NGOV-DECA2006/JLLAN 2007 Ewww.galleryandstudiomagazine.comRY&ST U VOL. 9D NO. 2 I NewO York

The World of the Working Artist

B N WALLACE ERMA THE GREAT UNKNOWN a bohemian rhapsody by Ed McCormack page 18 Wallace Berman, Self-Portrait, Topanga Canyon, 1974 Topanga Berman, Self-Portrait, Wallace (printed 2004), Gelatin silver print, 16 x 20 in. Berman Estate Courtesy Wallace Bruce A. Dumas

“Spell Bound” 16"x20" Acrylic on canvas

November 30, 2006-January 13, 2007 Patrick’s Fine Art 21 East 62nd Street, New York, NY 10021 By appointment: 917-743-9704 or 212-591-1918

THE BROOME STREET GALLERY Ground floor, 1,300 sq. ft. Exhibition space rental available

498 Broome Street, New York, NY 10013 Tel: (212) 941-0130

GALLERY&STUDIO NOV-DEC 2006/JAN 2007 Nancy Staub Laughlin Pastels and Photographs January 9 - February 17, 2007

530 West 25th St., 4th Fl. NYC, 10001 Tues - Sat 11 - 6pm 212 367 7063 Sun. by appt. www.nohogallery.com

Catalog available at the show, with introduction by Art Critic and Historian Sam Hunter. For more information please visit www.nancystaublaughlin.com “Pink Diamond and Sequin” 36" x 27" G&S Truman Marquez, page 4 Highlights

On the Cover: An underground legend in Venice, California, in the late 1950s, Wallace Berman was a magnet for serious artists, errant movie stars and “bedbug beatniks.” “SEMINA CULTURE: Nancy Staub Laughlin, page 25 Wallace Berman & His Circle” coming to N.Y.U.’s Grey Gallery in January, positions him as a precursor of postmodernism.–Page 18 SM Lewis, page 34

David Tobey, page 28

Sheila Finnigan, page 9

Personal Belongings, page 11 Drew Tal, page 32

Phyllis Smith, page 33

Peg McCreary, Bruce A. Dumas, page 35 Patrick Antonelle, page 36 page 13

TM GALLERY&STUDIO Subscribe to An International Art Journal GALLERY&STUDIO PUBLISHED BY $22 Subscription $18 for additional Gift Subscription $44 International © EYE LEVEL, LTD. 2006 Mail check or Money Order to: ALL RIGHTS RESERVED GALLERY&STUDIO 217 East 85th Street, PMB 228, New York, NY 10028 217 East 85th St., PMB 228, New York, NY 10028 Phone: 212-861-6814 (212) 861-6814 E-mail: [email protected] Name EDITOR AND PUBLISHER Jeannie McCormack MANAGING EDITOR Ed McCormack Address SPECIAL EDITORIAL ADVISOR Margot Palmer-Poroner DESIGN AND PRODUCTION Karen Mullen City CONTRIBUTING EDITOR Maureen Flynn www.galleryandstudiomagazine.com State/Zip 2 GALLERY&STUDIO NOV-DEC 2006/JAN 2007 Jeanne Butler’s “White Works” Achieve an Exquisite Synthesis “ he absence of color in gossamer fabric, disrupting Tthe work of the the silence and serenity of majority of artists included the composition with their in this book is one indica- sudden stridency. tion of the poverty of con- Tactile qualities play an temporary color theory,” even more prominent role writes Alan Sondheim in in “White 10:87,” where Individuals: Post-Modern the warp of the fiber runs Art in America. “Color is horizontally along the bot- apparently used today in the tom of the composition like following ways: A. As local waves in a colorless sea. color, useful for differentiat- Above, eight precise linear ing one sculptural or picto- divisions, like multiple hori- rial plane from another. B. zons in a metaphysical land- As conveying basic conno- scape, are intersected by tations––red for ‘danger,’ finer white-on-white vertical and so forth. C. The easy striations, suggesting the colors of contemporary “white rain” of the show painting. D. The harsh or title. muted colors of magazine In other compositions, and television advertising.” such as “White 10: 65” and “White 10:66,” finely Color theory or its sup- drawn grids, floating on or posed absence, however, within white fields, play host would appear to have little to delicate calligraphic to do with the work that strokes. The assured, spare, Jeanne Butler has been grace of these strokes sug- focusing most of her atten- gests a sympathetic kinship tion for the past decade, with the literati Chinese ink predominantly in white, an painting, which also achromatic entity for which eschewed all the blandish- even the Oxford American “White 10: 135” ments of color in favor of a Dictionary of Current light as air sculptures created with a loom pure synthesis of line, tone, English can supply only the most inade- and linen thread or Agnes Martin’s earliest and space. Indeed, like those ancient mas- quate of primary definitions: “1. resembling grid paintings (which Eleanor Munro once ters, albeit in a more abstract mode, Butler a surface reflecting sunlight without absorb- pointed out “were all near-literal renditions is influenced “by landscape and personal ing any of the visible rays.” of woven textiles with warp and woof clearly spiritual reflection” and sees spatial spareness While admitting that she is “still attracted delineated”). Butler’s work can be com- as a compositional element that “conveys to color,” Butler predicts that she will con- pared to Tawney’s for her ability to elevate oxygen and infinity.” tinue to resist being seduced by it for some textile materials to aesthetic realms far Evolving logically from the work that time to come, and the wisdom of her absti- beyond their craft origins, and to Martin’s she did after earning her BFA from CW nence is evident in her exhibition “White for a compositional austerity that is often Post College of Long Island University in Rain,” at Noho Gallery, 530 West 25th centered on a spare graphite grid. Butler, 1976––which involved the layering of hand- Street, from November 7 through 25. however, has developed her own subtle made papers and cheesecloth, along with oil (Reception for the artist on November 11, graphic vocabulary, in which fine lines are paint and graphite––as well as from her early from 4 to 6 PM.) just as likely to be created with thread as experiments with more coloristically cen- One of the indications of Butler’s origi- with graphite, resulting in a kind of trompe tered quilting techniques, Butler’s recent nality is that one will search in vain for a l’oeil interplay between sewn and drawn ele- “white works,” as she refers to them, are contemporary context in which to precisely ments, which I remarked upon in a previous important on two levels simultaneously. For locate her work. For while stating that fiber review but also bears mentioning here. not only do these pieces address certain is now the “foundation” of her art she com- Within this personal vocabulary, Butler principles of restraint and exquisiteness more bines quilting and appliqué with oil paint achieves a subtle variety of effects, as seen in prevalent in Asian aesthetics from a distinctly and graphite in a variegated mixed media “White 10: 135,” where a concentration of Western perspective; they also advance the technique. Thus one cannot strictly classify uneven vertical strokes, apparently drawn fiber art movement more firmly into the her as a textile artist or associate her work with graphite toward the lower center of the postmodern mainstream, by virtue of their too closely with the priorities of those con- composition, is muted under a semi-translu- highly original synthesis of sewing, drawing, temporary women artists who adopt materi- cent white square. Painted onto the fine, and painting. als used in traditional women’s crafts to subtly textured weave of the white appliqué, All of which suggests that Jeanne Butler’s make a feminist statement. or overlay, are a row of short, evenly spaced work is having a positive political affect after Although she certainly has to be aware of gray vertical units, which are interrupted all, even as she applies herself most diligently the political implications inherent in her near the end by one raw vertical graphite to exploring the innate riches of her singular choice of materials, Butler’s concerns appear gesture laid down impetuously on the outer sensibility. primarily formal in a manner more related layer, as though some of the underlying to Lenore Tawney’s physically imposing yet graphite elements have slashed through the ––Ed McCormack NOV-DEC 2006/JAN 2007 GALLERY&STUDIO 3 Moral Courage and Ambitious Scale Mark the Art of Truman Marquez

“Severed Voting Fingers Cast a Shadow Over Doubt” hen I placed a call recently to Austin, emotions choose to lead him. The mixed one’s artistic vocation. And now, half a WTexas, and asked Truman Marquez reception that greeted Marquez’s painting decade later, when it is possible to view the how the work he would be showing in his “Eleven,” created and exhibited shortly after painting from a slightly more rational dis- upcoming solo exhibition at The New Art the terrorist attack on the World Trade tance, rather than with the raw emotions Center was coming along, the painter Center in 2001, is a case in point. Although that prevailed in the immediate aftermath of chuckled and replied in that good ol’ boy many were moved by this mural-scale oil on 9/11, Truman Marquez’s moral courage is drawl of his, “Well, we’ll have to see what canvas, juxtaposing an inverted image of the vindicated. For it is clear, above all, that you folks in New York have to say about it.” Twin Towers, a demonic likeness of Osama “Eleven,” with its powerful composition, One couldn’t blame him for sounding Bin Laden, and an approaching aircraft, built around two of the pregnant circular wary, given the unwarranted snobbery and others condemned it as though it were an shapes that often provide the abstract thrust outright chauvinism that the New York art endorsement of terrorism and sent the artist of Marquez’s compositions, is an enduring crowd often shows toward artists from other hate mail. landmark in contemporary American history parts of the country (although the Flint Of course the opposite was true: painting. Institute of Art, in Flint, Michigan, recently Marquez was so deeply disturbed by the Thus the inclusion of “Eleven”, along had the curatorial wisdom to purchase his attacks on New York, a city he loved as only with several more recent paintings, serves as painting “Impadronirsi” for its permanent a country boy can, that he was unable paint a reaffirmation of the artist’s faith in his collection). Marquez, however, made his for weeks afterward. And when he was final- vision in Marquez’s solo show, at New Art bones here a long time ago, with a series of ly able to work again, Marquez anticipated Center, 580 Eighth Avenue, through killer exhibitions which obliged even the that there might be a negative response to November 25th. And one is also pleased to most hipper-than-thou locals to take notice. the subject he intended to take on so soon see that Marquez has lost none his “edge” Still, although it is now coming up on a after the traumatic event. But, as every in his recent works–– particularly those decade since I began to follow his progress intrepid artist in any medium knows, when paintings which take serious issue with the with great interest, acceptance does not such doubts arise that is precisely the time leadership of his fellow Texan George W. always come easy to a painter who refuses to one must press forward, in order to test not Bush, as regards his conduct of the war in shy away from controversy and is willing to only the limits of public tolerance for free Iraq. venture wherever his muse or his naked expression but also one’s own dedication to In the large oil on linen, “Binoculars:

4 GALLERY&STUDIO NOV-DEC 2006/JAN 2007 recent elections in Iraq). She is set against a visceral red field, out of which a multi- tude of other severed fingers seem to spring like fleshy mushrooms. From within the long shadows cast by the sev- ered fingers emerges the fig- ure of a dead American sol- dier, a casualty in a misadven- ture of forced democracy in a country that seems intent on settling its disputes by civil war. The meanings are less spe- cific yet still explicit in yet another major oil entitled “Moral Divide.” The ostensi- ble subject is rape, as the classically proportioned yet characteristically fragmented figures of a nude male and female writhe within a dynamically conjoined cluster of large circular forms. However, the painting is “Moral Divide” actually an allegory for the Twisting Our Liberty,” a pixilated portrait Over Doubt.” Here, the startling image of a present geopolitical climate, of the president, grinning like Batman’s arch middle eastern woman wearing a blue in which philosophy, ideology and religion rival The Joker and interspersed with images burka, her form as expressively distorted as do furious battle, as books of contrasting of binoculars, appears in a massive orb sus- one of Francis Bacon’s figures, is seen wield- colors sail through space, and only the pended within a twisted shape containing ing a pair of scissors to amputate one of her extended forefinger of God, appropriated fragmented images of the Statue of Liberty. purple-stained fingers (a reference to the from Michelangelo’s ceiling in the upper- Here, as in other paintings most sphere, offers the by Marquez, one is initially remote possibility of divine struck by the abstract power guidance. of the composition, with its Such appropriations, dynamic combination of long present in Marquez’s geometric and organic visual vocabulary, serve forms, complemented by both as tributes to the art of cool chromatic harmonies the past and symbols of aes- between predominantly pale thetic aspiration. In another purple, blue, and green new oil on linen called “A hues. Then, on closer Painter Contemplates the inspection, the images with- 5th Wall,” for example, the in the larger forms come viewer gazes down from the into focus with the effect of aerial perspective of a decid- a one-two punch delivered ing deity upon the meta- by a boxer skilled in throw- physically abstracted figure ing “combinations.” (This of the artist’s symbolic sur- effect is made even more rogate at work in a four- dynamic by Marquez’s walled enclosure. unique way of extending Surrounding him are paint- planes and bending con- ings by Picasso, Cezanne, tours as though his forms Van Gogh, and Warhol. are being viewed from the This revealingly titled work, perspective of some alerts us to the scope of “Fourth Dimension” that Truman Marquez’s ambi- only he has access to.) tion, which seems more Color is considerably than justified by the works more strident in another just discussed and several large canvas that Marquez other major oils in this spec- calls “Severed Voting tacular new solo show. ––Ed McCormack Fingers Cast a Shadow “Binoculars: Twisting our Liberty” NOV-DEC 2006/JAN 2007 GALLERY&STUDIO 5 Assessing Harriet FeBland’s Major Achievement in 3-D ince one immediately thinks in sculptural pure form. Yet for all its wall relief constructions in Sterms when the name Harriet FeBland precision and purity, her the same medium, such as comes up in the course of a conversation work has a warm, almost “Cool White” are pos- about contemporary art, it may come as a anthropomorphic, allusive- sessed of a monumental surprise to many familiar with her work that ness that was hinted at in austerity akin to minimal- FeBland’s 51st solo exhibition is actually her her recent statement that ism. Yet the former work first devoted exclusively to sculpture. This she likes to show the pieces dissects space like a geo- may well be because the sensibility of a mas- that she calls “totems” in metric propeller and the ter sculptor informs every aspect of this ver- groups because “they are latter, with its cropped satile artist’s oeuvre––be it a painting, a family.” and clustered rectangular drawing or one of the large monoprints she This familial feeling shapes and cast shadows, exhibited earlier this year at Berkeley comes across strikingly calls to mind the sun- College. when “Harlequin,” a piece washed mood of Hart Thus it seems relevant to point out that FeBland completed for this Crane’s poem sequence the title of FeBland’s new exhibition, at the exhibition is seen in close “White Buildings.” For it National Association of Women Artists Fifth proximity to “Stargazer,” an is FeBland’s special gift to Avenue Gallery, 80 Fifth Avenue, suite earlier totem that she creat- “Flying Cross” animate geometry in 1408, from December 2, 2006 to January ed in 2004 for the unexpected ways, making 3, 2007, is indeed, “Just Sculpture.” And Poughkeepsie Art Museum. While the new the most formal configurations yield a host although it has been quoted many times, piece is enlivened by starkly contrasting tri- of expressive associations. being such a succinct summary of what angular areas, reminiscent of the patterns in Also including an imposing wall relief makes her art unique as to have become a a harlequin costume, and the earlier work’s composed of wiggling stripes originally kind of critical mantra, it also seems impor- red, brown and black stripes suggest African included in her solo exhibition at the tant to mention once again that Paul tribal art, they share a certain visual velocity. Silvermine Guild, among other works large Mocsanyi, the former director of The New The streamlined vertical shapes of these two and small, “Just Sculpture” belies its unas- School Art Center once said of FeBland, works in painted wood are especially com- suming title. Indeed, this exhibition makes a “She is the Poet of geometry.” plementary, like siblings flaunting their indi- very strong case that Harriet FeBland’s Indeed, what FeBland’s pieces prove vidual identities, yet undeniably related, contribution to contemporary sculpture will most conclusively is that the qualities of for- while other groupings of totems, with their eventually be seen to exceed even the con- malism and lyricism are nowhere near as dis- narrow, notched contours, create rippling siderable esteem in which her work is tant from each other as we normally consid- patterns in space. presently held. er them to be. For FeBland makes us see By contrast, freestanding sculptures in the power of precision and the beauty of formica over wood like “Flying Cross” and ––Byron Coleman Zen and the Art of Jazz: Lisa Lyskava at The National Arts Club azz and zen Buddhism have long been color application, even in her more calli- Jlinked in the mythology of the Beat graphic paintings, achieving a sinuous linear Generation, particularly in the novels of Jack grace with them to rival that of any zen Kerouac and the poetry of Gary Snyder. But master. Indeed, in canvases such as no visual artist that we know of has synthe- “Nothing Else,” “No Compromise” and sized them so successfully as Lisa Lyskava, “Koudaroufa,” two or three splashy ges- whose exhibition “Jazzing Up” is on view at tures, converging on a pure white ground, The National Arts Club, 15 Gramercy Park suffice to make the point that in painting, as South, through November 13. in jazz, improvisation is the ticket and spon- Lyskava, who was born in 1949 in taneity can make all the difference. Muenster, Germany, and maintains studios However, in “Another World to Know,” in Germany and New York City, invariably a canvas inspired by jazz singer Abbey plays jazz recordings while painting, and her Lincoln, and “Autumn Leaves,” where bro- gestural thrust and color choices are often “Breakthrough” ken-off pieces of sponge enhance an already influenced by their infectious rhythms and hues flowing through each individual stroke tactile surface, Lyskava creates contrastingly melodies. More recently, attitudes acquired to reveal a rainbow radiance. saturated color field compositions which are in her study of zen have also affected her As always, Lyskava’s colors are fresh and notable for their symphonic sumptuousness. art. While some of her compositions remain unpredictable, tending toward strident com- Her two distinctly different modes come densely textured, chromatically complex, binations of pink, purple, yellow, blue, char- together brilliantly in “Harlem Nights,” and intensely gestural, others have become treuse, and violet hues that suggest a visual where rhythmically curved swathes of deep more spare and calligraphic. equivalent of musical notes more than any- purple snake over luminous areas of visceral In the latter paintings, although adhering thing found in nature. Occasionally, she will red and neon yellow with a velocity that is to the zen principle of “emptiness” by even throw in a fluorescent orange, as delib- truly exhilarating. working on pure white grounds and limit- erately discordant as a sudden squawk of Lisa Lyskava recently returned to New ing her compositions to a few swift, deft Ornette Coleman’s plastic saxophone, just York City after a two year sojourn in strokes, Lyskava does not eschew color as to kick-start a composition and keep it from Europe. This splendid solo exhibition gives zen ink painters in China and Japan have getting too pretty. ample reason to rejoice that she is back in been doing for many centuries. Rather, she While the brush is the basic tool of tradi- town. brings her consummate skills as a colorist to tional Buddhist painting, Lyskava continues ––Andrew Margolis bear in yet another manner, with variegated to favor sponges as her primary means of 6 GALLERY&STUDIO NOV-DEC 2006/JAN 2007 A Near-Religious Fervor Enlivens Monkdogz Group Show s its title suggests, the group show one would have to call Post-Pop his aesthetic, but also his iconic images of A“Came to Believe,” seen recently at Abstraction. International precedents for Elvis and Marilyn. However, he layers and Monkdogz Urban Art, 547 West 27th this sort of stuff can be seen in the 1960s fragments his compositions in manner more Street, in Chelsea, was a survey of strongly work of the American artist Nicholas akin to that other silkscreen maestro held convictions, verging on the spiritual, as Krushenick and even more obviously in the Rauschenberg, creating big, intricate com- in the Twelve Step slogan, “I came to work of the Italian painter Valerio Adami positions filled with photo-derived imagery, believe in a power greater than myself.” and the Britisher Trevor Winkfield. stenciled phrases, snippets of street signs, The implication here is that art can be Sebastian Aurillon, however, puts his own and other bits of cultural detritus that con- that higher power, offering the possibility of unique spin on things. Like the older vey all the franticness and transience of the spiritual redemption. And this could apply painters mentioned above, he works in bold New York City pre and post 9/11. quite literally in the case of Jean Marc hard-edged areas of clear, bright comicstrip Frankly derivative yet paradoxically origi- Calvet, one of the exhibiting artists, about colors contained within precise black out- nal by virtue of their subjective take on the whom the story goes that he locked himself lines. Yet while Aurillon’s style is uninflect- familiar, Christian Tango’s paintings are as in a room, intending to commit suicide, and ed, it is highly animated in an odd much a symptom of as a statement on our found a new lease on life by painting all over Flintstones or Simpsons kind of way. Which fame-crazed, terror-benumbed century. the walls with some oils and brushes that is to say: even Aurillon’s most ostensibly By now, many of us are familiar with the someone had serendipitously stashed there. geometric compositions, such as the chro- strange little sculptures of Steve Oatway. A Possibly apocryphal but nonetheless intrigu- matically delicious “The Twin Sisters” staple of the Monkdogz stable from the ing, it is the the sort of thing that a critic ––which simply consists of two almost iden- gitgo, Oatway attacks sanctimony and should let go in one ear and out the other, tically, outwardly innocuous striped rectan- piousness in all its forms with his eerily even when the gallery director telling the tale gles–– are pregnant with offbeat allusions extraterrestrial-looking baby dolls wearing

