Stephen Haller: Remembering Morandi

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Stephen Haller with a book on Morandi. The frontispiece photo comes from Haller's personal archives

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When he was a young man, the New York art dealer Stephen Haller had a brief but life-changing friendship with Giorgio Morandi, who was nearing the end of his days. Following his intuition to Italy, Haller sought out the solitary painter whose work touched something at his core. There, with Morandi as mentor and friend, he found his calling, which became a career and a life’s work. .
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“I have always thought of Morandi as my personal sage,” said Haller when we talked at his Chelsea gallery late last month. “It’s been a long time since I’ve reflected on that period—even during the recent Morandi exhibition at the Met.”
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What follows is Haller's narrative recollection, based on my interview with him.
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Full view of the book photo: the young Stephen Haller with Morandi. This framed photograph rests on the ledge in the gallery's viewing room

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A ‘Pilgrimage’ to Italy
Some 40 years ago, in the early Sixties, I was at a turning point in my life. I was unhappy in medical school and knew there was something else I wanted but that had not yet revealed itself to me. Where I felt most comfortable was visiting museums. In particular, on visits to MoMA the work of Giorgio Morandi called a special attention to me. There was a disquieting isolation in the paintings, which was how I was feeling myself. I remember thinking, ‘These bottles are not bottles; they’re people. They’re shoulder to shoulder and yet they’re not making any contact.’ At that time I didn’t have any formal background in art, so my response was visceral and emotional.
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I also remember a small Morandi exhibition on Madison Avenue that had probably a dozen works: paintings, watercolors, drawings. I knew, or sensed, that there was some connection with these works and the person who made them and myself. So after that school year I set out to find Morandi in Bologna.

Still Life (Natura Morta), 1956, Museo Morandi, Bologna

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Finding Morandi
My first stop was to Perugia to learn the language. Then I went to Rome—sometimes we’re guided by things yet to be known—where I met a friend from college who was in med school in Rome. He said he was transferring to Bologna. We took an apartment in Bologna.

As people got to know that I wanted to meet Morandi, a connection was made. Someone who knew Morandi told him that a young man would be interested in visiting. Morandi gave permission for me to call him. I called and asked if I could visit.

The First Meeting
I can’t remember if it was his sister who opened the door to let me in (Morandi had three sisters with whom he lived), but I remember him standing there. My first impression was that he was tall and slightly stooped. He was taller than me, and I’m six feet tall. He was very gracious and cordial. We sat down at the kitchen table, as we did in subsequent visits, never in armchairs, and I remember being surprised that the apartment was so dark. The windows must have been shuttered.

Morandi asked me what I did. I said I had been a student in medical school but that I was finding no satisfaction there. I was more interested in the arts. I told him I admired his work and addressed him as maestro. He said, “Please don’t call me that.” He may have told me to call him Morandi, but I can’t remember how I addressed him. Probably signore. Sir.

I was uncomfortable, as first meetings can be, because of how meaningful this meeting was to me. Morandi put me at ease by asking me if I would like to see his studio.

Morandi’s Studio
We walked from the kitchen table through several rooms of dark, heavy furniture. Much of it was covered with cloths. We walked down a corridor, past doors that were probably bedrooms. At the end of the corridor was his studio. I’m in awe of being in his presence and in shock that I’m actually experiencing this intimacy with him.

Things I remember: It was a small room. There was a printing press that was also covered with a cloth, unfinished paintings and finished paintings on the walls, and in the corner, a bookshelf that held the bottles and objects he painted. What startled me was that some of the bottles were painted over with white. I thought those painted bottles were quite unattractive in person. On subsequent visits, I noticed that some of the boxes were painted as well, but it was the bottles that startled me.

.At the Museo Morandi, Bologna: A recreation of the artist's studio. Note the bottles painted white and the boxes covered with paper. Photo courtesy of Ariel Churnin

Visits to Grizzana
I called Morandi a few weeks later. I was getting up the courage to ask him about acquiring a work. The person who answered the phone–it must have been one of his sisters—told me that he was at the country house in Grizzana [about 18 miles away] and asked if I would like the phone number.

