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FEBRUARY–MARCH 2013 www.galleryandstudiomagazine.com VOL. 15 NO. 3 New York GALLERYSTUDIO “Beat Memories: The Photographs of Allen Ginsberg” at Grey Art Gallery, NYU pg. 7

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530 West 25th Street, New York 212-226-4151 Fax: 212-966-4380 www.Agora-Gallery.com [email protected]

GALLERYSTUDIO FEBRUARY/MARCH 2013 “Winter Warm-Up” Showcases Several Artists ail Comes, one of the artists featured lightly sketched on toned paper in pencil and compositions from elements of realism. . Gin this catchily titled show, has a strong charcoal by the artist known simply as Zelda Then there is Lucinda Prince, whose two figurative style with sometimes surreal could also suggest subjects dating back to the paintings from her “Winter Trees” series, one overtones. Here, she is represented by the classical past. For in “A Tale of Two Men,” with snow piled on its bare branches, have a oil on canvas “Dancing with the Tiger,” in and two other drawings, Zelda displays shimmering beauty. Prince creates the effect which two mysterious, expressively delineated an almost old masterly ability to capture of clear winter sunlight on natural surfaces by hands emerge from the bottom of the character in a few sure, sensitive lines. streaking her still-wet oil pigments to create composition to merge two masklike faces that Another, more semi-abstract sense of vertical streaks that also lend formal ballast to fuse into one of those anatomical anomalies character comes across in Carole Barlowe’s her compositions. that Comes fashions so artfully. acrylic on canvas “Ms. Subway.” Riffing on Richard Carlson’s vertically stacked Margo Mead’s recent figurative works in the Miss Subways beauty contest that once yet horizontal diptych “Winter Storm watercolor and crayon on rice paper revolve adorned MTA cars, only the pale face, hands, / Scarves” is one of this consummately around classically simplified figures with and legs of Barlowe’s pretty passenger emerge subtle abstractionist’s subtlest works a powerful presence in symbolic settings, from an overall field of bright pink on which to date, with his omnipresent grid and as seen in “Global Warm-Up,” where the her torso is simply outlined in an electric line columns of newsprint all but submerged by earth takes on the appearance of a shrinking with Matisse-like economy. semitranslucent overall whitewash tinged, swimming pool beset by a huge sun-flash. A landscape by Artur Pashkov might better here and there, with faint tints of pink. Like There are strong messages in Mead’s be described as a “moonscape” in which those of Agnes Martin, perhaps his closest pictures, but she presents them with a wit and intricate, rhythmic, waves of iridescent color aesthetic ancestor, at his most abstract formal appeal that transcends the aesthetic swirl out from two tiny lunar orbs. Pashkov Carlson’s compositions invariably reward limitations of most social realism. further enhances the visionary quality of close scrutiny. Jeanne Claire Allen’s acrylic painting this atmospheric little oil on canvas by Another abstract painter, Meg Boe Birns “Joyful Times” depicts people in archaic surrounding it in a frame thickly encrusted is a maximalist in terms of texture, color, and formal dress –– the men sporting top hats, with cultured pearls and other costume composition. Birns’ mixed media and acrylic the women in long gowns –– on an airy jewelry. on canvas, “The Magician’s Girl,” with its verandah where beams of sunlight stream in Ava Schonberg displays a creamy thickly encrusted and bejeweled surface from the green impressionist landscape just painterliness and a sense of space akin to featuring intricate squares of alizarin crimson, beyond. As the title indicates, Allen’s scene Wayne Thiebaud in two acrylic paintings blue, and gold, is a baroque tactile and projects a poignant sense of nostalgia, as if the of beachscapes. In one, of Fire Island, Continued on page 23 figures are frozen in memory of a joy long in striped umbrellas enliven a vista of sky, sea, the past. and sand; in another of Knokke, a Belgian Curated by Carole Barlowe “Winter Warm- Although they could very well be seaside resort, a row of small changing cabins Up,” was recently seen at Broadway Mall contemporary portraits, the bearded faces lines the shore creating a serene abstract Community Center, 96th St. (center island). Harriet FeBland 5L^*VUZ[Y\J[PVUZ

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FEBRUARY/MARCH 2013 GALLERYSTUDIO 1 Christine Sellman and the Character of an Authentic Gesture nce our stereotype of Australian painting was the rough and Oready yet slyly sophisticated folkloric faux-primitivism of Sidney Nolan, one of the country’s most famous artists. But in actual fact there are all manner of innovative painters at work today in Australia, G S where one of the most impressive exponents of what Clement Greenberg once chauvinistically termed “American-Type Painting” is Christine Sellman. Highlights Although she started out as a figurative artist, Sellman, who has been widely exhibited in galleries in Melbourne, Victoria, Hong Kong, Los Angeles, and Cologne, eventually found more freedom in a spontaneous gestural style that springs from Abstract Expressionism. On the Cover: Working in acrylic on canvas, she creates large, vigorous compositions Beat legend Allen Ginsberg’s photographs, marked by improvisation. She eschews the limitations of a so-called annotated with hand-scrolled prosody, are “signature style,” preferring to let each painting dictate its own forms a tribute to his early inspiration, William and colors. Yet Blake’s illuminated manuscripts. –Page 7 an overriding consistency comes across in her work, given the distinctive character of her painterly “handwriting.” This can be seen by comparing even ostensibly disparate large canvases that vary greatly in color and form, such as “Eye Kanevsky, pg. 4 of the Storm” and “Summer Blaze.” In the “Hearts of Love” former work yellow and blue hues dominate and the shapes are shard-like –– almost like the jagged fragments of Clyfford Still –– and are closely clustered in a vertical composition, covering the entire surface of the canvas. The latter painting, however, is a horizontal composition, with most of the larger forms in red and yellow, centrally located on a subtly modulated light-colored field. Here, too, Sellman employs a spatter technique, splashing dark dots and drips over the mass of reds and Yost, pg. 21 yellows. While “Eye of the Storm” suggests a nocturnal hurricane and “Summer Blaze” evokes a sense of daylight heat, both are possessed of an identifying gestural thrust that appears to emanate directly from the artist’s nervous system. Perhaps diverse elements converge most harmoniously in another large canvas by Sellman called “Whimsical Flight,” in which she combines vibrant yellow hues with darkly spattered spots that appear to fly up like charred embers from a flame amid sinuous strokes of variegated purplish hues enlivening the bottom of the canvas. By contrast, Sellman comes closest to literal scenic description without FeBland, pg. 11 crossing the line into realism in the atmospherically evocative large canvas entitled “City Nights.” For without verging on fussy specifics, this poetic abstraction in a horizontal format, with its palette of deep blues and brilliant yellows, conjures up a panoramic vista of bridges, highways, darkly looming buildings, bright lights and all the vast mystery of a modern metropolis. Also allusive after a more totally abstract manner is “Hearts of Continued on page 23

