-patient, limited at first to a (reminiscent of those in traditional Japanese studio she set up within the institution, Kusama landscapes) that cut off the lower portion of a face Yayoi Kusama, Whitney Museum of American Art, was obliged once again to adapt to a smaller like those veils worn by devout Muslim women. 945 Madison Ave at 75th Street, scale. Perhaps influenced by her close relationship In time, however, Kusama had a proper studio Through September 30, 2012. to Joseph Cornell she created surreal diaristic built right across the road from her hospital home, G&S Classifieds opportunities “PERSONAL SEARCH FOR ART” by a Canadian Master, J. Allison Robichaud. Available on WEST SIDE ARTS COALITION (WSAC) established 1979, welcomes new members from all line at www.amazon.com/kindleapps NY ART MAGAZINE seeks experienced advertising rep to help expand advertising base beyond galleries to include art related cliental. Generous commission. For health care information please contact email: [email protected] New York Artists Equity Association, Inc. (NYAEA) at 212-941-0130. NOHO GALLERY is viewing portfolios in all media for our Chelsea location. Visit nohogallery.com Write for information to NYAEA, PO Box 1258, New York, NY 10276 20 GALLERYSTUDIO SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2012 Joy Saville Transports Contemporary Abstraction Back to Its Origins in the Spirit he influence of formalist critics –– A vertical composition over six feet tall, memorable statement “Light is color and Tparticularly Clement Greenberg, the it’s contrasts of rich, verdant greens and color is light.” By contrast, more subdued most vociferous of all when it came to pale, icey blue hues seem simultaneously to in hue and structured along the lines of programatically condemning meaningful express the miracle of life and the mystery of neo-cubism, Saville’s “Celebration, 2012,” subject matter as old hat –– has caused us to death. Here, Saville’s personal iconography a work commissioned by Rosanne Jacks, is all but forget that abstract art had its origins of richly layered triangular shard-like forms possessed of a subtle stateliness, with shard- in spirituality. When pioneering modernists (surging upward) are at once elegiac and like triangular maroon, violet, yellow, orange, such as Wassily Kandinsky, Frantisek Kupka, transcedent. Unlike the darkly somber and blue shapes converging in a manner that Kazimer Malevich, and Piet tells us that to celebrate can be a Mondrian began, over a hundred deeply reverent act, rather than years ago, eliminating the familiar merely an occasion for frivolous world from their work, they self-indulence. were attempting to embody To paraphase what the spiritual notions from Theosophy, late poet, critic, and MoMA Rosicrucianism and other esoteric curator Frank O’Hara once disciplines of their time in visual wrote about the painter Helen form. Yet as the twentieth century Frankenthaler, the beauties of continued, critics tended to Joy Saville’s work are “various concentrate more and more on and dramatic.” Frankenthaler’s the formal aspects of color and stain paintings, however, with composition as opposed to a work their swirling linearity and of art’s underlying meanings, generous expanses of unprimed ignoring even the protests of a canvas, seem influenced by the prominent abstract artist like Mark spareness of Asian ink painting Rothko, who disliked having his and watercolor. Saville’s pieces, work discussed in formal terms, on the other hand, come to us by saying, “I’m not interested in way of a quintessentially Western the relationship of color to forms tradition of compositional or anything else. I’m interested intricasy and coloristic lushness only in expressing basic human that dates from the Unicorn emotions –– tragedy, ecstasy, Tapestry through the chromatic doom and so on. And the fact that saturations of Joan Mitchell, a lot of people break down and cry arguably the greatest among the when confronted with my pictures second-generation of Abstract shows that I can communicate Expressionist painters. those basic human emotions. Although the textile The people who weep before masterpiece cited in the last my pictures are having the same sentence may seem a more religious experience as I had when apt reference (give or take the I painted them.” changing aesthetic fashions Confronting the majestic, of several centuries), the opulent works in cotton, linen, atmospheric fluidity that Saville and silk by the contemporary achieves in the non-liquid textile artist, Joy Saville, one “Celebration” medium of cotton, linen and silk cannot imagine her concurring pieced, stitched and constructed with Rothko’s disinterest in relationships of canvases