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5.31.2010

Louise Bourgeois: Dead at 98

. Bourgeois in her Chelsea home (in the Nineties?) with three pink cloth sculptures. As she advanced in age, she appears to have turned to more malleable materials than the marble, metal and wood she wrestled with for much of her career
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Fluent in many mediums, Louise Bourgeois drew from her own painful childhood to create a body of work that was emotionally and viscerally poweful. She worked for decades as a relative unknown--at one point using the roof of her townhouse as a studio--but championed by feminist artists in the Seventies, and by curator Robert Storr, she became well known and highly regarded in late middle age, making her the unofficial patron saint of unheralded midcareer artists everywhere.

I didn't know her, but sometimes I'd walk by her brownstone on 20th Street (a few blocks from my own building on 21st) and see her through the window, drawing. I always loved that.

Holland Cotter, writing for the New York Times, reports it was a heart attack. Read his obit in the New York Times and my own blog post from 2008 on her Guggenheim retrospective. (Next week I'll have images from Mind and Matter, the exhibition currently at MoMA, which features the artist's carved wood sculptures and a fabulous cloth book. )
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Red Room (Child), 1994, mixed media, 83 x 139 x 108 inches. Photo: Marcus Schneider, © Louise Bourgeois, courtesy of the Guggenheim Museum .

5.30.2010

Motherlode: Anne Truitt at Matthew Marks

Marketing Mondays will return next week
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I was going to title this piece Towers of Power, but the fact is that Anne Truitt’s totemic forms have nothing to do with brute strength. For over 40 years, from 1962 to 2004, the year she died, the Washington, D.C.-based sculptor created minimalist, mostly monochromatic, four-sided forms with a quiet, allusive presence.

Because the central exhibition space is so large, and each work is placed at a distance from the others, you are free to walk between and among the works, which are roughly human in scale, some shorter, some taller. It’s a cliché to say that you become one with the work, but the act of viewing these 10 works from so many vantage points, each with its own relationship to the others, is undeniably intimate. (There are individual works in each of three smaller galleries, which appear at the end of this post.)
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Ambient light affects your sensation of the work. With its large skylights, the Matthew Marks gallery on 22nd Street amplifies that sensation. Shadows change throughout the day. Is that a bluish shadow on a white sculpture, or is one side of the work actually painted a light blue? It is light blue. Is that tall red work all one hue, or are the facets different? It’s all one color, modulated by shadow. In another, what appears initially to be black is actually midnight blue. And a white form is in fact palest lavender with two tonal bands at the bottom. When your eyes become accustomed, the forms are fairly blazing with color. Truitt painted in acrylic, but the matte surface has the milky richness of casein.
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This is the the view from the entrance to the gallery. The yellow work in the center Sun Flower, 1971, is 72 x 12 x 12 inches. Let this work be your visual anchor as you travel clockwise around the gallery

Below, a view from the opposite corner. First Spring, 1981, is the blue faceted work to the right of Sun Flower; Return, 2004, the dark red piece at the left of the frame, is the artist's final sculpture

Continuing clockwise we come to this view. There's a gallery to my back containing Pith, which you'll see farther down. Foreground, The Sea, The Sea is deep blue

Below, and following are views I liked. Seeing the images here, I get a sense of musical or mathematical notation, something I didn't see when I was walking up close among the forms
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View of Sun Flower, with a shift in color that zips up the length of one side
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Up close, you can see that Truitt was as much a painter as a sculptor. Her color, created with many layers of thinly applied paint, often features the slightest shift in hue. In Sun Flower, the squat cadmium yellow work around which all the others seem to revolve, two yellows abut. You don’t see the color shift at first--indeed, you barely see it from four inches away—but as you look, your retina registers this most subtle of subtleties and you follow it from eye level up to the top and down to where it stops just above the floor.