Christine Sellman, Agora Gallery, 530 West 25th Street, February 7 – 27, 2013 Morrison, pg. 20 FrédériqueK, pg. 6 Reception: Thursday, February 7, 6 – 8pm 2 GALLERYSTUDIO FEBRUARY/MARCH 2013 Contemporary Landscape Painting at New Century “ lein Air,” the French term for painting strokes of compositions such as his “The brightly peopled beachscape,”Naples Pier.” Pdone outdoors from nature is the Dock, Sunrise in the Fog,” still show a with gracefully floating clouds above to the subject of “Far and Near Horizons,” the strong allegiance to the Impressionists softly atmospheric panorama “Morning latest group exhibition curated by Basha and Pointillists of his native country. Fog, Monterey California.” Maryanska, revealing several international However, Cardot’s circular composition, The Brazilian painter Sandra Nunes approaches to a timeless theme. “In the Water,” depicting a craggy tree often brings the color and bustling Debra Joy Groesser, who was born trunk partially submerged in water, has excitement of her native city, Rio de in England but has lived in Nebraska a visionary quality akin to the American Janeiro, alive in oils, charcoal, or soft since 1970 warmly embraces an adopted artist Charles Burchfield. The real surprise, pastel, capturing its landmarks, markets, landscape tradition in paintings such as her however, is the silhouette of a shapely and streets in a style made up of many wittily titled oil “Bully Bully,” employing a woman within the tree trunk––surreal swiftly jotted, vigorous strokes. Particularly particularly British expression for a picture shades of Magritte. energetic in the present exhibition is of two bulls in a meadow. Her work, often Fascinated in childhood by Thomas Nunes’ vertiginous view of a hilly street, featuring ruddy earth colors, as seen in Cole and other Hudson Valley landscape lined by picturesque old houses, that twists another oil of a cliff above a body of water, artists, J.R. Baldini applies a similar and swerves past telephone poles and wires has a rugged quality much in the manner vitality to more contemporary views of down to the mouth of the harbor. of the great Western artist Frederick Monhegan Island, Maine. Baldini’s “The Originally from California, in 1984 Remington. Legacy of Monhegan Island is a smoothly Georgia Mansur moved with her husband Julie Houck, a former professional painted oil, in which a small craft traverses to Australia to develop a cotton farm, photographer, is a maestro of “skyscapes,” a body of water bordered by dark rock and there started painting her rhapsodic often employing low horizon lines and formations, while her “Spring Thaw” is a landscapes to cope with an isolated new devoting much of the space in her oils more expressionistic image of melting ice life in the outback. Although she has on canvas and linen to atmospheric vistas and writhing trees laid down in energetic obviously become acclimated to her new of clouds and lighting effects that call to impasto. environment, a residual sense of loneliness mind the English master JMW Turner. The Colorado artist Janice Warriner, amid great distances still invests her strong Particularly pleasing among Houck’s who studied in both Canada and the oils and lyrical watercolors with a haunting paintings were a somber-hued composition United States, is another painter enamored beauty. called “Thunder” and a luminous view of of the spontaneous gesture as a vehicle Denver, Colorado artist Lelija Roy pink tinged cumuli above verdant fields for capturing the many moods of nature. apparently puns on the name of a famous entitled “Bit of Heaven.” Warriner’s “Aspens in the Fall,” for California chainsaw and forestry supply The Canadian artist D.F. Gray, on the example, is a fiery explosion of autumnal company in “What Bailey Saw.” Yet for other hand, works in soft pastel on paper, yellows and reds with the distinctive all the casual wit of her outlook, Bailey’s layering swift, delicate strokes to evoke spotted bark of the trees serving as vista is possessed of an almost unearthly impressive subtleties of chiaroscuro. Gray’s signposts in a composition that almost magnificence, taking in a view of distant “Moorcroft Vue,” depicts the rolling tide, verges on abstraction. white-capped mountains giving way to a craggy rocks, and foliage of a Canadian Karl Eric Leitzel, a native of pine forest and a waterfall streaming down shoreline with dappled strokes, while Pennsylvania, moves with his moods and boulders, all evoked realistically in implied “From Brant Point” is a moist, marshy the dictates of different subjects from perspective yet underpinned by a Cezanne- vision of one of the artist’s favorite painting loose to more precise paint handling. And like sense of cubistic structuring on the sites. his definition of landscape is also flexible, two-dimensional picture plane. The well known Scottish painter, tutor, ranging from the bravura composition of Then there is Linda Richichi who and author Margaret Evans captures a sand and scrubby foliage in “Dunes First combines plein air painting with an moody beauty in “Last Light,” with a Light” to the teeming human landscape intuitive element of imagination. Richichi’s shadowy mountain looming in the middle of a country fair midway at evening, with unique vision comes across with special distance against a delicately radiant sky, its milling crowds, flags, and gaudy lights dynamism in her pastel “Divine Feminine rocks rising from the water and a lone evoked in a style at once vigorous and Rising,” where two branchless trees in rowboat abandoned at the shore in the controlled, vital and descriptive. an otherwise naturalistic landscape turn forefront. By contrast the aptly named The human image also enlivens the slightly surreal, forming the clearly defined idyllic composition “Plockton Peace” nature paintings of the Florida artist contours of a curvaceous female torso shows white cottages clustered under green Carol McArdle, as seen in “Three Early and hips, as well as in her acrylic painting hills and mirrored in a nearby body of clear Fishermen,” where the figures are all “Path Less Traveled,” in which along water. but dwarfed, like the tiny scholars and with an actual, if somewhat spectral figure A musician as well as a painter, Larry travelers in Chinese scroll paintings, by traversing a cliff, this viewer could swear Seiler employs nature as a spiritually the magnificence of landscape blazing he saw a clearly defined oversized human expressive element in his small yet powerful brilliantly around the river, as they cast profile emerging from the silhouetted side oil “Sundance Creek,” where the ethereal their lines from a rowboat. Frequently, of a tree and could Rorschach a mounted glow illuminating the water is at once however, McArdle makes avian figures, figure reminiscent of the Western song natural seeming and magical. In another particularly the exotic water birds of her “Ghost Riders in the Sky” galloping oil by Seiler, entitled “Flooded Timbers,” home state the main subjects of oils such as through the luminous clouds above. reflected tree trunks take on a contrasting “The Elegant Hunter.” –– Vincent Klein palpable solidity. Yet another artist who includes the Although the mostly self-taught French human figure in some of her landscapes is artist Christophe Cardot moved to the Kathryn A. McMahon, who was born in “Far & Near Horizons,” New Century U.S. and settled in Florida, calling Key Canada and now holds duel citizen there Artists Gallery, 530 West 25th Street, West his “spiritual home,” the intensity and in the U.S. McMahon’s fluid plein March 5 - 23, 2013. of light and color, as well as the staccato air style shifts smoothly from the breezy, FEBRUARY/MARCH 2013 GALLERYSTUDIO 3 Alexander Kanevsky: Restoring the Heroic n his definitive book Man as Hero: extended weeks beyond its original “Laocoon” to “King David,” from IThe Human Figure in Western Art, closing date, Kanevsky showed a group “Antonina” to “Queen Elizabeth.” the artist and art historian Pierce Rice of mural-scale oils on wood from a series One of the more strikingly over-the- makes the point that down through the called “Giants, Heroes, and Martyrs.” top paintings among these is “Mowgli,” centuries the single most pervasive theme It was followed by another major named for the fictional protagonist of in Western visual art (as opposed to most exhibition in the elegant showroom at Rudyard Kipling’s “The Jungle Book,” a Asian and Islamic art, in which images Cyrus Company, also in Soho, entitled boy lost by his parents as a child during of people are largely a tiger attack in absent or generally the Indian jungle diminutive or and raised by a subordinated to an pack of wolves. overall design when In a seven foot they do appear), has long horizontal been the glorification oil on wood, of mankind. Kanevsky depicts “The ostensible the grown subjects,” he writes, Mowgli, who in “were the heroes Kipling’s tale, of mythology, develops almost kings and queens, superhuman saints, prelates, skills as a tracker gods, God, soldiers, and hunter, angels, the once as a massively and still famous, muscled Tarzan- but collectively of like figure (albeit enduring interest with dark Indian as an aristocracy skin, rather than of vast distinction as just another of bearing. The caucasian jungle identification of the hero lording it actual individuals over the natives) and the episodes literally wrestling they take part in is a huge beast by secondary to their the horns, as one universal character.” of his brother One of the wolves howls in most prevalent the foreground developments in and a shaggy lion worldwide art of as majestic as the the past couple of two stone beasts decades, however, guarding the has been the face of the 42nd deification of “Antonina” “Laocoon” Street New York peculiar quirks and Library stares freak qualities that reduce the human “Monumental Powers.” serenely out at the viewer. image to a status smaller than life. Kanevsky won the First International Equally powerful in another manner Indeed, in a cultural climate where, Award for Fine Arts in Venice, Italy, in is Kanevsky’s “Laocoon,” in which the apart from the most humorless precincts 1999 and, in 2003, was asked to create Trojan priest is depicted battling the sea of political correctness, irony reigns paintings for The Royal Shakespeare serpents sent by Poisidon to strangle him supreme, it is only the rarest species of Company’s Globe Theater, in London. and his two sons for attempting to expose contemporary artist that is willing to Over the next few years, other prestigious the ruse of the Trojan Horse. In his much address heroic themes. commissions for large-scale public works more visceral treatment of the theme than The Russian-born American painter, followed: a painting called “Africa” for that of the elaborate three-figure marble Alexander Kanevsky (who, after years of Kenya; another painting called “India” sculpture in the Vatican Museum, which being censored under the Soviet regime, for New Delhi; yet another major work idealizes Laocoon’s facial expression as started making waves in the local art comparable in its own manner to JMW exemplifying the “quiet simplicity and scene soon after immigrating to the Turner’s masterpiece “The Battle of noble grandeur” that was thought to be United States in 1990, when he was Trafalgar,” entitled “The Battle of China the essence of ancient Greek sculpture, written up in the New York Times for and Japan of 1605,” jointly sponsored Kanevsky depicts only Laocoon in relative creating controversy with a painting of by the Chinese Ministry of Culture and close-up, his face and torso alone filling a nude couple displayed in the window the government of Japan. More recently a panel eight feet tall by four feet wide. of a gallery in his adopted state of Kanevsky was the featured artist at And, by contrast, his expression reveals Connecticut) is just such an animal. Sundance Film Festival. the more authentic grimace of pain such At a recent exhibition at Ward-Nasse Among the paintings exemplifying heroic struggle would provoke, as the Gallery in Soho, which attracted such his unabashed passion for epic themes coils of the huge serpent wrap around widespread attention that it had to be and mythic personalities, ranging from his powerful chest, which appears fully as 4 GALLERYSTUDIO FEBRUARY/MARCH 2013 Dimension to Figurative Art ruddy and livid as one of Soutine’s flayed as to confess to Oedipal ambitions toward like that of Icarus from sky to sea, filling beef carcasses. Michelangelo, the giant Pierce Rice cites most of a large wood panel. Although Indeed, Soutine, along with as the supreme master of Man as Hero. At decapitated at the chin by the lower right Rembrandt, would both appear to be the same time, the popular appeal of his side of the composition, the partial figure major influences on Kanevsky’s manner paintings can also be compared to such culminates on the other end, where the of applying oil paint to wood panels, great Mexican muralists as Diego Rivera groin would normally be, in a second strange bedfellows as they may seem, for and Jose Clemente Orozco, for they are head –– again partially severed by the top his manner of combining the glistening possessed of a similar monumentality and left edge of the panel! More fanciful than visceral reds of the former with the fiery dynamism, albeit mercifully stripped grotesque (despite the difficulty of finding dramatic chiaroscuro of the latter. And of political polemics. adequate language to do proper justice to like Norman Mailer boasting that he For all the universality, in fact, many of such an anatomical anomaly), like one of would have liked to get into the ring Kanevsky’s paintings are highly subjective Odilon Redon’s giants or his Cyclops, it and go a few rough rounds with Papa visions, as seen in “Cloud,” where a possesses its own inarguable visual logic. Hemingway, Kanevsky has been so bold massive, muscular male torso plummets Nor are males the only heroes of Kanevsky’s paintings, as seen in his portrait of a wry and busty “Queen Elizabeth” –– obviously, from her silken finery, depicting the last Tudor monarch of England, rather than her modern namesake; his “Leonora,” another formidable lady, coddling her irresistible pair of lion cubs; and his “Antonina,” painted as the very model of domestic maternity, with her hands sunk in the gunk of a large kitchen bowl, while a young boy-child clings to her skirts and a towering monster of a grizzly bear with an enormous furry head and adoring yellow eyes nuzzles her bare shoulder with his mushy snout. Could this possibly be the mythic Antonina, wife of the fourth century Greek Byzantine General Belisarius, who was said to have led a dissolute life, having had many children before her marriage, but later bravely joined her husband on his campaigns during the Gothic War and became “his steadfast comrade and helpmate”? Such biographical specifics hardly matter, given Alexander Kanevsky’s unfailing ability to lend each of his human subjects an innate nobility that enlists them in that “aristocracy of vast distinction of bearing,” as Pierce Rice puts it in Man as Hero, making the “identification of the actual individuals and the episodes they take part in . . . secondary to their individual character.” Given the climate of irony, pseudo- sophisticated cynicism, and commercial self-interest in which any contemporary artist is compelled to operate, this in itself amounts to an heroic feat. –– Ed McCormack