that make up the nondenominational on a hidden frame approaches Mitchell’s own color and form, given how agreeably these chapel in Houston, Texas (now known as in pigment. elements are arranged in her compositions. the Rothko Chapel), completed just before Witness works such as “Spring Moss,” with On the other hand, unlike many Mark Rothko’s suicide, Saville’s “Beside Still its sense of verdant moisture, and “Evening contemporary abstract artists who have been Water” is an uplifting rather than morbid Poppies” with its brilliant reds bleeding cowed by the prevailing critical prejudice, tribute to a lost sibling, a fond, faith-filled through nocturnal blues, both from 2011 and Saville is not reluctant to acknowlege the farewell rather than a veil of tears. both giving a splendid sense of how energy spiritual componant in her aesthetic when she Although created in 2009, two years can flow through stillness. says, “My work allows me to live creatively earlier, “Regeneration,” another major Then there is “Fragments of Time, 2012” within the tension of yin and yang and in that textile work by Joy Saville, appears in context which incorporates print fabrics from the place of stillness where the presence of God is symbolic of the optimistic philosophical 1940s and ‘50’s that, mingled with the most easily felt.” stance projected in most of her compositions. immediacy of her characteristic palette of Indeed, Saville elaborates on “that place” Very much like another brilliant large piece silken hues, contribute to what the artist in an artist’s statement issued in connection called “October Sun,” (which was originally refers to as “a sense of ‘even now, even then, with her newest exhibition “Still,” saying: intended for this show but was purchased yet,’ a sense of continuation and remaining.” “The new work expresses the feelings of for the collection of The University Medical Amid the cacaphony of an often raucous connection, interaction and recognition that Center of Princeton, where it was installed art world, these lyrical new works by Joy happen in moments when time stands still, in April), “Regeneration” is an exilarating Saville sing in a hushed whisper that rises moments that often occur when I am focused composition in which myriad fragments eloquently above the general din. on my work; I am centered, but very much of silken yellow, red, and blue fabric burst –– Ed McCormack aware, as if in meditation. The energy of this upon one’s vision like Impressionist strokes stillness encircles me.” of gleaming pigment, evoking a sense of In seems relevant in this regard that shimmering chiaroscuro; of the dance of Joy Saville, Noho Gallery, 530 West 25th St., “Beside Still Water,” one of the more sunlight and shadow over foliage and fresh October 2 - 27, 2012. powerful works in the exhibition was created blooms. Reception: Saturday, October 6th, 4 - 7pm soon after the death of the artist’s brother. Here, especially, Saville demonstrates her SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2012 GALLERYSTUDIO 21 Bruno Palmer-Poroner: Poet, Gallerist, Art Critic, Editor: 1921 - 2012 runo Palmer-Poroner, who passed away this an artist’s loft. BAugust after a long illness, was my mentor The romance led to marriage and Margot gave when it came to art writing. birth to twin boys. Many years later, when he “If you’re going to make up a word, you spoke proudly of his grown sons, Bruno always should at least try to spell it correctly,” I seemed greatly relieved that Daniel and Michael remember him commenting drily one day as he opted for careers in business rather than the arts. edited my copy. For while Bruno’s own career gave him status When I wrote for ArtSpeak, the magazine he in the New York art world, as well as aesthetic published with his wife Margot (out of which and intellectual gratification, it hardly resulted Gallery&Studio, the magazine my wife Jeannie in material riches. From 1958 to 1959, he was and I publish, grew), I often felt like I was Director of the Camino and Nonagon galleries. Eliza Doolittle and Bruno was Professor Harry In 1959, already a published poet, he also Higgins in a peculiar remake of “My Fair Lady.” became Art Critic for the Village Voice. From from a hectic, sometimes self-destructive, few What we had in common was that we 1961 to 1971, he owned and directed the East years covering popular music and popular culture were both dropouts: me from Seward Park, a Hampton Gallery on 56th Street and later served for Rolling Stone. notorious penal institution thinly disguised as a as Director of the Phoenix Gallery, on Madison I wanted to start over. Bruno and Margot high school on the Lower East Side; Bruno from Avenue, until 1975. Palmer-Poroner, his