I called Grizzana and he invited me to come out and visit with him. So I drove out. He again greeted me at the door. Here the furniture was light, Scandinavian, very different from the heavy period furniture in the Bologna apartment. We sat at the table. He was always on the long side and I usually sat at the end. He liked that I wasn’t interviewing him or asking him any questions. He liked that I was looking to have a career in something that was meaningful to me. The more I was with him, I felt his presence: someone so calm and assured about his place. I realized that that was what I was looking for in my life.

It’s hard to remember the conversations. My Italian then was pretty good, good enough for conversation, but he spoke very little. He was a very private, solitary person who had no need to call on people and would only have an association if they made the initiation to be with him. I was content knowing that I was in the presence of someone special. I didn’t have to talk. Some of the time I was there he was painting, or finishing a painting, or cleaning up.

The house in Grizzana, about 18 miles southwest of Bologna. Image from the Museo Morandi, Bologna

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“Keep Looking”
On my second visit to Grizzana he asked me if I would like to visit the studio. I saw a much different studio than in in Bologna. The Grizzana studio was a more sparsely furnished space, with three or four unfinished paintings on the walls. He had a little reproduction of a Cezanne watercolor landscape above the sink where he cleaned his brushes. I looked at it with no formal art knowledge.

“I don’t feel the importance of Cezanne.” I said to him. One of my great life lessons was Morandi’s response: “Continua a guardare.” Keep looking.

An Opinion Sought
One time he showed me two paintings on the wall. They were very similar, each having three bottles. One had an aqua blue line around the neck, the other a burgundy line, as I remember. He asked me, “Do you have a preference?” I told him that I preferred the one with the burgundy because I thought the contrast made the painting work better. “ Forse,” he answered. Perhaps.

Acquiring a Morandi
On one of my visits, I said I’d be interested in acquiring a painting. He said that he had no work available, even though I could see he had work finished or unfinished all around us. They were all promised to dealers or collectors, he said, but he would put my name on his pad. In later visits I would ask, “How am I doing on the list?”

One thing I learned was that different people paid different prices for his work. I was somewhat familiar with the prices for his work in New York, so I mentioned that I knew the dealers were selling his work for considerably more than he was selling it to them. He said it didn’t matter to him what other people sold the work for, because his only interest in doing the paintings was for himself. He did the work to do the work. Concern with price would be a distraction from the work. The prices he set gave him enough money to cover his expenses for himself and his sisters. It was a life lesson for me about the real purpose of one’s own purpose.

I never bought a painting from him, but I but I did eventually buy a drawing from him and he gave another to me. That second one was a birthday gift. We were talking at the table around the time of my birthday. Underneath the table was a box without a top where his working drawings were placed. (He was frugal; it was just a cardboard box. And I remember he was always erasing and reworking drawings.) This day he reached under the table and pulled out a drawing, looked at it, and handed it to me. “Buon compleanno,” he said. Happy birthday. It was a very unexpected and grand surprise.

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Becoming a Dealer
One time when I was visiting Morandi in Bologna, he showed me these beautiful papers and told me he had gotten them from a man who owned an antique bookstore in Reggio Emilia. This book dealer would tear out the end papers of distressed books and save them for Morandi. He said he sometimes used the papers for his etchings.

One day I went to visit that shop. The book dealer also dealt in prints. I bought three graphic works, including a Picasso etching. They were not expensive at that time. Another time I bought lithographs by Chagall and Miro and sent them home to New York to be framed. My mother lived in Manhattan, on the East Side, but she had a framer on the West Side. When the framer put the prints in the window to show off his framing, people came in wanting to buy the framed prints. My mother called to ask if I wanted to sell them. I said yes, knowing I would use the money to acquire more. That was the day I became an art dealer.

After a few visits, Morandi asked me what I would like to do in the art world. I considered his question. I thought about the painters, academics and collectors I had met. I didn’t think of being a painter or an academic, but I really enjoyed their company, especially the older ones because of their knowledge and accomplishments. The collectors were fascinating because of their stories, and the passion with which they collected ‘things.’ Before I left Italy to return to the United States, I came to realize that I was their go-between.

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Addio
I was in Bologna for two years, 1961-1963. Toward the end of my stay, I told Morandi I would be returning to the States soon. As I was leaving Grizzana for the last time, I remember taking a photograph of the house. All of a sudden a curtain parted and he was standing there in the window waving goodbye.