Alexander Kanevsky www.alexanderkanevsky.com Cyrus Company, 57 Greene Street “Queen Elizabeth” Through February 20, 2013 FEBRUARY/MARCH 2013 GALLERYSTUDIO 5 Krzis-Lorent FrédériqueK and the Lives of Women f unabashed beauty is the last taboo in Rouge, much of the appeal of FrédériqueK ’s down in a state of weariness or a fit of pique Ifine art, fortunately the French painter compositions springs from her consummate over an evening out that has ended badly. Krzis-Lorent FrédériqueK chooses to ignore draftspersonship. And like him as well, she As in many of FrédériqueK ’s paintings, it. For FrédériqueK’s oils on canvas celebrate often handles oil washes with a translucent this picture projects the sense of an ongoing the female form, as well as the occasional delicacy one associates more often with drama, of a scene in a narrative. landscape subject, in a manner that, while watercolor, to let her drawing ability shine The figure in another painting by thoroughly contemporary, harks back to through, and has a tendency to leave empty FrédériqueK, entitled “Silence,” is evoked in a periods before the cult of ugliness came to rule space around her figures in order to let her more full-bodied manner, with soft, feathery compositions “breathe.” strokes of pigment covering the entire canvas This device is especially striking in the with color in a manner that lends her a more painting FrédériqueK calls “Sauge,” in which palpably physical quality than the girls in the areas of virgin white-primed canvas the previous two paintings. Another slender around the figure enhance the ethereal effect beauty, with flowing hair and vaguely Eurasian of her luxuriant light blond hair and ivory features, seen from the waist up, she appears to complexion in a manner that makes her full, be an active contemporary young woman on ruby-red lips stand out like exclamation points. the go. The blurred shapes in the background Here, too, the subject’s filmy red garment, suggest that she may moving among crowded suggesting a gossamer gown or negligee, adds city streets; yet with one shoulder raised a subtle eroticism which underlies the overall defensively, her mouth making a moue, she purity of the image. maintains her distance, her silence. “Deroute” Equally exquisite for FrédériqueK ’s By contrast the three elegantly coifed and certain precincts of the art world. handling of white space is “Deroute,” a chicly dressed young harpies in “Gossip” Although she acknowledges the influence diptych depicting a lissome young model in might be as appealing as “The Three Graces,” of ancient Greek sculpture, the masters of the a short white nightgown reclining on a white if only they could cultivate silence as well. But Italian Renaissance, the post-Impressionists sheet, her white thighs bare, her lower legs they, too, are part of the feminine drama that –– and even Abstract Expressionists like sheathed in sheer gray stockings, her feet in FrédériqueK depicts so insightfully and with Mark Rothko for their formal qualities –– silky purple spike-heeled shoes stretching all such formidable formal beauty. –– Peter Wylie her paintings also show a kinship with more the way to the far edge of the second of the down-to-earth ancestors like Jules Pascin and two closely joined canvases. Although she is Toulouse-Lautrec who also depicted intimate lying on her stomach, as though sleeping, Krzis-Lorent FrédériqueK, Agora Gallery moments in the lives of women, be they in the one of her slender arms reaching down from 530 West 25th St., February 7 - 27, 2013. boudoir or the brothel. the bed to rest on the floor, her eyes are wide Reception: Thurs. February 7, 6 - 8pm. As with the latter master of the Moulin open, as though she has just flung herself New Ways of Looking at “Land and Sea” lthough no title could sound more suggesting an aqueous flow, as it streams adhering to a more realistic approach. For Atraditional, “Land and Sea,” curated down to the verdant earth. Lessner’s realism, as seen in “View from by participating artist Linda Lessner for the Marie Robison is a stylistic shape-shifter. Olana” and “Green Meadow,” is muted and West Side Arts Coalition, revealed several Her mixed media collage, “Autumn Fantasy,” atmospheric, suggesting a subjective filter of fresh contemporary approaches to a timeless is a lyrical semiabstract treatment of delicate poetry that transforms her scenes into inner theme. linear twigs afloat in a field of Halloween visions. The landscapes of Charles Coates, for hues. However in her “North American Adam Adrian Brostow favors clear, definite example, can appear so abstract as to verge Dinosaurs,” the fanciful forms of prehistoric forms arranged flatly on the picture plane on minimalism. This is particularly true species are sharply outlined in black against in a manner akin to the early Alex Katz, as of Coates’ acrylic painting “Miles from a landscape of solid pastel hues, as in stained seen in his acrylic paintings “Krabi” and Montauk,” which consists of two simple areas glass. “Havran.” The former depicts a yellow and of color, one orange, the other blue. But look Michelle Melo focuses on fauna rather red small craft traversing a cerulean river with closer, absorb the subtly variegated tones of than flora in her black and white linocut tall rocks on the far shore; the latter evokes a what Turner called “color-as-light” in each, “Fish.” Its strongly stylized shape is log lodge with ski trails in the snow and pine and suddenly one becomes aware of a vibrant reminiscent of Eskimo prints, only conceived trees flecked with snow towering behind like vista of sky and sea. in a more consciously contemporary manner, skyscrapers with lit windows. Consider, by contrast, Dammika D. at once simple and sophisticated in its formal Almost always untitled, almost always Ranasinghe’s two precise compositions integration of the central forms and its built on the grid, the mostly monochromatic in watercolor and acrylic on canvas paper underwater environment. mixed media collage paintings of Richard “Living Beings in Nature” and “Lotus The mixed media collages of Celia Carlson employ austere means to arrive Design.” In both Ranasinghe employs Cruzado have an opposite appeal, given their at a remarkable variety of visual solutions. intricate repetitive patterns in an overall imagistic complexity, in which figures and Perhaps in deference to the show’s theme, manner; yet each evokes a distinctly different elements of landscapes, as well as architecture one of Carlson’s works features a large circle aspect of nature’s endlessly replenishing fracture and merge to create an effect akin to to suggest a moon glowing over a slatted energies and rhythms. neo-cubism. Cruzado’s ”My Secret Garden” wooden fence. Deborah Yaffe, on the other hand takes is especially charming for its image of two Continued on page 23 a visionary approach to nature in her oil on little girls hand-in-hand amid lush foliage paper “River to the Sky,” its rugged paint as they approach what appears to be an handling recalling Marsden Hartley. The enchanted forest. “Land&Sea,” recently seen at Broadway Mall composition is aptly named, with a rainbow- Curator Linda Lessner imbues her oils Community Center, 96th St. (center island) like area of electric pink and blue actually on canvas with a sense of magic, even while 6 GALLERYSTUDIO FEBRUARY/MARCH 2013 Memories Evoked by “Beat Memories: The Photographs of Allen Ginsberg” at Grey Art Gallery, NYU by Ed McCormack he year I finally got to know Allen TGinsberg was an especially busy one for the poet who, along with Jack Kerouac, s had been one of the early literary heroes of my high school beatnik youth. Not only had Harper & Row just published a hefty volume of his Collected Poems, but he was about to have the first solo exhibition of his photographs at the Holly Solomon Gallery uptown on Fifth Avenue. A year earlier, inspired by discovering his old negatives among his papers (he had stopped taking pictures in 1963 to concentrate on his poetry in the wake of all the Beat Generation publicity), Allen reprinted many of his early pictures and began taking new ones. Encouraged by pointers from Robert Frank, an early associate of the Beats (Kerouac wrote an introduction for Frank’s book of photographs “The Americans” and Frank made the landmark Beat film “Pull My Daisy,” written and narrated by Kerouac, starring Ginsberg), as well as by a visit to the distinguished elderly photographer Berenice Abbott at her home in Maine, Allen started thinking of his photographs as art, he told me, rather than mere snapshots of his friends. In the years since, these images originally intended as “keepsakes,” preserving “certain moments in eternity” have been widely exhibited in galleries and museums. The especially extensive selection, presently on view at Grey Art Gallery, New York University, in the posthumous exhibition “Beat Memories: The Photographs of Allen Ginsberg,” revived my own memories of a week spent as the poet’s shadow. Although I had actually met him years earlier at a party in the home of my editor at the seminal underground arts tabloid Changes, Sue Graham (later to become Sue Mingus when she married her fiancé, the great jazz composer and bass player Charles Mingus), the assignment came about © 2012 The Allen Ginsberg LLC. All rights reserved.© 2012 The Allen Ginsberg because of a story suggestion I made to 1947, Gelatin silver print, printed 1984–97, 10 7/8 x 7 3/8 in. (27.6 18.8 cm), National Gallery of Art, Gift of Gary S. Davi an adventurous young editor named Andy a sober photo portrait of the poet wearing president of the Asia Society, recalling his two Port. While Andy would be much more a suit and tie with the benign blurb “Allen month stay in China, as part of an American in her element a few years later when she Ginsberg & Company, Respectable at Last.” cultural expedition. The distinguished poet went to work at “T,” the style and fashion But inside the magazine, the piece was and the distinguished orientalist had appeared supplement in the Sunday edition of The New headlined “A Real Howl,” and the layout together on an early morning radio show and York Times, back then she was still an editor contained a hairy 1961 snapshot of Allen and were continuing to exchange impressions at the Magazine section of the New York fellow Beat poet Gregory Corso, both nude over tea and danish when the subject got Daily News. I liked to think that Andy and but with hands cupped mock-modestly over around to the supposed sexual repression in I were conspirators in a little pothead plot their genitals. There was also a more recent Red China and Allen said, “It doesn’t seem to subvert that right-wing rag with articles full-page color photo of Allen and William S. to be working. I managed to make out with a that would never have been published if the Burroughs: two grizzled old geezers holding boy while I was there.” editors higher up had been paying attention. hands like a couple of school girls. Remember: this was 1984, and sodomy Fortunately, they seemed to regard the And if that wasn’t enough to get some was not legalized in China until 1997. Nor Magazine as a trifle and hardly ever glanced readers out in the bridge and tunnel burbs for that matter, were gay references exactly down from their hard-news perches to see gagging on their Sunday bagels, consider the smiled upon in most of the politically what we were up to. following paragraph from my article: “Take reactionary neighborhoods where the The The cover feature that eventually appeared this morning, for instance, as he sat in a News had its most faithful readership. But under my byline was camouflaged behind coffee shop in midtown with Robert Oxnard, considerably more shocking for me was the FEBRUARY/MARCH 2013 GALLERYSTUDIO 7 discovery that Allen’s daily schedule was more like that of a harried businessman than the freewheeling bohemian I had always imagined him to be. Indeed, its hecticness was reflected in the inscription scrawled across the title page of the advance copy of

Allen Ginsberg Collected Poems that he gave s me: “For Ed McCormack, January 14, 1984, a day in both our Eternities from Radio to Gallery to Harper Publisher to Lawyer to Home Office w/ Peter Orlovsky & Poet Bob Rosenthal, Juanita Leiberman and the Author Allen Ginsberg.” (On the facing page, he also hand-printed a large “AH” that struck me as being more like a weary sigh than the exuberant Buddhist exhalation of Bardic breath he probably intended.) After the radio broadcast and coffee with Oxnard, we stopped at Holly Solomon Gallery, where Allen wanted to show his old crony William S. Burroughs (by then as revered a guru to the punks as Allen himself had been to hippies some years earlier) around his exhibition. Burroughs now walked with a cane that Allen claimed served as a sheath for a hidden sword. But he still looked spry and dapper, wearing a gray sharkskin suit and an argyle- patterned sweater over a button-down shirt and tie. He chuckled like coal going down a chute at the title of the show, scrawled across one of the gallery walls in a larger version of the same bold hand with which the poet/ photographer captions his photographs: “Hideous Human Angels.” “Allen’s pictures are quite revealing,” Burroughs said stopping in front of a larcenous looking image of Herbert Huncke, a notorious and suitably shifty-looking Times Square junkie who would regularly ransack his Beat friends’ already threadbare apartments. Then confronting a much younger but already wizened image of himself in 1957, when he was living in Tangiers and supporting a heavy heroin habit on a modest trust fund from his paternal grandfather who invented the adding machine, he wryly 1953, Gelatin silver print, printed 1984–97, 13 5/8 x 9 1/4 in. (34.8 23.5 cm), National Gallery of Art, Gift of Gary S. Davi croaked, “That was a long time ago.” LLC. All rights reserved.© 2012 The Allen Ginsberg When his secretary, a tall, waspish young later (as Queer, 1985). Lower East Side Fall of literary activity in the early ‘50s when the man named James Graurholz, suggested 1953.” Beat movement was busy being born. it would make an interesting bookjacket There’s also an iconic shot of Jack Kerouac One especially vibrant image, showing a photo, Burroughs again emitted his crackling smoking a cigarette in heroic profile “on fire- couple nuzzling under a movie marquee on little death-rattle chuckle, and said, “Well, escape three flights up overlooking backyard a bustling city street alive with period detail wouldn’t want to scare the folks.” clotheslines South,” as Allen noted in the (business men in fedoras, women in smartly * * * rambling handwritten text below. Again tailored suits, sailors on leave) is annotated by I don’t recall if it was in the show at unable to resist mythologizing a friend, he Allen as follows: “Neal Cassady and his love the Holly Solomon Gallery or not, but in added, “He’d already published The Town of that year the star-cross’d Natalie Jackson the present Ginsberg exhibition at Grey and the City, completed a treasury of half conscious of their roles in Market Street Art Gallery there’s another, less “scary” dozen unprinted classic volumes including Eternity: Cassady had been prototype for portrait captioned with characteristic candor: On the Road, Visions of Cody, Doctor Sax,” Jack Kerouac’s 1950 On the Road saga hero “William Burroughs on roof of apartment and, with mentions of fellow writers and Dean Moriarity, as later in 1960s he’d taken house East Seventh Street where I had a flat, poets like Burroughs and Gregory Corso the driver’s wheel of Ken Kesey’s psychedelic- we were lovers those months, editing his who passed through, goes on to historicize era day-glo painted Merry Prankster cross letters into books not published till decades his tenement pad on East 7th Street as a hive country bus “Further.” Neal’s illuminated 8 GALLERYSTUDIO FEBRUARY/MARCH 2013 American automobile mania, ‘unspeakably enthusiastic” friendships & erotic energy had already written his name in bright lit signs of our literary imagination before movies were made imitating his charm. That’s why we stopped under the marquee to fix the passing hand on the watch, San Francisco, maybe March 1955.” The movie theater marquee lists “3 complete features”: the most relevant among them in relation to Cassady being Marlon Brando in “The Wild One.” Like the illuminated poems of one of his heroes, William Blake (who appeared to address him one night in a vision in his lonely room in San Francisco), the handwritten texts that Allen affixed to his photographs are inseparable from his visual imagery. * * * Later that hectic afternoon in 1984, as they sat together on a sofa in the office of Holly Solomon, the gallery director, partaking of coffee and cookies, Allen appeared wounded when Burroughs confessed he was not sure he agreed with the ethic of selling photographs. “But Bill, I’m selling mine for $150 and Berenice Abbot who’s having a show right around the corner at Marlboro Gallery on 57th Street is getting $1,000 each for hers,” Allen said defensively. “But she’s dead,” Burroughs said, and refused to give in, even after Allen informed him that the distinguished photographer, although quite elderly, was still very much alive. Then, to the gallery owner, Allen, who could never resist functioning as an agent for his friends (and without whose natural showmanship and promotional abilities it seems clear that the Beat Generation would never have emerged as a highly publicized cultural phenomenon), said, “You know, Holly, Bill does art works too.” 1984, Gelatin silver print, printed 1984–97, 16 1/2 x 11 in. (42 28 cm), National Gallery of Art, Gift of Gary S. Davis LLC. All rights reserved.© 2012 The Allen Ginsberg “Oh really,” said Solomon, a small After a stop at Harper&Row, where Allen Leiberman. The couple sat at the table with vivacious woman with white close-cut hair conferred with his editor, we headed across Allen and his secretary, Bob Rosenthal, also a who seemed amused at the notion of hosting town to the office of an expensive housing poet, who gave them some bad news about a Beat reunion in her own inner sanctum. lawyer with whom Allen had an appointment the finances of their unique extended family. “Tell me, Mr. Burroughs, what sort of work because his landlord was trying to evict him (Apparently, Allen was the breadwinner for do you do?” from his modest rent-stabilized apartment in all three.) Burroughs hemmed and hawed, explaining a tenement on East 12th Street.” “At present you have $52 in your bank that he didn’t really take his artwork “I’ve lived there for 10 years,” he explained account,” Rosenthal told Allen, as Orlovsky seriously; he merely liked shooting bullets in the cab, “stuck it out through the usual yawned and Leiberman, a slender young through plywood boards and observing junkie hassles, burglaries and muggings, and woman with long straight brown hair nibbled “the fascinating striations that occur in the now my New Age landlord –– a speculator an apple, looking worried. shattered veneer.” in the East Village gallery scene, I recently “You have a few hundred coming in “It’s sort of like shotgun art,” Allen added, found out –– is trying to get rid of me on over the next few weeks from royalties and beaming proudly at his contrary old friend. some obscure technicality.” readings, but at present, Allen, we seem to “Oh, is that anything like a shotgun Next we continued downtown to the have a serious cash-flow problem.” wedding?” asked Holly Solomon, who may “home office,” where we were joined by “Maybe we should declare bankruptcy,” or may not have been aware that many years Peter Orlovsky. A husky, painfully stoic man Allen mused, before insisting that somehow earlier, in a playful William Tell overture who had recently cut off his pony tail and they must come up with $ 500 to send to an that tragically misfired at a drunken, druggy shaved his head down to a Sluggo stubble, impoverished painter friend in urgent need of party in Mexico City, William S. Burroughs Orlovsky had been Allen’s lover for 30 years money for art supplies. attempted to shoot a champagne glass off his before deciding that he wanted to have Rosenthal shrugged, then turning to me, wife’s head and blew her brains out instead. children and moving into the apartment said, “I opened Allen’s first bank account for * * * next door with a young poet named Juanita him last year, but there’s never much in it FEBRUARY/MARCH 2013 GALLERYSTUDIO 9 1991, Gelatin silver print, printed 1991–97, 8 3/4 x 13 in. (22.2 33 cm), National Gallery of Art, Gift of Gary LLC. All rights reserved. S. Davis © 2012 The Allen Ginsberg because he still insists on giving most of his the supple leather over his slight pot-belly. money away.” “I’ve always wanted one but I could never FOR EXHIBITION Before we left the apartment to go to a afford it before. Who ever heard of a beatnik AND GALLERY ADS reception at Pen International Center on without a black leather jacket?” contact Jeannie McCormack, Lower Broadway over his dress shirt and tie publisher, (212) 861-6814 (“I’m donning my father’s dignities,” he * * * at [email protected] muttered as he knotted it), he put a brand new three quarter length black leather jacket Beat Memories: The Photographs of Allen FOR DISPLAY ADS that he purchased inexpensively and mailed to Ginsberg, Grey Art Gallery, New York contact Betty Cheung University, 100 Washington Square East. Advertising & Marketing Manager himself from China. at [email protected] “How does it look?” he asked, smoothing Through April 6, 2013