Jean Marc Calvet Sebastien Aurillon Marcus Van Soest Alex Racine is as credible and entertaining a storyteller as that resonate on the brainpan with a tuning big ostentatious crosses, and especially one Bob Hogge, who runs the show at fork “ping.” already celebrated voo doo-like effigy of Monkdogz in concert with his more circum- Consequently, in another canvas called Osama Bin Laden with a toy fighter plane spect business partner Marina Hadley. But “The Hearts Upside-Down,” two other impaling his abdomen. A dead serious sur- the simple truth of the matter is that Calvet’s more or less identical forms suspended sym- vivor of various personal travails, addictions, energetically primitivistic paintings actually metrically in a four square grid suggest not and blessings in disguise, Oatway continues do look like the work of a man who started so much the inverted hearts of the title as to fight the good fight with an installation painting only because he was being pestered two sets of disembodied buttocks gift- simply called “composition,” in which his by a whole population of inner demons but wrapped in kandy-kolored panties. More bloody Osama doll and two of his clerical in the process staggered upon his own slight- unabashedly figurative is “The Pink Mill,” in figures are surrounded by an array of flags, ly skewed version of Amazing Grace. which a wind-up Don Quixote with a big plastic things that look like tied up bundles Admittedly, that could seem unlikely, key sticking out of his back sits astride an of dynamite sticks or electric vibrators, bot- considering that, on one level, Calvet’s equally mechanical-looking purple steed tles of Heinz ketchup, and other artfully dis- large, jam-packed canvases could initially contemplating the proverbial windmill as arranged cultural artifacts that future arche- remind one of Australian aboriginal though it were a crossword puzzle. Then ologists will surely savor in the wake of the “Dreamtime” designs on acid. Yet there is there is another brilliant confection called coming apocalypse. no denying that in a warped sort of way, “The Botanical Garden,” in which the sun Also featured were equally apocalyptic Calvet’s visions of funny little Art Brut fig- and all the flowers look like olives with neo-expressionist figure paintings by Marcus ures with penis noses, skulls, snakes, Edward pimento eyeballs and everything dangles Van Soest, a monstrous terra cotta head Munch scream guys with the DTs or heebie languidly as Salvador Dali’s limp watches, with gaping mouth by Alex Racine, and jeebies, phallic steeples and Chagall-like albeit with the kind of sly coloring-book large, vibrant hard edge canvases by shtetels under twinkling stars, and a whole faux-innocence that is the hallmark of Matthew Turov that might have looked out shitload of other esoteric images and sym- Sebastien Aurillon’s style. of context among this rowdy bunch if not bols framed by borders swarming like ant Though he was a practicing Catholic and for their eccentric dialogue between geo- farms with obsessive tribal-looking patterns, is definitely some kind of icon, Andy Warhol metric and organic forms. An auspicious do seem divinely inspired. has not yet been canonized by the church. boot in the ass to kick off the new season, The other major revelation of “Came to That, however, hasn’t stopped the Danish- “Came to Believe” exemplified the winning Believe,” albeit in a cooler Gallic manner, born painter and musician Christian Tango combination of outsiderish passion and were the paintings of a young Frenchman from regarding Andy as a patron saint. insiderish sophistication that we have come named Sebastien Aurillon, which belong to Tango appropriates not only Andy’s dayglo to expect from Monkdogz Urban Art at its a tendency that, for want of a better term, silkscreen technique as a regular feature of best. – –Ed McCormick NOV-DEC 2006/JAN 2007 GALLERY&STUDIO 7 PEG McCREARY SOLO SHOW OF ABSTRACT PAINTINGS Including new large scale works inspired by Stravinsky’s Le Sacre du Printemps Evocative Expressions a juried fine arts exhibit September 27 – December 28, 2006 November 24-December 4, 2006 Gallery hours: Cornell Medical Center Lobby Gallery Daily, 10am until closing of Avery Fisher Hall 12 West 72nd Street Artists are: New York, New York Miguel Angel • Carole Barlowe • Roberta Berman Meg Boe Birns • Cati Blanche • Elinore Bucholtz • Eun-Seong Choi Mary Anne Holliday • William Hunt • Rini Hunter • Madi Lanier Monday & Wednesday through Friday: 9 a.m.–5 p.m. Ruth Llanillo Leal • Margo Mead • Dellamarie Parrilli Tuesdays 9 a.m.–7 p.m. Marsha Peruo • Monique Serres • Ivan Sherman • Ava Schonberg Call for Weekend Hours: 212-746-7803 Meyer Tannenbaum Curated by Jennifer Groves Cork Gallery, Avery Fisher Hall Lincoln Center Plaza Artist’s website: www.pegmccreary.com 65th & Broadway, NYC

James Havard VISIONS UNLIMITED A Fine Arts Exhitition Recent Paintings November 29-December 17, 2006 Exhibitors: Arthur Bitterman • Carol Carpentieri • Robert Henry Eckel October 21 - December 22, 2006 Juanita Evans • Pamela Flores • Mary Hogan • Madi Lanier Anne Rudder • Ava Schonberg • Patience Sundaresan Patricia Uriel Allan Stone Gallery Broadway Mall Community Center 113 East 90th Street, NYC 10128 96th Street and Broadway,center island, NYC Tel. 212.987.4997 Fax. 212.987.1655 Gallery Hours:Wed.6-8pm,Sat./Sun.12-6pm www.allanstonegallery.com [email protected] 212-316-6024 www.wsacny.org

8 GALLERY&STUDIO NOV-DEC 2006/JAN 2007 Sheila Finnigan’s Conceptual/Painterly Impeachment of George W. Bush he Chicago artist Sheila Finnigan Tseems to have serious issues with father and forefather figures. In her two previous New York solo exhibitions, she dealt with Andy Warhol, the founding father of Pop, with whom every contem- porary painter must somehow come to terms, pro or con. In her third, “Georgie- Porgy,” seen recently at Pleiades Gallery, 530 West 25th Street, in Chelsea, Finnigan confronted George W. Bush, the president whose swaggering cowboy per- sona has confirmed a lot of the world’s worst fears about America. Finnigan’s take on Warhol was rife with ambiguity, acknowledging Andy’s enormous influence on his time, while cri- tiquing his myth as irony maven and media manipulator. In the case of George Bush, however, while her humor is just as mordant, her sense of outrage lends the work even more bite. The show is based around the conceptual conceit of a Smithsonian-style historical exhibition–– “George III” 72"x 48". Mixed media complete with faux-institutional wall tamount to strolling onto a carnival mid- that says “BANG!” labels of the type that might accompany way and hearing the barker say, “Step The portrait of Barbara Bush shows the display of relics such as George right up, folks, you are about to enter a her similarly posed but wearing a more Washington’s wooden dentures–– follow- world of strange wonders!” placating Betty Crocker smile as she offers ing Bush from childhood through his Also present in the gallery is an actual up a plate of festive sweets, in keeping present notoriety. Its piéce de resistance is World War I field cot, serving both as the with the title “Let Them Eat Cookies,” a an installation that includes toys purport- most imposing element in the tableaux play on Marie Antoinette’s answer to ed to have belonged to “Georgie-Porgy” and the main prop for its two largest poverty in pre-Revolutionary France. in childhood. These include an actual old- paintings: companion portraits of George Even in repose, Mrs. Bush is no Naked fashioned hobby horse, a hopscotch mat, and Laura Bush in the manner of Jacques Maja; always, she is fully dressed and and toy alphabet blocks spelling out key Louis David’s peel-me-a-grape portrait of proper. Unlike a previous First Lady, phrases such as “WEAPONS OF MASS “Madame Recamier” reclining on a chaise whose Hollywood reputation implied DESTRUCTION.” lounge. (This same furnishing served as a otherwise, she looks like a woman who As in Finnigan’s previous exhibitions, prop for Finnigan’s similarly posed por- really would just say “no.” these found objects, while having a reso- traits of Andy Warhol, as well as two of Sheila Finnigan has so much to say nant presence as components of the his favorite subjects, Marilyn Monroe and about the way we live now in America installation, also serve as props for the Jackie O, in a previous show in the same and so much native wit to say it with, that paintings. Thus, the rocking horse and a venue.) her showy installations could almost dis- ten gallon cowboy hat that is also featured The kingly connotation of the title of tract from what a fine painter she is. in the installation (along with his severed the portrait “George III” suggests our Fortunately, though, her painterly quali- “constitutional ties”) is prominently fea- macho president’s lust for Empire, as well ties prevail by virtue of their genuine tured in a painting of a rollicking Boy as the fact that he is the third American peculiarity, achieved through her use of George at play, accompanied by a wall president with that name in a lineage that mixed media on pastel cloth rather than label explaining that the childhood por- includes George Washington and his canvas, giving her surfaces a matte finish trait was commissioned by the president’s father, George Bush senior. (The first roughly akin to Leon Golub’s paintings cousin “Flatte Bush,” who was “so happy president is depicted on the same chaise on unprimed cotton. with the resulting painting that she gifted in a smaller portrait and our present one There is a fascinating disparity between Bush’s hobby horse to the artist in pay- is seen in another painting trying on a the narrative nature of Finnigan’s subject ment.” white Washington wig for size, as though matter and the immediacy of her tech- Like Garrison Keillor’s monologues on to imply that he would not tell a lie about nique: the drips, splatters and other evi- “A Prairie Home Companion,” Finnigan’s those weapons of mass destruction.) dences of “process” that activate her can- wall labels transcend the merely factual to In “George III,” Dubya is depicted vases. These elements provide a kind of apprehend a higher truth through the lounging on the chaise in a ten gallon sensual delectation that operates quite time-honored American medium of the Stetson, a “wife-beater” undershirt, and apart from her tart commentaries on cul- tall tale. Her synthesis of installation and polka-dot boxer shorts. The flag is draped ture and politics, lending Sheila painting, of the postmodern and the tra- like a comforter across his knees and he Finnigan’s paintings an autonomous ditional, of the conceptual and the corn- also sports cowboy boots with spurs. His aesthetic value above and beyond the ball, is essential to the eclectic appeal of trademark smirk is smeared smugly across intriguing contexts in which she presents her signature style. To enter a gallery his face as he brandishes a toy sixgun with them. filled with Finnigan’s varied output is tan- a red banner protruding from its barrel ––Ed McCormack

NOV-DEC 2006/JAN 2007 GALLERY&STUDIO 9 Talent: An Annual Tradition at Allan Stone Gallery he barechested man in Scott meticulous synthesis of early Renaissance and oil on unstretched canvas, notable for their TGoodwillie’s oil on panel “Outsourced” medieval details and design motifs within an exquisitely austere spatial sense and subtly has the head of an elephant. No big deal. overall abstract context, and the trompe tactile paint handling. Molly Kugler The head fits perfectly on his body and the l’oeil sculptor Richard Haden, whose Dickinson also displays painterly finesse in flesh tones match and the eyes look humanly “Anonymous Box” makes mahogany and her gouache, “Biggest Bigtop,” where the worried anyway. The waistband of his under- enamel identical to stained brown cardboard wavering red and white stripes of a circus wear is showing above his trousers, but not and packing tape, evoking the kind of “sus- tent are the piéce de resistance of the com- in the way currently fashionable among the picious packages” that Homeland Security is position. And, characteristically, Nguyen young and insouciant; more in the careless always warning us to report. Emily Epstein Ducmanh strikes a resounding blow for the manner of an older guy going to seed. And Vines also stakes out peculiar sculptural terri- spontaneous gesture with “Chimba,” an his beer-gut is hanging over it, as he stands tory with her small heads of various canine acrylic and mixed media on paper, in which there looking befuddled and obsolete with breeds, duplicated exactingly in ceramic clay bold red strokes laid down on a bare ground his arms hanging uselessly at his sides, a ciga- and acrylic paint. take on a heraldic elegance. rette smoking like a gun in one hand. Paintings of food seem to constitute a Drawing as a discrete and complete art Goodwillie’s poignant portrait was among mini-movement unto themselves at Allan form unto itself, rather than a medium for several other standout works in “Talent Stone, or at least a specific species of still life. preliminary studies, also comes to the fore- 2006,” this year’s Emerging Artists Salon, While Peter Anton’s big 3-D wall pieces of front in Dan Gilhooley’s meticulously seen recently at Allan Stone Gallery, 113 open candy samplers have predecessors in detailed large-as-life pencil drawing, “Self East 90th Street. Long overdue for more Pop, particularly Oldenburg, Duane Keiser’s Portrait at Forty”; Kate Sullivan’s photoreal- widespread recognition, Robert Valdes “Watermelon” and Gina Minichino’s “Little ist graphite drawings of industrial sites and showed a landscape in a long, narrow hori- Powdered Donuts” hark back to the 17th shopfronts, and Paul Lorenz’s zontal format reminiscent of a Chinese century Dutch masters, depicting their suc- “One Object,” an abstract composition of hand-scroll; however, rather than unfolding culent or sugary subjects with a delicious densely crosshatched graphite strokes with a in narrative time, Valdes’ stretch of rusty, explicitness verging on gastropornography. small circle of bare paper at its very center. sun-lit American river appeared as still and Long an even more substantial specialty of Allan Stone Gallery has won enviable art impassive as a Warhol soup can. this venue, which made its initial reputation world status and respect without adhering to Past New Talent shows included Andy in the early 1960s showing Kline, de any trendy agenda. As this exhibition Warhol, Wayne Thiebaud, Richard Estes, Kooning, and other Abstract Expressionists, demonstrated, once again, its policy of valu- Robert Ryman, Eva Hesse and other now are various overtly painterly tendencies, here ing the individual talent over the fashions of famous names early in their careers. And represented by the glistening-like-licorice the moment continues to pay high aesthetic there’s always a good chance that some of surface of Sandi Cervek’s sensual black on dividends. the present exhibitors may someday be stellar black abstraction; the vigorously brushed names as well. Two strong contenders are landscapes of Haden Glatte and Marjorie the painter Anne Connell who makes a Glatte, as well as by Pat Mahony’s still lifes in ––Ed McCormack Varied Approaches Animate “The Persistence of Form” f art is not a form of alchemy, how does Graham Denison. Yet rather than imitating Geraldine Simmons’ s colored pencil por- Ione account for an artist such as Lugo? the masters he admires, this British resident traits reveal all the psychological insight of Lugo takes a few bits of charred wood, a of Southern Spain updates the plein air tradi- human portraiture. Indeed, Simmons’ draw- scrap of cloth, a length of discarded string, tion with his boldly painted scenes executed ings are never generalized images of a species and converts them into an assemblage of a with juicy strokes of a pigment- laden but tributes to the individuality of each of miniature sailboat or a funky little dockside palette knife. her animal subjects. scene under a full moon that is every bit as Women are the inspiration for Sergey Paul Skurski’s paintings appear to cele- whimsical and disarming as Paul Klee’s Ignatenko, a young painter from Belarus, brate the sensual joys of youth. That some of “Twittering Machine.” Lugo is one among whose first models were his mother and sis- Skurski’s lithe young models are as attractive several aesthetic alchemists of different stripes ters. Although his style is more akin to classi- as film stars and sometimes seen in romantic seen in “The Persistence of Form,” a group cal realism, Ignatenko imbues the subject of situations tempts one to coin a term: Pop show at Agora Gallery, 530 West 25th Street, women in domestic interiors with a warmth Realism. By contrast, Robert Van Beurden from December 7 through 27. (Reception and empathy akin to certain canvases by harks back to the Dutch masters in his treat- Thursday, December 7, 2006, 6-8 pm). Bonnard. ment of still life. Indeed, Beurden lives and Lee Pirozzi, creates sculpture from blue Elizabeth Punches also evokes female fig- works in Holland, where such painting jeans crumpled to create fanciful forms. ures, albeit from a more fantastic perspective. thrived in the 17th century, and his oils Particularly ingenious is Pirozzi’s “Blue Jean Punches’ s women are as fanciful in their demonstrate still life will never go out of Brain,” in which the crumpled clothing elaborate period costumes as the figures of style, as long as there are artists who can morphs wittily into gray matter. Maxfield Parrish, although her work is imbue an arrangement of edibles on a table The Alaskan landscapes of the widely informed by a more contemporary irony, as with the breath of life. exhibited Japanese painter Tohru Aizawa indicated by titles such as “Wolves at the Whether depicting animal subjects, soccer impart their own peculiar magic to vistas of Door.” Fantasy also figures prominently in players in action, or a sinuously delineated overcast skies, icy peaks, and infinite seas in the paintings of C.G, Rodsant, as seen in one floral subjects, Daniela Vasileva, who was compositions possessed of an exquisite spare- picture of a slender nude nymph seated on a born in Bulgaria and now lives in Las Vegas, ness. Joseph Kim reinvests Biblical and clas- pile of rocks and another in which sailboats Nevada, invests her paintings with energy by sical subjects with immediacy by casting are seen under a churlish sky. Rodsant’s paint- virtue of her flowing forms and intense col- them in contemporary scenes painted in a ings are enlivened by a meticulously detailed ors. Combining realist draftspersonship with flawless realist style inspired by Caravaggio. textural suggestiveness reminiscent of the “ Neo-Fauvist chromatics, Vasileva achieves a Impressionism and post-Impressionism magic realism” of Ivan Albright. thoroughly convincing synthesis of seen and serve as inspiration for the paintings of Animal painting is a specialized field, yet the felt elements. ––Barbara K. Bernstein 10 GALLERY&STUDIO NOV-DEC 2006/JAN 2007 At CVB: Italian Artists Trot Out Some of Their Favorite Things tacky shocking-pink purse bursts open presided over by a portrait of a man who closer and comes up against the, flat sleek Alike a ruptured pig bladder or a car- looks as though he is posing for a mug-shot. wall of the photographic surface. Similarly, toony 3-D wall relief by Elizabeth Murray. Whether this is a self-portrait or the artist’s another piece by Gianna Scianname consists Out flies a string of cultured pearls, some favorite felon is not easy for an outsider to of fifteen connected plexiglass panels con- sort of fuzzy bunny, a rhinestone tiara and a determine; yet Massari juxtaposes the taining luminously flowing abstract shapes lacy red and black Miracle Bra. Still con- human image and inanimate objects con- that appear to float within the transparent tained within are a cell-phone, a miniature vincingly in this realist tempera on paper. panels, although they are actually painted on keyboard, a diary, a silky something that Grazia Gabbini gives us a sculpture that the surface. looks like a red thong, and God knows what resembles an arte povera house Gampiero Reverberi comments tartly on else...in other words, the everyday ammuni- plant––which is to say a sickly, scraggly look- the fact that “plastic” is the key to all too tion of your average teenage femme fatale. ing configuration of wiry shapes protruding many of our personal belongings with a wall This photograph by artist, critic, journal- from a beat-up box. The piece has a installation of more than forty pieces resem- ist, curator Stefania Carrozzini graces the poignant quality, like something its owner, bling credit cards. Look closely, however, catalog cover for her new group show against his or her better wishes, has grown and some of the designs on their surfaces “Personal Belongings,” curated for D’Ars attached to and can’t throw away. More morph into Jackson Pollock-style drip International Exhibition Projects, abstractions. Other abstract and on view at CVB The works by the painter Carrozzini von Buhler Gallery, Mariella Petrini and the 407 West 13th Street, from assembageists Gianni Lodi December 1 through 15. and Isa Di Battista Gorini “While traveling we must take are more difficult to deci- care of our personal belongings, pher in relation to the documents, keys, money, clothes,” show’s theme. Yet they writes Carrozzini, in her character- compel us nonetheless with istically imaginative catalog essay their purely formal virtues, for the exhibition. “But in the as do the sinuously unfurl- end the most important thing to ing alabaster sculptures of take care of, our real belonging, is Davide Alborghetti, which our body. Forget the key! Don’t wiggle so serpentinely in forget your head! Don’t forget space in a manner to sug- your heart!” gest the admiration one Carrozzini goes on to say that, might feel for the grace of a in this exhibition, her intention is beloved snake. But that’s a to bring together “concepts of stretch, if one will pardon a identification, private property, bad pun; for in the case of possession, as well as symbolisms such works, one must referring to a life story. Personal accept their thematic rele- belongings have a symbiotic rela- vance on good faith. tionship with memory, being Indeed, much of what we themselves remembrances of cozy think of as possessions could places that never leave; they are very well be anything or our Linus’s blanket.” Photograph by Stefania Carrozzini anyone that inspires our Of all the artists in the show, affection, making us count Massimiliano Miazzo seems to take the scrutable for its sophisticated treatment of a pets or even people among our personal curator’s exhortation that “our real belong- sentimental subject is a photograph by Anna effects, as in the endless variations in love- ing is our body” most to heart. Miazzo’s Maria Chiarvetto of pearls and a wedding song lyrics of the universal phrase “you photograph “Self Portrait” shows the artist band juxtaposed artfully with pictures of a belong to me.” Thus one could regard reclining in white Jockey shorts beside what cutely grinning baby. That image seems to Norberto Lenzi’s lovely line drawing of an appears to be a ghostly, digitalized robot hover between the mawkish and the ironic androgynous figure draped in off-the-shoul- replica of himself. The artist and his makes it all the more poignant. der dishabille as falling into this category. Frankensteinian creation lie head-to-foot, What the more abstract images in shows And the same might be said of the vague like lovers in post-coital exhaustion. such as this have to do with the ostensible canine outline, more of a silhouette than an What other artists consider to be their theme is often anybody’s guess. But perhaps image, in Celestina Avanzini’s texturally sug- personal belongings ranges from a pudgy their presence can be justified––in this case gestive photograph. white bird (possibly a toy), half hidden amid particularly––by the notion that works of art More overtly in the same spirit, alternat- blurred green foliage, in another intriguing are always the most “personal belongings” ing figurative, floral, and automotive photograph by Pinuccia Nicolosi, to of any artist, and the more obscure their imagery are seen within the twelve squares Giovanni Magli’s oil on paper of what seems imagery the more personal they may be. of the painter Marinella Galletti’s grid com- to be a classical still life set-up. However, Anyway, Clara Scarampella’s ten small pho- position in tempera on paper, which is actu- when one looks more closely at Magli’s tographic pieces in different colors––a red ally titled “Personal Belongings.” painting, the objects on the table are impos- one is especially tactile, like something Once again, Stefania Carrozzini has given sible to identify. (Could they be the con- carved in wet, red sand––suggest serial us an exhibition that explores its theme tents of a Medieval alchemist’s pocketbook?) mementos of nostalgic significance to the from many directions, some specific, some By contrast, Antonio Massari seems to artist. However, on a strictly formal level, more obscure, but all equally worthy of take the show’s theme more literally, giving these images play perceptual games with attention. us an array of more or less ordinary objects textures that appear actual until one comes ––Ed McCormick