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Photographs from the archive. Top: Morandi and Haller seated together. In the bottom photo, Morandi stands behind the curtain of the window, waving goodbye (he's barely visible even when you view the picture close up). It was the last time the two men would see each other

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That Christmas in New York I received a note from him: “Dear Stephen Haller, Season's greetings. Giorgio Morandi, 1963. I didn’t know this but he was ill at the time with lung cancer. I never suspected. He died in 1964. He was 74 years old.

Morandi was a man who knew what he wanted to do and understood what life was about for himself. And because he was so sure of it, he didn’t need to surround himself with people or trappings. He was extremely private, but accessible if you gave him his space. I think you have to understand—and I was too young to understand at the time—that he was uncompetitive about what he did because competition just didn’t have a place in his life. He was of no school of painting. It didn’t cross his mind whether or where he had a place in the art world. His thought was only to do his work.
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Still Life (Natura Morta), 1951, courtesy of Museum Morandi, Bologna
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Marketing Mondays: Careerism

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"Devotion to a successful career, often at the expense of one's personal life or ethics." (Dictionary.com)

"The practice of advancing one's career at the expense of one's personal integrity." (Webster.com)
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When I was in art school, "careerism" was a dirty word. It still is, although the definition and parameters of career ambition have changed.
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Back in the 60s, 70s, and early 80s, the mere admission of wanting to have a career was careerism. God forbid you talked about prices, creating a network of gallery representation for yourself or, horrors, earning a living from what you do. If you were so fortunate to achieve this kind of success, you would have been branded a sellout--because if the public responded favorably to your work, it couldn't be any good, could it? That notion was fostered by the professors (who all had jobs, thank you very much) and foisted on the students, who eagerly used the careerism cudgel to bash any of their peers who dared to go after, or achieve, what they were all secretly hoping for.
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Now, polished resumes, well-crafted exhibition proposals, business cards, a website, regular postcard mailings and even an e-newsletter are the welcome norm for professionals who want a piece of the pie. What used to be looked down on as "careerism" is now just ambition organized into a professional plan.
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The two dictionary definitions, above, of "careerism" are interesting to me. Neither is warm and fuzzy, but while the first suggests obsessiveness with a bit of nasty thrown in, the second is seriously pathological. Frankly I don't think either describes most ambitious artists, who are hard working and, yes, devoted to the pursuit of having a career in what they were trained to do. Creating a successful career takes a tremendous amount of work, precisely because we often must create not only the art but the opportunities to get it out into the world.
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Yet that c-word is often lurking.
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So today's Marketing Mondays poses some questions to you:
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. Is there a good reason artists shouldn't promote themselves or want critical and financial success for what we have been trained to do?
. Where does ambition end and careerism begin?
. Does age make a difference in the perception of careerism? That is, are mid-career artists still clinging to outdated and negative notions about self promotion, ambition and success? And, if so, is that outmoded thinking detrimental to their careers?
. Are there any young artists uninterested in creating a career for themselves?
. And finally, ethics: If you're driven but ethical, it is still careerism?

This is an open forum.
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Ellsworth Kelly at Matthew Marks

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Ellsworth Kelly has been exhibiting for longer than most of us have been alive, so it seems pointless to cavil about the work. If I sound less than enthusiastic, that’s both true and not true.

I am not a fan of his paintings. They leave me completely unmoved. But his works on paper, over half a century old, still jump off the wall.

Ellsworth Kelly installation at Matthew Marks Gallery, up through April 11

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Let’s start with the paintings. In the large gallery at 522 W. 22nd Street, eight works from 2007 and 2008—each a colored rectangle of stretched canvas placed diagonally atop a more square rectangle of white canvas—are meant to challenge your perception of shape and space. While I always like seeing color and shape, I have to admit that I'm not particularly challenged by this work. But their installation in this gallery provides an experience. The illumination from the skylights creates luminous parallelograms that float like visual echoes above the pigmented shapes, which hover slightly away from the wall. But you have to stand at a remove--as I did to shoot the photographs--to take in the mise-en-scene. Once you break through the fourth wall, so to speak, the drama is gone.
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Now let me do a 180 and say that I love the works on paper, on view in the small space next door at #525. Created between 1954 and 1962, these small framed works in gouache (or oil, ink and/or graphite) feature shapes, abstracted from natural forms, as well as some purely geometric compositions. They are intimate, inquisitive, fresh, still resonating with energy.