Subscribe to GALLERYSTUDIO GALLERYSTUDIO An International Art Journal $25 Subscription $20 for additional Gift Subscription PUBLISHED BY $47 International $5 Back Issues ©EYE LEVEL, LTD. 2013 Mail check or Money Order to: ALL RIGHTS RESERVED GALLERYSTUDIO 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

10 GALLERYSTUDIO FEBRUARY/MARCH 2013 Harriet FeBland Pays an Intimate Tribute erhaps the most telling wall-relief outdoors in public spaces, FeBland’s present not only to the relief constructions of Pconstruction in Harriet Febland’s 55th solo show features twenty-five smaller wall- FeBland’s spiritual ancestor, Vladimir Tatlin; solo exhibition is one of the least typical. relief constructions, created over the past two but to the Bauhaus elevation of typography Entitled “Biography,” its composition takes years, that reveal a more intimate aspect of to high art status (reflected here in her the form of a grid of 36 squares containing her work. Entitled “Homage” and dedicated inclusion of printed letters and numerals), a variety of abstract forms interspersed here to the memory of two beloved mentors, and also to the the Constructivists’ early and there with pictographic images of starkly supporters, and friends –– the collector twentieth century belief, shared with the stylized faces. The grid and the geometric Margaret Radoff and Rose Shar, framer Futurists, in machinery as a liberating force shapes are staples of FeBland’s oeuvre, which to major New York City Museums –– this for humankind (revived, at least nostalgically, has been remarkably consistent over her long exhibition makes clear why FeBland has been by today’s steampunk enthusiasts). and distinguished career. But the At the same time, FeBland’s faces are a relatively rare addition “ASK” also evokes all the more primal to her visual vocabulary, although associations of organic orifices –– most anticipated in the figurative particularly the womb –– and, despite imagery of her Hanga woodcuts, its diminutive proportions, encourages a traditional Japanese technique one to consider the infinite mystery dating back 1000 years to which of unlimited form contained within this consummately modern every circle, from that primal source of artist has made her own unique life itself to the symbolic zeroes of the contribution. immortal Zen Buddhist ink painters Overall, however, FeBland has of ancient China and Japan. ( Far be made formal concerns her primary it from FeBland to be predictable, preoccupation, and even the faces however: Another painted wall relief in “Biography” are masklike, as that she actually titles “Zen” consists of hermetically sealed and free from red, white, and blue stripes arranged in anecdotal allusions as the more a square and set transcendently afloat geometrical shapes in the adjoining on a solid blue ground.) squares, which suggest all manner A somewhat larger work in wood of things, from urban architecture and canvas that FeBland calls “Time to stylized anatomical details to Out with Red” could be seen as her cosmic symbols and remnants of own “Homage to the Square,” after ancient cultures to the streamlined Josef Albers –– albeit in depth and curves of Art Nouveau, without exploring a more complex range of spelling them out. chromatic interactions. Here, a square Despite its title, which promises canvas is centered within a larger square more personal disclosure than one panel serving as a painted frame, within normally expects from FeBland, “ASK” which overlapping precisely painted perhaps what the artist is making crisscrossing areas of various red hues clear in this piece is that the absolute beauty included in exhibitions with intimists such as and blue bracket a smaller blue-bordered of forms and colors are what her work –– and Joseph Cornell, as well as with other artists square. Within the indented center of this by extension her life –– above, all else, has best known for works on a larger scales, third and smallest square, regularly spaced always been about. Yet within the boundaries including Hans Van de Bovenkamp, Marisol, steps recede in a purple pyramid. Here, that she has set for herself, FeBland’s great and Louise Nevelson. For the monumental too, FeBland employs a textural pointillistic achievement has been to discover in these qualities that distinguish FeBland’s work, painting technique reminiscent of Seurat, not two basic elements a subjective expressiveness regardless of the actual dimensions of any only for its optical effect of “color as light,” that inspired Paul Mocsanyi, former director particular piece, have always sprung from her to quote JMW Turner’s felicitous phrase, but of the New School Art Center, to call her unerring grasp of significant form, rather than to lend the composition a sensuous tactility “The Poet of Geometry.” from the gratuitous gigantism with which far that knits its different levels together in Indeed, Mocsanyi’s capsule analysis of too many lesser artists routinely attempt to harmonious unity. her art is so succinctly definitive as to bear grab attention. Also included is an especially poetic box repeating in any serious discussion of it: Consider for example the truly miniature assemblage entitled “Four Days in May,” its “Sensing a vigor and vitality in geometry, (6" x 5" x 3") wall-relief construction called four panels containing rings, bracelets, and Harriet FeBland made it her subject. ‘It is a “ASK.” On one level, this circular-shaped semiabstract shapes suggesting the skeletal universal imagery understood by everyone,’ piece –– primarily in black, white, gray and chassis and wheels of a miniature automobile, she states. But hers is not the cool reasoned red, with 3-D rectangular relief elements a single cigarette, and other evocative props geometry of Mondrian, the result of grouped around its outer rim and protruding in a personal narrative. This solo show is yet analytical thinking. It is a creative woman’s from its center (a circle within a circle), another crowning achievement in the career intuitive vision of its vital essence ... the suggests the sub-genre of science fiction of the widely exhibited artist who coined the color of her prints is exalted; her sculptures known as “Steampunk,” with its celebration now commonly used term “construction” hint at a hidden meaning akin to the of anachronistic technologies and retro- and whose work exemplifies its most sublime mystery divulged by the prehistoric taboos futuristic details, such as steam-driven antique possibilities. –– Ed McCormack of submerged, magic civilizations. Harriet airships with primitive riveted portholes, as FeBland humanized geometry and revealed imagined by 19th century fantasy authors, Harriet FeBland, “Homage,” its mystery and its beauty.” such as Jules Verne and H.G. Wells. National Association of Women Artists Inc., Well known for her monumental sculptures There is also in this resonant little gem of 80 Fifth Avenue, March 6 - 29, 2013. and constructions in galleries, museums, and a work a bow to the Russian Constructivists;

FEBRUARY/MARCH 2013 GALLERYSTUDIO 11 A Group Exhibition Makes Good on Its Promise he group show, “Free Expression,” suggesting a spooky spider. this work, clearly inspired by the recent Tcurated by Sonia Barnett for the West Amy Rosenfeld showed an unusual work newsmaking weather patterns, presented a Side Arts Coalition, is exactly that: a freeform combining a childlike vision of fallen trees dark, stark contrast to some of Rich’s more exploration of form and color for its own sake. enveloped in a gray miasma, accompanied by characteristically bright, buoyant compositions. Daniel C. Boyer, however, also adds an a printed text decrying Hurricane Sandy. The Other contrasts came across in two strong element of the literary with “The Prime combination of words and picture possessed abstractions by curator Sonia Barnett: Ministers of the Acerbic at the Samurais a sense of innocence and emotional power “Struggle,” a linear composition of decisive Picnic,” a muscular riot of antic abstract usually only seen in so-called naive or “outsider blue strokes of acrylic set against a pure white shapes possessed of a cartoon bulbousness art.” A more sophisticated species of neo-Pop ground, was as spare as a Zen ink painting created in blue acrylic on a white ground. primitivism, however, enlivened Rosenfeld’s –– only expressing conflict rather than peace. Characteristically, Boyer also embellishes the mixed media painting “Chocolate Candy Bar In “Somewhere Else,” however, Barnett white frame around the picture with art pencil Bitten.” employed more luminous red, green, and scrawls ala Twombley. Arlene Finger employs a neo-primitive style yellow hues to convey the sense of longed-for His spouse and fellow artist Silvia Soares effectively in her mixed media work, “Mother escape from conflict at which the title hints. Boyer, on the other hand, takes a more surreal and Child.” Finger filters the influence Three oil/collage paintings on canvas approach in an acrylic on paper painted of Renaissance madonna icons through a from a series called “Black Star” by Leanne predominantly in varied blue hues called “A subjective take on Picasso-esque distortions to Martinson combined jagged, shard-like shapes Blue Symphony for Pandora.” In it, Soares arrive at a unique personal synthesis. and vigorous calligraphic strokes to project a Boyer juxtaposes the stylized face of an elegant Robert Eckel is a genre humanist whose sense of velocity, violence and grace. Those woman looming iconically on a screen in a gentle acrylic paintings depict people going terms do not seem contradictory when one what appears to be a theater, feathers in her about their everyday business with winning considers Martinson’s ability to go from hair merging with the fronds of a pair of palm humor and warmth. Here, our favorite among feathery softness of touch, suggesting an trees. The mysterious image is enhanced in the a group of Eckel’s scenes was “Bow Bridge,” explosion of feathers, to scalpel-like sharpness manner of a Toulouse Lautrec art nouveau depicting a young couple and their dog on the with the well practiced flick of a wrist. poster by the title of the work, written out in famous pedestrian walkway spanning the lake By contrast, the untitled abstractions of the artist’s sinuous script. in Central Park, the back of an elderly stroller Jutta Filipelli appear to be primarily concerned Herbert Evans makes a strong figurative in the near distance rhyming visually with with arresting solid essences. Whether statement in “The Birth of Autumn,” a vibrant the structure’s steep curve, yellow sunlight inspired by sensually suggestive floral forms or acrylic painting incorporating photographic buttering the verdant foliage beyond. geometric objects carved from thick pigment, fragments of a Buddha-like stone face. Vibrant Lula Ladson struck a pastoral note with Filipelli invariably creates compositions as orange and blue hues applied in a fiery gestural “Inner Peace,” a lyrical yet strongly painted unaffected in their freedom as a Miro. style contrast boldly with the monochromes in oil on canvas of a lushly blooming landscape. Then there is Nate Ladson, who showed a the photo in this composition with a Braque- She also scored with “Shine,” its title obviously scene with surreal overtones, involving three like quality. alluding to the blindingly brilliant light at the figures and a large all-seeing eye. Ladson’s Anne Rudder, normally known for end of a trestle-like configuration of trees, mastery of a classical realist oil technique, like Blakean figurative works, often incorporating the skeleton of a cathedral, or the tunnel that of Odd Nerdrum, gives him the ability to poetic texts, was represented by an unusual often described in accounts of near-death make such disparate elements suggest subtle abstraction in her usual medium of watercolor experiences. states of consciousness. –– Maurice Taplinger on paper titled “Inner Garden.” Rudder, Emily Rich, one of our most energetic however, always manages to somehow exponents of gestural abstraction put her “Free Expression,” recently seen project a sense of mystery, here with floral- painterly power to dynamic use in “Wild at Broadway Mall Community Center, looking forms, a sense of glowing light, and Wind.” With collaged photos of trees 96th St. (center Island) a shape near the bottom of the composition taking flight among the painted forms, G&S Classifieds opportunities WEST SIDE ARTS COALITION (WSAC) established 1979, welcomes new members from Dining/conference solid wood table available, 61"L x 41"W, plus 2 panels. Chelsea area. all geographic areas. There are approximately 14 exhibits per year for Fine Arts, Photography, and Craft 212-924-6531. Arts. Music, Poetry, Theater and Dance programs available. Contact info: Tel. 212-316-6024, email- [email protected] or website- www.wsacny.org. Or send SASE to the West Side Arts Coalition, PO Box 527, Cathedral Station, New York, NY 10025. Visit our ground floor gallery at 96th Street & Michael R. Horenstein Broadway (on the center island) New York City. Open: Wed. 6-8pm, Sat. & Sun., 12-6pm. Attorney & Counsellor at Law ± Arts Law, Provenance Concerns ± CUSTOM PICTURE FRAMING for artists and galleries. Museum quality, selected General Business Law ± frames & mats. Float & dry mounting, canvas stretching. Jadite Galleries, 662 10th Ave. (betw. Contract Drafting & Review ± 46/47 Sts.) Hours: 12 - 6 pm, Free delivery in Manhattan. 212-977-6190 [email protected] Corporate Law & Company Formation ± Commercial Litigation VIRIDIAN ARTISTS INC. 3rd International Juried Photography Exhibition: Juror, 437 East 80th Street, No. 27, New York NY 10075 Nat Trotman, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum Cash Prizes, Group Exhibition, February 5- 23, Ph: (212) 517-7340 Email: [email protected] 2013. Deadline for entries, Dec. 1. $40./3 images $5. each additional. Download prospectus at www.viridianartists.com For health care information please contact COME SING WITH US, no audition, all ages. Alto, soprano, bass, tenor wanted. New York Artists Equity Association, Inc. (NYAEA) at 212-941-0130. Chelsea area. Apply now. [email protected]