partner in life and in Harvard, where he earned a Masters Degree in Bruno was also invited to give talks on Artspeak, the magazine that they co-published American History, before deciding that he didn’t art at the Museum of the City of New York, from 1979 to 1997, gave me that opportunity. fit in with that elite institution’s snob-set and Kutztown University, the Pen and Brush Club, From the beginning ArtSpeak struck me as an taking off for Paris to experience the bohemian the Salon National des Galeries d’Art, Montreal, important publication, since it not only covered expatriate life for five years while studying French Quebec, (where he lectured in French), and was established artists but also emerging artists who Civilization and Literature at the Universite a juror for several arts competitions. His long weren’t getting attention anywhere else. de Paris and writing art criticism for the Paris correspondence with the abstract painter, William I enjoyed Bruno’s sharp wit and learned a lot American Kiosk. Baziotes (their friendship began when they hiked about art writing during those rigorous editing Back in the U.S., in Provincetown, where together in their teens) provided important workouts that he put me through like both the art crowd summered, Bruno met and reference material for a biographer of the artist. Strunk and White rolled into one. Like a lot of became immediately besotted with the charms “Sometimes I thought Bruno was a frustrated other people in the New York art world I will and charming accent of a petite, pretty French artist,” says Margot, “but somehow he could not miss him. But I’m glad he finished his book, Canadian art student named Margot Sylvestre. give up the writing.” “The History of the United States: American The courtship continued in Manhattan, where I met Bruno briefly in the mid ‘60s when I Grand Strategy,” before leaving this earthly plane. he took her to art openings on 10th Street and was still a visual artist, showing in a gallery on That year at Harvard didn’t go to waste after all. the Brata Gallery, on Third Avenue. The evening 10th Street, and got my first uptown exposure in –– Ed McCormack often ended with the couple sharing a single glass a group exhibition at his East Hampton Gallery. There will be a memorial celebration of his life of beer at fashionable Village ginmills like Dillon’s But I didn’t really get to know him until almost on Saturday, October 6, 2012. For info call: or the Chuck Wagon, or else attending a party in a couple of decades later, when I was rebounding 212-924-6531. While the late gallerist and collector Allan minimal, reductive, and geometric styles by Stone was best known as an early champion Dan Basen, Derrick Guild, Hans Haacke of Abstract Expressionism, his taste was and others, will be followed in October at once impeccable and eclectic. So it by “Robert Mallary, Sculptor, a solo makes perfect sense that the Allan Stone exhibition of works from the late 1950s and Gallery’s great summer group exhibition early 1960s by one of the most important “Disrobed,” featuring nudes by Gaston proponents of the “junk aesthetic.” LaChaise, Richard Estes, Wayne Thiebaud (left) and others, will be followed in MinMax: September 13 – October 20, 2012. September by a survey called “MiniMax: Robert Mallary October 25 – December 21, Minimalist Themes in a Maximalist 2012. Allan Stone Gallery, 5 East 82nd Street Collection.” That show, featuring works in Subscribe to GALLERYSTUDIO $25 Subscription $20 for additional Gift Subscription $47 International $5 Back Issues Mail check or Money Order to: GALLERYSTUDIO 217 East 85th St., PMB 228, New York, NY 10028 Phone: 212-861-6814 Name Wayne Thiebaud, Nude and Tapestry, 1981 Address Previous excerpts from HOODLUM HEART, a City memoir by Ed McCormack can be read on galleryandstudio.com. State/Zip 22 GALLERYSTUDIO SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2012 When Craft Approaches Art, Magic Occurs ounded in 1958, the organization known this show, however, is an elaborate necklace sculptures comes across in “Tension,” a Fas the Artist Craftsmen of New York featuring a bulbous cloisonné vitreous enamel pas de deux between stylized semi-abstract (ACNY) includes in its exhibitions beadwork, pendant on a 14k gold-filled woven chain couple, as well as in “In Out,” where a single ceramics, collage, jewelry, sculpture, fiber art which is at once baroque and exquisitely figure swings acrobatically through the and mixed media of many kinds. It would tasteful. portal-like opening in a geometric structure. appear that the organization’s main criteria A graduate of St. Martins School in Joan Israel works with polymer clay in is to show work by artists who push against