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

HONORING LABOR

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Inspired by Randy Kennedy's wonderful New York Times article on Labor Day subjects in NYC museums, September 5, 2015, we’ve grouped a few favorites by Peggy Bacon, Fred Becker, Bernarda Bryson Shahn, Michael J. Gallagher, Hugo Gellert, Riva Helfond, Axel Horn, Charles Keller, Hugh Mesibov, Betty Waldo Parish, Angelo Pinto, Albert Potter, Ben Shahn, Mary Sinclair, Mitchel Siporin, William E. Smith, Harry Sternberg, and Lynd Ward.

This is the link:

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

Riva Helfond, Curtain Factory, 1937, oil on canvas, 24 x 30 inches.

Have a wonderful holiday!

Day Trip to FRIDA KAHLO Show at the New York Botanical

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Frida Kahlo: Art • Garden • Life

On view through November 1, 2015

The entrance alone is worth the trip to the New York Botanical Garden. They’ve done a wonderful job of making it welcoming and grand. Right off the bat, the taco truck is just past the entrance alongside the rolling lawns, the grand vistas, and the giant poster for the Frida Kahlo show on the Mertz building.

The Mertz Building with the poster for the Frida Kahlo show.

The Frida Kahlo: Art, Garden, Life, in the LuEsther T. Mertz Library, and curated by Adriana Zavala, is remarkable. It’s select but inclusive with her fabulous Self Portrait with Thorn Necklace and Hummingbird, 1940. Her pet monkey and cat watch over her and look around at the same time – clearly they are not just pets -- they are familiars. Then there is the jungle surround. Used on the poster for the show, it makes it clear that this show is at the Botanical Garden and we better get used to it.

The paintings and drawings are heavy on still life subjects and each has it’s own magic. At once formal and luscious they lead into the more scientific part of the show: Case after case of botanical specimens, illustrations, references, and notes, all concerning the flora used by Kahlo. These speak to the most casual visitors, all manner of gardeners, professional botanists, and the hard-core Kahlo enthusiasts. Following botany are maps and photographs documenting her reverence for Mexico City. We even see her with Rivera in the ancient floating gardens of Xochimilco.

 

Reconstruction of Kahlo and Rivera's Casa Azul

A stroll or tram ride away is the second part of the show, Frida Kahlo: Garden. There, in the Haupt Conservatory, we encounter a re-imaging of Kahlo and Diego Rivera’s Case Azul. Originally constructed in the garden of Kahlo’s family home, it is an Aztec-inspired construction built to hold Rivera’s pre-Hispanic collection. Here it’s used for Mexican cacti and succulents in traditional terra cotta pots. Nearby are re-created versions of their “frog fountain” and Kahlo’s desk. All told there are masses of the native species that the couple favored; in addition to the cacti and succulents, there are cock’s comb, dahlias, zinnias, and, giving many visitors an entirely new appreciation of an old standby, marigolds. These are the two-foot tall Mexican natives known as the African Marigolds; the name in Aztec means “twenty flowers.” They are also associated with death and used to decorate graves for All Souls’ Day. Outside at the lily pond a greenhouse wall hosts a pipe organ cactus fence recalling the one at Rivera’s studio in San Angel.

 

Recreation of Diego Rivera's Pipe Organ Cactus Fence

In Kahlo’s endlessly complex and fraught world somehow botanical science is layered with marriages, with Mexican art, social history, and urban life, as well as with racial and medical issues.