Another thing you see when you’re looking closely is that the bottom of each sculpture is usually different from the top. With few exceptions, the works are set on a recessed plinth so that they appear to be hovering just slightly above the floor (they’re weighted internally so they don’t tip over). Chromatically there’s often a band of color at the bottom or top, something that shifts the visual weight just slightly. An installation video on the gallery website shows these details quite well.
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Return, 2004, the artist's last work
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First Spring and The Sea, The Sea
Through the doorway in the background . . .
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. . . you enter a small, street-facing gallery with Pith. This work, from 1969, is singular for its bulk, 18x18 inches around, and its height, over seven feet tall
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White: Four, 1962, latex-based enamel on wood, 87.75 x 20 x 7 inches
A small back gallery houses this one work from early in Truitt's career. I've always thought this little room had a chapel-like quality, and the combination of white sculpture and afternoon light created an unexpectedly gentle moment. (This looks like a black-and-white photo buit it was shot in color)
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A third small gallery houses one additional solitary work. My pictures of it were not good enough to post (it was hard to shoot), but you can see it on the gallery website


The narrative of the titles is intentional. Profound personal experiences were distilled into a particular hue and onto an attenuated form with a particular proportion. "I've struggled all my life to get maximum meaning in the simplest possible form," Truitt said in a 1987 interview, which was referenced in her 2004 obituary in the Washington Post.
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The show is up through June 26.
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5.26.2010

Motherlode

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Anne Truitt
at Matthew Marks through June 26
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.I feel like a prospector who has struck gold. A motherlode of exhibitions by extraordinary women is visible in New York right now. What’s more, these are women with experience, chops, and years in the studio. Most of the shows will be up into and through June, some into August.
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I'll do a series of posts on these shows over the next couple of weeks, so this is just a little overview of what’s coming. The links will go live as the posts go up.
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Betty Woodman
at Max Protetch through June 5

Mary Frank at Skoto through June 19
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Kiki Smith
at Pace, 22nd Street
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Lee Bontecou at MoMA through August 30
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Shirazeh Houshiary
at Lehman Maupin through June 19

Mind and Matter: Alternative Abstractions 1040s to Now at MoMA through August 16

Louise Bourgeois, Gego, Mona Hatoum, Yayoi Kusama, Anna Maria Maiolino, Louise Nevelson, Rosemarie Trockel, Rachel Whiteread and others

Frances Barth: Scale, Economy and Unnamable Color
at Sundaram Tagore, January and February

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5.24.2010

Marketing Mondays: When Bad Things Happen to Good Dealers

See updates at the bottom of the post
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Artists often talk about the very real difficulties they’ve had with dealers or consultants—late payments, non payments, damaged work, suddenly closed galleries—you know the list. Well, it’s not only artists who get the go-around. Recently I received an email from a European gallery that I’ve blogged about in my reporting of the art fairs. The dealer was at his wit's end, and it was clear he was asking around wherever he thought he could find help.



Was I familiar with the XYZ gallery in ( . . . a city outside of Manhattan)? Apparently the European dealer had lent the owner of this gallery half a dozen paintings for a group show, at the latter’s request. Now, some eight or nine months after the show, the European dealer was trying to retrieve the work. There had been no news of a sale. Indeed, there had been no news from the American dealer at all. Calls and faxes had gone unanswered.

As a courtesy I contacted a few art friends in the region where this gallery is located and asked if they knew the erstwhile dealer or the gallery.

“Bad news,” said one. “He’s known for not paying.”

“His gallery is empty and he hasn’t been around,” said another. This person offered the names of a few dealers in the more immediate vicinity of the rogue and suggested I pass them on to the European dealer, which I did. There was even a private cell phone number passed along.

As far as I know, the artwork has not been returned.

There are many things I don’t know about the situation:
. Did the European dealer know the American dealer before sending or relinquishing the work?
. If not, did the European dealer exercise due diligence about the American dealer and gallery?
. Did the European dealer take a credit card as a deposit? (Is this even done between dealers? I know it’s often done between dealers and consultants, or between dealers and clients taking the work on approval.)

