DOCSLIB.ORG

Janet Sobel: Primitivist, Surrealist, and Abstract Expressionist Author(S): Gail Levin Source: Woman's Art Journal, Vol

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Janet Sobel: Primitivist, Surrealist, and Abstract Expressionist Author(S): Gail Levin Source: Woman's Art Journal, Vol Woman's Art Inc. Janet Sobel: Primitivist, Surrealist, and Abstract Expressionist Author(s): Gail Levin Source: Woman's Art Journal, Vol. 26, No. 1 (Spring - Summer, 2005), pp. 8-14 Published by: Woman's Art Inc. Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/3566528 Accessed: 07-12-2019 17:46 UTC REFERENCES Linked references are available on JSTOR for this article: https://www.jstor.org/stable/3566528?seq=1&cid=pdf-reference#references_tab_contents You may need to log in to JSTOR to access the linked references. JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at https://about.jstor.org/terms Woman's Art Inc. is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Woman's Art Journal This content downloaded from 150.108.161.119 on Sat, 07 Dec 2019 17:46:46 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms A iR_ _r q?- *-- rL .-* .. 1.. IkA ItON .^ - .iw.~ .. PI. 5. Janet Sobel, Music (1944), oil on canvas, PI. 6. Janet Sobel, Disappointment (c. 1943), oil and sand on canvas, 24" x 17/2". Location unknown. Photo: Sidney Janis, 26" x 43". Courtesy Gary Snyder Gallery, New York. Abstract & Surrealist Art in America (1944). PI. 7. Janet Sobel, Pro & Contre (1941), oil on board, PI. 8. Janet Sobel, Untitled (c. 1943), mixed media on paper, 19" x 27". 30" x 20". Courtesy Gary Snyder Gallery, New York. Courtesy Gary Snyder Gallery, New This content downloaded from 150.108.161.119 on Sat, 07 Dec 2019 17:46:46 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms * 0 '~ I ~ JANET SOBEL Primitivist, Surrealist, and Abstract Expressionist By Gail Levin T he feminist movement was of "her already latest painting," underway, Music, which did not makewhen, the checklist. in 1968, William Rubin, a curator Some figurative at the works Museum were also on the of list.6 Modern Emily Genauer, re- Art (MoMA), traveled to Plainfield, viewing the show, singledNew out Jersey, "compositions liketo Retreating meet Horses Janet Sobel (1894-1968). By then and Heavenly bedridden Quarrel, in which and the artistnear has painteddeath, her subjects she felt honored when he acquired on herglass, modeling nonobjective her figures in calligraphic painting, whorls, giving Milky them a Way (1945), for the museum's great permanent feeling of movement."7 collection Pollock may also(as have well seen Sobel's as a second, smaller work for himself, work in Septemberwhich 1944, he inwould a group show later at the donate).' Norlyst Art Rubin was interested in Sobel Gallery because curated by her Eleanor "all-overLust and Jimmy Ernst.drip" paint- ings, including Milky Way, had influencedWe can be sure, too, the that Pollock abstract knew Sobel's expression- Music, for it ap- ist Jackson Pollock, a fact first peared remarked as a full-page color in reproduction the late that year 1950s in Sidney by Janis's no less an authority than the critic Abstract Clement & Surrealist Greenberg. Art in America. Janis also reproduced a color When in 1958 Greenberg revised plate of Pollock'sa 1955 She- essay,Wolf, as well "American-Type as a black-and-white reproduc- Painting," he added Sobel, discounting tion of Composition the (1943) influence by Lee Krasner.8 Whileon PollockJanis classified of Mark Tobey and asserting: "Leonore Krassner" as one of the "American Abstract Painters," along with Stuart Davis, Willem de Kooning, and her teacher Hans Back in 1944, however, he [Pollock] Hofmann, had he placed noticed both Sobel andone Pollock or withtwo the "Americancurious paintings shown at Peggy Guggenheim's Surrealist Painters," by along a with'primitive' Mark Tobey, William painter, Baziotes, Jim- Janet Sobel (who was, and still is,my Ernst,a housewife Dorothea Tanning, living Adolph Gottlieb, in Brooklyn). and Mark Rothko, Pollock (and I myself) admired theseamong others. pictures It is very likely, ratherfurtively: too, that Pollock saw the travelingthey showed schematic little drawings group offaces show organized almost to celebrate lost the publication in a dense of Janis's book, tracery of thin black lines lying culminating over andin New