London who has been living and working in both two dimensional paintings and three- the boundaries which normally separate craft the U.S. since 1977, Shula Mustacchi, works dimensional sculptures. Most recently, she has from high art. with a variety of textile materials and employs been combining this material with mirrors The varied educational experience of photographs of her own work in those to create relief-like floral forms in vibrantly Dongjune Lee, who studied industrial materials to create collages that also include colorful hues that make the viewer behave crafts in his native Korea and painting at the her own hand-painted papers. Mustacchi’s like a modern day Narcissus, gazing at his or National Academy School and Museum in “Crafty Birds” is a glorious arboreal/avian her image as though in a crystal clear lake in a New York is an excellent example of such a vision of a tree with many branches bearing a bucolic setting. crossover artist. Lee’s “Sinaburo 2012R” is colorful multitude of boldly patterned birds. Fran Medoff’s painted wood reliefs, a work in the craft medium of disperse dye Weaver Sally Shore, who learned to sew such as one featuring a Klezmer band, each which has the fluidity that we associate with and knit as a child in Wisconsin and studied stringed instrument supplied with real strings, abstract “poured paint” of artists have a lively visual humor akin to such as Morris Louis combined the assemblage paintings of Red with a kind of lyrical poetic Grooms. Equally appealing in its subject matter akin to the poetic own manner is Medoff’s “Vertical realist Loren McIver. Flowers,” in which the carved Alice Sprintzen, on the other and painted blooms have an hand, who has been teaching almost cartoon-like sensuousness jewelry making for over 20 years, combined with formal grace. elevates her craft by creating Former wildlife photographer wearable items, as inventive as the Evelyn Letfuss now expresses her sculpture of Alexander Calder, love of nature and its creatures who also created jewelry design in one-of-a-kind jewelry and for family and friends in his three-dimensional bead art and spare time. Indeed, Sprintzen’s mixed media works. Recycling piece “Musical Instruments,” in porcupine quills, fish vertebrae, which instruments are arranged in the form fine art at Kent State University in the late birch bark, and other unusual natural of a face, is every bit as fanciful as some of 1960s creates fabric works such as “Amaze materials, she is represented here with a witty Calder’s designs. Me 1,” and “High Rise,” both powerful box assemblage called “Fish Gotta Swim,” Laura Godler, an award winning polymer abstract designs, particularly the latter, where and “Global Warming,” a necklace fashioned clay artist who also creates wearable art the precise geometrical forms suggest urban from beads that drip like melting snow from jewelry shows an exotic and complex necklace architectural towers rising skyward. a semicircle of broken safety glass. called “Dragon Fly,” combining metal with New York photographer Philip Maier is Dorothy Hall, a professional jewelry stones, beads and a pendant containing a represented by two vibrant street scenes in designer for many years who has also turned graceful drawn image of a Japanese geisha or which the digitally shifted register of the to collage art creates intricate compositions courtesan suggesting the Edo period. forms and colors transforms city subjects in combining faded old photographs with Trudy Jeremias, who came to the United a manner that recalls Andy Warhol portraits. fragments of typography and elegant States from Vienna, Austria in 1939, is a In Maier’s “Flatironmerge,” brightly colored calligraphy in a poetically evocative manner. jewelry maker turned photographer who has flowers and trees frame the landmark building She often adds scroll relief elements that been showing her jewelry designs in ACNY in a softly Impressionist manner, while his lend them a delicate tactile appeal, as seen in exhibits since 1970. Recently, she has been “Timessquaremerge” is a neon-lit nocturnal “Meditation,” and “Music is Everything.” exhibiting her close-up color photographs, vision of crowds and traffic streaming in Then there is Karen Strauss, a professional such as the abstracted images of leaves and an jazz rhythms under a plethora of gigantic harpist who also creates one of a kind jewelry ornate plant seen here, which reflect her past kinetically flashing billboards. from gold, silver, copper, precious stones and as a jewelry artist by being gemlike in their By contrast, Lauren Golden, an even vintage bottle caps, often combining beauty. endocrinologist at the Naomi Berrie Diabetes elegance and a funky Pop quality. In