NOV-DEC 2006/JAN 2007 GALLERY&STUDIO 11 “Creativity: The Artist’s Journey,” at Synagogue for the Arts hile the flavor of the month mentality Miriam Wills is known for her Neo- Sonata II,” with its successful merging of Wprevails at the juncture of art and fash- Baroque semiabstract compositions, in asymmetrical and geometrical forms united ion, where experience is all too often under- which colorful photographic collage ele- by painterly vigor. mined, as the clueless clamor to collect ments clipped from consumer magazines are While not yet as familiar to New York recent MFAs who are rumored to be “hot,” seamlessly integrated with succulent passages gallery goers as some of the previous artists, working artists with impressive exhibition of painting. Like many of her collage paint- Boston painter Elaine Alibrandi belongs in histories, many belonging to longstanding ings, Wills’ “Party Favors” achieves a suc- their company, judging from her work in arts organizations, remain the bedrock of cessful synthesis of found imagery and mixed media and oil on canvas, “Wood the New York art world. painterly panache. Nymphs.” Alibrandi’s evocative composition Thus one anticipates with pleasure group Doris Wyman, long associated with Artists combines a bark-like surface with forms sug- shows such as the invitational exhibition Equity, is one of our most committed expo- gesting elongated vaginal knotholes in a “Creativity: The Artist’s Journey,” which nents of pure gestural painting, as evidenced manner akin to the craggy abstractions of brings together eleven members of the by her exuberant oil on paper ”White Water Clyfford Still. American Society of Contemporary Artists Wyoming.” The ethos of The New York Also on view will be work by Hedy at Synagogue for the Arts, 49 White Street, School is still very much alive in Wyman’s O’Beil, who belongs to the tradition of from December 14 through January 21. vigorous compositions, with their bold, New York painter-critics exemplified by Founded in 1917 as The Brooklyn Art rhythmic strokes and winning combination Fairfield Porter and Elaine de Kooning, and Society, and initially sponsored by the of spontaneity and control. has evolved from representational painting Brooklyn Museum, the ASCA has included Sensually billowing shapes that hug the to a more calligraphic style in recent years; names like Chaim Gross, Adolph Gottlieb, picture plane yet project a paradoxical sense painter and printmaker Jami Taback, who and William Zorach among its past mem- of voluminous sculptural presence are the has had more than fifty solo and group bers, and continues to boast some of our forte of Olivia Koopalethes, as seen in her shows, including one at the Ernst Museum; most accomplished painters, sculptors, and work in colored pencil, “Many Ways.” Lisa Robbins, who was featured in the printmakers. Drawing plays a large role in Koopalethes’ “Abstraction-5” exhibition at Broome Street Like the ASCA, The Synagogue for the compositions, articulating edges and lending Gallery, as well as “Artists for a United Arts, is a nonprofit organization “dedicated an allusive quality to her ostensibly abstract World,” at Tibor De Nagy Gallery; and to bringing high quality art exhibitions to compositions. internationally known abstract painter Jan the general public.” Designed by William Painter, printmaker, and “construction- Wunderman. Berger, it is known for making its space ist” Gerda Roze is one of those artists who (The solo shows of two other partici- available to all forms of cultural, artistic and refuses to fit easily into any one category or pants, Harriet FeBland, President of ASCA educational events, and seems an especially adhere to any one genre. Roze regularly and coordinator of this exhibition, and the auspicious venue for showcasing several of traverses the line between painting and widely exhibited abstract painter Frank this respected professional artist’s organiza- sculpture with intriguing results, as seen in Mann, are reviewed at length elsewhere in tion’s members. her shaped acrylic triptych “Moonlight this issue.) ––J. Sanders Eaton “Beyond Borders” Showcases Canadian Artists in Chelsea anadian art would appear to be auspi- urative forms. Employing pastel pigments on “Urban Diptych” and “Heart Condition Cciously in tune with postmodern plural- canvas, Rouleau employs color as an emotive Diptych,” both of which seem to inhabit ism, judging from “Beyond Borders: an element through which to reveal the sub- that peculiar plateau where the abstract and Exhibition of Fine Art from Canada,” on ject’s “secrets.” the surreal converge. Like Matta’s metaphys- view at Agora Gallery, 530 West 25th Street, Unambiguously lighthearted, Kathy ical vistas, Sommer’s compositions take us from January 2 through 23. (Reception Meaney’s “Ladies of the Lake” paintings into uncharted territory; yet we seem to Thursday, January 4, 6 to 8 PM.) depict Rubens-esque matrons frolicking at glimpse vestiges of reality within the overall Perhaps the following capsule comments the sea shore. Like the British painter L.S. abstract thrust of her compositions. will give an impression of its diversity and Lowry, Meaney employs a “sophisticated Clifford Jean-Felix, a relative of Jean- scope: Paul Cavilla’s paintings combine a primitive” style to capture our common Michel Basquiat, paints elongated expres- sense of narrative with vibrant colors and pleasures and foibles with sympathetic wit. sionist figures that recall the sculpted figures sumptuous surfaces, accomplished with a If the work of the next two painters are of Giacometti. Bathed in shimmering hues, palette knife technique, that imbues his fig- any indication, a nascent mode of mystical Jean-Felix’s svelte, androgynous personages ures with a palpable physical presence. The expressionism may be brewing in Canada: symbolize the commonality of the universal subject of Cavilla’s “Thinking Man” appears The widely exhibited painter Lynda Pogue’s soul. By contrast, Elana Kaufman deals with literally aflame with thought. works in mixed media, water-based paints the details that signify our individuality and Employing a process based on the lost and wax transform landscape subjects into the emotions evoked by particular memories. wax technique, Alicja Cetnarowski creates compositions that not only compel us with Thus, Kaufman’s pictures have titles like figures that fairly writhe with a sense of life. their abstract virtues but convey an emotion- “Home” and “Family,” and their pale colors In their final bronze incarnations, particular- al resonance. In the composition Pogue calls evoke the nostalgic pang of faded snapshots. ly, they seem to embody a host of human “Solitude,’ for example, a lone tree seems a Atousa Foroohary offers a refreshingly emotions by virtue of Cetnarowski’s expres- surrogate for our inner longings. By con- direct take on landscape, particularly in one sive formal distortions. trast, Jane Rusin employs a combination of lyrical painting of a rustic road leading into a Equally powerful in a more abstract man- strident red and yellow color areas and pre- forest. Devoid of “isms,” Faroohary’s com- ner, the bronzes of the artist known as Saya cisely rendered architectural forms to evoke a positions are unabashed celebrations of the reduce biomorphic forms to their essence. In magical mood, reminiscent of Loren natural world. Then there is Dergachoff, a Saya’s sculptures, the serpentinely flowing McIver’s semi abstract urban poetry, in her sculptor whose figures appear simultaneously shapes can seem simultaneously sensual and luminous painting “NYC Glow.” classical and surreal. While delving into the threatening. The paintings of Louise P. Paula Sommers uses baroque forms and a realm of myth, Dergachoff’s imaginative Rouleau, on the other hand, are character- muted palette of gray, brown, and pink hues pieces are animated by an appealing wit. ized by fiery hues and boldly blocked-in fig- to dynamic effect in paintings such as ––Maurice Taplinger 12 GALLERY&STUDIO NOV-DEC 2006/JAN 2007 Connecticut Painter Bruce A. Dumas Celebrates the Sacred in the Ordinary ruce A. Dumas paints like a man who is birds. Thus what Dumas gives us is not viewer, alert to the possibility of competition Bin love with the world. Which is to say, some cliched, banal reiteration of the grace for the females and ready to meet any chal- he paints the kind of unabashedly world- and beauty of the swan but an assiduously lenge with his horns. infatuated pictures that more selfconscious observed and realized matter of fact obser- While Bruce A. Dumas may very well be contemporary realists will only attempt with vation of these water fowl in their natural one of the premiere animal painters of our the safety net of irony or the intervention of habitat. Indeed, Dumas succeeds so splen- time, investing such subjects with an insight a clever aesthetic agenda. He paints directly didly in this painting that to fault the artist and sympathy that is rare in contemporary from nature, from personal observation, for choosing a supposedly hackneyed subject painting, it is perhaps in the less specialized earnestly and without irony, as though no would be as pretentious and asinine as ven- field of landscape that his gifts come most one ever told him you are not supposed to turing out into nature and applying such clearly to the forefront. In paintings such as paint that way today. But that in itself would critical criteria to the actual creatures and “Massachusetts Gorge” and “Marsh not be newsworthy if Dumas did not paint the landscape that they inhabit! Sunset,” for example, he seems a latter-day well enough to prove that you can still paint Equally wrongheaded would be to dis- peer of early and mid-nineteenth century any damn way you please, Hudson River School as long as you possess a painters such as Thomas Cole vision uncorrupted by con- and later Luminists like formist notions of what Jasper F. Cropsey for his abil- contemporary art is sup- ity to evoke panoramic vistas posed to look like and the with a polished and meticu- technique to translate what lous technique, employing you actually see into the subtle gradations of tone to terms that all good paint- establish variations in clarity ing demands, fashion be between near and far objects. damned. In “Marsh Sunset,” fields For this reason, this and marshes gradually give widely exhibited way to verdant, distant hills Connecticut painter’s work under a dramatically illumi- may come as a revelation to nated sky enlivened by gold- some and a pure delight to tinged evening clouds, while others who are still unjaded “Massachusetts Gorge” con- enough to take a picture at trasts stately, densely forested face value and not require a corridors of Fall foliage with fancy theoretical justifica- rugged, leaf-scattered rock- tion for what they see in his croppings and foamy rushing solo exhibition at Patrick’s water in the foreground, the Fine Art, 21 East 62nd entire composition bathed in Street, from November 30 auras of pinkish light. But through January 13, (The “Lucky Bull” perhaps Dumas’ most master- gallery is open by appoint- ful handling of light comes ment only. Call 212-591-1918 or 917-743- miss another remarkable painting by across most dramatically in the canvas he 9704). Dumas, wittily titled “Lucky Bull,” as simply calls “Spell Bound,” a marinescape which That said, we all know nobody should a mundane picture of a male bovine hang- captures the metaphysical border between paint a picture of swans anymore, right? The ing out in a field with his harem of cows, night and day, with the sun resting low in a only way any contemporary artist could get without taking into account such sophisti- purplish blue sky, spilling its radiance over away with that would be to make a deliber- cated formal virtues as the artist’s luminous the watery horizon to reverberate over the ately corny parody of the kind of paintings evocation of beams of sunlight streaming waves and illuminate the rocks rising out of you see hanging over the sofa in schlock fur- through the overhanging canopy of tree the shallows in the foreground. niture stores or Holiday Inns in some of the limbs, illuminating the leaves, and casting By contrast, in paintings, such as “Bethel redder states, correct? Swans are just too the shadows of the animals so convincingly Farm Morning” and “Spring Hill Farm,” beautiful, too graceful, and for a serious on the fresh green grass. For, here, not only Dumas captures the crisp clarity of country painter to actually attempt such a subject does Dumas’ handling of chiaroscuro bring daylight delineating the rustic charms of would be banal beyond words, right? the canvas vibrantly alive, but he also cap- fields and barns, or the tall shadows of slen- Wrong! Dumas’ painting “Hanover Swans tures a great deal of detail without his der, bare-limbed trees cast over country Five” takes this taboo by the neck, so to brushstrokes becoming the least bit fussy, roads curving down to distant meadows and speak, depicting a grouping of these living while situating the forms of the animals and hills that seem to stretch to infinity. avian arabesques on the reflective waters of a the surrounding foliage in a manner that Here as in the animal subjects for which placid lake and making the painting com- creates spatial tension, of what Hans he has been awarded numerous prizes. pelling and not at all corny by means of the Hofmann used to call “push and pull,” that Bruce A. Dumas demonstrates that there is slightly offbeat casualness of the composi- plays off splendidly against the pastoral calm no such thing as a mundane subject when it tion, its superbly balanced color harmonies, of the subject, suggesting the sexual rela- is seen with a fresh eye and interpreted by a among its other formal qualities, such as the tionship between the bull and his bovine painter of surpassing skills. precise placement of the horizon line of the harem alluded to in the title, which also opposite shore as an austere geometric foil comes across in the territorial manner in ––Ed McCormack to the extravagant organic forms of the which the male animal gazes out at the

NOV-DEC 2006/JAN 2007 GALLERY&STUDIO 13 Photographic Artists Explore Aspects of Abstraction n “Abstract Impressions” a photography in which sheer chromatic appeal over- the glassy facades of other skyscrapers were Iexhibition by members of the West Side whelmed subject matter. more ostensibly abstract. Arts Coalition, seen recently at Broadway Shirley Piniat created abstractions by Harriet G. Green employed photomon- Mall Community Center on the center focusing almost exclusively on shadows and tage as well as digital manipulation to create island at 96th Street and Broadway, it was light, making chiaroscuro or shafts of sun- images in which familiar things such as interesting to see how the various partici- light more her subject than the physical building wreckage, rocks, and even a simple pants approached the challenge of creating spaces in her pictures. Janice Wood Wetzel twig took on strange qualities that made us an abstract image with a decidedly literal achieved a synthesis of the abstract and the view them as abstract rather than specific medium. surreal in her print of a room viewed entities. And Robert Helman seemed to get Eliud Martinez solved the problem most through a fishbowl, creating a composition around the whole issue cleverly by photo- directly by photographing brilliantly colored in which a window, a red lamp, and the fish graphing things that are abstract anyway–-or pottery jars artfully positioned so that their seemed to float in the same aquatic abstrac- at least unrecognizable in context–-and cre- glazed or unglazed surfaces and grooves tion like forms in a blue Miro. Scott ating precise minimalist compositions in his created compositions that looked like Weingarten crossed over almost completely gem-like little pigment prints. abstract paintings. Co-curator David into the realm of the surreal in his digitally Photographic purists might fault some of Ruskin’s hand tinted photographs of land- manipulated large rainforest images, their the artists in this exhibition for employing scapes are painterly anyway, but by choosing intricate foliage taking on a haunting almost digital manipulation to achieve their abstract some of his most amorphous images of light hallucinatory quality reminiscent of Casper effects. But to do so is to impose restrictions on water or upside down reflections he too David Friedrich. on them that painters are not and never meets the challenge handsomely. Co-curator Jean Prytyskacz employs have been subject to, especially in an era Amee Vega created a luminous linear small format silver gelatin prints and pho- when mixed media has become all the rage. abstraction with the light streams from pass- tograms with great effectiveness, lending her At this late date, state of the art technology ing traffic and blue light pouring through black and white images of buttons, various offers photographic artists a chance to com- crystal. Lauren Feliciano employed shadow- knickknacks, and other modest objects sub- pete with the freedom that the painter has play skillfully to add mystery to abstractions tle tonal qualities in a precise abstract con- always enjoyed, in terms of image juxtaposi- created from close-up views of bicycle text. Don Sichler skirted the picturesque in tioning and just about everything else. And spokes, ropes, tools and other objects. his compelling picture of birds in an icy win- some of us say it’s about time: If all’s fair in Stephen E. Weintraub’s most abstract com- ter park but his other prints of buildings dis- love and war, why not in art? position was an image of a brilliant blue bus torted by watery reflections or mirrored in ––Marie R. Pagano Lalevga: Scoring the Ore Beneath the Painted Surface or many artists, the surface on which and meanings mysterious Another intriguing sym- Fone paints is a support to which to apply and open-ended. Thus the bol, seen in the work identi- pigment, nothing more. It plays a much viewer is free to experience fied as “VII,” is a central more significant role, however, in the work them from his or her own rectangle intersected by a of Lalevga, a painter from Canada, whose perspective and to draw single bar or stripe that work is on view at Agora Gallery, 530 West whatever conclusions divides the tall panel from 25th Street, from January 2 through 23, might arrive accordingly. top to bottom. These two with a reception on Thursday, January 4, This seems very much in joined elements, boldly laid from 6 to 8 PM. harmony with the intuitive down with a bold brush in Working in acrylic on wood, Lalevga not origins of the composi- a fleshy pinkish hue, are set only paints upon but carves and scores into tions, which are process- against a ground of deep the surface, turning the panel into a tactile oriented, with the different blue mediated by vigorously arena bearing the alternately rough and ele- panels or “plates” revealing brushed areas of yellow. By gant scars of many moods. Often several their hidden mysteries to contrast, another painting panels are in progress simultaneously, evolv- the artist gradually, over called “X” is a veritable ing over over “days, weeks, months, some- the often protracted peri- extravaganza of bold, tactile times years,” as the artist puts it, until each ods of their gestation and strokes of red blue and yel- reaches its natural conclusion. creation. low overlapping with swerv- The culmination of all this unceasing Some of the most ing rhythms akin to those of effort can be seen in the glowing examples intriguing of Lalevga’s Brice Marden. Here, too, of Lalevga’s work at Agora Gallery, which paintings are those that there is even a suggestion of run the gamut from almost minimalist aus- coalesce into more or less two tiny silhouetted figures terity of all-over, single color compositions specific, albeit abstract resembling African sculp- such as “XIX” and “IVIII,” to more chro- images, as seen in “XII,” tures at the center of the matically variegated acrylics on wood like where the central image is composition. “XI” and “XIII,” their richly scumbled sur- an almost-but-not quite However, this could be faces revealing an infinite range of primary cruciform, containing tac- purely in the eye of the and secondary colors, texturally enriched by tile yellow strokes at its beholder, for the great pleas- the various scores, scratches, and other center, and enclosed by “VII” ure of Lalevga’s paintings is “injuries” that the artist selectively inflicts on thick black, white, and red in discovering one’s own their wooden surfaces. outlines of even width. Here, the narrow meanings in the remarkable variety of forms Lalevga’s practice of affixing Roman vertical format that the artist favors further and colors that reveal themselves to the numerals to these paintings rather than titles enhances the stately quality of the image, incessant stroking and probing of this serves the purpose of keeping their origins adding to its iconic suggestiveness. immensely gifted artist. ––Marie R. Pagano