underYork at Mortimer a mottled Brandt Gallery, field from of No- predominantly warm and translucent vember 29 throughcolor." December 30, 1944. This exhibition included Pollock's Mad Moon Woman (1941), Sobel's Music (1944), Tobey's Greenberg, who surely understood Threading that Light (1942), Sobel and Krasner'spainted Composition with (1943), a naif'sas well approach to the night sky or to as worksthe byrhythms 46 other artists. of music, categorized her technique as "the first really Sobel 'all-over' told Janis that one Music that was inspired I had by Shostakovich's ever seen, Sev- since Tobey's show came months enth Symphony. later." Janis Greenberg quoted Sobel about this further work: "Music isal- my lowed as how he found it "strangely impression of thepleasing," music of Shostakovich adding: created in "Later a world torn on,by Pollock admitted that these pictures war and bloodshed. had Shostakovich made hasan captured impression the power of the on him."2 Russian people and by his music has given them strength. His mu- Following in the wake of Greenberg, Rubin wrote in 1967: sic has so stimulated me and I have tried to present these feelings "Pollock arrived at his all-over style without having seen the To- in my picture."9 In the Seventh Symphony, first played in 1942, the beys," adding that "he had seen, however, in 1944 and again in composer reacted to the horrors of the siege of Leningrad and the 1946, a few paintings by Janet Sobel, which prophesied his own deaths caused by the Nazis and by Stalin's orders, themes that style even more closely than did the Tobeys."3 Rubin's position lat- clearly resonated with Sobel. er was refuted by Judith S. Kays, who, in 1997, reasserted Tobey's Given the prominent exhibition history documented for Sobel's influence on Pollock, taking Rubin to task for errors and unsub- Music, with its dripped enamel paint in an all-over pattern, it is stantiated argument.4 Kays objected to Rubin's placement of So- not surprising that Milky Way, which quite closely resembles Mu- bel's all-over canvas Music (1944; P1. 5) "in a group show at Peggy sic, recommended itself to Rubin for acquisition. Both Music and Guggenheim Art of This Century early in 1944," when Sobel did Milky Way appeared in Sobel's 1946 solo show at Peggy Guggen- not show there until 1945. Kays also pointed out that Greenberg's heim's gallery, Art of This Century.l1 Pollock, too, employed astro- claim in 1958 that Tobey's show came months later" is inaccurate, al- nomical themes in titles of the immediately succeeding years, al- though accepted by Rubin, since Tobey showed his all-over paintings though he was still working with traditional oil paints. However, in at the Willard Gallery during April 4-29, 1944, actually preceding 1947 he added aluminum paint and gravel to the oil in Galaxy, slightly Sobel's first solo show at the Puma Gallery, which opened on and used enamel paint, together with oil and aluminum paint, in April 24, 1944, and remained on view through May 14. the large dripped canvas Lucifer. The enamel paint that Sobel Pollock did, however, see Sobel's Puma Gallery show. Pollock's used in Milky Way came from her husband's costume jewelry friend, the painter Peter Busa, told an interviewer: "When Jackson business. first saw her show at the Puma Gallery, he was very enthralled Greenberg wrote to Sobel's son Sol in 1971, confirming and re- with it."5 Although a checklist of the 26 works shown at the Puma iterating his opinion: "Thank you for your note about your mother Gallery exists, not all of the titles can be identified. At the same & her art. Yes, I did give Bill Rubin his lead. (I was impressed by time, a 1944 review in the Brooklyn Eagle discussed the exhibition the same painting, independently, that Pollock was impressed by; This content downloaded from 150.108.161.119 on Sat, 07 Dec 2019 17:46:46 UTC WOMAN'S ART JOURNAL 0 All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms Fig. 1. Janet Sobel, Through the Glass (c. 1944), enamel on glass, oil and sand .r'8-" > ' . 1j ,f.' . 