Strauss’ After studying jewelry making in the Center in New York City when she isn’t “Always Lurking,” a beaded serpent with United States and Mexico, and learning to taking photographs, chooses subjects that gems for eyes and a gold forked tongue construct her pieces directly from metal, Pearl recall Andrew Wyeth for their weathered winds sinuously around a delicate gold vine Brody mastered the wax carving technique outdoorsy quality. Particularly striking is festooned with Edenic floral forms. which she mostly uses now for jewelry Golden’s ability to find poetry in a desolate Like all the participants in the ACNY’s making. An exquisitely detailed leaf motif is subject “Baker’s Brook Fishing Shack,” group exhibitions, she also exemplifies the the subject of a pin in 18 karat green gold where clouds hang low over the beat-up magical combination of technical skill and and opal. She also shows a stunning amethyst structure of the title in a weedy lot near a personal vision required to elevate craft to the and sterling silver bracelet of six stones. murky body of water. level of fine art. –– Byron Coleman Lillian Cozzarelli, another innovative Dance loving Argentine-born artist Lila Jewelry designer, focuses primarily on wax Turjanski-Villiard creates mixed media figures carved rings cast in silver with touches of as slender as those of Giacometti, albeit AC / NY Member Exhibition, 14, 18, or 24 karat gold combined with always in graceful motion. The terpsichorean New Century Artists Gallery, gemstones. One of her most striking pieces in dynamic that animates Turjanski-Villiard’s 530 West 25th St., October 2 - 13, 2012. SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2012 GALLERYSTUDIO 23 WSAC 2012 Salon: A Mixed Bag of Aesthetic Pleasure articularly prominent in the West lorded over by a typically bug-eyed Various approaches to landscape were PSide Arts Coalition’s Salon Show extraterrestrial. Margo Mead showed also featured. Marvin Gettleman’s ink 2012, were semiabstract works in an antic yet ecologically concerned drawing of a ramshackle beach on stilts which the real world was altered by mixed media composition called in Far Rockaway, New York, “Mitchell’s the individual visions of various artists. “After the Forests, After the Oceans,” Hideaway,” was notable for the artist’s One example was Beatrice Rubel’s depicting human figures and colorful spontaneous yet relatively detailed exquisitely ethereal colored pencil toy automobiles floating without gravity handling of gray washes. Marguerite drawing, “Ethoria” with its delicate in a fiery universe where the sun is Borchardt’s oil “Lily Pond” wisely forms floating like rainbow-tinted represented by a red rubber ball. And sidestepped the manner of Monet cloud fragments. Richard Carlson’s M.C. Escher has nothing on Dammika to present a crystal clear panorama mixed media composition combined D. Ranasinghe, whose acrylic on of a petal speckled pond and a pine geometry and poetry in a work in cool paper “Fish in the Blue Water” was an forest on the opposite shore. Linda blues and grays, where skyscrapers intricate gridded composition in which Lessner’s “Summer Clouds” was at rose like cathedral spires from a hard- the same small goldfish was repeated ad once a realist tour de force and a lyrical edged abstract grid. Arlene Finger, infinitum. abstraction. Monique Serres’ tondo on the other hand, channeled Matisse People in their natural environment, in oil on linen “Lighthouse” imbued in a predominantly red room interior a timeless subject that never goes out a potentially hackneyed subject with charmingly evoked in pastel, white of style, was also interpreted by several new life by virtue of the artist’s skill chalk, and pencil on paper. artists. Robert Eckel evoked a poetically in rendering the contrast between the Total abstraction also made a strong melancholy mood with an atmospheric wispy clouds above and craggy rocks showing: Todd Miguel’s oil on linen oil on linen entitled “Early Winter,” below, as well as her witty presentation “The Cosmic Guru,” reminded us depicting a lone figure strolling between of the round canvas in a rugged rope of how the earliest abstract painters the tall shadows of bare trees forming frame. Ava Schonberg also risked like Kandinsky strove to paint the a tunnel in a public park. By contrast unabashed beauty, often a big taboo in unseen with its vision of a graceful red Michelle Ordynans made a starker contemporary art, with “Provence –– phantom suspended among glowing statement with her oil on canvas “Gray Eze,” her acrylic painting of a rugged heavenly forms. By contrast, Gloria Street,” in which possibly unemployed portal framed by delicate foliage. And Rosenberg bolstered pastel