Viewing page 8 of 12
This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.
May 20 - June 20, 1988 Page 3 [[image]] BRIAN YOSHIMI ISOBE, "Hidehira Bowl", 1988, mixed media on rag board, 40 x 60 inches, at Rich Perlow, 560 Broadway, to June 7. [[image]] MAX WEBER, "Dancers," 1912,gouache, pastel, pencil on board, 24 3/4 x 18 5/8 inches, at Forum, 1018 Madison, to June 4. [[image]] JULIE HEFFERNAN, "The Potato Eaters (A Population of Men)," 1987, oil on canvas, 60 x 84 inches, at Littlejohn-Smith, 133 Greene, to June 18. [[Image]] BOB MENDELSUND, "#4," 1988, mixed media, 25 1/2 x 34 1/2 inches, at Viridian, 52 W. 57th, to June 4. [[Image]] WALTER MACEWEN, "Composing a Letter," 1920, oil on canvas, 22 1/2 x 17 3/4 inches, in the show "Adventure and Inspiration," at Hirschl & Adler, 21 E. 70. to June 3. [[Image]] WILLIAM BAZIOTES, "Untitled," 1962, watercolor on paper, 7 x 8 3/8 inches, at Blum Helman, 20 W. 57th. [[Image]] HUGHIE LEE-SMITH, "Impedimenta," 1958, oil on masonite, 24 x 36 inches, in the exhibit "Three Masters: Cortork, Lee-Smith, Motley" at Kenkeleba House, 214-16 E. 2nd St., to July 17. DECKER Continued from Page 1 [[Image]] JOSEPH DECKER, "Boy at Dentist," c. 1883-1885, oil on palette, 16 1/4 x 12 1/8 inches, at Coe Kerr, 49 E 82 to June 11. attracted a number of major patrons, the most significant in many ways being Thomas B. Clarke, then the foremost collector of American painting. By the early 1890s, however, Decker's work was all but forgotten, partly due to the artist's withdrawal from participation in national and even local exhibits, and partly, too, to Clarke's own decreasing collecting activities in the 1890s, which culminated in the sale of his contemporary art holdings in 1899 and his (ultimately disastrous) replacement of that earlier passion with a preoccupation for supposedly early American portraits. Both Clarke's misguided adventures into the tricky and fraudulent world of historical portraiture and the decline in fortune and reputation of a large and cohesive group of once highly regarded artists of the 1880s--usually Munich-trained--are subjects that await further scholarly explication. Decker is fortunate in that regard, for he has been rediscovered and newly evaluated and his paintings are now to be found in major public and private collections. Initially the artist's work resurfaced in the pioneering studies of Alfred Frankenstein, who had encountered him in the catalogues of the Clarke Collection and had then noticed his appearance in catalogues of the exhibitions of the National Academy of Design in the 1880s and 1890s. While Frankenstein was actively working on his monumental study of American trompe l'oeil painting, "After the Hunt," he, in studying reviews of Decker's work, found the artist's name frequently coupled with those of William Michael Harnett and Jefferson David Chalfant, major figures in the trompe l'oeil movement in this country. In March 1949, the indefatigable Frankenstein mentioned Decker in a New York radio interview, bringing forth not one, but two owners of Decker's paintings, primarily still lifes. Further investigation revealed not one, but two Joseph Deckers--in aesthetic, if not in persona. There was the "hard" Decker and the "soft" Decker, a situation Frankenstein had run into previously in regard to Harnett. However, in that case, the "hard" Harnetts were the "real" Hartnetts'; the "soft" Hartnetts were the work of his almost equally talented but always little-known (until recently) colleague and friend, John Frederick Peto. The Decker paintings were all by one artist, if not of one piece. Though the evolution of Decker's painting can be traced fairly clearly and some explanation can be suggested for the changes that took place about 1890, this dichotomy in Decker's art persists to this day and can be reviewed in the present exhibition. (Above: the opening paragraphs from the essay by William H. Gerdts assisted by Evodokia V.Vytlacil At Graham By Ray Mathew This is the first one-man showing of Vytlacil since his death in 1984 at the age of 92. Although labelled "An American Modernist: Paintings from the '20s and '30s and clearly displaying Vytlacil's daring embrace of French models, it does happily include pictures from the decades afterward. Photographs illustrate his vitality