You can see some excellent installation shots on the gallery website, but let me show you a few up close:
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In the gouache-on newsprint drawing above, I can't help but think of Jasper Johns's encaustic on newsprint Green Target. Johns and Kelly are contemporaries; I think they might even have been living on Coenties Slip downtown at the same time, so the visual connection might have been borne of geographic proximity

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You're seeing some reflection in the glass from across the gallery--visible in the other pictures as well, even though I shot each individual work at an angle

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Each of these works is about 14 x 16 inches. Look closely at the one above and you'll see that the same yellow rectangle which appears as a painting in the top photograph also appears here. Can you make it out? Here it's on a same-yellow ground, and of course it's much smaller, but it's interesting to see how Kelly's layered shapes have recurred

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I love these variations on a theme

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And there's that yellow rectangle again, below:

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GeoMetrics II at Gallery One Twenty Eight

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I spend so much of my time in Chelsea that going to the Lower East Side is like an out-of-town trip. I went there with map in hand. Not that I'm totally unfamiliar with the LES, I just don't have the order of streets in my mind the way I do other parts of the city. Allen? Chrystie? Essex? Orchard? I get confused.

But I do know Rivington Street. Geometrics II marks the third time I have been in a group show at Gallery OneTwentyEight, located at #128. (The first was in 1997 when Harmony Hammond curated Material Girls: Gender, Process and Abstract Art Since 1970; the second was two years later when Sylvia Netzer curated Pieces III, an exhibition of work made with substantially material means.)

These days, Rivington--east of Bowery and right around the corner from the New Museum--is smack in the middle of an area that is chockablock with new galleries: Sue Scott, Eleven Rivington, both on Rivington; Number 35 on Essex Street; Canada on Chrystie; and Invisible Exports on Orchard. Just to name a few.

Looking from front to back, before the gallery filled up

For Geometrics II, curator Gloria Klein selected 12 artists from the Geoform website. Geoform, as I've mentioned in the past, is a fabulous online resource dedicated to abstract geometric art maintained by Julie Karabenick. Gloria and Julie are two of the 12 artists in the show. The others are Steven Alexander, Laura Battle, Mark Dagley, Julie Gross, Michael Knutson, Bruce Pollock, Lynda Ray, Larry Spaid, Lorien Suarez and me. (Specifics on the sidebar, right.)

I'm not sure what drove Gloria's selections--because the work ranges from hard edged and mathematically inspired to intuitive and more organically developed, and from maximal to minimal--but you can see from the installation that it works. All the paintings are modest in size, in keeping with the gallery's modest (well, shoebox) proportions. Given the economic downturn, there was something comforting about the scale, though at one point artists and friends were packed in pretty much check by jowl.

You can see more on the gallery's website, and read an opinion of the show at Chris Rywalt's blog, NYC Art. So here just let me say that I loved the installation, and I'm delighted to be showing with these hard-working and accomplished mid-career artists.

The view as you enter: Counterclockwise, my two paintings, Vicolo 35 and Vicolo 36; Gloria Klein's mathematically complex and visually mesmerizing crystalline composition, Beach Umbrellas; Steven Alexander's ordered color blocks, Calypso Rose; Lynda Ray's two small patterned geometries, Float Copper and Driftway

The image above moves you around the gallery

Below, continuing counterclockwise: Bruce Pollock's almost monochrome circles within circles, Red Square Cluster; Michael Knutson's organic and mathematic composition, Crossing Oval Coils XII, which is so energetic it almost gives off sparks; Mark Dagley's 16-point circle, Distressed Orb; and Julie Gross's sensuous circles, Mirro-B

Two more views

Above: Following the counterclockwise movement from Lynda Ray's two paintings, there are two framed works from Larry Spaid, and Lorien Suarez's intersecting circles, Wheel Within a Wheel 28. (I think "intersecting" characterizes the curator's selections, as there are many points of connection between and among the works.)