14 GALLERY&STUDIO NOV-DEC 2006/JAN 2007 At Gelabert Studios: Worlds Not So Distant After All lively three-way dia- cabs, pedestrians, and Alogue between artists a lone bicyclist con- with widely differing back- verge. grounds is presented in the With a painterly “Worlds Apart panache akin to Exhibition,” at Gelabert Fairfield Porter, Vais Studios, 255 West 86th combines realism Street, from December 5 with the principles of through 16, with a special abstraction to make preview on Tuesday, his oils on canvas December 5, from 5 to 8 come alive on two PM. levels simultaneously. In Outer Hebrides, a “Rainy Lower group of islands off the Manhattan,” for coast of Skye, Elisabeth de example, has all the Las Casas, who lives part of atmospheric charm the time in London, paints suggested in the title. the remote Scottish coast- Yet it also shows a line. While her rugged formal rigor that Ari Vais treatment of form is akin to transcends even its that in Marsden Hartley’s paintings of Maine considerable descriptive attributes. fishing villages, de Las Casas’ colors are more Whether depicting a busy street, a cruise muted and poetic, as befits this place of flow- ship leaving the harbor, or a slender blond Sam Rai ing tides, moody skies, and stormy gales. nude reclining languorously on a blue and Like “Griminish Harbour No.2,” with its white checkered sofa, Ari Vais combines independent sense of fantasy. subtly modulated blue, turquoise, and ocher vibrant color Graceful feminine figures are evoked in hues and softly blurred forms, most of de with vigor- luminous landscapes in paintings such as Las Casas’ paintings are landscapes. Figures, ous paint “Obscure” and “Heavenly Pour,” while the when they appear, are subservient to their handling in two figures in another painting inspired by surroundings. At the mercy of the elements, compositions the theme of Madonna and Child appear to they stand gazing out to sea or stoop to notable for merge mystically with the landscape. pick cockles on the beach in postures recall- their tactile In another series called “Temple,” ing Millet’s peasants. immediacy. inspired by 10th century Indian sculptures Yet a sense of the human spirit and Although of voluptuous female nudes, Sam Rai reveals human emotions haunts every winding road, trained in his ability to imbue aspects of antiquity with rock, hill, cloud, and stretch of desolate Mughal contemporary immediacy. beach in the paintings of Elisabeth de Las Miniature All three of these artists have evolved Casas, attesting to the artist’s final victory painting, the Elisabeth de Las Casas strong individual styles with which to over the land’s unforgiving beauty. Indian artist Sam Rai, now a resident of address their very different personal priori- By contrast, the oils of Ari Vais, born in Florida, has evolved a style that incorporates ties. Yet their shared concern with the finer Moscow, now living in New York, capture elements of modern Western painting. points of painting bring them closer togeth- the crowded, hectic energy of his adopted Working in watercolors in a refined tech- er than the title of this exhibition might lead city, as seen in “View Up 9th Avenue from nique suited to capturing ethereal effects, he one to expect. 33rd Street, NYC,” where trucks, yellow combines a respect for tradition with an ––Maurice Taplinger Creativity: The Artist’s Journey ELEVEN INVITED ARTISTS OF ASCA Synagogue For the Arts Gallery Space in cooperation with American Society of Contemporary Artists Near and Far Group Photography Exhibit DEC 14, ’06 - JAN 21, ’07 Co Curators: David Ruskin & Deena Weintraub Reception: Dec 14, 2006 6-8 pm January 10-January 28, 2007 Elaine Alibrandi Harriet FeBland Receptions: Saturday 1/13/07 2:30-5:30 Olivia Koopalethes Frank Mann Hedy O’Beil Sunday 1/28/07 2:30-5:30 Lisa Robbins Gerda Roze Jami Taback Adoniiah • Adee Braun • Michael Ettelson • Harriet G. Green Miriam Wills Jan Wunderman Doris Wyman Irmgard Kuhn • Jean Prytyskacz • Carolyn Reus David Ruskin • Don Sichler • Patience Sundaresan Scott Weintgarten • Deena Weintraub Gall. Hrs: Mon, Wed, & Thurs, 1-5 pm Tues 1-7pm or by appt: 212 966-7141 Dir: 3 blocks below Canal St. Broadway Mall Community Center between Broadway & Church St. #’s 1 & 9 to Franklin 96th Street and Broadway,center island, NYC stop, A,C, E, N, R, Q #6 to Canal St; #’s M1, M6 buses Gallery Hours:Wed.6-8pm,Sat./Sun.12-6pm to White St. ASCA tel: 212 759 2215 www.ascartists.org [email protected] 212-316-6024 www.wsacny.org NOV-DEC 2006/JAN 2007 GALLERY&STUDIO 15 The CLWAC: A Tenth of the Way into its Second Century omehow it always seems relevant to mention that the Catharine SLorillard Wolfe Art Club was named for the only woman among the 106 founding members of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, given the venerable club’s continued championing of excellence on the part of women in the arts. Nowhere was this more evident than in the CLWAC’s “110th Annual Open Exhibition,” seen recently at The National Arts Club, 15 Gramercy Park South. This year’s Honored Member was the sculptor Elaine Lavalle, a grouping of whose portraits and full-length figures in bronze, mar- ble and hyrdrocal displayed her deeply humanistic aesthetic. Other sculptors, as well, made especially strong contributions to the exhi- Marsha Tosk bition, ranging from the animated realism of Sylvia G. Jacobson’s bronze “Two to Tango”; to the fluent and witty organic abstraction tour de force. Other sculptors long associated with the CLWAC of Priscilla Heep’s “Her First Date,” a work in stoneware clay; to exhibited work of the quality we have come to expect of them: Jean Phyllis Rosser’s emblematic found wood wall relief “Rivers of T. Kroeber with a characteristically elongated female figure in Silence.” Vermont marble called “Loss”; Amy Bright Unfried” with “Henry Marsha Tosk also made an impression with her hydrocal wall relief at Three Months” a beatifically smiling bronze portrait head of a “Tempted,” its four panels imagining the narrative of Adam and baby”; Lee Hutt with “Young Noah,” a pensive portrait bust in Eve with sinuous grace. Janet York’s “Cavalier Vase” demonstrated hydrocal; and Gloria Spevacek, one of our finest animal sculptors, the translucent magic of acrylic sculpture with the figures of two with a smoothly flowing, dark patina’d bronze entitled “Seated frisky puppies romping within a translucent vessel. Susan J. Black Cat.” By contrast, Louise Peterson’s feline bronze “Lethal Geissler’s life-size forton figure of a bishop tippling out of a real Weapons” projected a less serene energy, arching its back and teacup, “Morning Spirits,” was a real crowd-pleasure. Alexandra extending its claws, its tail forming an “S” in the air. Martin’s “Fist: A Self Portrait,” a monumental clenched hand in Good painters were plentiful as well, in the upstairs gallery, where resin and aluminum was a powerful projection of selfhood. Yupin Shain Bard’s atmospheric oil of a “Suburban Sunset” cast a lumi- Pramotepipop’s large resin wall relief of a kneeling Asian woman nous glow, while Fran Foy’s semi-abstract watercolor “Playtime” (enigmatically titled “Peace of Me?”) was a technical and emotional captured the movement of horses on a farm with swift, angular strokes akin to those of John Marin. By contrast, Fay Moore com- bined equine and floral imagery with a coloristic lushness reminis- cent of Odilon Redon in a vibrant pastel. Emil Nolde also came to mind, on encountering Kirby Kendrick’s expressionist acrylic paint- ing “War Terrors,” with its fiery hues and frenzied brushstrokes. Theckla W. Williams created a dynamic abstraction with a closeup of meticulously painted machine parts in her oil ”Propulsion.” In “My Favorite Daughter,” Lucille Berrill Paulsen expressed the affec- tion inherent in the title with a cameo-like oil portrait of a fresh-faced teenager. Joan Lycardi employed a meticulously accomplished pen and ink technique to evoke the nostalgic mood of an antique photo- graph of three young women in 1920s fashions reclining giddily on a lawn in “Bee, Fern & Barb.” Contemporary takes on Romanticism could be seen in Adele Bloch’s blue-hued watercolor “Moonlight,” an evocation of a noctur- nal snow scene worthy of Samuel Palmer, as well as in Cary Thorp Brown’s dreamy, glowing monoprint “Sunlight on Autumn Oaks.” Adele Bloch Diverse abstract tendencies were also well represented in Leah Dunaway’s vigorous gestural mixed media painting “Open Doors”; WINTER SOLSTICE Joan Fitzgerald’s gemlike color field composition “Silent Water”; A Fifteen-Day Silent Auction and “Birds of Paradise,” a dynamic configuration of overlapping planes by Katherine Bleser. Other artists displayed a variety of December 19, 2006 – January 6, 2007 approaches to the human figure and still life, as seen in Aubrey Opening Reception: December 21, 6 – 8 PM O’Meara’s eerily lit close-up portrait “Heidi Gustafason”; Gabriela Closing Reception: January 6, 4 – 6 PM Dellosso’s full length pastel portrait of a statuesque black woman in Arlene Baker Erma Martin Yost a bridal gown; Jean Brinton-Jaecks’ oil of a contemporary young Marilyn Henrion Diana Freedman-Shea Myron Rubenstein Basha Ruth Nelson woman in a museum intently studying one of Sargent’s society por- Irving Barrett Leon Yost traits, and Doretto Miller’s meticulous realist watercolor of images Bruce Laird Lynne Friedman from Beijing juxtaposed with Chinese brushes and scroll-mounting Joy Saville Lan Phuong Nguyen patterns. Jeanne Butler Judy Zeichner Parker Nancy Staub Laughlin Jessica Fromm Also including strong works by frequently exhibited members Zarvin Swerbilov Siena Porta such as Holly Meeker-Rom, Gaile Snow Gibbs, Sharon Florin, Rebecca Cooperman Joan Zuckerberg Joyce Zeller, Jeanette Martone, and Karen Whitman, among others, Daniel Marin Sheila Hecht this exhibition made clear once again that there are many more Chuck von Schmidt Stephanie Rauschenbusch Virginia Davis Bruce Keyes gifted woman artists at work today than the few token “art stars” Pat Feeney Murrell Tina Rohrer whose names are constantly recycled in the press. And perhaps what that indicates most clearly is that now, no less than at its 530 West 25th St. New York, NY 10001 inception, The Catharine Lorillard Wolfe Art Club is an essential 212.367.7063 Tues - Sat 11 - 6pm cultural resource. www.nohogallery.com ––Jeannie McCormack 16 GALLERY&STUDIO NOV-DEC 2006/JAN 2007 Emile Azar: A Painter Whose Work is Full of Surprises mong those artists abstract elements can also By contrast, abstract elements are absent Awho make the distinc- be seen in a canvas called from the acrylic on canvas that Azar calls tion between mainstream “French Gathering,” where “Swinging Life,” which appears to be a and so-called outsider art a simplified couple whose mature outsider’s wistful meditation on the irrelevant, one of the most faces appear to merge freewheeling sexual mores of today’s youth. interesting of them is occupy the center of the For here, a vigorous-looking couple, the Emile Azar, whose work canvas, surrounded by bold young woman’s long yellow hair blowing in can be seen at Agora rhythmical strokes of blue, the breeze, her midriff bare below a green Gallery, 530 West 25th white, and yellow that read halter, strolls along while another young Street, from January 2nd as energy lines emanating man wearing a bathing suit appears to crawl through 23rd. (Reception: from the two figures. on his hands and knees like an animal. The Thursday, January 4, 6 to Similarly, in “Rendez- sky is filled with swirling forms resembling 8 PM.) vous,” another truly those in van Gogh’s “The Starry Night,” Born into a large unique composition, a and two tall trees on either side of the pass- Lebanese Christian family, small image of a couple ing couple sway in the breeze. That the ele- Azar has been painting holding hands at a table ments in the composition of “The Swinging since early childhood, and occupies the center of a Life” are so specific, yet their exact mean- his work retains a childlike composition dominated by ings or relationships remain somewhat “Swinging Life” freshness of vision. At the much larger red, blue, and obscure, is what makes this canvas so same time, however, Azar’s acrylic paintings yellow abstract forms that seem to swirl intriguing, just as the stylistic disparity on canvas possess an innate sophistication around all four sides of the canvas. between the quaintly primitive figure in the that comes across both in his color choices Figure and abstract form, however, are elaborate tutu, sandwiched between billow- and his unerring sense of composition. The more thoroughly integrated in other paint- ing stripe curtains in “Ballerine” and the combination is especially appealing in paint- ings such as “Nautilus” and “Redemption,” anatomically correct levitating female nude ings such as “Kaleidoscope 1,” where the in which the outline of the human form is in “The Flying Woman” can only produce a face and bust of a ruby-lipped blond who enveloped by a jazzy array of colorful sense of wonder in the viewer. looks as though she would look right at stripes. In the latter painting, especially, Indeed, that each painting seems to be a home on a Coney Island burlesque poster is these linear elements create an environment new adventure, subject only to its own inner enmeshed in a welter of red, white, and blue that almost suggests that the figure is en laws, is what makes the art of Emile Azar so abstract forms. uturo (but symbolically, since its proportions endlessly fascinating. Azar’s unique way of painting the figure suggest an adult human rather than an ––Peter Wiley as a discrete entity, yet merging it with embryo!). At Berkeley Gallery: Frank Mann’s Visual Music of the Spheres n his “Notations to the Oculus Series,” Frantisek Kupka, whose appear to be generated out IFrank Mann, a widely exhibited artist preference for spherical of other forms in an born in Washington D.C. and presently forms reflected their cosmic unending, circular flow. residing in New York, states that “the sub- inspiration, as these pioneers Vibrantly colored spheres ject of this group of paintings is images of abstract painting sought orbit each other and over- made of paint (not painterly images)...” to invent a new visual lan- lap, their very roundness This is an important distinction, indicat- guage with which to appre- mirroring the orb that ing the artist’s interest in optical sensation hend the unknown. Painting views them, suggesting a rather than mere tactile display. And his at that time truly could be metaphysical mating of the point is well taken, its meaning made mani- compared to interplanetary art object and the human fest in Mann’s recent solo exhibition, exploration, in that these eye, which is made all the “Paintings from the Oculus Cycle,” at The artists were venturing where “Oculus, No. 14,” 2005 more implicit in the Berkeley Gallery, Berkeley College, 3 East none before them had been. Latinate mythicness of the 43rd Street. As a postmodern painter, Frank Mann’s series name “Oculus.” Normally, the term “occulation” refers to concerns may be, to some extent, more for- However, being a quintessentially post- when one celestial body intrudes upon and mal and optical when he states that “the modern artist, and possibly less intrigued obscures the light of another, as when the image is created in relation to a purely artis- than his late nineteenth century predeces- moon moves between the earth and the tic internal model.” Yet he also admits that sors were by the notion of a “Fourth sun in a solar eclipse. In Mann’s composi- he is still engaged with “the mystery of the Dimension,” Mann toys with the sanctity of tions, however, the effect is quite opposite: experience of seeing” (if not with mysticism, the modernist picture plane, creating forms the interaction results in a chromatic height- as Kandinsky and Kupka were, in an era that shift ambiguously between the two- ening, as circular shapes created with lumi- when Theosophical beliefs were all the rage dimensionality and spatial depth. There is nous oil colors thinned to a translucent con- among the avant garde) and adds, “The also a suggestion of musicality in his exqui- sistency overlap in dynamically swirling con- sensual quality of the surface reflects a layer- site chromatic sensitivity that imbues his figurations. It also should be stated that, for ing of paint from which the forms are compositions with an undeniable spiritual all his denial of “painterly” priorities, there is derived in an automatic sense.” dimension of the most authentic kind; a velvety sensuality to his smoothly pigment- Indeed, an exploratory automatism which is to say, one that does not seem con- ed surfaces that makes them succulently would appear to be at the heart of Mann’s trived or even striven for in any conscious appealing. art, given the apparently unpremeditated sense, but results as a natural consequence Mann’s most kindred aesthetic ancestors fluidity of his technique and the rhythmic of an intensely dedicated creative process. are artists like Wassily Kandinsky and quality of his compositions, in which forms ––Ed McCormack NOV-DEC 2006/JAN 2007 GALLERY&STUDIO 17 WALLACE BERMAN: THE GREAT UNKNOWN A Bohemian Rhapsody by Ed McCormack I was planning to spend Sunday, a day when there are nor- mally not too many phone interruptions, getting started on a piece about the legendary yet still relatively obscure West Coast artist Wallace Berman, who died in an automo- bile accident in 1976. A charismatic hipster who gathered a vital community of artists and hangers-on around him in the Beat Generation enclave of Venice, California, Berman had his first and last commercial solo show at the Ferus Gallery, in Los Angeles, in 1957. After the show, which included the first issue of his influential handcrafted journal Semina, was busted by the LAPD vice squad for “lewd- ness,” Berman withdrew from the official art community, preferring to go underground and “swing in the shad- ows,” as he put it in the now-quaint jazz slang of his era. Berman had always fascinated me from afar, and since a big traveling exhibition called “SEMINA CULTURE: Wallace Berman & His Circle,” would soon be coming to The Grey Art Gallery downtown at New York University, I was looking forward to holing up at home and writing about him. But our friends Tony and Betty wouldn’t hear of it. They thought I needed to get out of my smug urban rut and see more of “America,” as I was in the habit of refer- ring to every place outside my beloved Manhattan. So they Wallace Berman Untitled (A7-Mushroom, D4-Cross), 1966 56-image showed up in Tony’s brother-in-law’s Subaru that sparkling Verifax collage, 45 1/2 x 48 in. Collection of Dan Fauci, Los Angeles Fall morning to take Jeannie and me on a long scenic drive upstate to an orchard where city folks, for a price, can have took me for one of those long-haired, bearded Vietnam the novel experience of picking their own apples. vets who look a little freaky but hold steady jobs and live in All the way across the Tappen Zee Bridge and along the suburbs. In any case, it pleased me to think I must those interminable country highways, as Jeannie pointed have looked to her like a normal American on his day off, out the beautiful colors of the turning leaves and tried in someone who does work that makes sense to people, vain to disabuse me of the notion that “if you’ve seen one rather than making a living doing something incompre- tree you’ve seen them all,” I complained that I didn’t even hensible like writing about art. I even liked the idea that like apples. If I had to be dragged away from my natural she probably assumed that the Subaru I was sitting by was habitat and out into the sticks, I bitched, I would have mine, even though I never learned to drive; never wanted much preferred being taken to one of those “book barns” to live anywhere that might make driving necessary. I had read about. For some reason, such cases of mistaken identity, when- But my wife just made her usual jokes about how I was ever they have occurred, have always pleased me, just as such a creature of concrete as to make even Woody Allen I’ve always taken vicarious pleasure in imagining what it seem like Nature Boy, they all laughed, and after what might be like to live the kind of conventional life I have seemed like an eternity or two, we arrived at a place called been running away from for as long as I can remember, Masker’s Orchard in some godforsaken town called even though I know in my bones that I would not be able Warwick, New York. to tolerate such a life for even a little while. * * * The simple truth of the matter is that I can hardly As you drive in, blond teenage bumpkins (the further remember ever having wanted to be a normal American. one gets from the five boroughs the blonder everyone At least since high school, all I’ve ever wanted to be is a seems to become, whether they actually have yellow hair or bohemian, by which of course I do not mean a native of not) pass handfuls of plastic bags in through the car win- the region of Czechoslovakia known by that name, but a dows. You fill them, and after inspecting the car like narcs citizen of a certain state of mind, philosophy, life-style–– for contraband apples as you drive out, they collect $16 whatever you want to call it––that enables one to pursue per filled bag before letting you leave the property. one's creative obsessions without undue worry over mate- “Apples make people happy,” Betty said, after some lit- rial rewards or what the neighbors might think. tle Asian kids sitting in the back of a pickup truck waved at So while I enjoyed impersonating a mensch and even us as we followed the map printed on the back of the bags got enough into the spirit of things as the day wore on to from “Cider Lane” to “Strudel Road.” pick a few apples, my mind kept wandering back to the life And later, I almost had to agree, at least to myself, as I and art of Wallace Berman, an inveterate beatnik like me... sat in a folding chair beside the car, after the others had * * * gone off merrily with their bags, watching entire families While it would be going too far to say that only bad art swarm the trees in a veritable apple frenzy. One elderly can do justice to a beautiful scene (an argument that art African-American lady working alone nearby caught my history would easily refute), it does seem safe to say that eye and grinned, as if to say, “This is my own little tree! All good art is generally too self-conscious, too self-absorbed, these beautiful apples belong to me!” to fall in love with an atmosphere. Thus the Then another woman, driving by in her car, saw me sit- “Noctambulists,” a school of painters in Paris who sought ting there in my broad-brimmed straw hat like Farmer to capture “the tones of night” are long forgotten, while Brown and flashed me a big neighborly smile. Maybe she their contemporaries, the Cubists, live on and on. 18 GALLERY&STUDIO NOV-DEC 2006/JAN 2007 Still, questions of artistic quality and orig- popular enough among the guys who gath- film, released the same year. inality aside, the very name Noctambulists ered around me for that group photo like In fact, the book’s author, Lawrence exudes far greater mystery. And though I’m Leo Gorcey’s “Dead End Kids.” Still, look- Lipton, was a conflicted former screenwriter, aware of mixing periods here, it pleases me ing at my selfconscious preadolescent self, publicist, journalist, and poet-manque who to picture them, woozy on absinthe, staring glowering darkly among gladly grinning once confessed ruefully, “I always looked entranced at the halos around the gas-lights normal boys, I can see that the malady of like everything I was not, and worse: I was in van Gogh’s “Night Cafe,” forever arrest- art was already setting me apart, making me capable of doing the very thing I had the ed by a beautifully futile bohemian ill at ease among my dead end peers. most contempt for––and doing it well!” epiphany. Savvy hack that he was, Lipton knew that In order to succeed as a bohemian, one most readers (myself admittedly among must fail spectacularly, like Joseph Delaney, them at that time) would rather be enter- one of the first adult artists I knew in the tained by “case histories” of composite char- mid 1950s, as a twelve year old from the acters with colorful pseudonyms like “Itchy Lower East Side, haunting Greenwich Gelden” and “Angel Dan Davies” than read Village, enamored of failure’s mystique––or about actual members of the Southern at least a species of failure more colorful California art and poetry community like than that which I saw all around me in my Wallace Berman and Stuart Perkoff (who neighborhood and family. The less success- make cameo appearances in the book only ful brother of the well-known black painter to lend the ring of truth to Lipton’s fiction- Beauford Delaney, Joe Delaney was a shab- alized account of a suddenly popular social bily elegant gentleman who looked like a phenomenon). down-at-the-heels Duke Ellington and * * * Being the kind of kid who had always painted a little like Reginald Marsh. Like By the late fifties, sitting in dank cellars preferred Captain Marvel to Superman, Marsh, he was a fine draftsman who could like The Gaslight, on MacDougal Street, or Lash LaRue to Roy Rogers, the slightly impart a classical quality to bustling urban the Cock ‘n’ Bull, on Bleecker, we aspiring outre and offbeat to the popular, Venice scenes. But his oils of folk singers in bohemians who swarmed the Village on (later to give us Jim Morrison, another too- Washington Square Park and soapbox ora- weekends were already grumbling into our late beatnik of my generation who parlayed tors in Union Square were so pale and espressos about “the tourists,” as though histrionic coffeehouse doggerel, set to pon- starved for pigments he could not afford they were squares from Nebraska or Ohio, derous rock music, into a notorious career that the bare bones of the preliminary draw- rather than high school kids from the five as lead singer of The Doors) appealed more ing invariably showed through the thin skin boroughs––which is to say, ourselves. to the teenage romantic in me than did the of the paint like elbows poking through a So naturally I was intrigued, flipping better known west coast Beat scene in San faded sweater. through a brand new book called The Holy Francisco. Perhaps it was Delaney’s poverty, his Barbarians in the 8th Street Bookshop one But when I confessed as much to Allen inability to buy proper art materials, that afternoon in 1959, to come upon an atmos- Ginsberg many years later, as we sat in his kept him in The Washington Square pheric photograph of shadowy figures hud- kitchen on East 12th Street sipping tea, he Outdoor Art Show, among the purveyors of dled in a steamy cafe window with a caption acted as if I had committed blasphemy and kitsch seascapes on black velvet, year after calling it “a real Beat Generation coffee- launched into a tirade about phony, sandal- year, while other serious artists like Franz house that tourists haven’t discovered yet.” wearing Maynard G. Krebs-type “bedbug Kline and Jackson Pollock, who had once The lettering on the window read beatniks” who gave the whole scene a bad hung their early work briefly on the building “Venice West Cafe Expresso,” but no “sic” name that struck me as hilariously ironic facades and fences around the park, had seemed necessary, since everyone, even in coming from the Beat Generation’s most moved on to fortune and fame in galleries the Village, pronounced espresso with the outrageous publicist. and museums. “X” anyway––and, obviously, expression was Allen’s collected poems had just come Recently, seeing one of Delaney’s street what the Beat scene in Venice, California, out and I’d spent several hours following scenes reproduced in a catalog put out by was all about, man! him from one appointment to another––or ACA Galleries, I hoped it portended some “Venice West,” the caption of the next as he put it when he inscribed a copy of the belated recognition for this kindly gentleman photograph (of a funky beachside boardwalk book to me: “a day in both our Eternities who had been something of a mentor to me. and the tall-columned facade of a derelict from Radio to Gallery to Harper publisher Inspired by his example and encouragement, resort) rhapsodized, “slum by the sea...old to Lawyer to Home Office.” Sadly, he I’d defy the monitors of the Outdoor Art Venice imitated in pipe and plaster, peeling seemed more like a harried, cranky business- Show, who’d frequently roust me for being now, where a disaffiliated, dedicated poverty man than the famous free spirit of yore. I unregistered and underage, and hang my is a way of life in the pads of the holy bar- couldn’t help thinking that maybe his suc- juvenile ink drawings and watercolors of jazz barians...” cess was making him feel like he’d failed as a musicians on the same fence outside Judson Just as atmospheric, an interior shot of bohemian. Memorial Church where the legendary Venice West Cafe Expresso, looking like the “But Allen, as a kid all that bedbug beat- bohemian poet Maxwell Bodenheim once beatnik dive in Roger Corman’s lurid nik stuff was exactly what fascinated me posted and peddled his poem manuscripts B-movie, “A Bucket of Blood,” showed about the Venice scene,” I explained, “par- for the price of a drink. bearded hipsters and their cool-looking ticularly as it was depicted in Lipton’s book. A snapshot from around that time shows chicks digging a jazz group playing in front “That book was such a potboiler! me seated in my folding chair in front of of a wall scrawled with the words “ ‘ART IS Kerouac hated that book!” Allen scoffed, as that fence, surrounded by a group of kids LOVE IS GOD’––WALLY BERMAN.” if that settled it. from the Lower East Side who had come to Although that slogan caught my atten- Then he stood, put on a jacket, visit me in the Village when those two tion, years before the drug culture made smoothed it over his little pot belly, and neighborhoods, while within walking dis- such Oh Wow Insights commonplace, there said, “How do you like my new black tance, were still worlds apart. wasn’t much to be learned about Berman in leather jacket? I’ve always wanted one, but I may have been a mediocre stickball The Holy Barbarians, which turned out to could never afford it before now. Every player but my ability to draw a convincing be a commercial exploitation of the Beat beatnik should have a black leather jacket, likeness of Elvis or a naked girl made me Generation almost as corny as Corman’s don’t you think?” NOV-DEC 2006/JAN 2007 GALLERY&STUDIO 19 * * * also including–– if not just “anyone” who It seems more than apt that “Semina thought they could be artists–– enough Culture,” which originated at the Santa marginally interesting work by lesser known Monica Museum of Art in 2005, before local characters to provide us with a vivid traveling to three other cities, and opens on picture of a subculture within a subculture. January 16 at Grey Art Gallery, 100 To the latter category belong people like Washington Square East, will be seen in the the spooky satanist Marjorie Cameron Village, where the ghosts of old bohemians Parsons Kimmel. A poet, painter and occult like Joe Gould, Maxwell Bodenheim, and practitioner, Cameron, as she preferred to Edna Vincent Millay still haunt the streets, be known, advocated the sexual magick of even as New York University, the very insti- Aleister Crowley and, working in a candlelit tution presenting the exhibition, does every- studio, painted fantastic, wraith-like female thing in its power to disrupt the human figures in a style whose surreal eroticism scale of the surrounding architecture and owes something to Leonor Fini. (It was a turn traditionally funky Washington Square drawing by Cameron of a couple making Park into its own sterile campus plaza. love doggy-style, included among the Wisely, Michael Duncan and Kristine Semina material in Berman’s exhibition at McKenna, the co-curators of the exhibition, Ferus Gallery, that raised the ire of the make the personalities and communal myths LAPD.) of Berman and his circle every bit as impor- Another arresting personality, although tant as the art they produced, in this com- perhaps more of a dabbler in drawing and prehensive survey of paintings, drawings, Wallace Berman and various contributors Semina writing than an artist in any legitimate sense, sculptures, writings, photographs, and arti- (editions 1–9), 1955–64 Mixed media limited edition was DiDi Morrill, a drug addict and former facts by more than fifty artists and poets artist’s publication, dimensions variable Special girlfriend of the jazz saxophonist Gerry associated with Semina. Collections and Archives, Utah State University Mulligan, who began hanging around the Library, Gift of the Marie Eccles The only glaring omission is Jay De Feo’s Beat scene as a teenager. Morrill’s poem- legendary 2300 pound tactile albatross “professionalism” of the type seen in the manifesto, Dido, reads like a criminal “The Rose,” a huge abstract composition New York art world–– where a poet such as resume (“Thief, fraud, con––educated by that the artist piled white oil paint onto for Frank O’Hara might collaborate with a masters ––on the street––travel––prison.... seven years, giving herself lead poisoning in painter like Larry Rivers on a print or book Adept with weapons, with no fear of vio- the process. Touted wistfully in the exhibi- project, but their disciplines would rarely lence....”), suggesting the scene’s infatuation tion catalog as “the visual masterwork of the overlap––were not highly prized in Venice with a certain outlaw glamour and existen- Beat era,” its absence leaves a hole that not West. Visual artists frequently wrote poems tial danger akin to the dark, Mansonoid flip- even the inclusion of a curious, paint- and poets often drew, painted in watercol- side of Flower Power. encrusted object entitled “Footstool ors, or made collages in their notebooks. Genuinely gifted artists also fell victim to (Used during the painting of the Rose, Many of the works in this show are the drug scene in Venice. One was Ben 1958-1965)” can fill. Last seen in The hybrids of the two forms dashed off in emu- Talbot, whose satirical collages and zany Whitney Museum’s 1996 survey “Beat lation of William Blake’s illuminated manu- mixed media assemblages, such as “Shrine Culture and the New America,” the paint- scripts. Encouraged by each others’ work, of the Great American Weaner,” were in a ing is just too cumbersome and fragile to visual artists like Berman and George league with those of Ed Kienholz. Talbot travel. Yet it haunts this exhibition in absen- Herms and poets like Diane DiPrima and participated in group exhibitions at Los tia, not because this overladen and Robert Duncan all displayed a freewheeling Angeles’ prestigious Dwan Gallery and had overblown abstract starburst composition artistic ambidextrousness. For others, the a solo show at the Pasadena Art Museum in really is the masterwork that the catalog time and place itself was the catalyst for cre- 1961. But his alcohol and drug abuse accel- hyperbole claims––far from it––but because ativity. erated over the next decade, after his once it so perfectly exemplifies heroic bohemian As John Arthur Maynard points out in supportive wife left him, and he became yet failure. his book Venice West: The Beat Generation another drug casualty in 1974. In fact,“The Rose” is a monolithic anom- in Southern California, “A few people, like Following Berman’s lead, many who aly; for while other Los Angeles painters, Wally Berman, were already artists before drifted into his orbit took up collage and such as John Altoon, Joan Brown, Wally they settled in Venice, but most took up photomontage as the most expedient medi- Hedrick, and Arthur Richer created relative- painting or drawing or writing poetry ums for direct, unschooled expression. Their ly large canvases, most of the artists in because it was what their friends were overwrought efforts often resemble nothing Berman’s immediate circle tended more doing, and because they believed in the cre- so much as pages in the “trip books” in toward intimism than gargantuan painterly ative act as an end in itself....Anyone could which itinerant hippies would record their productions. be an artist, they told each other; it was a drug experiences with intricate doodles and The favored mediums were drawing and matter of belief, not talent or preparation.” scrawled, disjointed texts. collage. That the occasional larger work was Kristene McKenna puts the best possible Influenced by George Herms, one of the usually assemblage, created with found spin on this democratic attitude in the cata- better known artists in this show, the col- materials, suggests that poverty, as much as log: “It was a world where art and poetry lages of Bobby Driscoll, a former child actor a taste for the funky, could have been a were created to be given as gifts and as an who was washed up in films by the age of determining factor for some. However, a expression of love, rather than as a means to sixteen and dead of a drug overdose by thir- shared intimist sensibility fostered by a close a career, and there was a respect accorded to ty, belong to this genre. So do Stuart relationship between art and literature not poverty that’s almost unimaginable today.” Perkoff’s compositions made up of images unlike that of the Dada movement seems To their credit, the curators sifted assidu- clipped from 1950s girly magazines and more to the point. And that small works are ously through the ruins of this bohemian superhero comic books, interspersed with portable and can be created in sketchbooks utopia, selecting works by artists such as cryptic snippets of newspaper text, although in the kind of cafes where bohemians hang Joan Brown, Bruce Connor, John Altoon, Perkoff was a local poet of some note and out probably played a part as well. and others who went on to have impressive made it into Donald Allen’s landmark For the most part, specialization and careers despite their respect for poverty; but anthology “The New American Poetry.” 20 GALLERY&STUDIO NOV-DEC 2006/JAN 2007 Other artists in Berman’s circle, however, antithesis of hip taste! The resemblance to missioned his portraits, Berman multiplied display a raw graphic wit that predates by the Keane waifs seems ironically underlined symbols drawn from the Kabbalah decades decades the comicbook-derived drawings of by the title Berman gave to this picture: before Judaic mysticism became trendy the contemporary Los Angeles artist “Wife.” among movie stars and pop tarts like Richard Pettibon, who graduated from In other photographs by her husband, Madonna. punk album covers and fanzine illustrations Shirley Berman is illuminated by a shaft of The compositions for which Berman is to major museum recognition. The poet sunlight that transforms her into a Botticelli best known repeat several identical Verifax painter Aya Tarlow, for example, created jazz angel as she stands in front of a images of a hand-held transistor radio within drawings in her “Beat Scrapbook” that junkshop window with a hocked saxophone the squares of a grid. Within the body of employ linear elements akin to David Stone hovering above her head, or reclines nude, each radio is a different image appropriated Martin’s classic covers for fifties jazz albums. elongated as a Modigliani, on a small boat from the mass media or drawn from the In the late sixties, Tarlow also made under- with the ankh symbol on its bow, embody- artist’s own archives. ground films with cameo appearances by ing the male fantasy of a beatnik dream Michael Duncan sees these compositions musicians such as Donovan and Ringo Starr chick. as “a resonant metaphor for Berman’s which were forbearers of the video collabo- Other Venice artists, as well, were broader role as a transmitter of images and rations between visual artists and punk-rock inspired by Shirley Berman’s cool, intelligent ideas that were metaphorically ‘in the air.’ ” musicians that took place in the East Village beauty. Photographer and video pioneer These and other images of a nude Shirley in the 1980s. Charles Brittin caught her with her electric Berman, marijuana plants, snakes, and cou- It should come as no surprise that the pixie-cut (possibly a model for the frightwig ples in erotic embrace, were often overlaid actor Dennis Hopper, who has always been of the young Bob Dylan) flared up like tips with Aleph, the first letter of the Hebrew something of a hipster, hanging out with of flame, as she lent the simple act of pur- alphabet, regarded by Kabbalists as “the James Dean in the ‘fifties and at Andy chasing a jelly apple from a stand on the spiritual root of all other letters.” Warhol’s Factory in the ‘sixties, also made Ocean Park Pier the enigmatic grace of a That the Aleph became Berman’s most the scene in Venice. But who would have mannerist allegory. Another local photogra- prominent symbol––painted or photocopied guessed that Billy Gray, best remembered as pher, Edmund Teske, created a memorable on paper stained to look like papyrus, walls, Bud, the clean-cut teenage son on TV sit- print by superimposing a mysterious image rocks, and even motorcycle helmets––could com Father Knows Best, had been a closet of Shirley with closed eyes over a shadowy be dismissed as an affectation not unlike the bedbug beatnik? double exposure of workmen demolishing later hippie infatuation with the trappings of After meeting Wallace Berman and his old grammar school, while artist’s model Eastern mysticism. But growing up in the George Herms in 1961, Gray started work- and collageist Patricia Jordan merged her Fairfax district (as close as L.A. came in the ing in stained glass, and when a pot bust a own photograph of Shirley Berman’s regal postwar years to having a Jewish ghetto like year later ended his Hollywood career, was profile with the Byzantine icons, Pre- the Lower East Side, with Hebrew lettering free to devote himself to speedway motorcy- Raphaelite nudes, and Egyptian goddesses on shop windows) had to imbue such sym- cle racing and creating artsy tchotkes such as in a collage scroll called “Golden Damsels bols with deeper meaning for Berman–– a “Untitled medallion (cross), Leaded stained Descending from the Clouds.” sensitive high school dropout, then still glass, 1962.” While she bore a more superficial resem- making ink drawings of jazz musicians that Other Hollywood actors found their way blance to the later Warhol super star called now strike me as remarkably similar to my to Berman’s circle, less as slummers, it Viva, Shirley Berman was on the level of own early efforts to delineate the hipster would seem, than as refugees from Edie Sedgewick, the most charismatic beau- mystique. Tinseltown superficiality. Unlike some of the ty ever to emerge from the Factory, as the Poet David Meltzer, a frequent contribu- dabblers, Dean Stockwell, who starred in physical embodiment of an era. But unlike tor to Semina, suggests that, in Berman’s Compulsion and Russel Tamblyn, of West the starcrossed Edie, who succumbed to Verifax collages, “the overwhelming banality Side Story fame, both became committed drugs and a too-much-too-soon lifestyle in of media imagery is held at bay” by the artists, working in a similar vein of surreal the limelight, Shirley comes across as a Kabbalistic power of this letter. And Stephen photomontage. Stockwell continues to domestic madonna (particularly in her hus- Fredman states just as credibly that the exhibit his own photomontages under the band's many photographs of her with their “obsessions of Berman’s life–– his family, his name of Robert Dean Stockwell, and young son Tosh), serenely immune to the friends, his devotion to jazz, his love of sex- Tamblyn says, “The death of my own father pitfalls of the surrounding scene. Yet, even ual display, his outrage at society as death- didn’t affect me as much as Wallace’s death without a Warholian media glare to enhance affirming––are all brought under the sway did.” her aura, she had an innate ability to impart of the sacralizing function of Aleph.” * * * a fashion model elegance to the thriftshop Fredman does not seem to notice, how- That it is sometimes difficult to distin- castoffs with which every bohemian artist’s ever, how this “Sacralizing” can take a more guish the art from the ephemera in this wife was obliged to make do. negative turn when aspects of drug addic- exhibition is not necessarily a drawback. * * * tion are naively equated with religious ritual, Often, Berman himself didn’t seem to make Style-sponge that he was, Warhol may as in two photos by Berman in Semina 2, this distinction; yet, even his most casual have picked up some pointers for his showing artist Robert Alexander shooting photographs of his wife Shirley, which Factory entourage when he came to Los heroin, the tie around his forearm suggest- appear all throughout the exhibition, can Angeles for his 1963 show at Ferus Gallery ing the “tefillin” that orthodox Jewish men hardly be called artless. and met Berman and his circle. Certainly wrap around their forearms for morning Shirley Berman was obviously her hus- the big painting of electric chairs that Andy prayers, one of Berman’s Aleph pieces visible band’s muse. A slender beauty with a great silkscreened the same year was influenced by over his shoulder. bone structure and huge, kohl-encircled rac- the altered still of Barbara Stanwyck * * * coon eyes, she appears able to assume a strapped into an electric chair, from the film After his obscenity bust, while continuing multitude of roles. For the cover of Semina “I Want to Live” that Berman ran on the to work on the Verifax collages for which he 4, she is posed in close-up wearing a Little cover of Semina 7 two years earlier. would eventually be best known, Berman Girl Lost expression, suggesting a hipster Both artists employed grids of images, concentrated much of his energy on parody of 1950s kitschmeister couple Walter Warhol’s silkscreened, Berman’s Verifaxed. Semina, producing nine issues between and Margaret Keane’s enormously popular But while Warhol repeated likenesses of 1955 and 1964. Laboriously printed on a paintings of big-eyed urchins–– the very celebrities and the society types who com- handpress in editions of only a few hundred, NOV-DEC 2006/JAN 2007 GALLERY&STUDIO 21 its pages of poems and artworks stuffed into “New Bohemians”), few are able to experi- individually delineated. When he produced a envelopes unbound, Semina was closer to ment or embrace poverty as freely as the red pencil from somewhere beneath the what we now call an artist’s book (albeit in laid-back Beats of Berman’s time. Still, blankets and began to inscribe a symbol serial form) than a traditional literary jour- “Semina Culture” is an exhibition to be resembling the “chops,” or seals, with which nal. Indeed, that Stuart Perkoff, a beatnik savored; for it presents a spirited counter- Asian artists sign their work, I knew that the coffeehouse bard at best for all his good weight to the forces of fashion, finance, and picture was finished and asked him if I could luck in getting into the Allen anthology, is real estate that hold the art world hostage buy it. When he nodded and I asked “How cited in the exhibition catalog as “the most today. much?”, he held up both of his hands, accomplished poet associated with the Epilogue: One Arm Drawing, opening and closing his fingers twice. I gave ‘Venice West’ group” does not say much for One Writer Clapping him a twenty and he rolled the drawing up, the native writing talent that Berman had to We came to own the picture on the wall put a rubber band around it, and handed it draw upon. However, by soliciting contribu- opposite our bed, where I am writing this, up to me. Then he disappeared back into tions from San Francisco poets like Diane because one freezing winter night a few his bundle of blankets like a turtle with- DiPrima, Michael McClure, and Robert years ago, as I escorted Jeannie home from drawing into its shell, and we knew it was Duncan, as well as world class bohemians a class she was taking at N.Y.U., we saw an time for us to go. like the Scottish writer Alexander Trocchi arm sticking out of a pile of old blankets on I am looking at the picture now and mar- (who lived in Venice briefly), and augment- the sidewalk outside the Grey Art Gallery. veling, as I always do, at the expression in ing them with translationsof classic French The pile of blankets was surrounded by one the owl’s eyes. They are the first thing you texts by Baudelaire, Cocteau, and Artaud, of those fortresses of shabby belongings that notice, but not in the way you notice the Berman managed to give Semina a rich mix the homeless are given to constructing big, insipid eyes of the waifs in those Keane of literary content, bolstered visually by his around themselves—in this case a shopping kitsch paintings or the creepy eyes on those own work and that of fellow artists like John cart filled with many rolls of paper most plastic busts of Christ that seem to follow Altoon and Bruce Connor, among many prominent among them. you around the room. My owl’s eyes are others. As we came closer we could see that the startlingly soulful, as though the artist had These artists are now acknowledged as hand at the end of the arm was holding a put something of his own suffering into forerunners of hippie psychedelic art, funk pencil and putting the finishing touches to them. Of course, people in my line of work and junk sculpture, new wave painting, graf- an intricately detailed drawing of an owl on are not supposed to talk like this: as if such a fiti, punk, and various neo-dada tendencies a large sheet of paper spread out on the mystical transference were possible. We’re that would emerge in the 1960s, ‘70s and pavement. The owl was perched on a supposed to know better—or at least pre- ‘80s. Certainly Semina, with its loose-leaf gnarled, Asian-looking bough, and as I tend that we do. One could even think that format, was a precursor of “mail art” ––those noticed this I also noticed that the artist, I’m projecting this haunting quality into the odd scraps of images and text that Ray from what I could see of his face under the picture because of what I know about the Johnson sent us in the mid sixties, which we shadowy layers of blankets in which he was artist (who I look for every time I’m around wish we’d saved rather than glanced at and almost entirely cocooned, also appeared N.Y.U., by the way, but have never seen tossed in the trash. And with their privileg- Asian. In fact, with his stringy white hair, again); but I don’t think so. I think that ing of visionary expression over formal inno- sparse beard, and lined, weather-beaten face, homeless literati hermit captured something vation, many in Berman's circle can now be he looked like one those literati artists who extraordinary in the picture on my seen as progenitors of postmodernism. once lived as hermits amid the craggy wall––something you don’t see in a lot of Directly or indirectly, their influence still fil- mountain peaks of ancient China and Japan the art hanging in galleries these days. ters down to inspire young artist-hipsters (most of whom, in today’s Manhattan hous- It’s beyond bohemian; it’s art for art’s struggling to create bohemian utopias of ing market, would be homeless, too). sake. And I suspect that Wallace Berman their own. He seemed oblivious to us as he went would have dug it, too. Given the present cultural climate, how- about his work, which he must have been at ever (in which a recent issue of The New for some time before we arrived, judging * * * York Times Magazine actually saw fit to from the detailed color pencil composition, headline a feature article about trendy with a crescent moon hanging in the sky downtown D.J.’s and party promoters above the owl’s bough and every feather