NOHO GALLERY is viewing portfolios in all media for our Chelsea location. Visit Write for information to NYAEA, PO Box 1258, New York, NY 10276 nohogallery.com for application form, or send SASE to Noho Gallery, 530 or email: [email protected] or [email protected] West 25th Street, NY, NY 10011. 12 GALLERYSTUDIO FEBRUARY/MARCH 2013

Catharine Lorillard Wolfe Art Club, Inc. Black Renaissance 2013 A Fine Arts Exhibit $QQXDO0HPEHUV¶([KLELWLRQ Curator: Sonia Barnett Feb. 13 - March 3, 2013 0DUFK²0DUFK Sonia Barnett • Sandra Brannon • Daniel C. Boyer Silvia Boyer • Gail Comes • Herbert Evans 5HFHSWLRQ $ZDUGV Gertrude Fleming • Debra Holland • Nate Ladson )ULGD\0DUFK30 Ida Marx • Dammika Ranasinghe • Dorethea T. Scott Robert N. Scott 7KH6DOPDJXQGL$UW&OXE %URDGZD\0DOO&RPPXQLW\&HQWHU )LIWK$YH1<& %URDGZD\#6W 1<& &HQWHU,VODQG +RXUV0RQ)ULSP6DW 6XQSP *DOOHU\+RXUV:HGSP6DW6XQSP [email protected] 212-316-6024 www.wsacny.org

People A Photography exhibit Curator: Jack Cesareo March 6 - 24, 2013 Jack Cesareo • Celia Cruzado • Calvin Eagle Robyn Gecht • Francois Ilnseher • Paul Margolis J D Morrison • Dr. Barry Pinchefsky • Lucinda Prince Jean Pretyskacz • David Reibman • Deena Weintraub

%URDGZD\0DOO&RPPXQLW\&HQWHU %URDGZD\#6W 1<& &HQWHU,VODQG Julie Joy Saypoff *DOOHU\+RXUV:HGSP6DW6XQSP [email protected] 212-316-6024 www.wsacny.org artbyjuliejoy.com

Living Beings Abstrax 2013 An animal-themed photography exhibit A Fine Arts Exhibit Curator: Carolyn Reus January 23- February 10, 2013 March 27 - April 14, 2013 Opening reception: Sat., Jan. 26, 2:30 pm- 5:30 pm Closing reception: Feb. 10, 2013, 2:30 pm- 5:30 pm Exhibiting artists are: Curator: Anne Rudder Arthur Cajigas • Jack Cesareo • Celia Cruzado • Myrna Harrison-Changar JD Morrison • Dr. Barry Pinchefsky • Paul Margolis • Cornelius Mead Lucinda Prince • Jean Prytyskacz Carolyn Reus • Amy Rosenfeld

%URDGZD\0DOO&RPPXQLW\&HQWHU %URDGZD\0DOO&RPPXQLW\&HQWHU %URDGZD\#6W 1<& &HQWHU,VODQG %URDGZD\#6W 1<& &HQWHU,VODQG *DOOHU\+RXUV:HGSP6DW6XQSP *DOOHU\+RXUV:HGSP6DW6XQSP [email protected] 212-316-6024 www.wsacny.org [email protected] 212-316-6024 www.wsacny.org

FEBRUARY/MARCH 2013 GALLERYSTUDIO 13 TRIAD an excerpt from HOODLUM HEART: Confessions of a Test-Dummy for the Crash and Burn Generation a memoir by Ed McCormack

The juicy kiss that crazy chick planted on around with you,” he griped later, out on beginning by the elopee’s sense of it my wife’s lips that night at Max’s Kansas crowded 86th Street. “The girls don’t being us against the world, we had grown City may have been what finally sent my even seem to notice me.” so close that we even came to resemble menage a trois fixation into overdrive; but “Maybe you need to let your hair grow each other physically and strangers often it had actually begun a few years earlier and dress a little cooler,” I told him. mistook us for brother and sister. Which with a pretty Swedish girl who lived in While I liked him well enough and may have been why it perversely pleased a tenement right down the block from respected his good intentions, the me to think of us as incestuous siblings ours on 89th Street between 2nd and 3rd boyfriend had a tedious tendency, on rather than proper spouses and to almost Avenues. those evenings when we all got together, imagine that we could merge into a single Jeannie had met her at our local to go on at length about his mission to hermaphroditic entity, as in Ovid’s ancient supermarket, the A&P on the corner of “organize the indigenous people in the fable about the boy whose body fuses with Lexington and 89th, right across from inner city in order to get them the kind that of the beautiful water nymph who the ivy-covered townhouse where Andy of social services they deserve.” Having lives in the pool where he bathes. Warhol lived with his mother, and where grown up working-class on the Lower I suppose one could say I was faithful we liked to think he may have been East Side when it was still a community enough after my fashion to feel that no inspired to paint his first Campbell’s Soup rife with enough poverty and crime to experience that I didn’t share with Jeannie can. The girl was in front of her on the make any social worker salivate, I liked could possibly be complete, and to reason, checkout line with a bunch of groceries to joke that such phrases sounded like however screwily, that if I was ever going and was a few dollars short. My wife patronizing clinical terms for people to commit adultery my wife would have to lent her the difference, and we ended like me. Since I could no longer qualify commit it with me. up becoming friendly with the Swedish as a juvenile delinquent by the time * * * girl, an aspiring dress designer, and her we met, I knew the chip I still carried Fantasy, after all, was very much in the American boyfriend, a social worker, who, on my shoulder for the social workers air in that druggy era of unisex, gender as it turned out, lived just a few doors at the Henry Street Settlement on the bending, and erotic experimentation. The down in the same row of tenements as Lower East Side –– who were also well eternal theme of the romantic triangle, so us on 89th Street between 2nd and 3rd intentioned, as they strove in vain to long a staple of Hollywood movies –– and, Avenues. civilize us before we were unleashed on for that matter, of all drama since time On weekends, when our little boy, society at large –– was as unwarranted as immemorial –– had been replaced in some Holden, often stayed with my parents on my neighbor’s idealism was naive. But of the trendier new films by romantic Staten Island, where he was able to enjoy since passionate argument was as catnip conflict- resolution via triangulation a nearby beach, we’d sometimes visit back to our arrogant young manhood, the in bed. In the 1968 Nicolas Roeg film and forth with the other couple in one contrast between his earnest altruism and “Performance,” for example, Mick Jagger, or the other of our apartments to talk, my hipper-than-thou cynicism often made playing to type as a decadent rock star, drink wine, smoke grass, and listen to for lively, even amusing conversation. shares a mansion, a bathtub, and a bed records. The layouts of both places, your After awhile, though, I’d invariably with Anita Pallenberg and her boyish standard railroad flat, were identical and grow bored with our talk, and as girlfriend, played by Michelle Breton. And furnished similarly, with a day bed that my fellow debater’s voice faded to a in “Blowup,” David Hemmings, as a mod doubled as a sofa in a livingroom which monotonous murmur and merged almost fashion photographer in London, has an also served as a bedroom. Whichever one inaudibly with the nasal whine of Bob orgiastic romp in his studio with a pair of we were in, Jeannie and the Swedish girl Dylan droning on the turned-down adorably nubile aspiring models. would usually sit together on the daybed stereo, my attention would wander to the Such scenes had nothing to do, as far while the boyfriend and I took the chairs. two beautiful girls nestled together nearby as I was concerned, with the repellent In contrast to the Swedish girl, who was on the daybed, wryly regarding our vain phenomenon of square suburban fun-loving, and charmingly frivolous, the verbal jousting with the superior wisdom “swingers” with their “key parties,” or boyfriend was an earnest, horn-rimmed of their sex. While pretending to listen their urban equivalent: sleazy orgy clubs upper middle-class Boston WASP with to his windy social theories, I would be like Plato’s Retreat, where creepy couples lofty 0political ideals and humanitarian mentally undressing both my wife and his who advertised in Screw magazine went to goals. girlfriend. And at such times, a line from cavort with their counterparts. No, what “It seems she’d only be happy if I “Triad,” a song by The Jefferson Airplane I had in mind was infinitely hipper, more went off to live with her in someplace would insinuate itself into my mind, “Why romantic and on a higher aesthetic plane; like Mallorca and did something like can’t we go on as three?” more on the order of some quite explicit make pottery,” he confided ruefully one line drawings that John Lennon showed afternoon over beers in one of the German At the same time, realistically, I knew at Lee Nordness Gallery in New York bars on 86th Street, giving me the distinct that Jeannie and I could never allow any of Yoko and himself in three-way erotic impression that their relationship was not outsider, no matter how comely, to join embrace with an unidentified woman, and going to last long. our “society of two” (as one friend wryly which I reviewed in Changes. Then again, he was a bit of a whiner. referred to our exclusive private world) Our generation was expanding the “I feel like I’m invisible when I walk for any length of time. Bound from the boundaries not only of consciousness

14 GALLERYSTUDIO FEBRUARY/MARCH 2013 “It perversely pleased

me to think of us as incestuous

siblings rather than proper spouses and to almost imagine that we could merge into a single hermaphroditic entity, as in Ovid’s ancient fable about the boy whose body fuses with thatlives of in the the beautiful pool where water he nymph bathes.” who