and his importance as teacher and mentor in New York. Vytlacil was largely responsible for Hans Hofmann's arrival in the States. The bulk of the paintings and works on paper show Vytlacil's attempts to absorb the methods and manners of Cezanne and the Cubists, climaxing in 1929 with "Still Life with Guitar", a work which now seems as confident and ways as it once seemed contrived unnatural. However, the delight of this show- if we can forget historicity and technical innovation- is its youth and individuality. The townscapes with their juggling of Cezanne well nigh crush Vytlacil's nature. Where he would attract, the cubes block out approach. His colours- so careful, so loved in earlier paintings- are here hot and strident. "The Green Hat" (C,1915) is all freshness, openness, ingenuousness, youth. The younger woman strides with swinging gait through the wood, pushes aside the foliage, nothing can impede her. "Mexican Figure No. 1" (1967) the latest work in this show" is another woman. She is controlled, caught, analysed, geometrised. But something in the flow of her raised arm recalls the figure in the Green Hat. And the Picasso face just manages to contain an "antique smile" that belies the bulk of the body. There is a sense of humor, a sense perhaps of the ridiculous. More Cretan that Mexican there is an air of a Greek vase with a sense of something gone hilariously wrong. How few painters learn that it is not necessary to be solemn to be serious. Vaclav Vytlacil, Graham Gallery, 1014 Madison, through June 10 Rauschenberg Continued from Page 1 leaded glass. Or is it a vision of the Holy Grail? "Untitled" is a suite of disparate images( The Sixties live again!) - piano key-board, a creature, ornamental gate, things other, a doodle effect of sketch book and change of place or mood or concentration but all held together as one mind, one hand... Passes?... "Late Porch" hold on its clothes line a naked wire coat-hanger alone against the endless nothingness of the dark sky. "Painter's Cavern" has not even the shadow of a painter only his reality. But the cans of paint are empty or spilt. There is no color but the cool, delicate, dimly clear blue of the cave. Somewhere, though, high up, is a daub of red. Or is it reflected fire, refracted day?... These pictures are hard to let go of. And I was caught up in admiration of the versatile use of acrylic. So Fascinated that later in the dau a chance encounter with a display of Folk Art Acrylic Colors kept me toying with intent and liable to questioning by store security. Robert Rauschenberg- M. Knoedler & CO,,19 East 70, throgh June 2. __________ Savidou in the catalogue for the Joseph Decker exhibition, organized by Coe Kerr gallery and Berry-Hill galleries, Inc... at Coe Kerr Gallery, 49 East 82nd Street to June 11) J. Silver, Montclair by Rober Harding In the suburban wilderness and trees of New Jersey, at the Montclair Museum, the sculptor Jonathan Silver is showing his recent sculpture. The work of Jonathan Silver uses the human figure as a vehicle for the embodiment of the deepest, often most troubling, often most inspiring, inner states of being that define the essence of human nature. These are not so-called figure studies, they are studies in which the content is transforming and tearing to pieces the very heart and soul of the feeling subject. Some would call this "expression." In fact, there is a reality here that comes closer to the truth of physics and time and psychic phenomena than the stylistic and theatrical poses of neoexpressionist. Along with the embodiment, attach the word "realism". It is reality with which we are asked to deal, not emotionalism. We have to confront this with feeling; we are compelled to stand and measure our own pose against the turgid, explosive, primeval oozing out of which the form struggles to take shape. This is present. But, with equal ferocity, we are called upon to surrender to the real and seamy side of life; the sloppiness of death, the shoddiness of vanity, the intrigues of the thousand ills that flesh and mind are prey to, the haunting of beauty and the terror of taking a stand for something. All this is here, The maimed beggar. The broker Venus. Duff Continued from Page 7 shapes and strong color. The shock value of George Segal's stark white plaster