HARRI ET FeBLAND AT N.A.W.A. “Mind & Heart” Just Sculpture A fine arts exhibit Co-curators: Pamela Flores and Anne Rudder National Association of Women Artists December 20, 2006-January 7, 2007 Fifth Avenue Gallery 80 Fifth Avenue (1408) Exhibitors: at 14th Street and Fifth Avenue Pamela Flores • Pud Houstoun New York, N.Y. 10003 Lenoira Naune • Pauline Roony Anne Rudder (et al) DEC 2, 2006 - JAN 3, 2007 Gall hrs: Mon-Fri, 11-5 pm Closed Sat., Sun., Broadway Mall Community Center Christmas, Mon. Dec 25, Mon. Jan 1 96th Street and Broadway,center island, NYC Tel: 212 675-1616 Gallery Hours:Wed.6-8pm,Sat./Sun.12-6pm [email protected] 212-316-6024 www.wsacny.org 22 GALLERY&STUDIO NOV-DEC 2006/JAN 2007 Exploring “Intimate Spaces” at Carrozzini von Buhler Gallery

n Alberto Bovio’s black and white pho- Itograph “Personal Horizons,” an old man sits alone on a bench overlooking a body of water, his feet resting on the rail- ing as he reads a newspaper. The sky is overcast and the empty promenade around him is slick with rain. Yet his soli- tude is complete; he appears perfectly content. There is no sign that he envies the inhabitants of the grand-looking buildings a few yards away their private comforts. He has made his own intimate space in public. “Intimate Spaces” is the name and theme of artist/curator Stefania Carrozzini’s latest exhibition, featuring several widely exhibited Italian artists, organized by D’Ars International Exhibition Projects, based in Milan, Italy. Exploring what Carrozzini refers to as “the most important and precious things we have,” the show can be seen at the Carrozzini von Buhler Gallery (CVB), 407 West 13th Street from November 7 through 30. Following her recent practice of con- tributing a work of her own, which is also Photo by Stefania Carrozzini used for the catalog cover, to each of her exhibitions, Carrozzini jump-starts the lic mask of fame. oristic entity so successfully as to eliminate theme with an intriguing photo of yet To Adalgisa Romano, however, the any space between them, intimate or oth- another solitary soul achieving privacy in whole question of intimacy or its opposite erwise. public, as he snoozes in a chair in a gar- takes a more metaphysical direction in a In Gabriella Ceccherini’s equally bold ishly lit, mall-like space suggesting a hall digital print called “IN/S,” in which a Art Brut portrait, a huge, perplexed-look- of mirrors or one of Escher’s interminable mysterious verdant bubble, floating ing head, its misplaced features squeezed mazes. against a clear blue sky, embodies what in swirls straight from the tube, its bloat- Enza Santoro’s untitled color photo- the artist refers to as “my obsession for ed contours spreading over the canvas like graph printed on forex puts a different INNER / EXTERIOR, CONTENTS / a tactile, topographical map of an island, spin on the show’s theme. Yet no one can CONTAINER.” conveys the notion that an intimate space deny that a close-up of the softly shad- Paolo Cavinato’s sideline as a stage can also be a place of isolation, as owed cleft of a peachy pair of buttocks, designer for theatrical productions in opposed to comfort. Yet an opposite gracefully encircled by vines of delicate Rome and Paris has obviously influenced mood comes across in an abstract painting pink flowers, constitutes an especially inti- his video and installation art, here exem- by Rosa Prizzi, where rhythmically super- mate space. Similarly, but somewhat more plified by an installation called “Tears,” in imposed shapes and harmonious blue ambiguously, an abstract mixed media which glass, metal, and bright circuit hues, interspersed with bursts of red, con- sculpture by Giampaolo Osele called lighting are employed to suggest an inti- vey the sense of a sanctuary. Then there is “Dream of an African Night” has its own mate enclosure as austere as a monk’s cell Pino Chimenti, whose hard-edge painting erotic resonance, suggesting a tribal vagi- in a cloister. in acrylic on wood depicts an array of fan- nal fetish object created with natural The naked human body, that most inti- ciful abstract and figurative forms as intri- materials that might also be used to con- mate of all spaces, is again employed by cate and meticulous as those of Oyvind struct a hut. Marcello Diotallevi, a visual poet and mail Fahlstrom or Trevor Winkfield, the inti- The notion that intimate spaces can artist, who superimposes closely-spaced mate space in this case being the mysteri- sometimes confine more than they shelter typewriting on a xeroxed photo-image of ous mental place from which the artist comes across in Giuliana Malanca’s mixed an inverted female torso in “Letters from draws such a wealth of personal signs and media painting, “City,” where wire mesh Kythera,” implying both the physical and symbols. stretched over a nocturnal expanse atmos- epistolary intimacy of a love affair. Indeed, in her catalog introduction, pherically evoked in oil on canvas creates Of all artists, perhaps painters allow Stefania Carrozzini makes clear that the an ominous enclosure suggesting a deten- themselves the most leeway in interpret- intention of this exhibition is to explore tion pen. By contrast, Marco Pucci’s 3-D ing themes such as that of this exhibition, not only physical spaces but “mental photo installation, featuring the image of given the freedom of their medium and spaces, spiritual spaces, the space of our a young man in a doorway extending a their need to make make emotions and minds,” in order to reflect upon “the bor- restraining hand, while a mask-like face ideas palpable in pigment, rather than der between visible and invisible, public projects into the viewer’s space from its expressing them intellectually. Thus the and private sphere.” The artists she has frame, seems to signify the game of inva- faux primitive figure painter known simply chosen do this and more in ways that not sion and evasion played between celebri- Marrius gives us an oil on canvas called even a curator as imaginative and savvy as ties and the paparazzi who intrude upon “The Hug,” in which the bodies of a cou- Carrozzini could have anticipated. their intimate spaces to penetrate the pub- ple are united as a single formal and col- ––Ed McCormack NOV-DEC 2006/JAN 2007 GALLERY&STUDIO 23 Mauricio Toulumsis: Secular Icons of a Painter’s Spiritual Search idely exhibited in both Mexico and below the shoulders into forms that resem- poreal and spiritual human.” Wthe United States , Mauricio ble the roots of trees, as seen in “Woman One of the most complex of Mauricio Toulumsis has given himself a unique artis- Eclipsed,” or that culminate in Baroque Toulumsis’ recent acrylics on canvas is the tic project: to explore his belief in eternal life arabesques like the figures in “Flesh, Soul large composition entitled “The Revelation in the medium of painting. The female, seen & Spirit.” Despite their unusual attributes, of Women’s Feelings.” In this work, which as “the central figure in the process of life, however, we experience these female per- resembles a kind of secular contemporary as the stewardess of birth and creation,” is sonages as palpable presences in Toulumsis’ cousin of the Romanesque icon, the figures the primary protagonist of Toulumsis’ paint- paintings––as specific of several mysterious ings, featured in “Masters of the portraits of imaginary woman, submerged Imagination: The Latin American Fine Art beings rather, than below the shoulders in a Exhibition,” at Agora Gallery, Chelsea, 530 generalized depictions ring of clouds from West 25th Street, in Chelsea, from October of anthropomorphic which three upraised 21 to November 10. (Reception: Thursday, symbols or archetypes. hands also protrude as October 26, from 6 to 8 PM.) In the painting though to hail them, are Working in acrylic on canvas, Toulumsis called “Soul and Spirit interspersed with seven depicts his female figures in a fantastic realist Creations,” for exam- representations of the style comparable to the imaginatively dis- ple, we encounter three cross. While one would torted surrealism of Victor Brauner. Peculiar such feminine beings in not attempt to analyze to Toulumsis’ figures, however, are distinc- one of the artist’s most “Soul & Spirit Creations” this painting’s specific tive forms that project from their heads like chromatically vibrant meaning, it projects a tree-branches, antlers or antennae. These canvases, while in “Later, We Will Follow powerful sense of something esoteric, just seem to be attributes of the spirit-world that You,” four figures are clustered together beyond understanding. Toulumsis’ figures appear to inhabit and harmoniously, the central one having the Indeed, one could spend many hours project a sense of supernatural energies that aforementioned root-like configurations visi- studying the paintings of Mauricio evade rational understanding. One can only ble below the shoulders. In these, as in Toulumsis, digesting their symbols, and imagine that Toulumsis has arrived at some other paintings by Toulumsis, there is a attempting to decipher their esoteric mean- intuitive understanding of how these spirit strong sense of spiritual inquiry, in keeping ings. However, it seems sufficient to take beings would appear, which he makes sur- with the note in the artist’s biography that them at face value, as mysterious and ulti- prisingly convincing by virtue of his artistic he has been involved for over three decades mately unknowable manifestations of one skill and conviction. in a process of self exploration, as well as a man’s search for truth transformed into Other anatomical anomalies in “philosophical search for meaning in life, objects of considerable aesthetic appeal. Toulumsis’ paintings are figures that morph meaning in death, and truths about the cor- ––Peter Wiley Emerging Artists Are Featured in West Side Showcase “ ew Contemporary Art,” curated by Wonder, his dark glasses gleaming, that con- gold mica and acrylic on canvas gave her NErica Mapp and Nichelle Ryan for trasted handsomely with an equally accom- pieces a kind of over-the-top Pop pizzazz the West Side Arts Coalition and seen plished portrait of a little girl in a purple that made them sensually seductive. recently at Broadway Mall Community dress squirming restlessly, as children will, Shirley Piniat never fails to surprise us Center, on the center island at Broadway when asked to pose. Both works were with the variety of lively compositions she and 96th Street, was a refreshingly unpre- brought to life by Davidson’s vibrant color creates with mixed media and collage. tentious survey of emerging artists selected and expressive line. Generally small and densely layered, Piniat’s by two of their peers. Indeed, the co-cura- Esther Hyneman is a gifted portrait collages, with their jagged torn-paper forms tors set the pace with the quality of their painter in the manner of Lucian Freud, and vigorous brush work, are ideally seen in own work: judging from her two oils of an elderly groups of at least four (as here), where they Erica Mapp showed two abstract seri- woman, her indomitable character shining conduct a dialogue. graphs from her “Rosa Mystica” series, in through in the artist’s juicy oil impasto. LeNoira Naune’s mixed media works which rectangular forms printed in a linear However, Hyneman’s painting of a solitary have a raw, primitive power which can only fashion over areas of rosy violet projected a New York City pigeon had its own consider- be compared to the work of the American mood at once lyrical and austere. Like the able appeal. visionary Forrest Bess. Naune, however, has French painter and printmaker Jacques Carole Randall has a radically funky a unique way of integrating glass panels, Villon, Mapp has a particular gift for making approach to assemblage, seen here in two paisley fabrics and other found materials into the most formal configurations resonate large works on foam board, entitled compositions notable for their tactile direct- with subtle emotive qualities. “Milkmaid’s Tits” and “Milk Tits and Milk ness and subtle sense of mystery. Nichelle Ryan’s large oil pastel on paper, Bars.” Randall combines a variety of urban The printmaker Rosa Santos showed a “Little Girl Blue,” gave visual voice to the detritus, including what appear to be group of six monochromatic etchings, litho- somber mood of the great jazz standard of brassiere cups, to generate a riotously ener- graphs, and woodcuts in which the particu- that name, with the simplified figure of a getic effect as oddly compelling as an early lar qualities of black and white were woman burying her face in her hands, Ornette Coleman saxophone solo. employed dramatically to convey a specific bathed in melancholy blue auras. Ryan’s By contrast, Julie Tersigni showed a grid- images that seemed to suggest deep person- bold handling of folds in the woman’s gar- ded installation of nine same size square al meanings. The face of a veiled woman, a ment imbued the composition with further mixed media works in which the yin yang female nude, a litter of lion cubs, or a saintly urgency. sign and a variety of other symbols and spi- face are all invested with equal significance Renaldo Davidson exhibited an iconic rals suggested all manner of esoteric mean- by virtue of Santos’ exquisite sensitivity to triple image of soulful superstar Stevie ings. Tersigni’s use of glitter, along with line and tone. ––Marie R. Pagano