1$ on canvas, 261/" x 293/8". Courtesy Gary Snyder Gallery, New York. Fig. 2. Janet Sobel, The Advisor (1943), oil on masonite, 24" x 24". isn't it in Peggy Guggenheim's collection now? Pollock told me, in Courtesy Gary Snyder Gallery, New York. 1948 when he saw-in reproduction-his first Tobey, that he thought your mother was better.) I, too, would like to see you."' show. Indeed, at the time more than one critic remarked that So- By 1945, Sobel was attracting attention that was remarkable, bel used "her own version of white writing," clearly linking her especially considering that critics had identified her a year earlier work with Tobey's. as "a housewife from Brooklyn who really does have a delightful Until Milky Way was acquired by Rubin in 1968 and shown decorative flair for pattern and color," and as a "primitive," and "an among the recent acquisitions at the Museum of Modern Art in unschooled artist."'2 She was juried into "The Women" at Peggy 1970, two decades had elapsed since Sobel's work had been ex- Guggenheim's gallery, where her abstractions appeared alongside hibited in New York City.7 After the burst of activity during and works by such important women artists as Leonora Carrington, just after World War II, neither galleries nor museums paid her Kay Sage, and Hedda Sterne.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • The Effect of War on Art: the Work of Mark Rothko Elizabeth Leigh Doland Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College
    Louisiana State University LSU Digital Commons LSU Master's Theses Graduate School 2010 The effect of war on art: the work of Mark Rothko Elizabeth Leigh Doland Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_theses Part of the Arts and Humanities Commons Recommended Citation Doland, Elizabeth Leigh, "The effect of war on art: the work of Mark Rothko" (2010). LSU Master's Theses. 2986. https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_theses/2986 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at LSU Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in LSU Master's Theses by an authorized graduate school editor of LSU Digital Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. THE EFFECT OF WAR ON ART: THE WORK OF MARK ROTHKO A Thesis Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of the Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Liberal Arts in The Interdepartmental Program in Liberal Arts by Elizabeth Doland B.A., Louisiana State University, 2007 May 2010 TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT…………………………………………………………………iii CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION……………………………………………........1 2 EARLY LIFE……………………………………………………....3 Yale Years……………………………………………………6 Beginning Life as Artist……………………………………...7 Milton Avery…………………………………………………9 3 GREAT DEPRESSION EFFECTS………………………………...13 Artists’ Union………………………………………………...15 The Ten……………………………………………………….17 WPA………………………………………………………….19
    [Show full text]
  • The Sidney and Harriet Janis Collection : a Gift to the Museum of Modern Art
    The Sidney and Harriet Janis Collection : a gift to the Museum of Modern Art Author Museum of Modern Art (New York, N.Y.) Date 1968 Publisher The Museum of Modern Art Exhibition URL www.moma.org/calendar/exhibitions/1886 The Museum of Modern Art's exhibition history— from our founding in 1929 to the present—is available online. It includes exhibition catalogues, primary documents, installation views, and an index of participating artists. MoMA © 2017 The Museum of Modern Art 1 The Sidney and Harriet Janis Collection A Giftto The Museum of Modem Art ) Trustees of The Museum of Modern Art cover: picasso. Painter and Model. 1928 David Rockefeller, Chairman of the Board; Henry Allen Moe, William S. Paley, and John Hay Whitney, Vice Chairmen; Mrs. Bliss Parkinson, President; James Thrall Soby, Ralph F. Colin, and Gardner Cowlcs, Vice Presidents; Willard C. Butcher, Treasurer; Walter Bareiss, Robert R. Barker, Alfred H. Barr, Printed in the United States of America by Clarke & Way, Inc. Jr., Mrs. Robert Woods Bliss*, William A. M. Burden, Ivan Chermayeff, Mrs. W. Murray Crane*, John dc Mcnil, Rene Color plates engraved by Briider Hartmann, West Berlin d'Harnoncourt, Mrs. C. Douglas Dillon, Mrs. Edscl B. Ford, Black-and-white plates by Horan Engraving Company, Inc. Mrs. Simon Guggenheim*, Wallace K. Harrison, Mrs. Walter Hochschild, James W. Hustcd*, Philip Johnson, Mrs. Albert D. Designed by Bert Clarke Lasker, John L. Loeb, Ranald H. Macdonald*, Mrs. G. Mac- culloch Miller*, Mrs. Charles S. Payson, Gifford Phillips, Mrs. © Copyright The Museum of Modern Art, 1968 John D. Rockefeller 3rd, Nelson A.
