THE IRASCIBLES

Seventy years ago tomorrow, May 20, 1950, the New York Times published a letter to Roland L. Redmond, President of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. It protested the selection of the museum’s ‘American Painting Today -- 1950’ exhibition and was signed by eighteen American painters, including William Baziotes, as well as ten sculptors, including Peter Grippe.

 

William Baziotes, Clown and Clock, 1943-46

The group was critical of the makeup of the juries: Among the jurists were Charles Burchfield, Yasuo Kuniyoshi and Millard Sheets. The next day, May 21, a competing paper, The Herald Tribune, published an article, presumably by their art critic Emily Genauer, defending the Museum and calling the protestors ‘The Irascible 18.’

Peter Grippe, Daley Brothers' Moving, 1944

On July 3, 1950, seventy-five artists issued a statement defending the museum. Among them were Will Barnet, Philip Evergood, Reginald Marsh, and Harry Sternberg. 

Detail of Nina Leen's photograph for Life Magazine, with identification.

Generally now known as the New York School, most of the protestors were photographed by Nina Leen for Life Magazine’s January 15, 1951, issue. It was Barnett Newman (who also largely composed the letter), who suggested that they should look like bankers.

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Women March at the NY Historical Society

Women March at the New-York Historical Society commemorates the centennial of the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment that granted women the right to vote in 1920. It explores the effort women made to expand democracy before and after the suffrage victory and was curated by Valerie Paley, senior vice president, historian, and director of the museum’s Center for Women’s History.

Riva Helfond, Curtain Factory, 1937

This multi-media serious and yet joyful extravaganza begins with banners and pamphlets from the 1820s through the nineteenth century when the Abolitionists and Suffragettes were closely aligned and the Wyoming Territory was the first to give women the vote in 1869. (Surely that’s not the only thing I remember from high school?) Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton through the National Woman Suffrage Association and Lucy Stone through the American Woman Suffrage Association were special heroes of the drive. After successes in several western states (perhaps prompted by the pragmatic notion that women might migrate to places where they were needed and would be appreciated?), the movement was revitalized in the 1910s. The installation has numerous photographs and films of this period featuring marches with hundreds and hundreds of women of diverse classes, races, and generations, in shoe-length white dresses, in endless rows – they are determined, very brave, and so dignified.

Installation shot: Antoinette Mauro upper left and center of lower left.

In the 1930s, during the era of the Great Depression, the groups supported the labor movement as sweatshops employed thousands of women largely as sewing machine operators. It is in this part of the show that Riva Helfond’s monumental painting Curtain Factory, 1937, appears. It’s amazing to come upon it – a sensitive and touching view of piece-work employment in a claustrophobic sweatshop environment. It stands out so clearly among the other mediums and moving images of the film pieces – all in black and white until that point. Just past the Helfond is an area dedicated to women who took jobs in industries making equipment and munitions for the war effort. Antoinette Mauro is shown with her colleagues and her actual drafting set. In the 1940s the Brooklyn Navy Yard, a huge, huge employer, hired its first woman factory employee.

Installation shot

Even as jobs were given up to returning soldiers, the 1950s set the stage for large numbers of women to further their educations and enter the workforce in the 1960s, paving the way for the demand for reproductive rights, childcare, feminism, and the eventually the #MeToo movement. The show ends with more contemporary memorabilia including a Gorilla Girl mask, a deep pink pussy hat, and hand-made posters (my favorite: If you’re not outraged you’re not paying attention), as well as footage of recent marches. Of course these are in color, the clothing is certainly not white, and there aren’t any of the seemingly endless, orderly rows of a century ago. The determination and the camaraderie are still there though.

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BARNES TALK ON ANGELO PINTO'S BATHERS ON THE BOARDWALK, 1944

Tomorrow, February 19, from 3 to 3:30, there will be a talk by Virginia Duncan, a graduate student in art history at the University of Pennsylvania, at the Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia. Ms. Duncan will be discussing the Angelo Pinto's reverse painting on glass, Bathers on the Boardwalk, 1944, as part of the Institute’s In Focus Gallery Talks series. This subject dates to the period when the artist and his extended family spent summers at the Jersey Shore.