Below: Julie Karabenick's Composition 78, 2008, acrylic on cancas, 30 x 30 inches, at far left, the last work as you swing around counterclockwise from the front door

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Curator Gloria Klein standing in front of her painting, Beach Umbrellas, 2007, acrylic on canvas, 30 x 30 inches



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Three of the artists from the show, above: Steven Alexander (in leather jacket), Michael Knutson barely visible behind him, and Larry Spaid. Foreground: painter Binnie Birstein with her back to the camera; background, sculptor Richard Bottwin



Curator Gloria Klein with her back to the camera. (The camera is looking to the front of the gallery.) .

The Artists' Stimulus Package

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While AIG is getting its sorry ass bailed out, artists are working harder for less. Sales are down, and collectors are asking for ever-steeper discounts even as our cost of doing business keeps rising.

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Think we're going to get a bailout or a bonus? Think we're going to get a stimulus package? Think again. With that in mind I have assembled the Artists' Stimulus Package, guaranteed to see you through the 16-hour days when you need to complete work for a solo show while holding down two part-time jobs. I can't vouch for their healthfulness (though I will admit to dark chocolate being my drug of choice). The diet pills at bottom right are the most extreme stimulus in this package. I've omitted the over-the-top chemicals--the point being to stimulate, not annihilate.

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Marketing Mondays: The Gallery Talk

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Blogpix at Platform Project Space

Blogpix, The Show

Blogpix, The Panel

Armory: Show Me the Money

Armory Week: Salvage Operation

Armory Week: Glop Art

Armory Week: Sew Me the Money

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Image from tjnorris.net

Pam Farrell, artist and blogger, suggested today’s topic. “It's obvious that anything an artist puts out there can be used as a marketing tool, and in this case, it goes for the gallery as well. I know how to talk about my art, but how does that change when it’s an event?”

Great topic, Pam, and congratulations on your show at the Ruth Morpeth Gallery. (Pam's going to give a gallery talk on Saturday, March 28. Her blog has the details.)

An event creates a more formal context for your comments. Not to put undue pressure on you, but when it’s an event, when people are coming to hear you, you not only have to have something to say, you have to be able to say it well for 20-30 minutes.
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An artist’s talk is a little bit of show business. Speak clearly. Make eye contact with individual members of the audience around and throughout the room. Share a story. Ask a rhetorical question. Invite an occasional call and response. After the main body of your talk, invite the audience to ask questions. An interested audience—and most people who make the effort to come are interested—could easily extend the event by another 20-30 minutes. Before you know it, an hour has gone by like that.
Credit: Lady Pink talk at the Brooklyn Museum exhibition, Graffiti, via post by Brooklyn Museum on flickr

Who’s Your Audience?
Is it primarily your collectors and friends of the gallery? Great! This audience is motivated to learn something about you and your work. It’s also true if the event is part of a lecture series, or if an artist’s talk is a regular feature. Talk about what motivates the work, how you work (technique), where you work (studio)—the big picture, so to speak—and then indicate specific works, pointing out some of the elements you’ve just mentioned, or tell a story (if it’s interesting) about how a particular painting/sculpture/print/whatever came to be. Just as the work on the postcard is usually the first one to sell in a show, the works you talk about may get that kind of collector attention as well.

Is it artists? They’ll want to know about the work, of course, but they’ll also very likely have technical questions for you. If you don’t wish to be bogged down by “What kind of ventilation do you use?” or “What’s your proportion of stand oil to turp?” feel free to say, "I’ll take a couple of technical questions, but since we’re surrounded by the work, that’s where I’d like to keep the focus today." Then draw their attention to a particular artwork. (You could also suggest that artists wishing to talk shop could meet at the gallery another time, or at your studio, specifically for that reason. This could develop into an important network and support group for you, and vice versa.)

Is it students?
This is not the case with Pam, who will be speaking to artists and collectors in a commercial gallery, but if you are showing/speaking in an academic setting, students will certainly be your primary audience. Here you'll talk about your work, but you should expect all kinds of nuts-and-bolts questions from the audience, from technical process to career advice. How else do students learn?
Credit: Ranjani Shettar talk via UMass Amherst website
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It is primarily your non-artist friends and family? Then you’re going to get questions like “How long did it take?” and “But what does it mean?” You might want to skip the talk entirely and just chat over a glass of wine.