So this is a post with no answers, just a caveat: Artists, if it can happen to a dealer, it can happen to you.

A few suggestions for artists:
. Don’t send your work to a stranger
who promises to put it in a show. Sure it feels good to be contacted by someone who professes to love your work, but understand the nature of the contact. A lot of smaller-city dealers and consultants are surfing the web to find art that interests them. While many are totally legitimate (I know, because I have worked with a few), others are just interested in the quick fix; they're looking for a particular color or size to go over a client's sofa. You might break your neck to deliver a work on time, but if it doesn't serve the purpose, it may be a long time, if ever, before you see it again.

. Ask around: Do you have artist friends in the area who know the dealer in question? Do you know anyone in the gallery city who either knows the gallery or would be willing to check it out for you? Don’t be afraid to ask a friend of a friend who shows (or used to show) with the gallery what his or her experience is (or has been) like.
. . . . . I was contacted by a dealer in an American resort city who said he loved my work and wanted to purhase it up front. Hmm. I knew the city but not the dealer or his gallery, so I asked a few friends in the area to check it out when they were in town. "Nice space and good light, but not the quality of art you want to show with," said two collector friends, citing mass-produced pictures of sailboats and matadors. Eek. "Cheese factory," came the succinct report from a fellow artist. That was all I needed to know. And, indeed, when I happened to pass by the place several months later, it was everything my friends had described. And less.
. Exercise due diligence. Is the gallery a member of the Art Dealers’ Association in that city? Have you seen ads from the gallery? Have its shows been reviewed, either in the local papers or in the national magazines? Does it have a web presence? Is it listed in the annual Art in America guide to galleries? If the gallery doesn’t turn up in any of your research, that's a red flag.
. Use the artist information network—i.e. email, Facebook, or other informal communication. That AiA guide lists the names of artists involved with each gallery (it's a list provided by the gallery)
. Don’t consign a lot of work the first time you do business with a new gallery (unless, of course you are familiar with it, or you know others who have worked with the dealer to good result).
. Get a signed consignment form. If the gallery doesn't give you one, make up a list and give a copy to the gallery. You want two signatures on the consignment: yours and the person to whom you are consigning the work on behalf of the gallery. Make sure it's dated.

. Go to the opening.
Take photographs of your work on the wall, of the dealer with your work. This is the part of your due diligence that's fun. Or at least it will be fun if your due diligence has been duly diligent.

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And heed that funny feeling in your gut. If it’s telling you to not get involved, don’t.

Good readers: Have any bad gallery things happened to you?

Update: Donald Sultan's lawsuit with the Bill Lowe Gallery in Atlanta

Update 7.13.10: New York Post reports that Chelsea dealer Harry Stendhal is accused of swindling two well-known artists

5.19.2010

Eva Hesse, Test Pieces

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Eve Hesse at Hauser & Wirth in April
Here in the anteroom, two sculptures in papier maché and a small wall piece in Sculpmetal
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Last month Hauser & Wirth showed work in paper by Eva Hesse. The focus of the show consisted of so-called "test pieces"--small, dimensional sketches created in papier caché, which is paper that is pressed and adhered by tape or glue. Such work by a less iconic artist would never have seen the light of day. But because it is Hesse, we had the opportunity to peek into her process and thinking. Some of the folded forms and concave shapes looked as if they might have been molded over a body, like the hollow of a back or the curve of a shoulder; others, as if the artist was simply doing what her hands and the material allowed. Extraordinarily fragile now (they were made in 1969), they suggest what might have been. The works were displayed on a large table that took up the entire back gallery.

The anteroom held two sculptures and a small wall piece. These sculptures, in papier maché, and the wall piece, in Sculpmetal, are more recognizably Hessian.