Photo collage by Jeannie McCormack

FEBRUARY/MARCH 2013 GALLERYSTUDIO 15 but of amorous possibility as well, were demimonde at that time might have naturally open up more avenues of overt we not? Look closely, though, and you thought we looked more like sisters! erotic expression between women in might have noticed that virtually all of In a 1973 essay titled “What Turns which the hippest of their male partners the triads (I hated the tacky swingers’ Women On,” the sexy feminist Germaine might happily participate? term “threesomes”) depicted in the Greer wrote: “Clothing and cosmetics Since we shared so many of the same male-controlled media involved one man are erotically pleasing; artifice is enticing. feelings and tastes in art, music, and so on, with two women, rather than the other Because men have refused or been I reasoned, surely whether she realized it way around. The old double-standard prevented from using these forms of consciously or not, my wife, like me, had still held, despite the illusion that the blandishment, a number of anomalous to find the Swedish girl seductive, with genders seemed to be not only bending conditions have arisen. One is that her flirtatious blue eyes that lingered and but blending, as young men everywhere women, who know that they are turned locked, seeming to drink one in deliciously became aware of how turned on the on by their own and other women’s during the most innocuous conversations. hippest, most desirable young women sensuous appearance and delicate How could anyone of either sex who was seemed to be by the new breed of garments and perfumes, find that their as aesthetically sensitive as Jeannie not androgynously dolled-up British musical sexual fantasies center on those same be as charmed as I was by the way the dandies like Jagger, Robert Plant and things and hence upon their own sex. Nell girl tossed her blond bangs like a frisky Mark Bolan, and started growing their Dunn confessed to Edna O’Brien that she pony and bared her carnivorous little hair out and dressing more outrageously. found other women’s petticoats erotic teeth when someone said something that Although it all seemed brand new at the and Edna wondered, ‘Isn’t it strange that, tickled her fancy? How could he or she time, what was actually being imported on the whole, women are more touched not wonder how that rough metal cross was a modified variation on the theme by the external things of women, like (which both my wife and I, in our separate of heterosexual cross-dressing endemic petticoats or dance shoes or something, turns, had held and lingeringly admired) to British culture since Shakespeare’s than by the external things of men ... that she habitually wore with black day, when young boys played the female Does that make us a little bit lesbian?” European existentialist jersies might look roles in theater. It persisted in the satirical All the same, I doubt that many of dangling between her pert naked breasts; spoofs of Monte Python and even in the my fellow male peacocks back in the day or not notice how prettily her compact annual Christmas pageants of the Anglo would have been willing to consider that little toes gripped the Indian print spread, American School on the Upper East they might have been, if not a little bit as she sat barefoot with her knees bunched Side of Manhattan, for which our son’s gay, at least little bit transvestite. Most up, sipping red wine on our day bed? headmaster traditionally donned drag. of them would surely have preferred to In my fevered imagination Jeannie and Interestingly enough, gay men took compare their foppishness to that of the I became like that intertwined couple of up the hyper macho Marlboro Country flashy black pimps on 42nd Street. For devilish angels hovering amid a blizzard flannel shirt and denims style that became the message sent out by those bold soul of delicate flower petals beside the central known as the “clone look” around the brothers prowling The Deuce in their figure in Botticelli’s “Birth of Venus.” In same time straight guys started sporting garish skintight jumpsuits, mink coats, fact, even without wings, at the time my satin and velvet. Granted, not many hetero diamond jewelry and other over-the-top wife and I actually resembled those two dudes went as far as the New York Dolls, finery was that a dude who was secure in idealized beings: she with her delicate a band of marble-mouthed straight guys his manhood need not fear looking pretty. features and coloring as tawny as that of from the outlying boroughs who raided (Perhaps Jimi Hendrix, the black guitar Venus herself; he with his long black locks one of their fashionista girlfriends’ clothes god beloved of white groupies for his flowing in the breeze as he emits a godlike closet and passed a lipstick around the luxurious nimbus of jerri-curls, his velvets, gust of breath to blow back the flimsy way other bands passed a joint before his scarves, and his gypsy jewelry, best cloth with which a relatively drab female performing their aptly named signature embodied the merger of both the British figure attending Venus from the other side song, “Personality Crisis,” for a cult- fop and Black pimp styles.) In any case, (perhaps a guardian of morality, judging following of downtown glitter tots at the the look was calculated to appeal to female from her dowdy gown) attempts to cloak Mercer Arts Center, the gravel-voiced kinkiness, and I don’t doubt that most of the goddess’s lovely nudity. lead singer, David Johanson, prancing the dudes who sported it would have been In my drug-deluded weirdness and and bellowing, “You’re a prima ballerina as willing as I was to project their own with what I imagined to be the telepathic on a spring afternoon / Change into the desires onto the woman they were with, if awareness that can develop over time Wolfman howling at the mooooooon!” it meant possibly ending up as the meat in between very close couples, I felt certain But I was pleased enough when a some sweet girl sandwich of inequity. that on some level, whether she was female editor for the hippie street fashion actually aware of it or not, my wife shared magazine “Rags” who took me to Granted, my wife had never said in so my attraction to our comely neighbor. lunch one day to talk about my writing many words that she was attracted to the Still, past experience had taught me that something for them described my look as Swedish girl in the same way that I was; a man had best tread carefully in certain “a latter-day Lord Byron in bellbottom but hadn’t she agreed that she was pretty matters, lest he risk the jealousy, emotional jeans.” And after I wrote an article in and remarked that she found her naive ambush, and long term recriminations Rolling Stone that was instrumental in enthusiasm a refreshing relief from the that can come of miscalculating the exact getting the Dolls a recording contract, pretentiousness of some of our pseudo- degree of candor permissible in even the when a grateful David Johanson draped sophisticated artist friends? Some of us closest, most imaginative marriage at any an arm over my shoulder and told a table didn’t need a nudge from Germaine given moment. full of people at Max’s, “Ed is like my Greer to notice that almost all straight So I held off making my feelings known big brother,” I was more amused than women were more physically affectionate until one night not long before the other appalled by the thought that someone toward other women than most straight couple suddenly broke up and the girl with a more traditional idea of masculinity men could ever allow themselves to be went back to Sweden, vanishing from our than prevailed in the downtown with their own sex. So shouldn’t this just lives forever. We had spent an especially

16 GALLERYSTUDIO FEBRUARY/MARCH 2013 FEBRUARY/MARCH 2013 GALLERYSTUDIO 17 pleasant evening with them in our admiring my wife’s agility as she twisted wielding his bullwhip, Mary Woronov apartment, and after they went home, her slender body into a variety of graceful doing her whacked out go go girl routine, I turned to my wife in bed and said, positions on her yoga rug nearby. After the light show flashing above. “Wouldn’t it be nice if she were here with she finished, the three of us walked over Ignoring the stage, the three of us us now?” to Central Park, where I bought a couple danced together off to the side in the “Who?” of loose joints from one of the hippie shadows amid the protective unreality of “Come on, you know who I mean. Her.” dealers hanging out around Bethesda the flickering strobes, not letting any of “Her? Here?” Fountain. We sat on a rock near the Sheep the other dancers intrude into our magical “Yes, here in bed with us.” Meadow and smoked the first joint, which circle. “What for?” turned out to be better than expected Later that night, back uptown on 89th “Don’t be disingenuous. Haven’t and heightened the beauty of an already Street, my wife, the Swedish girl, and I you always said that she’s pretty and gorgeous day. Then we wandered around sprawled languidly on our daybed, sipping charming.” for hours in a blissful slow-motion pastoral wine, passing the one last joint that I had “Yes, of course she’s pretty and I do like daze among the flower children; bright managed to cull and roll from fragments her...but what makes you think I would balloons bobbing here and there; frisbees of buds among the seeds and stems of want her in bed with us?” flying through the air; folk-rock music an almost depleted stash, listening to the “Well, why not? Don’t you think it would issuing from portable radios and blending Beatles’ “Rubber Soul” album. There be interesting ... as an experiment at in the most mellowly cacophonous way was a moment during the sitar part of the least?” with guitars being strummed by people haunting ballad “Norwegian Wood” when I was pleased that she was more amused sitting and singing in circles in the grass; we were so close and loose and warmly by my audacity than jealous or angry, and sun shining down on everything, the very in tune, as we lay lolling and humming seemed willing to at least play along with air seeming eroticized by a sense of sensual along with the song on our Indian print me –– if for nothing else but to add a new possibility. spread, its paisley patterns swirling like sense of adventure to our lovemaking. When it started to get dark and the multitudinous amoebas, when I felt all I “Oh, so you’d really like that, huh?” she good grass wore off, I lit the second joint would have had to do was reach an arm teased. And when I reached for her, she and we passed it around before leaving out to both of them and we three would coyly pulled away. “Well, of course you’d the park and heading back over to the merge without a word. like it, you pervert! But what makes you Lexington Avenue subway station on 86th But I hesitated just a second too long, think I’d be willing to go along with Street. All the way downtown on the train, that perfect moment passed; the grass something like that?” we laughed and bounced languidly against thwarted my plan in the perverse way that The phantom of the Swedish girl each other as if we were made of rubber. it suddenly can, by turning the Swedish slipped between our sheets for the first A black transit patrolman got on at girl maudlin over her failed relationship time that night, and before it became an Grand Central. Remarking that the way and uncertain future, making sympathy oppressive one-sided obsession for me, he was watching us reminded me of suddenly more in order than seduction it must have seemed to my wife to be how our little boy, Holden, play-acted (which would obviously have come off as just another one of our harmless games, in his policeman’s get-up, I dubbed unseemly under the circumstances). And like when I’d ask her to take the big him “Deputy Dawg,” prompting a fit of since it would have been up to me, the mahogony-framed mirror down from the giggles all around. instigator of the double fantasy, to make wall, prop it up on the chair directly across All the rest of the way downtown, he the initial move, I would later kick myself from our bed, and put on her garter belt watched us resentfully, knowing we were for letting that magic moment pass. and leather boots. stoned out of our minds and goofing on True, I often felt as much remorse * * * him, but unable to do anything about it. when I failed to be reckless as when As it turned out, I finally got a chance His scowl remained in place and I was I failed to be moral. But if only I had to turn my fantasy into reality when, sure I could feel his eyes from behind, reached out that night to turn my fantasy just as I had predicted, the other couple following us down the platform from the into reality, I would think from time decided to break up. The girl asked if it train when we got off at 8th Street and to time after the Swedish girl had long would be too much of an imposition if she Astor Place. vanished from our lives, one way or the stayed overnight with us on the evening After stopping for slices and sodas at the other I might have been able to finally put before her flight back to Sweden, since she pizza stand on the corner, we continued that fantasy to rest, and spared us much and her boyfriend had decided it would down Saint Marks Place through the of the bitter confusion that came later, to help them to make a cleaner break if they surreal neon-lit Saturday night crowds play such hell with our marriage. didn’t see each other immediately before of New Hades, to the big Day-Glo blue she left. building housing The Dom, a trendy new As it was, kinky situations were very “An imposition? Don’t be silly, it would disco in a former Polish meeting hall, later much in the air that year. Just a few weeks be our pleasure,” I told her, determined to be renamed The Electric Circus. Inside later, I found myself without grass to that it would be quite literally, if I had that cavernous, crowded nightclub, amid offer some friends who had dropped by anything to say about it. flashing strobes and murky projections, unexpectedly and called Bobby Z, a trendy The three of us spent a cozy, almost Andy Warhol’s “Exploding Plastic dope dealer who made home deliveries to magical day together. It was a Saturday Inevitable” was in progress. The Velvet the Max’s crowd. When I went out into one of those summer weekends when Underground were onstage, the tall, the hall and leaned over the bannister our son was spending part of his school deep-voiced Viking junkie goddess Nico, after buzzing them in, at first I took the vacation with my parents on Staten Island, singing a haunting ballad called “Femme tall figure in the long overcoat and Garbo and she came over early while Jeannie was Fatale” (“Here she comes/ She’s gonna fedora towering over the gnomish hippie doing the yoga exercises with which she break your heart...”); Lou Reed sneering dealer as they came up the stairs for one usually began the day. The Swedish girl behind his shades, languidly fingering his of the more statuesque dragqueens from and I sat on our daybed sipping coffee and guitar; Gerard Malanga in his leathers, Andy Warhol’s Factory –– perhaps a new 18 GALLERYSTUDIO FEBRUARY/MARCH 2013 competitor for Candy Darling. But once migraine or something and we could split dinner, drank wine, smoked some more of the incognito wrappings were unfurled –– early.” Bobby Z’s el primo pot and acted as if the long, glossy hair tumbling in lush auburn actress’s blatantly flirtatious overtures were waves out of the fedora, a voluptuous, Being perhaps a bit less tuned in to the going right over our heads. It seemed unmistakably real-girl body va-va-vooming signals of decadence, my wife was more our hostess was just old-fashionably coy from the folds of the oversize man’s surprised than I was to discover, when we enough to expect me, being the male, to overcoat –– Bobby Z’s escort turned out showed up that Friday evening, that we take the initiative at some point. But I was to be a former Hollywood film starlet, appeared to be the only dinner guests. in no position to comply, with Jeannie featured in her prime mostly in B-movies, “Are we early ?” Jeannie asked, after shooting me frequent “don’t you dare” but by then best known for her recurring the actress had admitted us to her dark, looks, even while keeping up the polite role as a character in a campy TV series opulently furnished lair. social palaver at which her Southern based on a comic strip. “No, darling, you’re right on time,” upbringing had made so much more adept The sudden appearance of such a the actress said. She was wearing a black than myself. person in our tenement living room was cleavage-highlighting top and dark “Well, farewell, my lovelies,” said not really unheard of for a surreal era in sparkly leotards that created an effect not the actress, paraphrasing Raymond which one had become accustomed to all unlike the skintight costume that wore on Chandler with an audibly actressy sigh of manner of incongruous surprises. the popular TV series. Her round, rather resignation, after nothing had happened “I’m one of Bobby’s most loyal more ample than fashionable buttocks and we were saying our goodbyes at the customers,” the slumming actress told my rolled smoothly, like graphite ball- door. “I really wish you two darlings wife, “and I always thought it might be bearings, as she led us into the spacious, could stay a little longer, but let’s do get a hoot to make his rounds with him one glitzily decorated dining room. together again some time soon.” night.” That she may have been as much as a A heavy rain was pelting Park Avenue They stayed to smoke the first joint decade older than Jeannie and me was when we got downstairs. with us, and as it went around, while more exciting than off-putting. For her “I hope that was weird enough for ignoring our other guests, the actress curvaceous sexiness harked back to the you,” Jeannie said sarcastically, as we seemed to flirt overtly with both Jeannie mature movie stars I had lusted for as waited under the building’s awning while and me. And when she and Bobby Z got a kid in the 1950s, before, as a slightly the doorman stood under an umbrella out up to go, she took our hands, drawing older adolescent, I started lusting more in the windy gutter blowing his whistle us close, and said, “You’re such a lovely subtly for the ingenue types closer to my and trying to hail us a cab. couple –– such a perfectly matched own age, like Carol Lynley and Tuesday “It was,” I admitted. set! You must join me for dinner at my Weld, that Jeannie had immediately “The way she was acting –– the staring, apartment this coming Friday evening. I reminded me of when my former boss Bill the smiling, the long pauses –– was absolutely will not take no for an answer!” Hearst introduced me to her, after she making me very uncomfortable,” she said. Later that night, after our company had first came to New York in the care of his “She was obviously coming on to us,” left, Jeannie said,“Why in the world did wife Bootsie to model and study acting I said. you accept that silly woman’s invitation? over summer vacation from her boarding “Whatever,” said Jeannie. “I couldn’t Couldn’t you come up with an excuse?” school in Virginia. wait to get out of there.” “She only lives a few blocks away, over The dining room was lit by candles “I could tell.” on Park Avenue,” I said, looking at the and the table was set for only three. Out “You weren’t uncomfortable?” address the actress had scrawled on a of the corner of my eye, I caught Jeannie “Not really.” matchbook cover and stuffed into my shirt shooting me the kind of look that any “Well, I guess you’re more at home pocket. “And I thought if the other dinner man with a wife would know does not with all those depraved Max’s types than I guests are anything like her, it might make bode well for whatever male chauvinist am. Why do you suppose she kept trying a nice decadent item for my ‘New York orgiastic fantasies may be taking shape in to feed me more avocados?” Confidential’ column.” his mind. “Maybe they’re an aphrodisiac.” “She’s kind of grotesque, don’t you “I’m really so delighted that you came, “Yeah, right.” My wife laughed. “Just think? Such an old-fashioned actressy my lovelies,” the actress said after a joint what I needed!” glamour girl caricature.” and couple of flutes of champagne, as she * * * “Exactly. That’s why I accepted. That took the baked salmon out of the oven. TV show has made her something of an “I don’t often cook, but for this occasion icon de camp, and since she’s actually a I followed a recipe quite closely. I hope it lot like her character, it could make for an turned out well.” amusing column item. And if the dinner is My crazy visions of the three of us Previous excerpts from not as debauched as I’m hoping it will be, entwined in her big four-poster bed had HOODLUM HEART can be read if it just turns out to be a drag, well, you already dispersed like a Navaho sand on galleryandstudio.com could always come down with a sudden painting in a wind storm. But we ate