    [Show full text]
  • Colorful Language: Morris Louis, Formalist
    © COPYRIGHT by Paul Vincent 2014 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED To UNC-G professor Dr. Richard Gantt and my mother, for their inspiration and encouragement. COLORFUL LANGUAGE: MORRIS LOUIS, FORMALIST CRITICISM, AND MASCULINITY IN POSTWAR AMERICA BY Paul Vincent ABSTRACT American art at mid-century went through a pivotal shift when the dominant gestural style of Abstract Expressionism was criticized for its expressive painterly qualities in the 1950s. By 1960, critics such as Clement Greenberg and Michael Fried were already championing Color Field painting for its controlled use of color and flattened abstract forms. Morris Louis, whose art typifies this latter style, and the criticism written about his work provides a crucial insight into the socio-cultural implications behind this stylistic shift. An analysis of the formalist writing Greenberg used to promote Louis’s work provides a better understanding of not only postwar American art but also the concepts of masculinity and gender hierarchy that factored into how it was discussed at the time. ii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to extend my thanks Dr. Helen Langa and Dr. Andrea Pearson for their wisdom, guidance, and patience through the writing of this thesis. I would also like to thank Dr. Juliet Bellow, Dr. Joanne Allen, and Mrs. Kathe Albrecht for their unwavering academic support. I am equally grateful to my peers, Neda Amouzadeh, Lily Sehn, Kathryn Fay, Caitlin Glosser, Can Gulan, Rachael Gustafson, Jill Oakley, Carol Brown, and Fanna Gebreyesus, for their indispensable assistance and kind words. My sincere appreciation goes to The Phillips Collection for allowing me the peace of mind that came with working within its walls and to Mr.
    [Show full text]
  • The Canonisation of Surrealism in the United States
    The canonisation of Surrealism in the United States Sandra Zalman In a pointed assessment of the first show of Surrealism in New York, in 1932, the New York Times art critic asked, ‘How much of the material now on view shall we esteem “art,” and how much should be enjoyed as laboratory roughage’?1 The question encompassed the problem Surrealism posed for art history because it essentially went unanswered. Even after the 1936 endorsement by the Museum of Modern Art in a show organized by its founding director Alfred Barr (1902-1981), Surrealism continued to have a vexed relationship with the canon of modern art. Above all, the enterprise of canonisation is ironic for Surrealism – the Surrealists were self-consciously aiming to overthrow the category of art, but simultaneously participating in a tradition of avant-gardism defined by such revolution.2 Framing his exhibition, Barr presented Surrealism as both the most recent avant-garde export, and also as a purposeful departure from the avant-garde’s experimentation in form. Instead, Barr stressed that Surrealism focused on an anti-rationalist approach to representation. Though Barr made a strong case to integrate Surrealism into the broader understanding of modernism in the 1930s, and Surrealism was generally accepted by American audiences as the next European avant-garde, by the 1950s formalist critics in the U.S. positioned Surrealism as a disorderly aberration in modernism’s quest for abstraction. Surrealism’s political goals and commercial manifestations (which Barr’s exhibition had implicitly sanctioned by including cartoons and advertisements) became more and more untenable for the movement’s acceptance into a modern art canon that was increasingly being formulated around an idea of the autonomous self-reflexive work of art.