Above, Inside II and Inside I, both 1967; acrylic, papier maché, sawdust, wood, cord and metal
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Inside views of the respective works below
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From the anteroom, above, we can look into the back gallery, below, where the test pieces were displayed on a large table

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Above and below, opposite views of the papier caché sculptures on the exhibition plinth. The works were scattered on a table the way they might have been in the artist's studio
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Additional: I wrote a long piece on Hesse's career retrospective at the Jewish Museum a few years ago. The post appeared in Two Artists Talking.
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5.17.2010

Marketing Mondays: "The Sofa"

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At the end of every semester in the professional practices course I teach, one student will inevitably ask some version of this question: “What if you don’t want your work to go over the sofa?”

This is a huge issue not just for newly emerging artists, but for artists at any stage in their careers. We want to sell. We don’t want to sell out. So beyond that specific piece of furniture, "the sofa" becomes a metaphor for any commercial transaction we feel will debase our work.


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Let me ask you this: What makes a corporate atrium any different from the space above a private collector’s sofa? The work will be appreciated by some, ignored by others. I think of Herb and Dorothy Vogel, those passionate packrats who acquired so much art it was not just over the sofa but in the entryway of their modest Manhattan apartment, in the kitchen, in the bedroom and in the bathroom. They loved what they had, and they put out as much as possible so that they could live with it and enjoy it. Recently they donated their collection of the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. --and then began to collect more!

At the other end of the scale are private collectors who acquire so much, so specifically--and often, so large--that they need to move the work into storage. Some mega-collectors acquire and rehab warehouses, which they turn into private museums. If you’ve been to Miami during the art fairs, you’ve probably visited collections belonging to the Rubell Family, Martin Margulies, the Cisneros-Fontanals Art Foundation and others.
(I don't think most artists have a problem with their art being acquired by a museum, so that's not part of today's discussion.)

Still, “the sofa” looms for many artists

If that's the case, consider alternatives to the commercial gallery. Some artists include them as part of their exhibition strategy as a matter of course:
. Local or regional non-profits (guilds, societies, associations and other .org institutions) are focused on bringing culture to their constituents. They’re funded by state or federal funds—or perhaps by private donation. Advertising, a catalog and the occasional review may be part of the package here.
. Academic galleries serve the institution while providing artists a respected venue in which to exhibit. The mandate of this kind of venue is to provide educational opportunities for its constituents—the educational community, perhaps the community at large. Some such galleries draw big-name artists as well as provide opportunities for emerging artists to build their resumes. A visiting-artist gig may be part of the package here, as well as advertising, a catalog and reviews. Many academic institutions cover shipping to and from, and some offer a stipend to the artist. (A post on academic galleries is coming soon.)
. Libraries and historical associations provide an appropriately dignified setting for work. Some of these institutions have designated exhibition spaces, though many are unlikely to have curators or directors the way an institution like the New York Public Library has. If you’re enterprising, you might explore exhibition possibilities in a local library to create not only a show for yourself but a gig developing or curating small exhibitions there. A salary is unlikely, but the opportunity to become part of your art community in a curatorial way would give you experience and access that most artists don’t have.
. Co-op galleries allow the artist, who is in fact a cooperating owner of the venue, to retain a high degree of control over every aspect of the exhibition. If you choose not to sell, that's an acceptable option.

Of course you’ll need deep pockets to fund your career without selling. But maybe a 9-5 job or a teaching gig is a more appealing choice than “the sofa.” That’s fine. And, if you get good at the application process, you could conceivably support yourself in large measure through grants and residencies.

One thing is certain: Pursuing alternatives to “the sofa” requires that you be the very opposite of a couch potato. And I'm curious: What do you have hanging over your sofa?

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Image from Atlas Sofas

5.14.2010

Central Time

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Grace DeGennaro, Indigo Series: #42, watercolor and gouache on arches, 30 x 22 inches; at Aucocisco Gallery, Portland, Maine in April
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Concentric circles and spirals have been used in meditation forever, being a tangible device to focus the mind inward toward the spiritual core. The work of Grace DeGennaro and Nancy Azara is specifically grounded in spiritual practice. But not all of this work is so inclined; the work of Beatriz Milhazes--here, a print--is joyous and sensual, the very opposite of meditation.