The GALLERYSTUDIO advertising deadline for the April/May issue is March 11 for color, March 18 for black/white.

FEBRUARY/MARCH 2013 GALLERYSTUDIO 19 From Realism to Abstraction: a Postmodern Sampler “ Gift of Art,”curated for the West Side Arts Although Ava Schonberg is best known for markings of different species (the spots of a ACoalition by participating artist Margo her architectural subjects, often set in Israel or dalmatian dog, the stripes of a zebra) blend Mead, brought together eleven artists with France, the surprise here is a figurative acrylic. with meticulously painted black and white lines diverse styles in a nonetheless complementary Entitled “First Grandchild,” it depicts a still and forms. Thus Schulz’s animal subjects have assembly of contemporary tendencies. youthful woman with only a touch of gray in a dynamic kinetic effect akin to the Op-Art Elizabeth K. Hill’s acrylic on canvas, “The her raven hair who may be ruminating on her abstractions of Bridget Riley. Clothesline,” showed a kinship with Milton new status as she cradles a baby in her arms. Livia Monaco’s mixed media works on Avery for her ability to create abstraction with Terry Berkowitz also favors intimate subjects in canvas employ a postmodern combination of a recognizable scene. Like pristine flags of her skillfully executed pastel reprises of works classical Veronese vistas with a unique neo- domesticity, white garments and linens perform by other artists. To each, even when inspired by impressionistic confetti-like collage technique. a wind-blown ballet on a clothesline strung Vuillard or Kuhfeld, as in her “Yellow Dress,” Sometimes tiny figures are added, as in “Night across an urban tenement rooftop. Yet the real her boudoir scene of a long haired young Over Forio” or windblown leaves fly from trees dance is the harmony created by Hill’s cool brunette in a lacy garment primping before a in Monaco’s long horizontal “Winter Storm” complementary hues. mirror evoked in strokes soft enough to stuff series. Michelle Ordynans also finds the abstract a pillow, Berkowitz brings her own delicate Adrienne Cosner combines the atmospheric in the real in her oil pastel on canvas “Traffic,” touch. and the formal in her urban scenes in acrylic culling cubist planes from the juxtapositiong The symbolic male and female figures of on canvas. Although Cosner’s “Bryant Park of cars, trucks and yellow cabs on a crowded Margo Mead are possessed of an opposite Reflection” superimposes the silhouette of a city street. Once again, the subject matter universality. Classically proportioned, strongly skyline on a grid of glass panes, her “Sunset is recognizable and there is an illusion of generalized, they inhabit cosmic spaces and on the Highline” juxtaposes a neo-fauvist sky perspective, but the most salient appeal of the spheres like monumental sculptures given flight; with a fleshy pink building to vibrant effect. composition is in Ordynans’ play of color and even the diapered babies orbiting the 3-D Then there is Yukako, who breaths bright new enjambment of forms in the shallow space of earth in front of one of those yellow NYPD life into splatter and drip overall compositions the picture plane. CAUTION signs in Mead’s mixed media work in her acrylic on canvas “It Could Happen Conversely, the recognizable forms are all but on canvas “Reaching for the Future” look like to You.” In another large work called “Saint- hidden in the intense and intricate maze of lines putti. Germain-Des-Prés,” Yukako tries out an entire and subdued hues in Dammika Ranasinghe’s In her composition “Animal Fantasy,” Marie arsenal of gestural mark-making techniques and work in watercolor and acrylic on canvas Robison depicts an entire jungle menagerie employs the resist effects of mixing acrylic and paper, “Grid Pattern.” Closer contemplation, in a combination of black ink lines and bright oil on canvas for extra vivaciousness. however, rewards the viewer with semiabstract watercolor hues with the luminous quality of –– Marie R. Pagano glimpses of fanciful animal shapes emerging stained glass. By contrast Kehinde Peter Schulz from the ornate webs of strong black lines and sticks to black and white acrylic on canvas in “A Gift of Art” recently seen at Broadway Mall soft yet vibrant watercolor washes. a series of compositions in which the various Community Center, 96th St. (center island) The Happy Marriage of Freedom and Formal Strength in the Paintings of Jennifer Morrison lthough she has lived and worked in to avoid working in such symmetrical ALondon for the past two decades, formats, lest their compositions become Jennifer Morrison was born in Durban, monotonous. But Morrison need not worry South Africa, which still informs her about such rules, for the elements of her paintings. paintings generate their own excitement “Durban has a sub-tropical climate through the sheer variety of visual elements with lush foliage which is still a source of she conjures up in each composition. If inspiration,” she said in a recent artist’s anything, the square shapes lend her paintings statement. “ I visit about four times a year. a sense of endlessness, of openness akin to It is a melting pot of Zulu, Indian and that of a circle, making them appear even “Falling Star” English South African people, making it a larger than their already considerable size. blue, green, and yellow that make up the oil very colourful and interesting place in which That her compositions are also most often and mixed media painting entitled “Fracture to have grown up. A fusion of different “overall,” like those of Jackson Pollock, with (Green),” where the shapes are more active cultures which has had a great influence the linear forms swirling and interwoven than in the previous painting, yet just as on me. The Hindu temple, the shape of a from edge to edge, as seen in her aptly named vigorous in their own manner. Zulu basket, the red soil, the humid air, and composition, “Tangle (Red),” adds further Indeed the consistent energy level that green leaves, the purple Jacaranda trees, and to their dynamically unlimited sense of space. Morrison generates transcends the specific elegant colonial building –– all of these things Here, the lines are in mostly primary hues ecriture of her strokes and the chromatic continue to influence me and my work.” and swirl like serpentine neon. By contrast sizzle of her color combinations. At the same And while Morrison’s work is adamantly an even larger canvas called “Force Field” time, one of her largest and most exciting abstract, dealing primarily with color and appears to allude to the dense and brilliant compositions is the canvas she calls “Falling shape, one can discern hints of her formative foliage of her native country, with explosions Star,” in which some of the red and yellow environment in her oils with their dazzling of green, red and yellow, interspersed with Continued on page 23 colors and swirling lines and shapes seemingly areas of pale blue that suggest looking up derived from the organic forms of nature through lush riots of vegetal shapes to a dancing rhythmically on canvases that are serene expanse of sky. Jennifer Morrison, Agora Gallery, often perfectly square. Sensual floral shapes are also suggested by 530 West 25th St., March 2 - 22, 2013. Academic teachers often tell their students the paler more pastel-mellow splotches of Reception: Thursday March 14, 6 - 8 pm.

20 GALLERYSTUDIO FEBRUARY/MARCH 2013 Erma Martin Yost: Homespun American Visionary s a dyed in the wool textile artist (if the as harmoniously in “Firefly Field,” with its rectangle at the center of the composition, Areader will pardon a poor but irresistible suggestions of a diagrammatic star map like where shapes resembling the shadows of pun), Erma Martin Yost cites diverse those in certain nocturnal box assemblages by slender tree-limbs cast on pavement, as well influences, ranging from a narrative Sujuni Joseph Cornell (another of her kindred spirits, as the shadows of flowing smoke (the latter wall hanging portraying life in the village of come to think of it); sinuous rainbow-colored apparently evoked by loosening the threads Bhusara, Bihar India, to the work of other emanations that wiggle like luminous worms; of the felt itself) suggest that commonplace contemporary fiber art innovators such as and apparently immortal lightning bugs, sights are often more ethereal than things that Barbara Schulman, Mariska Karasz, and the capable of surviving even in a snow-blanketed remain hidden. late Dorothy Caldwell, whom she admires for landscape. In “Reflection Pond,” the fibrous quality their “mark-making with thread.” One could also liken Erma Martin Yost’s of the felt itself is again called into play to But before Yost herself became one of the visionary permutations of nature to the create soft foamy textures for points of most original contemporary artists working burstingly fertile watercolors of Charles light created with rows of yellow stitches in felt, the ancient textile form which predates Burchfield; but perhaps her closest poetic to shine through. Filmy, smokelike felt spinning and weaving by several thousand ancestor is Emily Dickinson. For both the threads –– now slightly unraveling vertically years, she was a painter. And with rather than horizontally as in the this in mind, given that her work aforementioned “Shifting Shadows” still retains strong “painterly” –– play counterpoint to the darkly qualities rarely seen in fiber art, one gnarled winter branch above the of her true kindred spirits is a fellow blue horizon of the composition artist of whose work it is highly entitled “River Shadows.” Here, possible she may not be aware, too, Yost adds to the dominant since Loren McIver, who was born tree-limb what appears to be the in 1909 and died in 1998, was one kind of old-fashioned circular clasp of the woefully neglected women and curly bit of string used to fasten artists of our time. manilla envelopes, transforming it Indeed, it says much about the by virtue of her peculiar aesthetic routine neglect of even the most alchemy, as she often does with such esteemed women artists, so well commonplace found objects, into encapsulated in the title and subtitle a mysteriously animated symbol of Germaine Greer’s The Obstacle of minute organic life. Similarly Race: The Fortunes of Women transformed by her vision are the Painters and Their Work that photo transfers, mono-printing and MacIver (who escaped mention in other techniques that she absorbs even that worthy volume), remains into her felting process to lend relatively unknown, despite having texture detail and variety to her had several museum retrospectives, meticulous compositions. Especially including one at the Whitney striking in this regard is the detailed “Pond Shadows, 2012” Museum of American Art in row of tiny trees juxtaposed with 1953, as well as having represented the medium and the imagery of Erma Martin crisscrossing abstract beams of ruddy and United States in the 1962 Venice Biennale. Yost’s work makes one think of the poems earthy hues in “Autumn Field,” as well as In the catalogue of the Whitney show, John that Emily Dickinson sewed into booklets –– the realistic images of a singing bird and I.H. Baur, the museum’s director, noted, or “fascicles,”as she referred to them in private the plant forms under a gossamer scrim in “MacIver’s pleasure in unexpected things is correspondence, tellingly borrowing a medical an intimate diptych called “Spring Song.” as infectious as a child’s .... but it seems far dictionary term for clusters of nerve, tendon Here, the thickness of the felt simultaneously from childlike in its essence –– rather a mature or muscle fibers, perhaps for its visceral suggests two adjoining stone tablets or an poetic wisdom that guards its secrets well.” associations. For while Yost is by no means as open book, providing a condensed history of One who has long considered such hermetic as Dickinson (her present exhibition communication and demonstrating the old MacIver oils as “Puddle,” “Red Votive is her 19th at Noho Gallery), she is every bit saw about the relative value of a single picture Lights” and “Hopscotch” unknown as adept as the aforementioned MacIver was, and a thousand words. American masterpieces (despite the latter two according to Baur, at guarding her secrets. To mention at this late date that Erma works being in the permanent collection of One means this not in terms of technique –– Martin Yost descends from a long line of the Museum of Modern Art) cannot help but for Yost freely credits other fiber artists such Mennonite quilters could be redundant, be impressed by the comparable poetic magic as Jori Johnson, Janice Arnold, and Chad perhaps putting too folkloric a spin on the that Yost achieves in the more technically Alice Hagen with inspiring her own use of felt work of an independent, sophisticated, and daunting medium of hand-felted stitched –– but of her imagery, which invariably retains –– yes, consummately worldly –– artistic constructions in her present solo show at a sense of mystery more akin to poetry than sensibility. Yet I don’t think so, since this Noho Gallery in Chelsea. prose. background obviously still informs the Her “Pond Shadows, 2012,” for example, This is at its most subtle and elusive in reverent view of life and nature which is so evokes the spiral-like ripples around stylized works such as “Shifting Shadows,” with its refreshingly present in Yost’s work and makes lily pads with graceful blue linear forms vertical composition divided as strictly into it stand high above much that is facile and that swirl up from the pond waters to three tiers as the most minimal of Mark superficial in today’s art world. entwine with the bare, dark winter limbs of Rothko’s color field paintings. Both the upper –– Byron Coleman an overhanging tree in the foreground of and lower levels are dark, with a hive-like the composition, two of which are partly organic form hovering pregnantly in the one Erma Martin Yost, “Felted Fields,” whitened by intricate stitching, as if by flakes above, and a snail-like creature and a fanciful Noho Gallery, 530 West 25th Street, of snow or beads of frost. Yost merges nature yellow organism suggesting subterranean life February 5 - March 2, 2013. with the inner vision of imagination every bit at the very bottom. But it is in the lighter gray FEBRUARY/MARCH 2013 GALLERYSTUDIO 21 TALKING BACK TO BOOKS he name of this column –– a more formal gluing in others to create witty French puns unfinished genitals of a man in the process Telaboration of the pencil scrawls that or other textual oddities. of a sex change. By contrast, “Honeymoon invariably deface the margins of most of my Unburdened by the formal training or Nude,” an oil by John Currin combines a reading matter –– was suggested by my wife, “natural talent” that other modernists had Botticelli body and a bimbo-like expression who is also my editor and reminded me a to overcome in order to innovate, Cornell with features based on one of the male artist’s day or two ago that the reviewers’ copies made himself a formidable figure in the own self-portraits. of recently released books I requested from avant garde of his time, a sort of Yankee Equally indicative of today’s more publishers are piling up around my desk like tinkerer counterpart of Marcel Duchamp, liberated attitudes, particularly related to unpaid bills. homegrown and highly original. the disempowerment of The Male Gaze * * * which has dominated art history for so many centuries, is Tracey Emin’s explicit yet lyrical acrylic composition of a woman masturbating...The Naked Nude indeed. * * * Those who, like me, grew up in the era of Classics Illustrated and found their comicstrip adaptations of “The Three Musketeers,” “Ivanhoe,” “The Last of the Mohicans” and so on, yawningly “educational,” will welcome The Graphic Canon, a series of three thick paperback volumes of literary masterpieces reimagined by many of today’s most avant garde comic book creators (Edited by Russ Kick, 7 Stories Press).