bandage-wrapped figures is gone, as is also the jarring reds and blues of later years. This show seems to be a descent into the nether world with everything grey and black. The morbidity and pathos is terrifying even in the unemotional works involving a woman called "Helen" who sulks in a corner or is seen against a door. How terrifying is the theatrical "Abraham's Farewell to Ishmael" with figures embracing morning, watching in terror before a looming large rock. How bleak is the "Street" with its funeral solemnity, its figures moving in silence, the offsetting Chinese red door in a whitish archway, the lack of life in the gather storefront. Perhaps this is a still for an existential film. My favorite work in the eerie show is a portrait of a "Man Against a Wall with a Black Drain Pipe", whose likeness strongly resembles the Renaissance bust of Machiavelli (At Janis, 110 W. 57th, to June 4.) [[Image]] Ben Nicholson, "Feb. 26.52 (limegreen),"1952, oil and pencil on canvas board, 13 3/4 x 17 1/2 inches, at Anthony Ralph, 43 E. 78, to June 4. [[Image]] David Hare, "In the Forest," 1987, oil on canvas, 38x52 inches, at Gruenebaum, 415 W Broadway Childs at HirschlAdler By David Matlock The prints of Bernard Childs (d.1986) at Hirschl and Adler (21 East 70th Street) are enigmatic blending of '50s spontaneity and the strength of machinery. His tiny editions were pulled on plates worked by machine tools; the imagery is free form and electric, yet the markings examined are sharp as diamond. Non burin could mark and vibrate with this precision. It is strange to see the machine yoked do surely to human intent. It is tempting to compare Childs to an Enlish contemporary, Stanley William Hayter, another obsessive printmaker based for many years in Paris, whose work remains underrated. An American in Paris through the '50s, Childs' work has finish that a New York contemporary would have discarded for rough effect. In Childs' violence is sublimated through extensive reworking of plates and the physical arduousness of handling the press. It is revealing that print making was unpopular to the "now or never" Ahabs of New York. Clement Greenberg denounced the slick finish of the Paris market, but here care ascends as strength. Childs' mythology is astronomic – planets and sunspots in electric weave. The World is energy broken from Chaos into pattern. The two versions of "Passage" (1956) reveal the uses of color in mapping. In both, passages of broken ellipses and tangles orbit a sun. In the "first trial proof," The conflagration at center is blue green and the paper gray with black incisions, outer space as ice. The "unique color" proof sets fury of breaking lines against an orange background for furnace effect. In a quiet way, color is key to his effect. Pale and understated, it is in alternate proofs of the same plate that its meaning registers. These are a printers' prints, comparable to the very best, (Through June 30). Studio K in Queens by Jonathan Phillips There's more than P.S.I and the Socrates Sculpture Park to The Long Island City art scene. Many artists (from the Soho/ East Village diaspora) live and/or work on the west coats of Queens, and two significant galleries make their home there. The better known one is Richard Bellamy's Oil & Steet Gallery, which shares a waterfront converted factory space with sculptor Mark DiSuvero, The second, lesser known gallery - Studio K - exhibits exclusively local (LIC) talent. Studio K just moved into a new space(at 10-63 Jackson Avenue) and it really is worth visiting. Four artists, Diane Sipprelle, Nancy Graves, Bill Adams and Elinore Schnur, are featured here. All are figurative, but each has a distinct, wholly unrelated style and set of concerns. Diane Siprelle has produced the strongest paintings of this show. Her small scaled paintings of "New Jersey and Helicopters," the "#7 Train," Tropical "Palm Trees", and best of all, languid, green-tinted bodies swimming in an over-chlorinated pool, each generate a uniquely defined wacky sense of space. City Gallery is now accepting proposals for fine arts exhibitions to be held from February 15-August 31 1989. The application deadline is June 10th; call (212) 974-1150 ext. 360 for a copy of the Application Guidlines.
Transcription Notes:
Suggestion: Change page 3 to 4.