What If You’re Terrified of Speaking?
You’re not alone. And there’s no reason to put yourself through an agonizing experience. Consider these options:

. Organize a panel, especially if it’s a group show. Sharing the spotlight takes the pressure off. Get someone else to moderate

. If it’s a solo show, ask the dealer to “interview” you, a la The Actor’s Studio, or to have a “conversation” about your work. That’s good visibility for the dealer too

. Remember this: People who come to hear you speak are motivated by an interest in you and your work. You are the authority here. No one knows more about your work than you. Just open up and share what you do, why you do it and, if you wish, how you do it. Still nervous in front of your audience? Imagine them on the toilet; that's the great leveler

(The Blogpix panel, March 7, 2009, at Denise Bibro Fine Art. From left: me, Hrag Vartanian, Roberta Fallon, Libby Rosof, Bill Gusky and Brent Burket. Photo: Martin Bromirski) .

Prepare for the Talk
You’ll be a lot more at ease if you have prepared your thoughts, perhaps printed out some notes. (Actually index cards are better because they’re easier to hold, and they don’t rustle.) Often I’ve ended up not using the notes at all, because the fact of having prepared them was all I needed.)

Tips from TV School
Back when I had my day job in publishing, I was sent to a three-day course to prepare me for speaking on TV and to large groups. Here’s the gist:
. Stand up (or sit up) straight. Sounds elementary, but it makes a difference. When your spine is straight and your shoulders are back, your lungs can take in more air. That makes you more alert
. If you’re using a mic, adjust it before you begin so you don’t fumble. And, this sounds ridiculously elementary but it’s not, know how to speak into it. There’s a sweet spot where your normal speaking voice will be amplified without your having to strain. (And when you say, "Can you hear me?" you are making personal contact with the audience right from the gitgo.)
. Make eye contact. TV school says, “Four seconds per person.” You don’t have to count. Look at someone, say a sentence or two, and then look at someone else. It's not a tennis-match back and forth, but a front, back, here, there movement
. Watch the “Ums” and “you knows.” If you follow New York politics you’ll recall that, you know, Caroline Kennedy was, you know, recently, you know, undone in her bid for the, you know, open Senate seat in part by her, you know, speaking style. If it’s painful to, you know, listen to you, people will, you know, tune out. And um, if you need to say um between sentences, just take a breath instead
. The answer is in your brain, but rolling your eyes back to find it will not retrieve the information. That looking-up-to-heaven eye roll is endearing in little kids, but in adults, not so much
. Yes, you can use your hands. Some people like to keep them in their lap or on the table, and that’s fine. TV school tells you that “small gestures” are OK. I’m Italian, so “small gestures” is relative, but the point is, if your conversational style includes hand movements, keep them in. And this is me talking now, not TV school: If you are a sweeping-gesture kind of person, and it’s your artist's talk, for godsakes don’t try to sweep your gestures under the rug. Gesture away. (When you have your 15 minutes on 60 Minutes, follow TV school’s advice.)

Do not be intimidated by this list. In fact, just reading it is enough to make you think about unconscious gestures and perhaps to adjust them ever so. By the way, I have just saved you $2500.

Have the Talk Taped
You don’t have to put it on You Tube, but a good talk of you at a particular point in your career is a valuable document for your personal archives. The dealer may wish to use a snip for the gallery website, or to include a DVD of your talk to a client who couldn’t make the event. If you look at the tape and hate what you see, learn from it. In fact, if you haven’t spoken before, make that tape before you give your talk and learn from what you see.

One Last Requirement
Enjoy yourself! Enjoy the attention. You'll be back in the studio, alone, soon enough.
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Armory Week: Sew Me the Money

Armory: Show Me the Money

Armory Week: Salvage Operation

The Fairs: Glop Art

Early in my painting career, I edited a magazine devoted to the textile arts. The big discussion then was art versus craft. It was a serious issue, since so many art-school trained artists with BFAs and MFAs were, by dint of their medium, designated as “craftsmen” or "craftswomen,” a second-tier status in the art world. Well, let me clarify, many adopted the term themselves, then they wondered why they weren’t getting the kind of representation they wanted. If you have a choice of saying “I am a fiber artist” or “I am an artist,” why opt for the restrictive one and then be pissed off that you’re unable to show your work more widely?