24 GALLERY&STUDIO NOV-DEC 2006/JAN 2007 Nancy Staub Laughlin: Beyond Seductive Surfaces n artists whose work is sim- among many. Iplistic or obvious, changes By contrast, in another pastel, “Elegance can be stark. Extreme shifts of Sequins,” the same crystal bowl figures signal a new direction or sty- just as prominently. Only here it is seen in listic digression. In the case of an infinite field of delicate white wildflowers, more subtle and complex sen- with a photograph of a lush summer tree set sibilities, however, every amid many colorful baubles at its center, minute variation seems preg- seeming now to suggest the high hopes of nant with meaning, the youthful romance. smallest details give one an Not that anything is spelled out quite so inkling that something signifi- specifically in Laughlin’s compositions; it is cant is going on. So it is with simply that they resonate with submerged the ever-evolving imagery of narrative meanings far beyond their seduc- Nancy Staub Laughlin, whose tive surfaces. At the same time, those glitter- second solo exhibition at ing, shimmering, or translucent surfaces Noho Gallery, 530 West 25th themselves seem symbolic of the supernatu- Street, “Pastels and ral, as seen in “Window of Paradise,” in Photographs” will open on which a gossamer white curtain wafts diago- January 9, 2007 and continue nally across the top of the composition like a through February 17. veil between worlds in a mysterious interior Laughlin still adheres to where luminous orbs float weightlessly. In her rigorous process, photo- the equally metaphysical pastel “Pink graphing objects submerged Diamond and Sequin,” a close-up of the in tanks of water or reflected objects named in the title is seen within a off rippling surfaces to create rectangle floating at a sail-like angle on a carefully calculated distor- glittering blue body of water. tions, then painting them in a For reasons, as usual with this artist, that meticulous photorealist tech- are difficult to define, one of Laughlin’s nique in pastels. She still most haunting recent pastels is the stately “Waterford in the Winter” chooses an odd and eclectic triptych called “Fall of the Sparkling array of baubles, bangles, beads, sequins, where ordinary things take on auras of the Flowers.” Its three narrow, separately and other dimestore tchotkes as her supernatural; where piles of marbles and framed panels evoke a panoramic mani- “props,” combining them with mirrors, bottlecaps in a cigar box, say, can become a cured country garden with dense foliage in glass, strings of pearls, and photographs of pirate’s chest of precious jewels . the foreground and spacious green lawns natural landscapes, either serving as second- Much can be made of the fantastic ele- stretching into the distance beyond. While a ary images within her compositions or set- ment in Laughlin’s work, of her intuitive jewel-encrusted floral pin dominates the ting the scene for her tableaux. Through her ability to create dazzling juxtapositions of center panel, large stone garden urns are peculiar aesthetic alchemy, she transforms object, shadow, and reflection. Surely few prominent in the compositions of both side these disparate elements into glittering little contemporary artists are as adept as she at panels. Although both overflow with pink worlds, microcosmic material metaphors in conjuring chromatic magic, provoking pris- flowers, larger crystal floral forms spill from a visual poetics so densely layered as to matic sensations, or presenting us with lumi- the vase in the right-hand panel. Elongated, almost defy deciphering. nous layers of illusion. However, to lean too pendulous crystal forms are also suspended As its title suggests, a new twist in heavily on her “special effects” would be to midair in the adjoining panels. In contrast Laughlin’s present exhibition is that the trivialize the seriousness of Laughlin’s proj- to some of Laughlin’s more intricate com- “photo studies” which she creates as prelim- ect. For there is much more than immedi- positions, this relatively sedate triptych has inary references now share center stage with ately meets the eye in her compositions, an eerie, almost funereal quality akin to the her pastel paintings. Not only do these large which only begin to reveal the full depth of “Vanitas” paintings of Audrey Flack. color photographs, far from mere studies, their riches with prolonged contemplation. Indeed, like Flack, Laughlin resists the hold their own admirably as discrete works In the pastel “Waterford in the Winter,” tendency of many artists who can be loosely of art, they also possess peculiar qualities of for example, a picture postcard of a snowy termed “photorealists” to confine them- their own, particularly a crystalline clarity country scene with tiny baubles and minia- selves to a limited range of subject matter that lends their surreal juxtapositions a star- ture multicolored leaves scattered over it is through which they display their technical tling veracity. Their imagistic juxtapositions set within an intricately carved crystal bowl. proficiency, while establishing a signature are as surreal as those in the collages of Max The bowl itself is set within what appears to style with deliberately banal subjects such as Ernst, while their bright, slick Better Homes be an actual snowy landscape (though given Charles Bell’s images of gumball machines & Gardens colors project a piquant Pop Laughlin’s gift for illusion, one never or Ralph Goings’ paintings of pickup trucks wit–– like calendar art gone ga-ga!––sug- knows), mirroring the landscape in the post- and fast food stands. gesting that Laughlin could launch a whole card. However, among the swirling For an artist to employ similar means to separate career in the forefront of the new snowflakes are a few grains of rice. This sin- probe more deeply into the nature of reality tendencies in postmodern photography. gle detail, suggesting the handfuls of rice with complex visual conundrums is to risk a Then again, Laughlin’s enterprise has flung at the bride and groom at a wedding, complexity that can be daunting in the age always had something playful about it, hark- seems to turn a winter wonderland, much of reality lite and the sound bite. Obviously, ing back to childhood games and reveries. like the ones in those novelty snow-globes Laughlin is willing to take the risks neces- Her pastels, with their softer, more lyrical that fascinated us in childhood, into a chill- sary to make images that lodge themselves qualities, transport the viewer back to those ingly adult meditation on marriage. This, of in our consciousness with a persistence that remembered realms of innocent imagination course, is only one possible interpretation suggests a major talent at the height of her powers. ––Ed McCormack NOV-DEC 2006/JAN 2007 GALLERY&STUDIO 25 G&S NYC GUIDE

BOB DYLAN is the only two-legged genius in jukebox music. (The good buddy Andy W (one of her favorite subjects, as amply evidenced Beatles had eight legs and might have gone on wanting to hold our here ) she always brought her camera. “WARHOL and Other hand forever, if not for his influence.) Thus the former Robert Photographs from the Sayn-Wittgenstein Collection” is at Westwood Zimmerman rates “Bob Dylan’s American Journey: 1956-1966,” an Gallery, 568 Broadway, now through December. exhibition of song lyrics, films, paintings, photos and other artifacts * * * related to his most relevant decade, at the Morgan Library and Museum RICHARD SEGALMAN’s paintings occupy a timeless space. Dreamy (no less!), 225 Madison Avenue, through January 6. young women sit on tenement stoops, sun and shadow evoked in bold, * * * buttery strokes. Or else they perch on windowsills staring out at the red Since the internationally celebrated Venezuelan painter and sculptor brick facade of the tenement across the street. Segalman paints a world JULIO AGUILERA is a nonstop cigar smoker, it seems apt that his that is vanishing, yet is eternal. His pictures make one nostalgic for the new exhibition will be seen at the upscale tobacconists Davidoff of tawdry romance of the Lower East Side before it was gentrified out of Geneva, 535 Madison Avenue (corner of 54th Street), from November existence. He is a strong, mellow, somewhat melancholy painter: Neo- 16 to February 23, 2007. The opening reception, on November 16 Ashcan School with a dash of Ab-Ex brio. His show makes one remem- from 7 to 9 PM, should be aromatic as well as artistically edifying. (A ber what oil painting is all about, at Katharina Rich Perlow Gallery, 41 lengthy review of Aguilera’s exhibition will follow in our East 57th Street, from November 7 through December 2. February/March issue. ) * * * * * * Blame it on the Big Guns of Abstract Expressionism: all too often large One never knows quite what to expect when HOPE CARTER, one of scale is equated with significance. DOUG SAFRANEK proves the falla- our most innovative and oddly lyrical installation artists, unveils a new cy of such thinking in his exhibition “Both Sides of the Bridge: New exhibition. Her latest is called “Contemplating the frail intensity of red.” York in Egg Tempera,” at ACA Galleries, 529 West 20th Street, through Intriguing title? All we know is that it can be seen at Phoenix Gallery, December 2. Safranek’s “Gung Hay Fat Choy (Wishing You 210 11th Avenue, in Chelsea, from November 1 through December 2, Prosperity)” encompasses a mere 4X3 1/4 inches, but it captures a with an opening reception on Thursday, November 2, from 6 to 8 PM. panoramic stretch of East Broadway in Chinatown in meticulous detail, Expect the unexpected. Period. from individual pedestrians strolling past shops and restaurants, to a tiny * * * bicycle chained to a parking sign, to the municipal spires of the financial Leave it to the hip and cheeky gallerist and curator JAMES CAVELLO district soaring skyward in the distance. But here, as in other miniature to discover an Austrian princess with the eye of a paparazzo. Only, street scenes depicting our ethnically diverse neighborhoods, Safranek is PRINCESS MARIANNE SAYN-WITTGENSTEIN, now 87 and concerned with much more than how many New Yorkers can dance on resting on her laurels, didn’t have to hide in the bushes to get great the head of a pin. In fact, he proves himself a peer of Cadmus, Tooker, shots of Jackie O, Audrey Hepburn, Elton John, and countless other Marsh, Wyeth and others in “Masters of Tempera,” running concurrent- socialites and celebrities. She was welcome everywhere, and like her ly in Gallery II.

opportunities MONTSERRAT CONTEMPORARY ART GALLERY is reviewing artist portofolios for its new Chelsea Gallery. National and 12 YEAR ESTABLISHED CHELSEA GALLERY. Quality exhibitions, International artists are invited to submit. Sase, slides, photos and brief location and marketing. Currently reviewing artists. Online information artist bio. Send to: Montserrat Contemporary Art Gallery, 547 West 27 requests: http:// www.worldfineart.com/inforequest.html street NYC 10001

WEST SIDE ARTS COALITION Exhibitors from all areas welcome for DIRECT ART MAGAZINE #14 - competition for over $22,000 in memberships. Visual arts exhibits, theater events, multi-media opportunites. publication awards including cover and feature articles. Deadline Tel: 212 316-6024 e-mail: [email protected] West Side Arts Coalition, March 31, 2007. For prospectus email [email protected], print at: P.O. Box 527, Cathedral Station, N.Y., N.Y. 10025-0527 www.slowart.com/prospectus, or mail SASE to SlowArt Productions, 123 Warren Street, Hudson, NY 12534. 20 YEAR ESTABLISHED MIDTOWN GALLERY seeks new artists for next season. Street level. Tel. 212-315-2740 [email protected] ARTS PR – Your ten minutes of fame on film $100; press releases, critical reviews, catalogs. Contact 212-255-6040, 347-628-1616 or PLEIADES GALLERY Join our community of artists at this prestigious [email protected] artist-run gallery to exhibit your work and advance your career. Memberships now becoming available. www.pleiadesgallery.com – or workshop SASE to Pleiades Gallery, 530 W. 25 St., 4th fl. NY, NY 10001-5516, Tel.- 646-230-0056 “SELL YOUR ART” Workshop presented every six weeks by Renée Phillips, author of The PHOENIX GALLERY, CELEBRATING ITS 47TH YEAR, has moved to 210 Complete Guide to New York Art Galleries. Renée provides insight into Eleventh Avenue @ 25th St., Chelsea, New York, NY 10001, is accepting different NYC galleries and how they operate. She offers strategies on applications for ACTIVE, INACTIVE or ASSOCIATE membership. Send how to select and approach galleries. She also provides advice on how to SASE for membership application or Email: [email protected] sell, promote and market your work and create presentation materials so Website: www.phoenix-gallery.com you can prosper without having gallery representation. For more info. go to www.Manhattanarts.com or call 212.472.1660.Workshop ESTABLISHED CHELSEA GALLERY reviews artist portfolios monthly. Send sase or visit www.noho gallery.com for application form. Noho exhibition Gallery, 530 West 25th Street, New York, NY 10001. 212 367-7063 AMERICAN SOCIETY OF CONTEMPORARY ARTISTS 88th Annual, “The Best of ASCA: 2006,” Nov. 7 - 19 at Broome Street GELABERT STUDIOS GALLERY Gallery, 498 Broome St., NYC offers artists the opportunity to showcase their work in a unique, elegant Upper West G&S NYCGUIDE Side setting. Fully equipped gallery for rent on weekly or yearly basis. Top quality Rates: 1 issue: 20 words for $40.; .50 each additional word. lighting. Call 212-874-7188 for rental 2 issues: 20 words $75; .75 each additional word. details or visit our website: Deadline for Feb/March issue is Jan. 16th. www.gelabertstudiosgallery.com. Call (212) 861-6814. Gelabert Studios Gallery, 255 W. 86th St. Boxed format or business card (2 1/4 W x 1 1/4 H) (at Broadway), New York City 10024. 1 issue: $100., 2 issues: $150.