    [Show full text]
  • Motivation of the Sign 261 Discussion 287
    Picasso and Braque A SYMPOSIUM ORGANIZED BY William Rubin \ MODERATED BY Kirk Varnedoe PROCEEDINGS EDITED BY Lynn Zelevansky THE MUSEUM OF MODERN ART, NEW YORK DISTRIBUTED BY HARRY N. ABRAMS, INC., NEW YORK Contents Richard E. Oldenburg Foreword 7 William Rubin and Preface and Acknowledgments 9 Lynn Zelevansky Theodore Reff The Reaction Against Fauvism: The Case of Braque 17 Discussion 44 David Cottington Cubism, Aestheticism, Modernism 58 Discussion 73 Edward F. Fry Convergence of Traditions: The Cubism of Picasso and Braque 92 Discussion i07 Christine Poggi Braque’s Early Papiers Colles: The Certainties o/Faux Bois 129 Discussion 150 Yve-Alain Bois The Semiology of Cubism 169 Discussion 209 Mark Roskill Braque’s Papiers Colles and the Feminine Side to Cubism 222 Discussion 240 Rosalind Krauss The Motivation of the Sign 261 Discussion 287 Pierre Daix Appe ndix 1 306 The Chronology of Proto-Cubism: New Data on the Opening of the Picasso/Braque Dialogue Pepe Karmel Appe ndix 2 322 Notes on the Dating of Works Participants in the Symposium 351 The Motivation of the Sign ROSALIND RRAUSS Perhaps we should start at the center of the argument, with a reading of a papier colle by Picasso. This object, from the group dated late November-December 1912, comes from that phase of Picasso’s exploration in which the collage vocabulary has been reduced to a minimalist austerity. For in this run Picasso restricts his palette of pasted mate rial almost exclusively to newsprint. Indeed, in the papier colle in question, Violin (fig. 1), two newsprint fragments, one of them bearing h dispatch from the Balkans datelined TCHATALDJA, are imported into the graphic atmosphere of charcoal and drawing paper as the sole elements added to its surface.
    [Show full text]
  • Primitivism" In2 0 T H Century
    TH THE MUSEUM OF MODERN ART PRIMITIVISM" IN 20 CENTURY ART 11 WEST 53 STREET NEW YORK, NY 10019 Affinity of the Tribal and the Modern (212) 708-940U FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE August, 1984 No. 17 NEW EXHIBITION OPENING SEPTEMBER 27 AT MUSEUM OF MODERN ART EXAMINES "PRIMITIVISM" IN 20TH CENTURY ART Few if any external influences on the work of modern painters and sculptors have been more critical than that of the tribal arts of Africa, Oceania and North America. Since the turn of the century when Gauguin, Picasso, Matisse, and others first acquainted themselves with masks and sculptures from these areas, modern artists have continued to display strong interest in the art and culture of tribal societies. The term "primitivism" is used to describe the Western response to tribal cultures as revealed in the work and thought of modern artists. Recognizing the importance of this issue in modern art history--and the relative lack of serious research devoted to it--The Museum of Modern Art in New York this fall presents a groundbreaking exhibition that underscores the parallelisms that exist between the two arts. Entitled "PRIMITIVISM" IN 20TH CENTURY ART: Affinity of the Tribal and the Modern, the exhibition, which opens on September 27 and runs through January 15, 1985, is the first ever to juxtapose modern and tribal objects in the light of informed art history. William Rubin, head of the Museum's Department of Painting and Sculpture and director of the landmark 1980 Pablo Picasso: A Retrospective, has organized the show in collaboration with Professor Kirk Varnedoe of New York University's more/ The exhibition and its national tour are sponsored by Philip Morris Incorporated.
    [Show full text]
  • Janet Sobel, Whose Art Influenced Jackson Pollock
    Overlooked No More: Janet Sobel, Whose Art Influenced Jackson Pollock With no formal art training, working in her Brooklyn apartment, she took up the drip style of painting that Pollock later made famous. By Maya Blackstone July 30, 2021 Janet Sobel in about 1944. Painting on her stomach on the floor of her Brooklyn apartment When Janet Sobel created one of the most recognizable artistic styles, drip painting, on scraps of paper, boxes and the backs of envelopes, she was 45 years old, had never taken a single art class and didn’t even have her own supplies. Rather than use a brush, she threw paint onto a surface or used objects like glass pipettes to control the pigment as it fell. Sometimes she used a vacuum cleaner to move the paint around. The result was an allover composition not bound to conceptions of form and shape. Though art historians say her spontaneous manner of painting is characteristic of Abstract Expressionism, it is another artist known for drip painting who gained fame as a founder of the movement: Jackson Pollock. “No one would dare to make drip paintings just like Pollock,” Gary Snyder, an art dealer and expert on Sobel, said by phone, “and the wild thing is, Sobel did it before him.” In part because of his use of drip painting, Pollock is recognized as one of the most important artists of the 20th century. Few people know that he was influenced by Sobel after seeing her work in an exhibit. And yet, Snyder said, “Sobel is a footnote in Pollock’s story.” Sobel was born Jennie Olechovsky on May 31, 1893, in Ekaterinoslav, about 300 miles south of Kiev, Ukraine.