colored men with too much time on their hands Pilar Malley also made a memorable shapes with bold black outlines in her stroll as listlessly as George Tooker’s statement with “Palms,” a strong oil dynamic acrylic painting, simply titled subway zombies amid coffee shop signs pastel of a simple subject laid down with “Abstract.” In his acrylic on canvas and other oases for the idle. In “Nite/ considerable conviction. “The Order of Things,” Robert N. Meet,” another street scene by Carole In recent decades photography has Scott combined geometric forms and Barlowe, although they are raised come into its own as a medium to be painterly brushwork in a harmonious from the canvas in low relief, the two shown alongside painting, rather than manner to achieve an aesthetically colorless human figures occupy the segregated in an aesthetic ghetto and successful marriage of opposites. Daniel forefront of the composition but do not the photo artists in this show prove Boyer combined vigorous calligraphic dominate it, being brilliantly upstaged the wisdom of that tendency, starting energy with wry beatnik irony in “The by the luminous sky, rooftops, and with Amy Rosenfield, whose “Nature’s Death of Espresso,” a work in the water tower in the background, as if to Red,” two glossy digital prints on unusual medium of gouache diluted remind one how little effect we have on glossy paper had a Warhol-like iconic with Coca-Cola. Then there was Robin the impregnable urban landscape. quality. David Ruskin, who combines Goodstein, an artist whose jagged forms Two artists approached the portrait qualities of painting and photography and flat matte color areas add up to in vastly different manners: Gail Comes in his hand-colored prints also made a more than the sum of their parts in an showed “Grace,” a pristine and vibrant strong showing with his moody vista untitled oil on canvas that harks back to oil on canvas of a beautiful African “Mendenhall Glacier, Alaska.” And Pop abstraction of ‘60s art star Nicholas woman with big haunting eyes that cut Carolyn Reus gave an unexpected Kruschenick. the viewer down to size. By contrast, bucolic lyricism to a familiar subject Other artists caught our attention Jutta Filippelli’’s acrylic painting, a head in her digital color photograph “East with the juxtaposing of real things and shoulders view of a black-haired River.” in symbolic environments: Deborah woman in a blue turtleneck posed Two final artists rounded off the Yaffe, for example, with her whimsical against a tomato soup red background enjoyable variety of this fine salon composition, “Balloons Rising,: where was pointedly titled “Portrait,” exhibition with that most unassuming the objects of the title ascend like although the figure lacked a face. yet frequently surprising genre: buoyant Easter eggs floating against a Two other artists chose feline watercolors of floral still life. “Love” by sky too blue to be true. Marianne V. subjects: Nate Ladson’s oil “The Lions” Barbara Hughes was a delicate Valentine McNamara made an especially poignant captured the terrible tense stillness to the viewer. “Peonies” by George statement with a deadpan faux primitive that the sight of a male and female lion Jellinek was a modest yet vibrant oil on canvas of a chubby, overdressed relaxing (she suddenly more alert than expressionist composition reminiscent matron marooned in a make believe he) can provoke in the human psyche. of Emil Nolde. ballroom where a svelte former self By contrast “Ty-Ty” by Lucinda Prince ––Maurice Taplinger dances a dream tango with a suave was an affectionate oil of a slender gigolo in a tuxedo. Jack Cesareo, best Siamese cat poised as gracefully as an known for his photographs of a giant Egyptian glyph atop a ladder in front WSAC 2012 Salon, recently seen at pink frosted cupcake, went 3-D with of a window, its panes enhancing the Broadway Mall Community Center, an equally amusing box construction formal effect of the skillful animal 96th Street (center island). of a two regulation-size cupcakes portrait. 24 GALLERYSTUDIO SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2012 WARM/COOLS A mixed media exhibit September 12 - 30, 2012 Reception: Saturday, September 15, 2012 2:30 - 5:30pm Marguerite Borchardt • Joseph Boss • Herbert Evans Helen Henry • Francois Ilnseher • Nate Ladson Ida Marx • Emily Rich • Amy Rosenfeld • Beatrice Rubel Anne Rudder* • Patience Sundaresan *curator %URDGZD\0DOO&RPPXQLW\&HQWHU %URDGZD\# 6W 1<& &HQWHU,VODQG *DOOHU\+RXUV :HGSP6DW6XQSP [email protected] 212-316-6024 www.wsacny.org The GALLERYSTUDIO advertising deadline for the Nov/Dec/Jan issue is October 8 for color, October 15 for black/white. 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