COAL & STEEL, SOURCES & USES

The exhibition Coal & Steel, Sources & Uses, is on view at the Susan Teller Gallery from July 17 through August 29, 2012. Showing are fifty paintings and works on paper by more than twenty American artists including Will Barnet, James Daugherty, Hugo Gellert, James Penney, Angelo Pinto, and Ben Shahn.

Ben Shahn, Head of Welder

Coal mining and steel production, foundations of American industry, were strong sources of inspiration for artists of the 1930s, 40s, and 50s. During The Depression these male-dominated fields were fraught conflicting issues.  Were they dangerous, un-caring institutions that abused workers who were desperate for any employment, or were they sources of a living wage and the dignity of a day’s labor?

A great deal of the material here can be traced back to Harry Sternberg and his class at the Art Students League. Sternberg was awarded Guggenheim Grant study American industry in 1936. His monumental painting, Steel, 1937-38, is in the exhibition. 

Riva Helfond, Panther Creek Valley, 1932

Riva Helfond, whose future husband Bill Barrett, was from Lansford, Pennsylvania, was Sternberg’s conduit to actual mines and mining communities, largely in the north-eastern, anthracite region. Sternberg made regular weekend trips taking members of his class: Blanche, Grambs, Helfond, Axel Horn, and Charles Keller. (Winifred Lubell went once, but there had been an accident a day or so before and so they returned home without doing any art work.) Keller also had connections to mines in North Carolina, Alex Horn to mines in West Virginia.

Michael J. Gallagher, Coal Breaker, about 1940

           Philadelphia's Michael J. Gallagher, himself from a mining family, lead the Work Progress Administration (WPA) Printmaking Shop. Hugh Mesibov was with him there in the later 1930s and in the 1940s Mesibov worked at Cramps Shipyard which was re-opened to make ships for the war effort and at it’s height employed 18,000 laborers.


While coal fed the furnaces of factories and homes, steel was used to build the factories themselves, the infrastructure of railroads, bridges, canals and skyscrapers. As the country entered World War II, steel was used to build the great ships and the machines of war, and then to re-build the American Dream as with Mitchell Siporin’s Railroaders, Lynd Ward’s Pipelines, and Fred Shane’s Clam Shell Dredge.

Hugh Mesibov, Mural Study for Steel

Day Trip, Philadelphia, July 6, 2012

It was 95 degrees in Philadelphia on Friday, but the humidity must have been low. It was a bright, cloud-free day, and perfectly comfortable, even walking the tree-less blocks between the Reading Terminal Market and the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts.

Angelo Pinto, Morocco, 1932-37

PAFA and Dr. Barnes was in its last three days at the Academy. According to curator Robert Cozzolino, Barnes first showed works from his European collection there in 1923.  Included in the PAFA’s show were two works by Angelo Pinto, a large version of Amusement Park, 1935, and a related, smaller study. It’s always great to visit that wonderful 1876 building, and, their Isabel Bishop, Young Woman, 1937, was also on view.

Barnes Foundation, July 6, 2012

We made a quick trip to the Philadelphia Museum and managed to see Visions of Arcadia as well as the smaller shows of work by Rockwell Kent and Benton Spruance.  The Arcadia show was a good preview to The Barnes Foundation in its new location on Benjamin Franklin Parkway.  The Cezannes, Henri Rousseaus, Matisses, and Picassos, were all fine, but for my taste, the Gauguins stole both shows.

Hugh Mesibov, Girl in Armchair, 1947

Of course, we were anxious to see Hugh Mesibov’s and Angelo Pinto’s works at the Barnes.   They have Mesibov’s, Byzantine Figure, 1945-46, very like our Girl in Armchair, 1947.

Angelo Pinto, Industrial Scene, 1945

Acquiring nine works by Angelo Pinto, Barnes also hired Pinto to teach at the Foundation and also to take on the job of photographing the collection. Our Morocco, 1932-37 comes close to paintings at the Barnes, and our Industrial Scene, about 1945, has some of the sharp detail of the Pinto’s reverse paintings on glass of which the Barnes has several.  It’s startling to come upon them.  The small 7 x 10 format and solid, clear colors, make for arresting images that range from surrealism to picturesque charm. 

The installation is admired for keeping the spirit of the original building and I think it does – quite well.  The mix of periods, mediums, nationalities, and fine and decorative pieces is always a wonder and seems to work better than ever.

Fred Becker, The Exquisite Corpse

Exquisite Corpse was an artistic idea used by the Surrealists.  Possibly dating to World War I, it took hold in the mid 1920s. Usually more than one person participated.