26 GALLERY&STUDIO NOV-DEC 2006/JAN 2007 Spiritual Auras Illuminate the Domestic Scenes of MG deButts “ try to imagine what it would be like and life. Although her figures are as gious icon. And the same can be said of I to open your eyes to the physical anatomically accurate as those of any real- the two boys in the foreground, one hold- world for the first time, not with the ist, they are invariably defined by bold, ing a garden hose, or the child romping immature mind of an infant, but with a colorful outlines that resemble auras. One with a butterfly net in the distance. fully developed consciousness,” says the gets the sense that deButts is seeing Enveloped in their bright individual auras, Virginia-born painter MG deButts. “Color, through exterior appearances to the spiritu- each figure seems to signify the sacredness movement and random energy agitating of existence––as though the artist truly is against the vertical and horizontal planes opening her eyes to the physical world for would be a stunning assault on the senses. the first time and sharing her heightened Everything interconnected and yet singu- vision with the viewer. lar. Most of all human faces would seem Conversely, the painting called inscrutable––fraught with both expectancy “Comprehension,” appears to convey the and judgment.” same idea from the perspective of the The visionary sense of wonder that “seer,” its composition dominated by deButts strives for comes across strongly in close-up views of three babies who stare her oils on canvas, on view at Agora out at the viewer with what appears to be Gallery, 530 West 25th Street, from wide-eyed astonishment. Here, the thick December 7 through 27. (Reception outlines around the figures, along with December 7, 6 to 8 PM.) deButts’ characteristically bright, flat color On one level, the subjects that deButts areas, create a kind of Pop effect akin to chooses to paint are as domestic as those of that in the early paintings of Tom Fairfield Porter. Adults and children are Wesselman. seen in pleasant, presumably upper middle However, while deButts’ figures are just class settings, at ease on grass lawns and in “Agua” as emblematic as those of the Pop artist, gardens, amid all the trappings of an afflu- they possess a spiritual presence, which ent suburban lifestyle. Yet color is height- al essence of each person that she paints. comes across with special force in canvases ened and the commonplace becomes exot- Thus while the little girl standing in the such “Kate’s Duck,” in which a child and ic, as though familiar scenes have suddenly backyard swimming pool in deButts’ oil on her toy loom monolithically in an enchant- become as exotic to the artist as Gauguin’s canvas “Agua” is wearing a Mousketeer cap ed garden, and “Suzan and Henry,” a dou- first impressions of Tahiti. Indeed, deButts with ears and appears on one level as casual ble portrait where a mother and child share shares with that great post Impressionist a as any kid captured at play in a candid the same golden aura. love of resonant color and fluid form that snapshot, she is also as much of a formal ––Maureen Flynn invests her canvases with a sense of energy and symbolic entity as a figure in a reli- A West Side Group Show Celebrates Silent Eloquence ne of the more lyrical recent group landscape. exponent of classical surrealism, employing Oshows, “Silent Words,” curated by Bernardo Diaz’s abstract canvases are as incongruous images to evoke a sense of the Ruth Llanillo Leal for the West Side Arts aggressively suggestive as their titles. In both uneasy relationship between dreams and Coalition, was seen recently at Broadway “Revenge-Crazed” and “Propagandist,” reality. In one of Kulmamirov’s oils, a spigot Mall Community Center, on the center Diaz employs bold angular shapes, areas of on a grand piano drips water into the island at Broadway and 96th Street. a strident color, and abrasive collage ele- mouth of a parched lizard; in another, a Leila Elias showed fanciful oils, such as ments to make the point that the world, penguin perches on a desert ridge, under the avian fantasy “White Mother Bird,” and although a harsh place, can surprise us with which three camels stroll–– images that, like mixed media prints with titles like “Butterfly sudden bursts of beauty. those of Magritte, defy logic yet resonate in Dreams.” Elias makes poetic statements Ivan Sherman, on the other hand, juxta- the subconscious. with figurative subjects painted in softly har- poses the burning Twin Towers with a The oils of Mary Anne Holliday imply monizing hues, as well as with photo- quote from Whitman celebrating “high cosmic and oceanic subjects while scrupu- derived images juxtaposed surrealistically. growths of iron, slender, strong, light, lously avoiding specific description in favor Miguel Angel demonstrated his knack for splendidly uprising toward clear skies” to of a kind of phenomenological formalism. evoking ethereal feelings with unlikely mate- chilling effect in his digital print In Holliday’s “Coming and Going,” color- rials, achieving a kind of transcendence in “Manhattan.” By contrast, Sherman’s large ful spheres splash into areas of dense black the process. In Angel’s black on black assemblage of hand-cut and painted corru- strokes; in “Beyond Beyond,” similar assemblage “Enigma,” a single bold black gated cardboard layered in pyramidal shapes shapes appear to bounce like ping pong balls stroke, enlivened by subtle inner swirls, and mounted on canvas is a tour de force of above moon-crators to buoyant effect. appeared on the reverse side of a glass panel, geometric complexity. The oils of Margie Steinmann, on the exquisitely counterbalanced by a shard-like Ruth Llanillo Leal’s meticulous and other hand, appear to allude to clustered shape in low relief. accomplished acrylics are at once as austere figurative forms and landscape shapes with- Joey Infante’s four small oils on panel of and sensual as the figure paintings of Will out sacrificing their abstract autonomy. In the same scene in Central Park at different Barnet. Leal’s “Lost in Space” sets a single, canvases such as “Sweet Danger” and times of the year showed how the seasons fleshy pink floral form and its sinuous “Keeping Track,” for example, Steinmann paint the earth with their varied palette of umbilical vines against a smooth black generates a rhapsodic chromatic and gestur- hues. Equally enchanting was Infante’s background, while her “Dreaming” depicts al energy by virtue of her softly diffused yet “Normandy, France,” an unabashedly pic- a slender, pale blue female nude as graceful vibrant colors and muscular paint handling. turesque view of a flock of sheep traversing a as a living arabesque. ––Maurice Taplinger path under sheltering trees in a pastoral Berik Kulmamirov is a contemporary NOV-DEC 2006/JAN 2007 GALLERY&STUDIO 27 A Symphonic Flow Animates David Tobey’s Abstractions lthough other visual artists have drawn “The Structure of Aanalogies between abstract painting and Energy.” That felicitous music, David Tobey can speak with special phrase still applies in terms authority on the relationship between the of encapsulating what his two art forms, being both a painter and a work is really about: the professional violinist who has been perform- synthesis of energy and ing for over thirty years. In fact, recently form, of vitality and con- when Tobey’s painting “Exuberance” was trol. And while it was reproduced on the program cover for the descriptive in the first Music Conservatory of Westchester’s 75th instance of his paintings, anniversary concert at Alice Tully Hall, as the same dynamic applies well as on a large poster displayed outside to his welded steel sculp- Lincoln Center, Tobey performed as guest tures like “Junk Yard conductor for part of the program. Dog,” in which various Growing up in Westchester, as the child found metal objects, such of the well-known historical illustrator and as a large spring, screws, muralist Alton Tobey and the renowned bolts, and other other sal- concert pianist Rosalyn Tobey, David Tobey vaged industrial detritus got a firm grounding in both of his artistic are employed much in the disciplines from an early age. But while his same way that Tobey layers father was his first art teacher, the fact that skeins of pigment in his he eventually gravitated toward abstract acrylics on canvas. painting––a genre closer to music, which by The main difference, of its very nature is the most abstract of all the course, is that in Tobey’s arts––indicates that he may have been even sculptures, form alone more influenced subliminally by the sound must do the work of form of his mother’s piano, presumably as it res- and color. This could seem onated from another part of the house as a formidable handicap, she practiced or rehearsed. In any case, the since in his paintings, visual / musical synthesis at which Tobey Tobey is a sumptuous col- arrived, after graduating from the Julliard orist, combining brilliant School of Music and studying at The Art hues, both with the brush David Tobey with works in his exhibition at Pleiades Gallery Students League, seems a natural outgrowth and with a pouring tech- of that formative experience. nique, in a densely layered and saturated emulates how “chess masters strategize to For those, like myself, however, who have manner, to achieve qualities that make formulate a dynamic approach to the game been familiar with only Tobey’s paintings immediately clear why the term “chromatic” while creating concealed patterns and rela- since his first solo show in New York City in is used in both painting and music. tionships within,” with linear images of 2003, the sculptures also included in his lat- However, Tobey more than makes up for chess pieces hidden within the composi- est exhibition will reveal a whole new facet the absence of color in his sculptures by tion’s intricate configurations of swirls, set of this artist. The show, a benefit for the virtue of the fluidity of his forms, in pieces against a brilliant red ground. While the National Scholastic Chess Foundation, can such as “Conductor,” where the metal rod artist’s use of gracefully sweeping loops of be seen at Pleiades Gallery, 530 West 25th at the top of the piece, supported by a weld- black and yellow poured paint as the domi- Street, from November 7 through 25, with ed welter of more baroque, anthropomor- nant forms in this work might recall Jackson a reception on Thursday November 9 from phic shapes, wittily suggests a baton. Other Pollock, the more deliberate calligraphic 5:30 to 8:30 PM. metal sculptures such as ”Quixote” “El dance of the underlying linear networks is One should not be surprised that Tobey Toro” and “Moon Archer” also emulate the more akin to the work of Mark Tobey, a would endeavor to capture an equally musi- hide-and-seek element of figuration that ani- namesake to whom, as far as one knows, cal sense of movement, rhythm, and spon- mates Tobey’s abstractions, where one is ini- David Tobey is not related. taneity in his sculptures as in his paintings; tially seduced by formal elements only to Among several other strong paintings yet one cannot help but be impressed encounter allusions to the visible world on and sculptures, perhaps the centerpiece of nonetheless by how well he succeeds, given prolonged viewing. Although it is a delight David Tobey’s new exhibition is “Fallen the unyielding nature of his medium, weld- to suddenly discover the mounted knight Angels 9/11,” a large acrylic on canvas, ed metal. However, Tobey exemplifies the within the freewheeling abstraction of painted in 2002, that alludes to the video approach that the Spanish sculptor Julio Tobey’s “Quixote,” or discern the contours images of the terrorist victims who were Gonzalez espoused when he pioneered this of the horned bovine in “El Toro,” this forced to leap to their death from the burn- medium in the 1920s: “drawing in space.” sense of delayed recognition is especially ing Twin Towers, which have been burned Tobey achieves a unique draftsmanly fluidity appealing in “Moon Archer.” For here, the indelibly into our communal memory by in metal, surpassing even that of Gonzalez, circular shape at the top of the piece seems the news media. Through the merciful aus- as he duplicates the forms in his paintings in to function both as the simplified head of pices of abstraction, the artist transforms three dimensions, particularly through his an abstract figure aiming an arrow and a the horrific into the symbolic, creating an use of gracefully curved rods to convey a lunar orb, making concrete metaphor for image as mythical as the fall of Icarus. In similarly linear quality, or uses organic the poetic title. this powerful, vertiginous composition in a shapes in combination with more geometric As for Tobey’s paintings, they continue palette dominated by red, white, and blue, forms to invest the contours of his pieces to evolve at a pace with his native talent, as David Tobey demonstrates that his visual with a sense of flow and flux. seen in the brilliantly colorful and richly music can be somber as well as uplifting. Those who saw Tobey’s first Manhattan configured large canvas called “Bishop ––Ed McCormack exhibition may remember that he titled it Takes Rook,” which according to the artist 28 GALLERY&STUDIO NOV-DEC 2006/JAN 2007 ART ONLINE Kimberly Berg: Restoring the Power of the Great Goddess ike the late John Lennon, as articles on the pow- patriarchal thought. Yet such early visionar- LKimberly Berg would erful roles played by ies, who devised their own, more surrepti- probably classify himself as a women in several tious, ways of expressing the radical notion “male feminist”, judging ancient cultures. that spirit and nature were not antithetical from the work on his website But by far the most are surely among Berg’s artistic ancestors. (WWW.ISISRISING.NET) which convincing aesthetic More overtly mystical than the evokes the spirit of the mysti- case is made by the “Meditation” series (despite its title) are a cal matrilineage that Gerda drawings themselves, in group of exquisite pastels entitled Lerner celebrates in her semi- which the female figure “Mandala,” in which female figures are jux- nal text The Creation of invariably takes on a taposed with glowing circular symbols exe- Feminist Consciousness From monumental quality, cuted in luminous hues akin to those in the the Middle Ages to 1870. displaying its power, pastels of Redon. The nude figures, the Like these early mystical even in repose. artist explains, are “a metaphor for a certain feminists, Berg propagates a Especially outstanding mental nakedness that is required of us holistic spirituality based on in this regard is a series before we can enter through the first gate- what Lerner terms “the con- entitled “Meditation. ” way of the Mandala.” cept of the divine female, In these mixed media While no rationale is needed for any of Great Goddess, procreatrix, ” works the voluptuous Berg’s nudes beyond the beauty that more “Mandala ll” in mixed media and pastel nude figure is seen in than justifies them in aesthetic terms, the images of the female nude as the embodi- solitude in a forest setting, the subtly modu- figures in another series of pastels entitled ment of all that is beautiful and humane in lated earth colors that dominate the series “Woman & Mirror,” bathed in sensual our world. Although Lerner’s writings are emphasizing the primal relationship of blues, could symbolize naked introspection. not among them, Berg’s website also women and nature. Here, as in all of Berg’s In any case, like all of this artist’s work, they includes a variety of texts, including an drawings, spiritual and erotic qualities are succeed in fulfilling his desire “to restore intriguing treatise called “The Natural combined in a secular manner that would that part of ancient goddess culture that Superiority of Women,” citing Ashley not have been conceivable in the twelfth to honored women for their sacred, life-giving, Montagu’s theory that “The love of a fourteenth centuries, when artists such as life-affirming powers.” mother for her child is the basic patent and Hildegard of Bingen, and Margery Kemp ––Maureen Flynn model for all human relationships,” as well still labored under the religious strictures of Nature and Metamorphosis in the Paintings of Ada Gabriel ather than with transcribing the particu- sunny yellows are among the recurring hues, Rlars of landscape, the award-winning lending many of Gabriel’s works on canvas, Canadian painter Ada Gabriel, whose work paper, or mylar an overall ambiance of land- is handled through Lambert’s Gallery, in scape, even when the forms are relatively Vancouver, appears to be concerned with a amorphous and do not even remotely sug- deeper apprehension of nature in the gest the lay of the land. abstract compositions seen on her website: Gabriel’s work goes well beyond de www.ada.gabriel.name. Kooning’s famous remark that “all abstract “My interest is in creating art that con- painting is based on landscape” by virtue of nects the seen and the unseen,” Gabriel its all-enveloping natural atmosphere. Thus, states. “Beginning with that intention, I while the title of a large canvas allow process to carry me. Birth, creation, “Prosperity,” which won first prize in an change and metamorphosis seem to be my annual juried exhibition, could suggest a themes.” monetary state of being, its lyrical composi- These linked themes are splendidly tion of floating yellow, green, and blue color addressed in works such as “Biorhythm,” areas makes immediately clear that the refer- where a calligraphic green shape is set buoy- ence here is to the rich bounty of nature. antly afloat against a luminous yellow field, And when Gabriel’s softly defused forms as well as in “Untitled #5” and “Abstraction verge on the geometric, as seen in “2 Soft #3,” with their more intense colors, gestural Rectangles/Kissing” and “2 Soft brushwork, and landlocked forms. By con- Rectangles/Loving,” the vibrant colors “Biorhythm” trast, in the series of abstract compositions imply a nontraditional treatment of a that Gabriel calls “The Butterfly Analog,” romantic idyll in a pastoral setting. Gabriel’s graphite drawings, with their deli- the colors are clear and luminous, the grace- The more texturally defined but equally cate, fossil-like linear traceries, as well as in fully flared shapes at once fragile and monu- elusive elements in “Startled” and her photographs focusing on close-up mental. “Uprising” suggest an emotional response images of plant forms. Far from being There is a primal quality to all of to such phenomena as flowing water and minor entities, included on the website to Gabriel’s paintings; each shape seems essen- fresh, swaying grass. Even in her “Rock cast light on the genesis of her paintings, tial, derived directly from a natural source, Series,” where the more tactile paint applica- these works possess their own unique quali- rather than from some preconceived notion tion may appear to allude directly to the ties, particularly the drawings, with their fine of abstract design. The artist appears acutely solid substance of rock and hills, Gabriel shadings and exquisite sense of space. attuned to the patterns and cycles of refuses to descend to finicky descriptiveness, Indeed, all of her explorations in various nature––a refreshing stance in an era when giving us instead powerful formal metaphors media reveal Ada Gabriel’s singular synthesis too many others can’t see the forest for the for natural forms, forces, and essences. of “the seen and the unseen.” pages of Artforum! Verdant greens and This approach also comes across in ––J. Sanders Eaton NOV-DEC 2006/JAN 2007 GALLERY&STUDIO 29 ART ONLINE Aaron Morgan Brown: Souls Adrift in the Shopping Malls t is easy enough to see how some who Saint George painting, mountain goats in a Iview the website of Aaron Morgan Brown contemplat- brightly lit panoramic landscape (www.aaronmorganbrown.com) might ing the drag- dioramas appear more of this compare his paintings superficially to those on. Rather, it world than the shadowy, shuf- of Edward Hopper, since both artists project comes from fling visitors who view them. In a poignant sense of social isolation. the manner in another, a worker who appears However, Brown deals with a far harsher which the to be a preadolescent boy wash- contemporary environment and a more artist arranges es a skeleton in a morgue-like intense sense of depersonalization than the all the ele- workroom “backstage” at the genteel, now almost nostalgic, melancholy ments of the museum. Brown makes gleam- that we associate with Hopper. Others more picture to ing corridors, blank video mon- versed in the postmodern scene might just make an over- “Borderland No. 2” itors, and even fire-extinguish- as readily liken Brown to Eric Fischl. But all statement that is finally more significant ers take on strange symbolic significance. they too would be wanting in insight, since than the sum of its literary components. Especially impressive is one large oil on Brown’s paintings rely less on the obvious, At the same time, it would be disingenu- canvas entitled “Ann, Contemplating the sensational, and the perverse, and he is ous not to acknowledge that disturbing rela- Something Other Than the Weight of by far the superior painter. tionships and symbols abound in Brown’s History,” in which a beautiful Victorian Evoking the artificial atmosphere of Mall- paintings: the stunted little man who appears society lady in a white silk dress, holding a Land, U.S.A., Aaron Brown tells us a great about to accost the dark-skinned child with book in one languid hand, gazes out from deal about the desolate state of our present the bare-midriff amid a funhouse maze of her gold-framed portrait at the back of a reality. Yet the most impressive single thing glassy storefronts in “Borderland, number young man sporting the black garments of a about his paintings is that he freezes the 1”; the small girl with pink ribbons in her contemporary “goth” and looking defen- fleeting, even banal, moment with a formal hair wandering alone through a murky cock- sively uneasy in the elegant interior where elegance recalling Vermeer. Indeed, the real tail lounge in “Borderland number 4”; not the portrait hangs. drama in Brown’s paintings emanates not to mention the full length skeleton in a glass For here, while retaining characteristically from such details as the guarded posture of vitrine waiting to greet the two small boys contemporary psychological tension, Aaron the hefty cleaning lady in the red babushka engrossed in a more innocuous display near- Brown boldly invites comparison to John in “Borderlands number 2,” as she stands by in “Museology number 1.” Singer Sargent and demonstrates that his with her broom, surrounded by ghostly The latter series, like much of Brown’s technique is equal to the task. shadows and reflections, gazing into the work, is an amalgam of memory and fantasy yawning maw of an empty escalator like based on childhood museum visits. In one ––Ed McCormack Barbara Rachko’s Surrogates for Our Inner Demons ecause of her non-traditional approach quent trips to Mexico realist Jack Beal. (Surely her Bto perspective (“I pick a point as my (some associated with the use of pastels on sandpaper is perfect vertical, but as you go out to the Day of the Dead and every bit as detailed yet defined right and the left the verticals slant”), every- other festivals and rituals), as Beal’s use of oils on canvas, thing is slightly askew in the large, vibrant form a kind repertory although the very nature of her pastel paintings of Barbara Rachko, seen on company that the artist subjects lends her pictures a her website www.barbararachko.com. employs to evoke a host more abstract, emblematic This befits Rachko’s subject matter: folk of subtle meanings in her quality.) But while Beal depicts art figures from Mexican mythology––a emotionally-laden com- figures and still life objects as bright red devil, an angel, a villainous repre- positions. Thus the same discrete entities in a more con- sentation of Judas, an insect with a human colorful crab that crawls ventional manner, Rachko face–– acting out bizarre personal allegories out of an open oven door merges them in a whole new amid the trappings of the modern kitch- to do battle with a way. Which is to say: because enette, livingroom, or bedroom, in compo- mounted warrior in “The Rachko’s protagonists are inan- sitions with oddly haunting titles such as Magical Other” might be imate, yet are so dramatically “Truth Betrayed by Innocence” and “No called upon to loom on a juxtaposed that they become Cure for Insomnia.” toilet seat-cover over a convincing, emotionally-laden How close to home they are is hinted at fallen ape in “He Lost surrogates for ourselves, all the in the title of the first painting Rachko did His Chance to Flee.” commonplace props surround- after losing her husband in the plane that Horned or winged, “She Embraced It and Grew ing them also come weirdly crashed into the Pentagon on 9/11: “She leering or wearing a Stronger” alive. Ordinary domestic set- Embraced it and Grew Stronger.” Rachko’s frozen smile like the figure in the floral pat- tings, very much like our own apartments, husband had long been her artistic help- terned skirt, backed against an empty book- seem suddenly sinisterly charged with a mate, using a wide angle lens to photograph case by a menacing semi-circle of fellow sense of danger. Suddenly an open doorway the elaborate tableaux that she sets to work statuettes in “She Embraced it and Grew leading to a darkened room looms like a from. After his death, she literally had to Stronger,” Rachko’s characters function as slightly lopsided abyss; an ordinary picture start over as an artist, taking courses in pho- stand-ins for the fears and demons that calendar, hanging over a kitchen stove, tography over the next couple of years, as reside within us all. seems a sinister portent. she tried to regain her bearings while deal- In technical terms, the way Rachko’s Indeed, it is their strange psychological ing with her grief. Now her photographs heightened colors lend coherence to her resonance, amplified by their taut formal have become an integral part of her art and intricate compositions, with their stark tonal tensions, that makes the pastels of Barbara are often exhibited along with her pastels. contrasts, saturated shadows, and patterned Rachko some of the most deeply compelling The figures that Rachko collects on fre- fabrics, can remind one of the well known images in recent art. ––Jeannie McCormack 30 GALLERY&STUDIO NOV-DEC 2006/JAN 2007 ART ONLINE Ingo Karwath: Authentic Heir Encountering the Arboreal to a Great Artistic Legacy “Portraits of Chris Bowman” he Expressionist “ rees and stones will teach you that which you will never learn Ttradition is alive Tfrom books,” wrote Saint Bernard, and this seems a sentiment and well in Germany, with which the painter Chris Bowman would readily concur, given judging from the his recent solo exhibition at Jadite Galleries, 413 West 50th Street paintings on Ingo through November 30, in which trees are the single and more than Karwath’s website sufficient subject. (www.inka.biz). Nor Working in acrylic on canvas, but employing the medium with is one referring to the textures akin to those in the oils of van Gogh, Bowman manages to watered down Neo- imbue his subjects with an almost anthropomorphic expressiveness. Expressionism, which For even while depicting arboreal subverted that tradi- “anatomy” with unfailing accuracy, he tion with fashionable imparts to his trees emotive qualities irony when it was all that invariably provoke a sense of the rage from the late human empathy. Thus, even before one 1970s to the mid ’80s. reads its title, Bowman’s painting No, Karwath is the real “Alone,” depicting a single tree amid thing, a painter thor- rolling hills, evokes the sensation of oughly committed to a loneliness. strain of subjective Part of the power of Bowman’s vision that had its ori- paintings resides in their overall tactility. gins in the expressive Not only is the textured tree made pal- distortions of pable in pigment but the surrounding Gruenwald and sky intersecting its branches is also real- reached its apex cen- ized in thick impasto. Thus the entire turies later in the The canvas appears to palpitate, with nega- Blue Reiter works of tive and positive spaces composed of “Life” Franz Marc and equal heft and weight. The tree and the August Macke. entire landscape that it occupies take on a pregnant presence. At the “Venetian Cocktail” Like those fellow same time, however, the overall composition comes alive with a countrymen––and particularly his fellow countrywoman Paula sense of light and movement. Modersohn-Becker who so successfully assimilated the formal influ- While one can compare Bowman’s ability to animate nature to ence of Gauguin and Cezanne––Karwath employs color fearlessly. that of the great American watercolorist Charles Burchfield, His oils have a remarkable chromatic resonance, particularly in his Bowman’s rugged yet controlled paint-handling lends his canvases “White Lines” series where nudes and other figures have an almost their own special qualities. Chief among these is a succulent paint ghostly quality, delineated linearly against shimmering color fields surface composed with short rhythmic strokes that “knit” the vari- dominated by incendiary reds and yellows. ous elements of the composition together, imparting a sense of for- By contrast, “Hot in the Summer Tonight” and “Night Sky” are mal harmony to his pictures, reflecting the underlying patterns that more somber in their nocturnal colorations. The former work is unite all natural forms. especially atmospheric, showing shadowy figures beside a body of Indeed, Bowman’s trees seem to relate not only to the terra firma still water in which the trees and lights on the opposite shore are from which they emanate but also to all manner of unseen universal reflected, while the former is a near abstract image of luminous yel- forces, as they writhe and strive toward the sky. This symbolic syn- low stars glowing from a nocturnal sky whose brilliance all but sub- thesis is especially evident in the large acrylic on canvas entitled sumes the verdant landscape below . “Life.” Unlike most of Bowman’s other trees, with their lush, thick- Although “Night Sky”––or Nachthimmel” in German––is a large ly configured concentrations of leaves, this lone tree bares its naked oil on canvas, it has all the freshness and fluidity of one of Emil branches as it claws at the air. Indeed, its sinuous limbs can suggest Nolde’s tiny watercolors. Equally spare in execution and something the fingers of a huge hand (although the resemblance is not exploit- of a departure from Karwath’s Expressionist roots for its subdued ed as obviously as in Pavel Tchelitchew’s “Hide and Seek”). Here, colorations is another large oil executed in a spontaneous manner too, the red sky hovering around the veiny branches enhances the that one normally associates with watercolor. Entitled “Manhattan visceral effect, heightening the sense of struggle that makes this large #41,” this painting depicts pale gray figures moving somnambulant- canvas especially dramatic. ly through a pink mist in a rain of sooty particles reminiscent of Each of Bowman’s paintings resonates with its own inherent 9/11. drama, as titles such as “Be True (Triptych),” “Consciousness,” and More characteristically colorful and vigorously gestural, the paint- “Memory of a Sunrise” suggest. Each has the presence of an arbore- ings in Karwath’s “Fingerprints” series include sensual nudes, and al portrait, embodying its own emotional makeup, projecting its “Red/roter Pullover,” a dancing figure in a crimson shirt that sug- own psychological impact. Thus, while the large canvas called gests a flickering flame, and a powerful composition centering on a “Resonance,” in which a single tree seems to totter precariously on crucified figure twisted like a lover around an anthropomorphically a slanted slope, provokes a vertiginous sensation in the viewer, the bent cross that harks back to Gruenwald. Even more brightly hued, small, vertical composition called “Bamboo” presents a contrasting as well as more formal in composition, are the oil pastels that sense of stolidness. Karwath creates when he works on structured cartons, such as Unlike what Clement Greenberg once termed “art that wants to “Samoa Session” with its seemingly inexhaustible range of figurative be loved in a hurry,” the paintings of Chris Bowman do not attempt floral and landscape imagery in hot tropical colors and bold outlines. to win the viewer over with novelty. Rather, they captivate him or Also outstanding are an entire rogue’s gallery of portrait heads in her in a more subtle and enduring manner, by revealing new mean- which Ingo Karwath adds a soupçon of Picasso-esque formal inge- ing in something long familiar. nuity to his already formidable oeuvre. ––Byron Coleman ––Peter Wiley NOV-DEC 2006/JAN 2007 GALLERY&STUDIO 31 Drew Tal: Postmodern Romanticism Meets State of the Art Technology lthough he employs Viewed together as a Astate of the art digital single entity, these technology, Drew Tal, an faces created an Israeli-born artist who has impression of spiritual lived and worked in New struggle and diversity. York City since 1981, Especially powerful appears to take inspiration was a portrait of an from Victorian and Asian woman entitled Edwardian predecessors “Tibetan Tears.” such as the American Bathed in a pale blue Symbolist F. Holland hue that made the Day, who obsessively blood-red streaks issu- photographed himself as ing from the woman’s Jesus Christ, and the eyes even more stark, Swedish Romantic pho- this haunting visage tographer Oscar G. suggested the specific Rejlander, who employed subject of the strife multiple negatives to cre- that the Tibetans have ate elaborately fabricated been subjected to by allegories, inspired by China, while also classical and romantic making a broader painting. comment on religious In this regard, Tal can and cultural persecu- be compared to Joel- tion in general. In Peter Witkin, another another print called photo artist who has “Bliss,” a small shad- rejected the dominant owy meditating fig- shoot-from-the hip natu- ure, set against the ralism of Robert Frank huge, enigmatically and others in favor of a smiling face of a lumi- more premeditated and nous gold Buddha, baroque approach to por- conveyed a sense of traiture. However, the spiritual transcen- resemblance ends there; “Faith” dence. Conversely, for while Witkin courts “Within” juxtaposed monstrousness with his images of freaks spiritual novices. Their shaven heads and the large head and prayerfully clasped hands and corpses, Drew Tal celebrates human symmetrical Asian features, as well as the of a serene living monk surrounded by a beauty in all its ethnic diversity. uniform positions of their hands, con- brilliant aura with various smaller devotional Starting early age, Tal has traveled the tributed to the harmonious rhythms of the images. world, studying and sketching a multitude frieze like composition. In other pictures, Drew Tal makes sym- of cultures. Eventually he gravitated toward In contrast to the monochromatic aus- bolic use of ornate temple walls, stone carv- photography as his medium of choice and, terity of “Faith,” other compositions by ings, weathered facades and other exotic ele- in a few short years, became a successful Drew Tal are lushly colored and suggestively ments photographed in his travels to remote fashion photographer. But he finally found sensual. One picture, called “Blue,” is satu- areas of Asia, India, North Africa and the art photography more gratifying, and taking rated by a vibrant shade of that hue. It Middle East as backgrounds and props that up digital software in the early ‘90s enabled depicts an androgynous countenance, remi- play off the equally exotic features of his him to introduce new dimensions of color niscent of some of the faces inFellini’s great carefully selected models to create a com- and texture to his pictures, which he prints film “Satyricon,” bracketed between two posite drama. on a large scale on canvas to enhance their tactile steel panels with rugged rivets and For a piece called “Messiah,” for exam- painterly attributes. rusted bumps that contrast sharply with the ple, Tal superimposed an ancient-looking Tal’s recent exhibition at KFMK smooth skin of the subject. By contrast, cross over the Christ-like countenance of a Galleries, 515A West 29th Street, a relatively “Rose of Kashmir” centers on a beautiful, young Spanish artist to create a mystical new venue in Chelsea whose spaciousness decidedly female, face with large almond effect, while his “Portrait of an Indian and elegance seemed especially well suited eyes and full red lips framed in an ornate Maiden” is a study in sepia tones in which a to the presentation of his pictures, featured rose-colored veil; while in “War,” the more young contemporary model resembles an a large selection of his work. In a well-lit somber tones and the dark line separating idealized version of a Native American in a outer gallery, several large portraits were two sides of a single, glowering face simulta- daguerreotype of the Old West by Matthew hung at eye-level. Although most focused neously suggests not only external conflict, Brady or Laton Alton Huffman. on single faces in dramatic close-up, a com- but the divided self and ambivalent soul of a However, unlike such intrepid pioneer position called “Faith” focused on the faces soldier. documentarians, Drew Tal belongs to a of several Buddhist monks, their hands Off the main gallery, in a dramatically generation that seeks less definable frontiers. prayerfully clasped under their chins. Like darkened room, several other large portraits Indeed, it just may be that Tal’s work is in most of Drew Tal’s subjects, all of the functioned as an overall installation. Set the forefront of a nascent movement of monks were youthful and good-looking, higher up on the walls, the glowing images postmodern romanticism. suggesting an unusually comely group of appeared as though suspended in space. ––Maurice Taplinger. 32 GALLERY&STUDIO NOV-DEC 2006/JAN 2007 The Syncretic Vision of Painter Photographer Phyllis Smith ne of the signifi- Smith imparts to its sensual white Ocant differences leaves, with their thorny edges between the work of and subtle pastel pink and blue- Phylilis Smith and that green shadings, a not only mes- of other artists who can merizing rhythm but also a sense be termed photorealists of the sometimes slightly sinister is that Smith does not consequences of artificially merely employ photo- expanded consciousness. This graphs as source materi- seductive plant truly looks like als for her paintings but something that might ensnare often exhibits them one’s spirit with ultimately pre- along with her paintings carious visionary delusions. in exhibitions as Not surprisingly, Smith’s pho- autonomous works unto tographs are equally evocative, as themselves. seen especially in “Silver Lily Just how related yet Long Wood,” where two slender discrete these two facets phallic shoots with blood-red of Phyllis Smith’s work heads spring from an unearthly are can be seen in her blue liquescent surface, surround- new solo show at ed by large, startlingly silver pods Viridian Artists, Inc., that appear to be floating over to 530 West 25th Street, engulf them with their triangular from November 7 openings in some sort of erotic through 25, with a natural water ballet. reception for the artist Indeed, this photograph is on November 11, from more suggestively surreal than 4 to 6 PM. Photos and the companion painting that paintings, rather than Smith calls simply “Water Lillies,” being separated, are which has its own more formal exhibited in close prox- attributes, with its limpid forms, imity to each other and delicately delineated green leaves, create a complementary overall chromatic phosphores- visual dialogue. cence, and oddly oxidated Another distinguish- infrared effects. Phyllis Smith’s ing characteristic of triumph in this painting is to Smith’s work is the inti- have achieved a kind of lyricism macy of her imagery. that bears no relationship to that Rather than depicting of the famous painting by Monet the landscape entire, she in whose shadow any contempo- prefers in both her pho- rary painter attempting this sub- tographs and her paint- ject must labor. Which is to say, ings, to give us a close- she has made it new, as Ezra up view of nature, zero- Pound insisted all modern artists ing in on what she calls “Flaming Swords” must do who endeavor to extend “precise microcosms or expand upon an existing poet- found close to earth.” She is particularly photorealism, Smith tweaks the visual infor- ic or aesthetic tradition. interested in the interplay of water and solid mation found in the photograph to height- Perhaps one of the most radically abstract matter as a way of expressing contrasts en intensity of her subjects. For example, in of Smith’s paintings is “Flaming Swords,” in between the mutable and the stable, one of her recent oils on panel, the intricate which the intricately tangled green and pur- between that which is constantly in flux and folds and shadows in a close up view of a ple zebra-striped fronds of the plant with that which is rooted in the earth, yet also mushroom appear to writhe and billow, tak- that botanical name are interwoven with alive and growing. ing on a sense of mystery made all the more golden leaves of the same species at a differ- Through her intense concentration on dramatic by her use of chiaroscuro, with ent stage of their development in a compo- detail, Smith achieves a heightened sense of deep, earthy hues giving way to fiery reds sition possessed of a dazzling optical energy. her subject matter akin to that in the work and luminous yellows. One gets the sense However, a similar energy enlivens the pho- of the pioneering photorealist Audrey Flack. less of a specific subject than of mysterious tograph entitled “Melinda’s Rocks,” which Like Flack, Smith does not strive for the forms and essences akin to the nature- focuses on a dense concentration of various- impassive surfaces one normally associates derived abstractions of painters like Gregory ly colored, wetly glistening stones, many with a good deal of photorealism; nor does Amenoff and Bill Jensen. with veined or speckled surfaces that relate she strive to approximate in painting the Some time ago, after being captivated by to the stripes in “Flaming Swords,” leading flattening effect of the camera or other one of Smith’s paintings of a floral subject in one to conclude that it is her singular sensi- aspects of the photographic vision of reality. a group exhibition at Viridian Artists, I bility and vision that enables Phyllis Smith She does not, in other words, make photo- commented in my review on its “hallucina- to syncretize her two mediums so harmo- graphic effects the subject of the painting in tory” quality. Appropriately enough, one of niously that each provides equal rewards for order to impose a sense of ironic “distanc- the paintings in this exhibition, Mescal,” the viewer. ing” to her compositions. Rather, like depicts the plant that the hallucinogen ––Ed McCormack Audrey Flack, one of the true pioneers of mescaline is synthesized from. And, indeed, NOV-DEC 2006/JAN 2007 GALLERY&STUDIO 33 Contemporary Impressionist Patrick Antonelle at The National Arts or a regular guy from Long Island to be who has gained his following over the past Fdubbed “the American Renoir” could be three decades, has always known what he daunting. But Patrick Antonelle, whose solo wanted to do in painting. exhibition can seen at the Trask Gallery, Ever since his student days at the School National Arts Club, 15 Gramercy Park of Visual Arts, the Brooklyn Museum Art South, through December, 2006, takes it in School, and The Art Students League, stride. Antonelle has known what he has wanted to Nor did the good natured Antonelle do and has been sharpening his skills toward seem to mind when one interviewer recently that end. Anyone who has spoken with him mentioned his name in the same breath as knows that he is quite aware of and knowl- that of Thomas Kinkade, although he edgeable about abstract painting. should have. For while Kinkade is a popular Still, like Fairfield Porter, Wolfe Kahn, schlock phenomenon, known for his cozily and other New York realists who were not artificial treatment of light, Antonelle is a in opposition to Abstract Expressionism, “Winter Stroll, Central Park” real painter with an unerring sense of natu- Antonelle (who had the respect of his accents on the grassy areas bordering the ral light who just happens to have a popular abstract peers when he showed at Gallery path, as well as in the shimmering atmos- following. Which is to say, not only is 84, one of the original Tenth Street phere he evokes where the trees recede into Antonelle’s work in numerous corporate Galleries, after it relocated to 57th Street in the distance on the lawn. collections and prestigious private collec- the 1990s) has always preferred to apply As a young man, Antonelle considered tions of contemporary art, it has also been abstract principles to recognizable subject becoming an architect, and this has inspired purchased over the years by people like matter. That he has also obviously absorbed him over the years to make the landmark Leonard Bernstein and Frank Sinatra, as certain principles of Asian painting is evident buildings of old New York some of his well as by serious collectors who are normal- in works such as “Winter in the Park,” a favorite subjects. But while these paintings ly more likely to buy a Renoir or a Monet scene in which tiny figures can be seen tra- are tinged with nostalgia for the older style than a work by a living painter. versing the snowbanks in Central Park. The of architecture that he prefers over the glass An unabashed adherent of Impressionism diminutive scale of the figures, here as in facades of more recent buildings, his com- most of Antonelle’s paint- mand of firm, architectural linear strokes, ings and prints, hints at along with his softer handling of the more the insignificance of the ethereal elements of light and shadow, have human being in the total long made his city scenes favorites of dis- scheme of things, which cerning collectors. has always been a promi- More recently, however, Antonelle’s nent feature of traditional European landscapes have become just as Chinese landscape paint- prized, particularly his scenes of Tuscany, ing. Here, too, the misty Italy, with its hilly topography and fertile quality of the tall build- vegetation, which he evokes with great ings looming over the vigor. Particularly exemplary in this regard is park and its bare, slender “Sunflowers– Tuscany,” where clusters of trees also harks back to the big, brilliant yellow flowers dominate the misty mountains seen the foreground of the composition and in Chinese scrolls, recede into the distance, where red-roofed although the falling snow rustic houses are visible, set against the ver- affords Antonelle the per- dant hills. Flowers and fields are also fea- “Tuscany Path” fect opportunity to dis- tured elements in other canvases, such as and Pointillism, Antonelle updates the tech- play his pointillist technique as well. And “Poppies and Wheat, Tuscany,” and niques of both movements to create his while most Chinese painting is basically “Country Road, Tuscany.” The latter paint- New York City scenes, as well as his land- monochromatic, being accomplished with ing is especially striking, with the narrow scapes of Nantucket and European locations gray tones in variously diluted shades of dirt road winding over a hill bordered on in England, France, and Italy. Indeed, he is black carbon ink, Antonelle also brings all of both sides by tall russet foliage dotted with one of the few contemporary painters who the chromatic subtlety he acquired in his red flowers. has mastered those techniques sufficiently to study of the Impressionists to bear in the Something of an anomaly among capture subtle qualities of light on different soft pink tints of the sky and the variety of Antonelle’s recent paintings is the composi- surfaces as proficiently as his Parisian prede- delicate hues he employs to the sense of tion called “Spring Birches,” in which he cessors. In his New York views, particularly, waning afternoon light on the snow in this depicts his subject with a detailed precision he shares their ability to invest scenes of exhilarating winter scene. reminiscent of Andrew Wyeth. Here, too, everyday life with freshness and vivacity. By contrast, Antonelle is able to indulge not only are his brushstrokes less Of course there has always been an his love of lush color and richly textured Impressionistic but his composition is sparer American Impressionist tradition, going foliage in another New York scene called and his colors are somewhat more subdued, back to Childe Hassam and other members “Gramercy Park Summer,” with its sliver of indicating that those of us who thought we of The Ten. In recent decades, however, the clear blue sky peeking through the verdant knew every facet of Antonelle’s art well can tendency has been to imitate the superficial trees and lawns, while a person walks a little still be surprised by his versatility. Indeed, mannerisms of the movement without mak- dog along a purple path dappled with the this exhibition at the National Arts Club is ing the thorough study of light that has shadows of the leaves. Here, particularly, one of his most varied and impressive to always given Antonelle’s paintings the edge. one sees the artist’s almost transcendent way date. One of the reasons for this is that Antonelle, with light in his handling of the yellow —Byron Coleman 34 GALLERY&STUDIO NOV-DEC 2006/JAN 2007 Catching Up With the Contemporary “Action Painting” of Peg McCreary eg McCreary keeps the faith; when a subject requires its dense Pwhich is to say: she is one of viscosity and the latter when its the few painters today who exem- quick-drying properties are plifies the ethos of what Clement called for––McCreary apparently Greenberg termed “American- proceeds with the certainty of a Type Painting,” what some call painterly conquistador, engaging “Action Painting,” what others a complex range of challenges think of as “New York School” with her vigorous handling of painting, and what most of us still pigment to capture the flow and refer to as Abstract Expressionism. flux of her feelings in form and Moreover, she does so without color, unmediated by the cau- seeming in the least bit retrograde tious strategizing that character- or resorting to the distancing izes so much postmodern artistic strategies that any number of her enterprise. Immediacy and sen- contemporaries use to justify work- suality are the keynotes of the ing in a manner that goes against oil on canvas “Blue Grotto,” the prevailing conceptual grain. with its deep blue hues merging In McCreary’s case, not only muscularly with milky white does her faith in the primal vitality “Glissando” impasto to achieve a surface at of pure gestural expression pay off the actual space of our lives. But we sense once smoky and succulent, while handsomely, but it proves once again that a deep morphic resonance between the rhythm and speed distinguishes the acrylic this species of painting can be every bit as composition, colors and spaces on a can- on canvas “Traversal,” where the paint relevant (if not as revolutionary) today as vas and the rhythms, moods, and conflicts quality is somewhat thinner and the com- it was when the explosive emergence of of our lives, and it is to the increasingly position is driven by a whiplash linearity. Pollock, de Kooning & Company first rich visualization of this resonance that Qualities of both are combined in established New York City as the art cen- my work is committed.” “Glissando,” where acrylic takes on the ter of the world. The proof is everywhere One of the most interesting facets of tactile richness of oil, yet the composition evident in McCreary’s exhibition at the McCreary’s work is that the resonance of is animated primarily by a calligraphic Cornell Medical Center Lobby Gallery, which she speaks shifts easily between her swiftness, further enlivened by the artful 12 West 72nd Street through December inner and outer worlds. Her sinuously lin- placement of subsidiary splashes and 28. ear brushwork (which seems to spring drips. Here, the title, which refers to a McCreary still speaks of painting the directly from the artist’s nervous system rapid sliding up and down the musical way artists did in the Tenth Street era, as if it were an actual monitor of her bio- scale, alludes specifically to the artist’s when the conversations held in the now- logical impulses) alternately delineates background as a former professional musi- gentrified cold water lofts or at the leg- turns and twists in her personal journey cian, playing double bass with several endary Artists Club was not all about how (“Traversal No.2”), her reactions to a film symphony orchestras. However, it is the to make gallery connections or schmooze by Stanley Kubrick, (“Odyssey No, 10”) innate musicality of Peg McCreary’s work curators and collectors, as all too often it or her response to nature––particularly that makes all of the paintings in this is today, when she says, “Abstraction is “lush vegetation emerging from a phos- exhibition equally exhilarating. not allegory; it is not a one-to-one corre- phorescent lake” (“Blue Grotto”). spondence between the object in the vir- Working either in oil or acrylic on can- ––J. Sanders Eaton tual space of the canvas and its referent in vas––choosing the former, one presumes,