This post is just for your viewing pleasure, a bit of visual nirvana.
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James Cambronne, gouache on paper, more at Alexandre Gallery, New York
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Beatriz Milhazes, print app. 24 x 60 inches, at James Cohan Gallery, New York, recent
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Joanne Mattera, Serpentine, enaustic on panels, 12 x 24 inches; from the book Spirit Maps
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Maureen McQuillan, Double-sided Drawing (Pinwheel), marker and glue on Japanese book-mending tissue, 11.25 x 11.5 inches; from her solo at McKenzie Fine Art, New York, through April
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Douglas Florian, QQ, gouache on paper with collage, 16 x 16 inches; solo at Bravin Lee Programs, New York, up through June 5
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Nancy Azara, Two Red Spirals with Silver, carved and painted wood with palladium leaf and encaustic, 12 x 20 x 1.25 inches; from her solo at Andre Zarre Gallery, New York, March
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Grace DeGennaro, Indigo Series: #30, watercolor and gouache on arches, 30 x 22 inches, at Aucocisco Gallery, Portland, Maine
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Related posts on this blog: Tantric Paintings and Mandalas
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5.12.2010

Line and Space


Suzanne Ulrich, small collage of glued papers at OK Harris Works of Art


Two current shows inspired this post, both of which deal with linear abstraction.

Suzanne Ulrich at
OK Harris glues tiny linear elements into collages often no larger than a postcard. Her focus is rectilinear, not unlike Mondrian's. These intimate works are haikus to monumentality on a tiny scale. Go look.

Joel Shapiro at Pace on 25th Street in Chelsea creates large, dimensional drawings with colored wood planks suspended in space by taut lines attached to the ceiling, walls and floor. Their strong angles suggest the grid, exploded. Shapiro calls them “the projection of thought into space.” You can walk into and around these thoughts. And possibly because Pace Wildenstein has reverted to Pace, that ridiculous ban against photograph has been lifted.

Both shows are up through this weekend, May 15..


Suzanne Ulrich, small collage of glued papers at OK Harris Works of Art
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Joel Shapiro at Pace: Was Blue, 2010; wood, casein paint and fishing line, room-size installation
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Detail below

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5.11.2010

A Little Competition with Spell Check

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Run bienvenue through Microsoft's Spell Check and you get two options: benzene and ingenue.

Can anyone top that combination of misleading info from the occasionally useful but equally unreliable app?

5.10.2010

Marketing Mondays: Open Mouth, Insert Foot, Lose Out

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Some years ago, a friend called to say she was coming into town and could we meet that evening. I had a ticket for a performance at the Joyce Theater in Chelsea--a dance company was performing to the music of Philip Glass--which I was not about to give up, so I offered to see if I could get her a ticket. She agreed, and I secured a primo spot for her in the center of the orchestra.
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I enjoyed the performance from my side aisle seat in the M row. When the performance was over, I waited there for my friend to exit her row.
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"The dancers were good,” she boomed as she shuffled along the row, “but that music. Ugh, dreadful! There was an audible gasp as theatergoers who had been sitting nearby turned to look at her.
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Guess who had been sitting in the seat directly in front of her and who was at that very moment walking parallel to her on his row? Yes, the composer. If he was affected by my friend’s comment he didn’t show it, but he certainly heard it. .
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But sometimes our comments, overheard or directed at someone, can have dire professional consequences. And that's the topic of today’s post.
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At an art fair a few years ago, an artist was displeased where the gallery had placed her work, which she felt was a less-than-prime spot in the booth. Outside the building she ran into a friend and let her anger and disappointment out. Fair enough. Unfortunately the disappointment included some serious dissing of the gallery. Unknown to her, the gallery assistant was around the corner having a cigarette and heard the whole tirade. The assistant told the dealer, and when the artist returned later to the booth, she was let go from the gallery right then and there.
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While that artist was left to rue the consequences of her remarks, the following artist has no idea what his comments cost him. Recently a curator friend mentioned that he had been thinking of giving a particular artist a solo exhibition as part of a larger prestigious event, but that the artist had been so rude over another matter that he, the curator, decided to offer the exhibition to someone else. “I’m not going to put myself in the position of being verbally abused by this artist. My job takes too much out of me as it is,” said the curator unapologetically.
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Marketing Mondays is usually about the nuts and bolts of getting yourself and your work into position in the art world. These anecdotes illustrate what can happen once you’re there. You work too hard to get yourself in the enviable position of being on a curator’s radar, of getting into a gallery. Why let a stray remark drag you off course?
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As always, your comments, stories and--especially--cautionary tales are welcome.
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Images from the Internet

