Rosalyn Drexler at Mitchell Algus Ans Nicholas Davies
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bringing hard-edged , often ro lent imagery from film noir alll tabloid culture into the Poi arena. Known also as a plat wright and novelist , Drexler r her youth enjoyed a brief stintas , a professional wrestler. Ths dual -ven ue selection of bol '60s work and recent painting! and collages more than proves the lasting appeal of her literale comic sensibility. Sex and violence are he intertwined themes. Se/f-Port,a, (1963) presents a skimpily cloo Sylvia Sleigh: Detail of Invitation to a Voyage, 1979-99, oil on canvas , 14 panels, 8 by 70 feet overall; at Deven Golden. prone woman against a rel background with her high heel. in the air and her face obscurocf Gardner is good with planes, import, over the years , of her Arsenal , a castlelike fortress by a pillow . The large-seal! O both when delineated as in self-portraits as Venus as well built on an island in the early image s in what is perhap. Untitled (Bhoadie, Nick, S, Matt as the idealized male nudes of 20th century by eccentr ic & Tim playing basketball, The Turkish Bath (1973), art crit Scottish-American millionaire Victoria) or when intimated as in ics all, including her husband, Frank Bannerman to house part Untitled (S pissing). The latter the late Lawrence Alloway. of his military-surplus business. was one of the best pieces in Perh aps the practice harks Sleigh first glimpsed the place the exhibition. The urine spot on back to Sleigh 's charmed from the window of an Amtrak the ground is delicately evoked, girlhood in Wales; perhaps train, and on a mild spring day as is the stream of urine, which it ha s something to do with a some time later she organized a has the prec ision of a Persian European tendency to allegory riverbank picnic to take advan miniature. and symbol. Whatever the rea tage of the picturesque scene. Gardner paints politically so ns , Sleigh brought the This was the takeoff point for unconscious middle-class white predilection to a high point in her 20-year project , which is boys. Some viewers will find the huge , ambitious Invitation strikingly fluid in time. It memori them funny , others repre to a Voyage: The Hudson River alizes her cat , Zelda, and her hensible. This wedge works to at Fishkill (1979-99). In these husband, Lawrence; among the Gardner's advantage, as it forces 14 8-by-5-foot panels , hung others seen once or even sever viewer!; to take a position on his edge to edge, the landscape is al times in the panorama are the work. Although he uses a variety continuous and makes an enclo critic John Perreault and his of locales surrounding collegiate sure around us, yet characters friend Jeff Weinstein , who sit life- dormitories , pools , tracks recur and we're never quite sure cross-legged on the riverbank; and also travel destinations rang where we are, or why, or whom artist Eileen Spikol , who ges ing from Cancun to India-the we've already met. tures for one and all to come real focus is the artist's memory But we are sure this is join the revels ; and Warren of moments with friends, which enchanted territory, based on Perkins , one of Sleigh's stu he portrays without obvious emo Watteau's fetes galantes as dents at the Art Students tion. -Vincent Katz surely as it refers to a musical League, standing almost in the version Sleigh had hear d of river, cap in hand. One suspects Sylvia Sleigh Baudelaire 's bluntly exquisite all the people portrayed were poem Invitation to a Voyage. close to Sleigh's heart. at Deven Golden The work is set by a bit of rail There's a lovely poetic existen Rosalyn Drexler : Art His tory : Ana Falling , 1989, acrylic on canvas, Sylvia Sleigh has lo ng been road track flanked by the river tialism to the work. The crowning 80 by 40 inches ; at Mitchell Algut concerned with turning real peo on one side and woods on the mystery is Bannerman's Arsenal, ------- .......oa ple into mythological or sacral other. Particularly prominent a staunch building of great beau beings. Such has been the is the ruin of Bannerman 's ty, while the characters in the at tableau seem as benignly Drexler 's most haunting pa bemused as they are overt ly ing, Marilyn Pursued by David Brewster : Tractor and Farm, 1999, oil on canvas , charming. My favorite bit of social ( 1967), are taken from a n 13 by 19 inches; at Spheris. poesis is the ever-elegant paper shot of Monroe foll me Alloway lifting a radiant Sleigh to by a bodyguard at the funeril his her feet. Sleigh 's Invitation a friend. The black, white