Worlds Apart Exhibition A selection of extraordinary paintings; from the desolate beauty of the Outer Hebrides of Scotland, the rawness of New York City to the spirituality of India, by: Elisabeth de Las Casas Ari Vais Sam Rai Abstract 2006 December 5 through December 16, 2006 A fine arts exhibit GELABERT STUDIOS An International Art Gallery November 8-28, 2006 255 W. 86th Street (at Broadway) New York, NY 10024 Exhibitors: 718-431-5726 Miguel Angel • Jeanette Arnone • Sonia Barnett • Terry Berkowitz Elinore Bucholtz • Judith De Zanger • Leanne Martinson SPECIAL PREVIEW: Peg McCreary • Emily Rich • Meyer Tannenbaum Tuesday, December 5, 2006 5:00 to 8:00 PM Broadway Mall Community Center GALLERY HOURS: 96th Street and Broadway,center island, NYC Tuesday through Saturday Gallery Hours:Wed.6-8pm,Sat./Sun.12-6pm 1:00 to 6:00 PM [email protected] 212-316-6024 www.wsacny.org www.worldsapartgallery.com NOV-DEC 2006/JAN 2007 GALLERY&STUDIO 35 SM Lewis: A Contemporary Master of Photomontage

lthough photomontage falls under its overall effect, “Architect’s Flame” Athe general category of collage, superimposes the ethereal outline of a which changed the course of art history human figure over what appears to be through the formal innovations of the type of ongoing memorial devise Cubism, the manipulation of photo- known as an “eternal flame” in a man- graphic imagery is more akin to the ner that appears to ignite the figure in a dreamlike juxtapositions and psychologi- brilliant red blaze accented here and cal resonance Surrealism. Whether there with subsidiary auras of blue, through cutting and pasting, double green, and yellow. Behind, partially in exposures, the printing of different neg- front of, and seen through the fiery fig- atives onto the same sheet, or, more ure in its most translucent areas, are recently, digital alteration, photomon- conical geometric shapes that form tage always possessed its own special repetitive, evenly spaced patterns. This power. Photographs, after all, generally image could suggest many things, but represent moments in time and are per- above all it seems to allude to the con- ceived to capture “reality.” In pho- fluence of creative fervor and rationale tomontage, perceived reality can take on thinking, of inspiration and reason, startling new dimensions. Depending on required for the realization of enduring the skill and imaginative breadth of the works of art, be they architectural or in artist, the possibilities for subjective SM Lewis’ own medium of digital pho- expression are virtually limitless––espe- tomontage. cially given the range of effects now pos- Whereas the figure was most often sible with advanced digital technology. subordinated to architectural structures SM Lewis exploits this technology in Lewis’ previous exhibition in the more effectively than most artists, creat- same venue in February of 2006, ing compositions that transcend the arti- appearing for the most part as shadowy ficial categories normally imposed by pedestrians glimpsed in passing, phan- critics of art and photography. Just how tom-like figures, prominently placed, successfully Lewis does this can be seen also dominate the new compositions. In in his new solo exhibition at Amsterdam the punningly titled “Beach Buoy,” for Whitney Gallery, 511 West 25th Street, example, the semi-translucent outline of from November 3 through 28. a young boy is combined with a large “While the montage components are clump of dried beach vegetation with derived from reality, the photomontage leaves that protrude like tendrils, shad- as a work is created in the mind,” Lewis owy smaller images of similar plant stated recently, adding, “When pho- forms, and the distant silhouette of a tomontage is judged by the rules of buoy afloat on a body of water, suggest- photography the determination of good ing a mysterious submerged narrative and bad is often too easily influenced by provoked by a childhood memory. This the constraints inherent to judging pho- image has a haunting quality akin to tography.” some of Jasper Johns’ self-portraits con- Although Lewis probably knows taining silhouettes of his own body amid from whence he speaks, having had his objects, symbols, and forms of obscure work misunderstood or misinterpreted personal significance to the artist. by those who think “within the box,” as Unlike earlier masters of photomon- they say, most viewers will require no tage, such as John Heartfield and critical guidelines to appreciate his digi- Hannah Hoch, both of whom were tal photomontages. Indeed, one falls active in Berlin during the Dada period effortlessly under the spell of a magically and subject to the limitations of cutting atmospheric picture such as “Madison and pasting, SM Lewis has a host of Square Park,” which evokes the sense of subtle, sophisticated technical possibili- an urban epiphany with the lone figure ties at his disposal. But rather than of a man seated on a bench, enjoying a indulging them recklessly, as a lesser moment of pastoral respite in the midst artist might be tempted to do in order of the city. Here, the visual components “Architect’s Flame” to produce flashy effects as vulgar as are somewhat less overtly surreal than in those we see in contemporary fantasy some of Lewis’ other pictures. However, moment of solitary reverie with which any and science fiction films, Lewis employs some of the brilliant red and orange flow- viewer who has ever experienced such a them with admirable restraint in the service ers appear to float beyond the low iron moment can easily identify. By virtue of of a singular aesthetic vision. It is for this fence surrounding a patch of lawn like SM Lewis’ imagistic and chromatic manip- reason that his work appears destined to botanical phantoms and hover holographi- ulations the viewer is transported by this endure and to continue speaking to future cally in the foreground of the composition. picture just as effectively as he or she might generations, long after our current fascina- And portions of the clouds around The be moved by viewing the park scenes of tion with the new technology has waned. Empire State Building seem to drift down Seurat, Renoir, or others among the around the seated figure, where they Impressionists in an earlier century. morph into pink mists evoking a perfect Considerably more radically symbolic in ––Ed McCormack

36 GALLERY&STUDIO NOV-DEC 2006/JAN 2007 Patrick Antonelle JOHN WALLACE Paintings through December “Self Portrait with Telescope, The Pleiades and Saskia” “Self Portrait with Telescope, January 2 - 27, 2007 Reception: Saturday, Jan 6, 3 - 6pm

Central Park Spring Blue Mountain Gallery 530 West 25th Street, NYC 10001 National Arts Club 646 486 4730 Tues - Sat 11- 6 15 Gramercy Park South, New York, N.Y. www.bluemountaingallery.org

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