5.07.2010

From Red to White

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The previous few posts were all about red. This one is all about White, Betty White, as performed by the St. Olaf Glee Club--my buddies Jim Colucci and Frank Di Caro, and their buddy, Fredrick Ford--in anticipation of the White lady's performance on SNL tomorrow night.


5.05.2010

Seeing Red, Part 3: A Few Paintings


While the play and the dress are in performance, several red paintings, all in exhibition in New York City, are quietly interacting with viewers one person at a time. Specifics are in the caption below each image, so here—as a totally unintentional post script to the current Marketing Mondays post on Ageism— let me let me just say that these paintings were created by people whose painting chops have been developed over time.
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Suzan Frecon, Embodiment of Red (Soforouge), 2009, oil on linen, two panels: 108 x 87.5 x 1.5 inches
At the Whitney Biennial through May 30
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Two rounded forms, one in each panel, seem to rise or sink—or perhaps breathe, rising and falling—in this painting. Frecon has been at it for “more than four decades,” according to the museum’s website. Frecon’s painting (there’s a second one of hers as well) is on view in the big gallery to the left of the elevator on the fourth floor. The painting appears courtesy of the David Zwirner Gallery, which Frecon recently joined.
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Tad Wiley, Counterpane, oil-based enamel on wood panel, 74 x 56 inches
At the Heidi Cho Gallery through May 22

Wiley, who according to his website arrived in New York in 1982, specializes in large repeating forms that float through the picture plane. Sometimes geometric, sometimes more organic, they reference architecture and landscape in more or less equal measure. From a distance you'll fall into these paintings; from up close you'll see the painterly subtleties within the forms.
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Sohan Qadri, title unknown
At Sundaram Tagore through May 8
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Qadri is described by his gallery as a “tantric painter,” whose works—painted in ink and dye on paper, embody the great opposite themes of yin and yang. I'm struck by the textile-like maeriality of Qadri's work, and by another compelling opposite: the richness of his reductiveness. He was born in Punjab, India, in 1932.
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Detail below

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Eric Holzman, Grove II, 1993-2010, oil on linen, 16 x 20 inches
At Lohin Geduld, ended April 24
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In Canopy, a lovely exhibition organized around the image and theme of trees, this gem of a painting radiated almost off the wall. My heart beat a little faster when I saw it. The artist was born in New York City in 1949, though if this painting is any indication, it could have been Siena in 1349.
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Richard Anuskiewicz, Formal, 1968, acrylic on masonite, 36 x 36 inches
At D. Wigmore Fine Art through July 9
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Born in 1930, Anuskiewicz is the granddaddy of the group, though his heyday was the Sixties, when he was under 40. Still, the work says something about "aging." The seven paintings in this show are as visually fresh, physically pristine and optically compelling as the day the paint was dry to the touch.

This and six other Anuskiewicz paintings are in the Wigmore exhibition, Op Out of Ohio, which includes the work of Julian Stanczak and The Anonima Group (Ernst Benkert, Francis Hewitt and Ed Mieczkowski). If you’re interested in geometric abstraction with an optical bent, get your retinas over to see this show in midtown.
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