So, starting at the top of the tower: Like It had to take courage and a surprising his famous box assemblages, Joseph Cornell’s lack of vanity for supermodel Kate Moss to Manual Of Marvels (Edited by Dickran subject her exquisite beauty to a pregnant Tashjian and Analisa Leppanen-Guerra, nude portrait by the loaded brush of Lucian Thames & Hudson) is a noteworthy object. Freud, an artist not known for flattering his Suitably presented in a boxed format with a subjects. Moss, credited with embodying the trompe l’oeil cover resembling a weathered doe-eyed waif look as a high fashion trend marble patterned composition book, this in countless international fashion spreads is unique publishing event consists of three made mere mortal meat by Freud’s lumpish discrete items: a hardcover volume of sixty impasto. But that’s the whole point of The facsimiles of pages Cornell altered in a fat Naked Nude, by Frances Borzello (Thames French farmer’s almanac called the Journal d’ & Hudson). Presented as a contemporary Agriculture Practique; a book of essays about answer to the classical images of the the project; and an interactive CD exploring unclothed human body in Kenneth Clark’s the entire project and attempting, as A Note 1956 art historical landmark The Nude: A In Volume One (“From The Epic of To The Reader within puts it, to replicate the Study in Ideal Form, Borzello’s book strips Gilgamesh to Shakespeare to Dangerous playful experience “of holding and exploring nudity of all glamour with in-one’s-face Liaisons”) ‘60s icon Robert Crumb, riffs a real Cornell work.” pieces like “Piss Mooning,” a photo-based on the above-mentioned series by attaching The original, discovered after the artist’s work by Gilbert & George, in which the the headline “A Klassic Komic” to his strip, death in 1972 in the basement studio of the homely middleaged British art duo bends “Excerpts from Boswell’s London Journal house on Utopia Parkway, Queens, where he over to show us their bare, hairy bums; 1762-1763.” Unlike his ill-advised visual lived with his mother and disabled brother Marc Quinn’s beautiful marble figures of adaptation of “The Book of Genesis,” for most of his life, began with Cornell’s models whose missing parts, unlike those of which proved wildly unsuitable for his funky discovery of the antique volume in one of similarly posed classical nude statues, are due underground comics style, Crumb gives the second-hand book stores downtown not to the erosions of antiquity, but to birth vibrant life to young Boswell’s trysts with that he haunted on his frequent trips into defects or amputation after accidents; and trollops and strumpets in public parks and ale Manhattan. Ron Mueck’s “Dead Dad,”Ron Mueck’s houses with private rooms for whoring. With Starting in the early 1930s, and continuing hyperrealist larger-than-life sculptor of his “a handsome actress” he identifies only as for over a decade, Cornell worked his peculiar father’s naked corpse. “Louisa,” magic on many of its pages, altering them in a Also making the case for a more diverse Boswell even experiences “the tormenting surreal manner by means of collages, cutouts, approach to a timeless subject, taking into anxiety of serious love,” until he comes down incongruous hand-colored tip-ins of antique account new ways of looking at the gender with a disillusioning dose of the clap and engravings and the occasional drawing, as and the human body, Jenny Saville’s large oil wonders “Can this beautiful, this sensible, well as by crossing out certain words or on canvas “Matrix” presents a close-up of the this agreeable woman, be so sadly defiled? 22 GALLERYSTUDIO FEBRUARY/MARCH 2013 The Emanation of the Giant Albion,” Shakespeare’s “Sonnet 18” (“Shall I compare reproduced from the only existing complete thee to a summer’s day?”) reinterpreted as a color version in Yale University’s Center for nostalgic modern day tribute to mother-love British Art. For with his intricately scripted by Robert Berry, a cartoonist best known hand-lettered texts, his muscular male figures for his ambitious online graphic adaptation and their voluptuously monumental, female of James Joyce’s “Ulysses”; a marvelously companions soaring around in fiery cosmic intricate, ornate, almost psychedelically realms, Blake, after all, was the original whimsical illumination of Emily Dickinson’s Creator of Super Heroes. “Because I Could Not Stop for Death” Other highlights of The Graphic Canon and Lewis Carroll’s “Alice’s Adventures in are Noah Patrick Pfarr’s Interpretation Wonderland” by Dame Darcy, a flamboyant of John Donne’s poem “The Flea” as a cartoonist, illustrator and musician who just lesbian seduction sequence limned in a may be visual art’s answer to Lady Gaga. sinuous linear Art Nouveau style; Ellen Lindner’s interpretation of the Romantic At this writing, two large paperback poet Leigh Hunt’s “Rondeau: Jenny Kissed volumes have been published, each number Me” (which while visually perfunctory is 500 pages. Volume One ranges “from nonetheless valuable for introducing to a The Epic of Gilgamesh to Shakespeare to new audience one of the loveliest lyrics of Dangerous Liaisons”; Volume Two goes the Victorian era); an elaborately detailed “from Kubla to the Bronte Sisters to The and witty interpretation of Dante Alighieri’s Picture of Dorian Gray.” Volume Three, Can corruption lodge beneath so fair a “The Divine Comedy by famous designor soon to follow, will feature “from Heart of form?” / illustrator Seymour Chwast; a humorous Darkness to Hemingway to Infinite Jest,” But even crumb is outdone by the full color take on Miguel Cervantes’ “Don and will take us almost to the present, only bonified masterpiece included in The Quixote” by Will Eisner, creator of the including works by Jack Kerouac, William S. Graphic Canon in its original form: William celebrated 1940s comic strip “The Spirit” Burroughs, Hubert Selby Jr., and others. Blake’s seven page epic poem “Jerusalem: and one of the pioneers of the graphic novel; –– Ed McCormack

JENNIFER MORRISON accented with touches of violet, Goodstein “LAND AND SEA” Continued from page 20 combines a brushy lyricism with aspects Continued from page 6 shapes take on the sharp points of actual of Color Field composition in a rich visual Then there was Daniel C. Boyer, whose stars, while others are more softly contoured symphony. “Dad Bay or The George Strait” took in the manner of floral forms. Here, again, Although most of Dammika D. a fluidly abstract approach to landscape however, an overall harmony is achieved by Ranasinghe’s paintings in watercolor and with a surface like molten lava and forms virtue of Morrison’s stylistic tendency to acrylic on canvas paper consist of intricately and colors suggesting the underlying compose with more or less equal-sized units interwoven abstract patterns, “Country energies of nature without delineating of color that fill the entire surface of the Folk Dance” includes stylized figures. Like the lay of the land. In intriguing contrast canvas in a nonhierarchical manner. more joyful counterparts of the character in to expressionistic freedom of the acrylic Thus for all the exuberant freedom, Munch’s famous “Scream,” they pop wide- painting within, Boyer extended his energy, and sense of inner movement her eyed and gape-mouth from Ranasinghe’s composition to the frame around it, which compositions generate, they also possess vibrantly colorful wiggles and waves of line he adorned with more delicate biomorphic a formal strength that is highly unusual in and color. –– Maurice Taplinger linear forms in color pencil. such gesturally vigorous work. Indeed, it Silvia Soares Boyer displayed striking is this unerring combination of expressive CHRISTINE SELLMAN contrasts, in this case from one composition autonomy and intuitive formal control that Continued from page 2 to the next: In her acrylic on paper puts Jennifer Morrison’s recent paintings Love,”one of Sellman’s boldest “Oriental Roots, Soares Boyer employed in the forefront of the new postmodern compositions, with its large red main form silhouettes of the spiky spires, domes, abstraction. –– Maureen Flynn simultaneously suggesting a Valentine and and turrets of exotic Eastern architecture curvaceous contours of feminine anatomy. as a vehicle to geometric abstraction. By “WINTER WARM-UP” Red also figures prominently in the canvas contrast, her work employing diluted acrylic Continued from page 1 Sellman calls “Hurt,” where it serves as pigments and crystals on canvas, “The River coloristic feast. a signifier at once emotional and visceral, of Life,” was an exhilaratingly freeform Todd Miguel, on the other hand, puts with the impact of an open wound. By foray into gestural abstract expressionism his own unique postmodern spin on the contrast, another large acrylic painting with a symbolic twist. vocabulary of Abstract Expressionism in called “Admist” features an ethereal color –– Peter Wylie works in acrylic and oil that achieve richly field in delicately pale blue, softer yellow, layered and fluid effects. Miguel’s broad and rosy pink hues with a decidedly lyrical and shapely strokes of fiery color fill quality, onto which the artist, unwilling to intimate-scaled compositions such as “Old lull the viewer with too serene an overall Man’s Reflection,” with dynamic gestural mood, has splashed some lively spatters velocity. and drips down along the lower edge of Subscribe to Robin Goodstein takes a softly diffused the composition. As all good painters, style GALLERY&STUDIO approach to form and color in the oil on for Christine Sellman is clearly a function canvas called Memories.” In a palette of character, rather than of a contrived See page 10 of mostly softly diffused reds and blues, strategy. –– Wilson Wong

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530 West 25th Street, New York 212-226-4151 Fax: 212-966-4380 www.Agora-Gallery.com [email protected]

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