    [Show full text]
  • Sigrid Ruby the Give and Take of American Painting in Postwar Western Europe
    The American Impact on Western Europe: Americanization and Westernization in Transatlantic Perspective Conference at the German Historical Institute Washington, D.C., March 25–27, 1999 Sigrid Ruby The Give and Take of American Painting in Postwar Western Europe www.ghi-dc.org/conpotweb/westernpapers/ruby.pdf ©Sigrid Ruby 1 The Give and Take of American Painting in Postwar Western Europe (Sigrid Ruby) The standard narrative of 20th century art maintains that with the advent of abstract expressionism in the late 1940s American painting for the very first time made a genuine contribution to the course of Western art history. This at first sight eurocentristic narrative relies on the conceptualization of modern art as an evolutionary process, mainly conditioned by the esthetic qualities of the autonomous art work and urged on by successive vanguard movements. Pointing out its formal inventiveness and radical newness, its painterly grandeur, purity of means, and artistic self-consciousness, art historical writing has naturalized abstract expressionism as an integral part - if not the climax or glorious finale1 - of the modernist adventure. In 1970, the American art critic Irving Sandler published „Abstract Expressionism. The Triumph of American Painting.“2 The book perpetuated the by then well- established modernist interpretation of abstract expressionism, but the somewhat self-congratulatory title suggests a bias which became crucial for a revisionist reading of this „triumph“ in the following years. Max Kozloff‘s article „American Painting During the Cold War,“3 Eva Cockroft’s „Abstract Expressionism. Weapon of the Cold War,“4 and, especially, Serge Guilbaut’s book „How New York Stole the Idea of Modern Art“5 are landmarks of a new, materialist approach in dealing with post- 1945 art history and its American contribution.
    [Show full text]
  • Bridget Riley Born 1931 in London
    This document was updated March 3, 2021. For reference only and not for purposes of publication. For more information, please contact the gallery. Bridget Riley Born 1931 in London. Live and works in London. EDUCATION 1949-1952 Goldsmiths College, University of London 1952-1956 Royal College of Art, London SOLO EXHIBITIONS 1962 Bridget Riley, Gallery One, London, April–May 1963 Bridget Riley, Gallery One, London, September 9–28 Bridget Riley, University Art Gallery, Nottingham 1965 Bridget Riley, Richard Feigen Gallery, New York Bridget Riley, Feigen/Palmer Gallery, Los Angeles 1966 Bridget Riley, Preparatory Drawings and Studies, Robert Fraser Gallery, London, June 8–July 9 Bridget Riley: Drawings, Richard Feigen Gallery, New York 1967 Bridget Riley: Drawings, The Museum of Modern Art (Department of Circulating Exhibitions, USA): Wilmington College, Wilmington, February 12–March 5; and Talladega College, Talladega, March 24–April 16 Bridget Riley, Robert Fraser Gallery, London Bridget Riley, Richard Feigen Gallery, New York 1968 Bridget Riley, Richard Feigen Gallery, New York British Pavilion (with Phillip King), XXXIV Venice Biennale, 1968; Städtische Kunstgalerie, Bochum, November 23–December 30, 1968; and Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam, 1969 1969 Bridget Riley, Rowan Gallery, London Bridget Riley: Drawings, Bear Lane Gallery, Oxford [itinerary: Arnolfini Gallery, Bristol; Midland Group Gallery, Nottingham] 1970 Bridget Riley: Prints, Kunststudio, Westfalen-Blatt, Bielefeld Bridget Riley: Paintings and Drawings 1951–71, Arts
    [Show full text]
  • APRIL 2006 Charles Seliger with Phong Bui and John Yau by John
    APRIL 2006 Charles Seliger with Phong Bui and John Yau by John Yau and Phong Bui On a sunny afternoon of last month, Rail publisher Phong Bui and art editor John Yau drove up to Mount Vernon to visit the home/studio of the painter Charles Seliger to talk about his life and work in conjunction with the current exhibit of his new paintings at Michael Rosenfeld Gallery (on view until May 13). While the three of us were sitting down for lunch after our conversation with his wife, Lenore, Seliger, in his casual and genteel manner, demonstrated an unusual gift—in a matter of less than five minutes, he duplicated all the American Presidents’ signatures nearly in order from memory. The list is included here in these pages. John Yau: The first observation I want to make is how much your work has changed. As far back as I can remember, paint has been your central medium, but you’ve recently been using colored pencils. Charles Seliger: It’s something I’ve wanted to try for a long time, to experiment and see what the results would be. I managed to prepare a surface with various mattegels and modeling paste, so that I could draw on it with colored pencils. There were limitations with pencils; you’re locked into their colors and can’t do very much blending. I explored it as far as I think I can go. But what I’ve accomplished satisfied me enough. Actually, three works in the show are made with this technique. Yau: You’ve gone as far as you can with colored pencils? Seliger: Yes, I think so.