of· reminds us that in our goings to blue figures starkly contrast Wli1 and fro are moments of wonder, the lathered, chocolate-br i wit and even luster. background, creating an i -Gerrit Henry image of doom that deserves be placed alongside the di Rosalyn Drexler paintings of Warhol. Drexler's feisty politics at Mitchell Algus feminist anger an imate and Nicholas Davies works. Is It True What They Rosalyn Drexler's witty, tough About Dixie ( 1966) speaks gir l paintings from the '60s umes simply by floating a reflect the decade's darker side, of rednecks on a white- 152 ackground. An eye-popping the coastal waters of the Atlantic !er work, Art History: Ana and Pacific, the Grand Canyon Falling (1989), depicts the and the Northwest rain forest. eathfall of Ana Mendieta, The inf luences come thick iressedin a Wonder Woman and fast: Thomas Cole (espe slyle bikini, as that of a cially , perhaps, for his poe tic oootemporary Icarus. The trajec theatricality), George Inness {the loryof the tragic descent is per vasive , ambie nt light ) and ndicated by bold, cartoony Winslow Homer (steady chroni !haftsof light against the black cle r of things and pla ces enedwindows of her high-rise. American), and such Post InDrexl er's hothouse world of Impressionists as van Gogh and boxers,gangsters and abused Cezanne , to say not hi ng of 1001is,women have to fight back. Signac , for their rich , painterly ~ Self-Defense ( 1963) , a surfaces and pure color. man's red fingernails claw the DiGiorgio, who died at age 68 liceof a bruiser as she wrestles not long after thi s ex hib ition lor his gun. Ever cautious, closed, worked in series, and his Drexler paints Embrace (1964) last one was "New York City at asan indistinguishable lump of Joseph DiGiorgio: New York City at Night No. 2, 1995, oil on canvas, Night. " His studio was on the entangled silhouettes against a 56 by 68 inches ; at Kouros . Bowe ry; looki ng nort h he saw b'ownbackground. beauty in a broad, rising road Recentwork is more free wa y against the sky line , the llheelingly comic. Taken from a directly succeeded the Action unequivocal beauty. The paint la tter featur ing t he Con Ed ~ws photoof Lech Walesa and pa inters in the '60s and '70s ings are thi ck with diagonals ; Tower on 14th St re et , the Poland'scommunist leaders in might seem like Brewster's nat light is pure color, color is pure Metropolitan Life Tower on 23rd conference, Getting to Know ural neighbors. But he sough t stroke. So many things geomet Stree t an d the Emp ire State You(19 97-98) depicts the new territory. His Vermont and ric are going on compositionally Building on 34th. Looking south gesticulating bigwigs as con New Hampshire are wilder, and that the eye dances. Th is is he saw the Brooklyn Bridge and fabbing rock stars in Bob Dylan prettier, than the rolling flatlands some of the best painting-as Brooklyn itself. The air was rich &inglasses and KISS face paint. of the painterly-realist-inhabited painting around today. with the urban picturesque. Alriptych, Manny & Dick (1997- Hamptons . Still, Brewster is any - Gerrit Henry DiGio rgio brought a strong , 98),is accompanied by a thing but a prettifier. There is a unstudied and remarkably fresh ext-panel short story about a gargantuan grit to his work , a Joseph DiGiorgio kind of romanticism to veils of lrustrated punk musician who kind of bucolic push 'n' pull, as if dar kness as well as sheets of l'lowsup his neighborhood . The Hans Hofman n had gone inex at Kouros summer rain or winter sleet. In 'OOStdele ctable new works are plicably farm boy. This is some For 40 years, Joseph DiGiorgio New York City at Night No. 14, a &irrealco llages from computer of the toughest, roughest paint has been known for his roman hig hway head ing fo r a far -off ~ns printed on acetate (1997- ing around: Thurber Hillside is tic , nee-Poin tillist American vanishing point is painted a slick, 99).Un der a drawn skeleton more fantastical than idyllic, with landscapes. That these wo rks wet red gl isten ing wit h au to tith the logo for Passion per its crea my greens and stately are widely respected is not sur lights. New York City at Night fumeis scrawled "In the bones light blues, whi le Round prisi ng: he has been lyr ically No . 7 reads as an almost de :jthebeholder." Never afraid to Mountain shares with it a qua limning land injured by industri Kooningesque bedazzlement of !!flher hands dirty, Drexler is a vering romanticism of brush and alization , holding out its beauty blacks , yellows, whites , even a 1ey missing player in the Pop palette.