Armory Show: Tracey Emin at White Cube, London; stitched blanket

Detail below

It’s great to see that the discussion is finally over. Artists make what they make, whether it’s with fiber, glue, thread, wood, metal or paint, or something else entirely, like trash. Art is art. Sometimes it gets covered by a textile magazine, sometimes in the art press. Just spell the artist's name right.

I am biased in my love of cloth, fiber and thread. I am the granddaughter of tailors, the niece of a dressmaker and of a lacemaker. This final post in my coverage of the New York fairs focuses on work in fiber, or work in other mediums that reference textiles. I didn’t love it all, but I liked the ambiguity of some of the work--is it a drawing or a weaving?--and I liked the narrative thread of the images you see here.

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Armory Show: El Anatsui at Jack Shainman Gallery, New York City

With its liquor-bottle caps and bottleneck wrappers held together with twisted wire, it's as much sculpture as painting or tapestry. I love the different ways the work can be interpreted

Armory Show: Mary Heilman chairs at 303 Gallery, New York City



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Armory Show: Patrick Van Caeckenbergh at Zeno X Gallery, Antwerp
Detail above and installation below
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Armory Show: Eve Berendes at Jacky Strenz, Frankfurt

This threaded sculpture has a Caracas-in-the-Fifties feeling, but it's a contemporary work

Armory Show: Ruth Lasky at Ratio 3, San Francisco

From a distance they look like framed drawings, but they're technically adept weavings

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Detail below
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Armory Show: Alyson Shotz at Carolina Nitsch Contemporary Art, New York City

This piece is called Four Dimentional Drawing. This work with its precise geometry, bicolored threads and the shadow that's integral to the piece, may be my favorite piece in this post

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Detail below

Lin Tianmiao, Kukje Gallery, Seoul

There appears to be a photosilkscreen image on the surface of the woven fabric, but it might be the weaving itself. Within and atop the surface are masses of threads that force you to see beyond them into the image. The title, nicely poetic, is Seeing Shadow

Volta: Surasi Kusolwong at Hoet Bekaert, Ghent, Belgium
The installation consisted of a booth full of tangled skeins with a low divider of polished stainless steel

Detail below

Armory Show: Ivan Morley at Galerie Barbara Weiss, Berlin

Not a favorite, but I included it for the visual narrative--what the previous work might look like if stitching has been a priority. You notice, by the way, that weaving and stitching are no longer "women's work"

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Detail below

Armory Show: William Kentridge, Galleria Lia Rumma, Milan and Naples

Detail below


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Bridge: Beatrice Kusiak, Collective Gallery, New York City




Armory Show: Nicholas Hlobo at Michael Stevenson, Capetown
A Xohsa man who came of age as apartheid was ending, Hlobo uses stitching to bring together metaphorically the different pieces and layers of personal and cultural identity. (I liked the work better once I learned that.)
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Detail below






Armory Show: Daniel Zeller at Pierogi, Brooklyn
You can't tell from the full view, above, but this is a drawing, not a textile, but you can see from the detail below that stitching, lacing and weaving are the visual substance of the work



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Armory Show: Thomas Fougeirol at Praz-Delavalade, Paris and Berlin
Anothe bit of trompe l'oeil: an oil-on-canvas painting that suggests shimmering lace
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Detail below




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Armory Show: Amanda Ross Ho at Cherry and Martin, Los Angeles
How did macrame get to be such a joke? This piece is not macrame--I think it's cut canvas or paper--but it does seem to let you in on the joke
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Volta: Maria Nepomuceno at A Gentil Carioca, Rio de Janiero
Hammock sculpture executed in coiled basketry technique
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This piece just creeps me out, but I'll tell you why I put it in the mix here. Across the aisle from this booth was Samson Projects from Boston. It's director, Camilo Alvarado, was showing Rune Olson's Hustler-style images of women, and of men with full breasts and hard cocks, each topped with a painted bear head. This hammock-like sculpture (or possibly an actual hammock) so embodied the sexuality of the photographs that I laughed out loud. Was it a curatorial decision or just the coincidence of placement? Anyway, it's the first, and possibly the last, example of a he/she hammock I've ever seen.

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And with this post, my coverage of the New York fairs is over. I would have shown you more from Pulse, but midway through my camera malfunctioned. Next year . . .

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