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DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20260515T180000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20260515T200000
DTSTAMP:20260525T220750
CREATED:20260507T200731Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20260511T152433Z
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SUMMARY:In Dialogue with the Art of Benny Andrews
DESCRIPTION:Please join us for a conversation with artists Maria de Los Angeles and William Villalongo\, moderated by Dean Daderko\, Chief Curator of the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis. This panel discussion will explore connections between the artists’ practices and the work of Benny Andrews\, with a focus on process\, imagemaking\, and their shared meditation on histories of migration. \nSeating is limited\, RSVP to rsvp@michaelrosenfeld.com
URL:https://artinamericaguide.com/event/in-dialogue-with-the-art-of-benny-andrews/
LOCATION:Michael Rosenfeld Gallery\, 100 11th Ave\, New York\, NY\, New York\, United States
CATEGORIES:Exhibition
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;VALUE=DATE:20260207
DTEND;VALUE=DATE:20260405
DTSTAMP:20260525T220750
CREATED:20260205T191953Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20260210T223810Z
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SUMMARY:William T. Williams: Word of Eye
DESCRIPTION:William T. Williams: Word of Eye is the debut presentation for a new series of paintings by William T. Williams (b.1942). The gallery’s fourth solo exhibition of the artist’s work\, the show includes eleven paintings created between 2024 and 2025. Imbued with a sense of monumentality that is expressed through their beauty\, compositional complexity\, and perceptual impact\, Williams states: “I wanted to make a body of work that demanded and would require a person looking and looking for a sustained amount of time. It’s not a 30 second pass\, its stopping\, looking\, inquiring\, and allowing the painting and the viewer to become one in the same.” \nLearn more
URL:https://artinamericaguide.com/event/william-t-williams-word-of-eye/
LOCATION:Michael Rosenfeld Gallery\, 100 11th Ave\, New York\, NY\, New York\, United States
CATEGORIES:Exhibition
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;VALUE=DATE:20260207
DTEND;VALUE=DATE:20260405
DTSTAMP:20260525T220750
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SUMMARY:Beauford Delaney: The Light Contained in Every Thing
DESCRIPTION:The gallery’s fourth solo presentation featuring the work of celebrated American artist Beauford Delaney (1901–1979)\, Beauford Delaney: The Light Contained in Every Thing includes abstract paintings and works on paper created between 1954 and 1968. Taking its title from the introduction to Delaney’s 1964 solo exhibition at Galerie Lambert in Paris written by his close friend and famed author James Baldwin (1924–1987)\, this exhibition illuminates Delaney’s unmatched ability to imbue his compositions with a radiance that resonates on a visual\, psychological\, and spiritual level. \nLearn more
URL:https://artinamericaguide.com/event/beauford-delaney-the-light-contained-in-every-thing/
LOCATION:Michael Rosenfeld Gallery\, 100 11th Ave\, New York\, NY\, New York\, United States
CATEGORIES:Exhibition
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;VALUE=DATE:20251114
DTEND;VALUE=DATE:20260201
DTSTAMP:20260525T220750
CREATED:20251201T210733Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20251212T182101Z
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SUMMARY:Mary Bauermeister: St.one-d
DESCRIPTION:Learn more
URL:https://artinamericaguide.com/event/mary-bauermeister-st-one-d/
LOCATION:Michael Rosenfeld Gallery\, 100 11th Ave\, New York\, NY\, New York\, United States
CATEGORIES:Exhibition
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DTSTART;VALUE=DATE:20250904
DTEND;VALUE=DATE:20251109
DTSTAMP:20260525T220750
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SUMMARY:Surreal America
DESCRIPTION:.