    [Show full text]
  • Robert Henri American / Estadounidense, 1865–1929 Beatrice Whittaker Oil on Canvas, 1919
    Daniel Garber American / Estadounidense, 1880–1958 Junior Camp Oil on board, ca. 1924 Daniel Garber served on the faculty of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts for over forty years. He started as a student in 1899, studying with William Merritt Chase. After being awarded a scholarship that allowed him to study in Europe for two years, he returned to Philadelphia in 1907, where he was first hired by Emily Sartain to teach at the Philadelphia School of Design for Women. This painting demonstrates a shift in Garber’s style, as he is known for his Impressionist landscapes. In the 1920s, Garber began experimenting with a heavier stitch-like brushstroke, as seen here, in one of his many depictions of the Delaware River embankment near his home and studio. Campamento juvenil Óleo sobre tabla, ca. 1924 Daniel Garber formó parte del cuerpo docente de la Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts durante más de cuarenta años. Comenzó como estudiante en 1899 y fue alumno de William Merritt Chase. Tras estudiar en Europa durante dos años gracias a una beca, regresó en 1907 a Filadelfia, donde fue contratado por primera vez por Emily Sartain para impartir clases en la Philadelphia School of Design for Women. Esta pintura pone de manifiesto un cambio estilístico en Garber, conocido por sus paisajes impresionistas. En la década de 1920, Garber comenzó a experimentar con pinceladas más empastadas, semejantes a puntadas, como se aprecia aquí en una de sus muchas representaciones del dique del río Delaware, cercano a su hogar y estudio. Gift of Bella Mabury in honor of Paul R.
    [Show full text]
  • The New American Painting, As Shown in Eight European Countries, 1958
    The new American painting, as shown in eight European countries, 1958-1959 Organized by the International Program of the Museum of Modern Art, New York, under the auspicies of the International Council at the Museum of Modern Art Author Museum of Modern Art (New York, N.Y.). International Program Date 1959 Publisher The Museum of Modern Art: Distributed by Doubleday, Garden City, N.Y. Exhibition URL www.moma.org/calendar/exhibitions/1990 The Museum of Modern Art's exhibition history— from our founding in 1929 to the present—is available online. It includes exhibition catalogues, primary documents, installation views, and an index of participating artists. MoMA © 2017 The Museum of Modern Art THE NEW AMERICAN PAINTING As shown in eight European countries 19581959 The Museum of Modern Art >New York MoMA 645 c.2 LIBRARY .fi '^Museumof ModernArt ARCHIVE VWffEt-EP. THE NEW AMERICAN PAINTING As Shown in Eight European Countries 1958-1:959 Organized by the International Program of The Museum of Modern Art , New York under the auspices of the International Council at The Museum of Modern Art , New York THE MUSEUM OF MODERN ART, NEW YORK Distributed by Doubleday & Company Inc., Garden City, New York TRUSTEES OF THE MUSEUM OF MODERN ART Henry Allen Moe, ist Vice-Chairman; William A. M. Burden, President; Mrs David M. Levy, ist Vice-President; Alfred H. Barr, Jr, Mrs Robert Woods Bliss, Stephen C. Clark*, Ralph F. Colin, Mrs W. Murray Crane*, Rene d'Harnoncourt, Mrs C. Douglas Dillon, Mrs Edsel B. Ford, A. Conger Goodyear, Mrs Simon Guggenheim*, Wallace K.
    [Show full text]