Angelo Pinto, Bathers on the Boardwalk, 1944

Showing here is our preparatory drawing for the Barnes’ work, a gouache on paper. It’s interesting to see that the composition is basically ‘flopped’ with the building and pier and the green-suited figure both on the left of the Barnes’ version. Of course this makes sense if the artist was following his composition and we are seeing it from the back as it were. Could there be a more difficult technique? 

Our drawing has two additional figures on the sand, below the boardwalk level.

Naturally I wish I could be there. If anyone has an opportunity to attend – comments would be most welcome.

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NEW YORK FINE ART PRINT FAIR

This week we move into the Javits Center for the New York Fine Art Print Fair. We're in Booth 204 and we're nearly ready!

Millard Sheets, Family Flats, 193

Public Hours:

Thursday, October 24           Noon* to 7 PM

Friday, October 25               Noon to 8 PM

Saturday, October 26           Noon to 8 PM   

Sunday, October 27             Noon to 5 PM 

We will be featuring:

The Women of Atelier 17: Intaglios by Worden Day, Dorothy Dehner, Fannie Hillsmith, Kett, Alice Trumbull Mason, Anne Ryan, and master printer Sue Fuller.

*SPECIAL EVENT: Thursday, from noon to 12:30, Dr. Christina Weyl will be at our  booth to discuss her recent publication, The Women of Atelier 17, Modernist Printmaking in Midcentury New York.

Louis Schanker: Prints on paper, plaster, and wood, by the highly innovative Schanker, along with states and variant impressions, made possible by the Estate’s recent release of this extremely scarce material. Included is an impression of the   huge woodcut, Mythical Cock, along with its matrix.

American Modernism: Works by William Baziotes, Howard Daum, Michael J. Gallagher, Peter Grippe, Stanley William Hayter, Dorothy Browdy Kushner, Hugh Mesibov, Angelo Pinto, Karl Schrag, Millard Sheets, William E. Smith, and Ansei Uchima.

Link for Preview Page on Site:

http://www.susantellergallery.com/cgi/STG_art.pl?artist=NYPF2019

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AMERICAN MURAL STUDIES

Building on works that have been in our inventory for more than a decade and some that came in just this spring, this group of Mural Studies ranges from the modestly sized Samuel Greeenburg 1940s rural scene at 6 x 8 to Hugh Mesibov's 1940 Life of a Miner at 63 inches. Some are early suggestions of images such as Louis Schanker's drawings for the World's Fair Mural, 1939, while others like Mordi Gassner's Coca Cola, a private submission of 1932, are finished in fine detail.

Harry Sternberg, Steel, 1937, oil on Masonite

It is unlikely that there will be additional subjects added to this list -- an odd one or two perhaps, but very, very few. It’s a condensed number of years and although I’ve stretched the definition of ‘study,’ it’s unlikely that new discoveries will be made, although it’s nice to think that they might be.

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Link to site:

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

PASTELS AND CHARCOAL DRAWINGS

There is a new virtual exhibition on our site featuring pastel drawings. Charcoal studies and mixed media pieces with work in pastels are also included. Because it’s by medium there’s a large subject range, from finely delineated abstractions such as Hugh Mesibov’s Space Interior #2, 1952, to Katharine McCollum Gallagher’s incredibly delicate Spring Bouquet made when she was in her eighties, to Charles Keller’s highly expressionistic Hanging the Sticks (a North Carolina tobacco barn), 1945.

Charles Keller, Hanging the Sticks, 1945

It’s notable that although many artists tried their hands at pastels, in fact these works generally account for a very small number in the artists’ full body of work. They are in fact scarce.

This is the link to the virtual exhibition:

http://www.susantellergallery.com/cgi/STG_ExhList.pl

#pastel #pasteldrawing #charcoal #charcoaldrawing 

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GWYNETH LEECH: Construction Sites

The Gallery

Clinton / Hell’s Kitchen Studios

545 West 52^nd Street, New York, NY

On view through June 8

Ever since an enormous new hotel blocked Gwyneth Leech’s studio window she has taken on construction sites in the city. The Hudson Yards, The Museum of Modern Art, One Vanderbilt, 57^th Street – these and others are subjects in the paintings and works on paper on view.

Although she would probably prefer to be on the street working, she’s often at the exhibition. If you have the opportunity to visit while she’s there by all means try to do that.

Link to Leech’s page on the Gallery site:

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

#gwynethleech #constructionsites #hudsonyards #onevanderbilt #545West52nd #clinton

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