INK Miami Art Fair, 2015

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Room 156 at the Suites of Dorchester, 1850 Collins Avenue at 19th Street.

Howard Daum, Combat, 1947

We are exhibiting at INK Miami. There are groupings for the Urban/Industrial Scene (Peggy Bacon, Lou Barlow, Isabel Bishop, Alexander Brook, Michael J. Gallagher, Gwyneth Leech, and Angelo Pinto), American Modernism (Will Barnet, William Baziotes, Axel Horn, Louis Lozowick, Alice Trumbull Mason, Jackson Pollock, and Anne Ryan), and an Atelier 17 wall (Howard Daum, Dorothy Dehner, Peter Grippe, and Franz Kline).

INK Miami Ballloon

LYND WARD Exhibition

Illustrated by LYND WARD

An exhibition of books, jackets, and magazines, conceived by and/or illustrated by Ward, from the collection of Robert Dance. 

Now on view at The Grolier Club, 47 East 60^th Street, NYC.

Below is a drawing for the dust jacket of Hunky Johnny, 1945, from the Estate of the Artist.

PARIS, November, 2015

Our thoughts are with Paris.

Alfred Bendiner (1899-1964), Kiosk, about 1950, lithograph, 7 x 6 inches

New York PRINT FAIR

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Saturday, November 7 (Noon to 8) and Sunday, November 8 (Noon to 6.) 

This year we will celebrate the 80th Anniversary of the signing of the Works Progress Administration (WPA) into law in 1935 as well as the founding of the New York Atelier 17 in 1940. We hope to see you at the Park Avenue Armory between 66th and 67th Streets. Booth 116 -- that's the north-east corner of the room -- go to the far left aisle and walk towards the back, to the Lexington Avenue side of the building.

We were in a bit of a rush setting up, and I still haven't shot the whole booth, but this is a view of the East Wall (Lexington Avenue Side) showing, at the left, the two states and final version of the Howard Daum's Combat, 1947. It is a perfect storm of Guernica tribute, Hans Hofmann inspiration, Indian Space composition, and Atelier 17 technique, combined with Daum's relationship with Stanley William Hayter, Picasso's friend and printer.

ART FOR EVERY HOME

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 This week I received the brand-new publication Art for Every Home, Associated American Artists, 1934-2000. Hats off to Elizabeth G. Seaton, Jane Myers, and Gail Windisch, who stuck with this project and saw it to completion. Special congratulations to Windisch. She catalogued the nearly 3000 AAA editions. 

Until now the world has had only the list compiled by Meg Dunwoody Hausberg in, well, after the Selectric typewriter but years and years before the personal computer. That precious document has saved me many times. But now, NOW the book has a complete checklist of the AAA prints as well as instructions for downloading the FREE complete catalogue. The book is beautifully designed with tons of illustrations including two shots of Meg’s and my ol’ boss Sylvan Cole.

Eventually there will be lots more about this project, but for now let’s just celebrate and say an enormous thank you to Liz, Jane, and especially Gail who worked on it the longest and initiated the catalogue. It’s a HUGE job well done.

The related exhibition is currently on view at the Beach Museum of Art, Kansas State University, through January 31, 2016 – still kicking myself for not going to that reception. It will be in NYC in the spring, at the Grey Art Gallery of New York University, from April 19 through July 9, 2016.

#ArtforEveryHome, #AssociatedAmericanArtists, #AAA, #ElizabethSeaton, #JaneMyers, #GailWindisch, #MegDunwoodyHausberg, #MargaretDunwoodyHausberg #SylvanCole.

BLACK MOUNTAIN

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Leap Before You Look: Black Mountain College, 1933-1957, runs from October 10 through January 24, 2016, at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston. 

Josef Albers, Prefatio, 1942

Of course, Josef Albers was a key figure; he taught there from 1933 to 1949. 

Fannie Hillsmith, The House, 1946

Fannie Hillsmith (1911-2007) taught at Black Mountain in 1945 at the invitation of Albers. In 1996 she and I travelled together to Asheville, North Carolina, when their archives honored her with a one-woman show. We visited the college grounds and even though it had been turned into a summer camp she could still see traces of the original layout. 

Peter Grippe, Death of the Heros, 1952

In the summer of 1948 Peter Grippe taught sculpture there; in addition to Albers his colleagues were Willem de Kooning, Buckminster Fuller, Merce Cunningham, and Beaumont Newhall. 

Franz Kline (1910-1962) taught there in 1952.

Franz Kline, Bather Drying Her Hair, about 1945

Link to Gallery site:

http://www.susantellergallery.com/cgi/STG_art.pl?artist=btmt

Appreciating the New Whitney

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--> The new Whitney Museum of American Art’s inaugural exhibition, America Is Hard to See, closed on September 27. It was a great start. Of course, most of my time was spent in two places.

Peggy Bacon, Lloyd Goodrich

On the first floor there was the wonderful room dedicated to the history of the museum, with Peggy Bacon’s Whitney Studio Club drypoint – PERFECT! Bacon knew Lloyd Goodrich, art historian and long-time Whitney curator who became director in 1958.

On the top exhibition floor (mostly the show went chronologically down from the top) there were the protest pieces from the 1930s.  There was entire wall devoted to scenes of lynching including Harry Sternberg’s Southern Holiday, 1935, adjacent to works by Ben Shahn and Bernarda Bryson Shahn. In more serene areas there were works by Joe Jones and Louis Lozowick.  

Harry Sternberg, Detail: Southern Holiday, 1935