Participants wrote or drew on a sheet of paper that was folded to conceal the previous contribution and then he or she passed the paper along to the next person. The show at the Museum of Modern Art, on view through July 9, is especially concerned with how the Surrealists used the idea of the Exquisite Corpse to create “fantastic composite figures.”

The American artist, Fred Becker (1913-2004), made a woodcut entitled the Exquisite Corpse in 1960. Entirely his own piece, the image includes “creases” that suggest where a sheet of paper might have been folded.  

The always witty Becker created a giant outlandish creature. There is a proof printed in black and blue ink on brown paper and a final version, shown here,  printed in black, green, and red, on white paper.

Report from Asheville, June, 2012

The Asheville Art Museum specializes in American Art beginning in the 20th century. Their premier Art Fair is June 22 through 24, 2012.  

Peter Grippe, The City, 1943

Nearby, at Black Mountain College, 1933-1957, teachers included, Josef Albers, Peter Grippe, Fannie Hillsmith, and Ben Shahn.

Located in the Blue Ridge Mountains near the Appalachian Trail, Asheville is the birthplace of Thomas Wolff, Roberta Flack, Zelda Fitzgerald, James Daugherty, and Elizabeth Blackwell, first recognized woman doctor in the US, and home to the Spanish architect Rafael Guastavino (innovator of the timbrel vaults used so effectively at the Manhattan Municipal Building).

Elizabeth Blackwell monument, Asheville

 The largest city in Western North Carolina, in what was the Cherokee Nation, Asheville is the site of the US National Climatic Data Center – the world’s largest active archive of weather data.

In the twentieth century Asheville endured a series of dramatic financial twists, including claim to the largest per-capita debt owed by any city in the nation at the time of the 1929 crash. Rather than default the city paid the debts off over a fifty-year period resulting in slow economic growth. An unanticipated consequence is an extensive range of Art Deco architecture. And the hot-dog vendors all have a vegetarian option.

S & W Cafeteria Building, Asheville Art Deco

St. Louis Mercantile Library Fair Review

St. Louis Weekend, May 4, 5, and 6, 2012

As with so many places, Spring came early this year to St. Louis, and there were many wonderful gardens on the way to Mr. Wizard’s.

It was a beautiful weekend on the University of St. Louis campus, with only a few thunder storms. The fair, May 4, 5 and 6, was very well attended – by far the biggest crowd ever.  There was interest in the Fred Shane material as well as that of Peggy Bacon and Anne Ryan.

Fred Shane
Old Man with Yellow Suspenders, 1980
14 x 12inches

And, of course, no visit is complete without a trip to the St. Louis Mercantile Library itself; there was an installation of Worlds’ Fair related material.

AMERICANS IN MEXICO EXTENDED

On view by appointment or by chance, June 5 through June 20, 2012. 

Theodore Haupt, Market Place, 1950

Paintings and works on paper from 1940 to 1982 by PEGGY BACON, ABE BLASHKO, ELIZABETH CATLETT, THEODORE HAUPT, LAWRENCE A. JONES, CHARLES KELLER, DOROTHY BROWDY KUSHNER, DORIS ROSENTHAL, and JUDITH SHAHN.

In addition to Haupt's monumental Market Place, 1950, there are extremely rare works by Lawrence A. Jones, surprising drawings by Peggy Bacon.

Lawrence A. Jones, Market Place, 1973

There are also market views by Charles Keller, Lawrence A. Jones, and Judith Shahn.

Link to site:

www.susantellergallery.com

SUSAN TELLER GALLERY

568 BROADWAY • NEW ROOM 502  NEW YORK, NY  10012

212-941-7335

National Medal of Honor Day on March 25

On Thursday morning, March 22nd, on our way to the McNay Museum Fair in San Antonio, we fell into the American Airline’s ceremony at LaGuardia honoring veterans in conjunction with National Medal of Honor Day.

The procession of Medal of Honor recipients in Terminal  D was led by a military honor guard; both the New York City Police and Fire Departments’ bagpipe bands played, and along the corridor were placards with pictures and biographies. Service men and women saluted, officials stood at attention, and the rest of us clapped as ribbon-wearing veterans, from Korea, Viet Nam, and more recent wars, were honored.

It was a nice -- it combined the official and organized effort of city, military, and commercial, with the impromptu enthusiasm of the hugely diverse world of airport "gates."  We really felt that we were at the right time in the right place.