URL:https://artinamericaguide.com/event/surreal-america-exhibition/
LOCATION:Michael Rosenfeld Gallery\, 100 11th Ave\, New York\, NY\, New York\, United States
CATEGORIES:Exhibition
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;VALUE=DATE:20250208
DTEND;VALUE=DATE:20250504
DTSTAMP:20260525T220750
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SUMMARY:Alfonso Ossorio & Nandor Fodor: The Search for the Beloved
DESCRIPTION:View the complete exhibition checklist \n\nMichael Rosenfeld Gallery is pleased to present Alfonso Ossorio & Nandor Fodor: The Search for the Beloved\, a first-of-its-kind exhibition exploring the impact of the theories of Hungarian psychoanalyst Nandor Fodor on the art of Alfonso Ossorio (1916–1990). Fodor’s 1949 book\, The Search for the Beloved: A Clinical Investigation of the Trauma of Birth and Pre-Natal Conditioning (New York: Hermitage Press\, Inc\, 1949) was an early contribution to the field of prenatal psychology\, and while many of his theories have lost their currency\, the provocative language\, vivid imagery\, and theories put forth in the book provided Ossorio with\, in his own words\, “a springboard from which to take off.”[1] From his early surrealist drawings to his celebrated mixed-media assemblages known as Congregations\, the works presented in Alfonso Ossorio & Nandor Fodor: The Search for the Beloved reveal Ossorio’s enduring exploration of themes addressed in Fodor’s book\, notably birth\, death\, suffering\, and sex. \nIn The Search for the Beloved\, Fodor argues that prenatal experience and the inherently traumatic upheaval of birth form the foundation of each person’s psyche\, instilling in them an innate fear of death and a lifelong\, subconscious desire to return to the womb. In the book’s introduction\, Fodor writes: “After nine months of peaceful development\, the human child is forced into a strange world by cataclysmic muscular convulsions which\, like an earthquake\, shake its abode to the very foundations. … In its shattering effect\, birth can only be paralleled by death.”[2] \nBorn in Beregszász\, Austro-Hungarian Empire (now Berehove\, Ukraine) to a Jewish family in 1895\, Nandor Fodor completed a doctorate in law at the Royal Hungarian University of Science in Budapest. After moving to London in 1929 to work as a journalist\, Fodor became interested in the work of Sigmund Freud and began publishing his own writing in psychoanalytic journals. By 1949\, when he published The Searched for the Beloved\, Fodor had developed a reputation as a compelling psychoanalytic thinker writing for a popular audience. Many chapters of The Searched for the Beloved were first published in scientific journals\, including The Psychiatric Quarterly\, The American Journal of Psychotherapy\, and The Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease. Although it is unlikely that Fodor ever met Ossorio\, his theories had an indelible influence on the artist\, who was a voracious reader on a wide range of subjects; notably\, Ossorio kept an annotated copy of The Search for the Beloved on his bedside table until the end of his life. \nAlfonso Ossorio was born in Manila\, the Philippines\, in 1916 and raised in a devoutly Catholic family. After attending Catholic boarding schools in England and a Jesuit secondary school in the United States\, he attended Harvard University\, where he completed his senior thesis titled Spiritual Influences on the Visual Image of Christ. Throughout his youth\, Ossorio’s irrepressible feelings of same-sex attraction were in conflict with the worldview of his upbringing and the beliefs that had been ingrained in him\, leading to immense inner turmoil that he expressed through vividly detailed surrealistic depictions of biblical subjects during the early 1940s. An exemplary selection of these early works will be on view in Alfonso Ossorio & Nandor Fodor: The Search for the Beloved. Executed before the publication of The Search for the Beloved\, these early drawings such as Job (1941) and The New Pandora (1944) reveal Ossorio’s lifelong interests in the themes of suffering\, birth\, and sex that would resonate with Fodor’s book. \n\nOssorio encountered Fodor’s book at a particularly important moment in his life and career. Early in 1950\, Ossorio returned to his home in the Philippines for the first time since he was ten\, bringing the newly published The Search for the Beloved with him. The official purpose of Ossorio’s trip was the execution of a mural titled The Angry Christ for the Chapel of Saint Joseph the Worker\, which his family had built in Victorias\, on the island of Negros. The ten months Ossorio spent in the Philippines opened up old wounds from his youth that led to a highly productive period and a new direction in his art.Guided by his reading of The Search for the Beloved as well as his new friendships with Jackson Pollock and Jean Dubuffet\, Ossorio composed his Victorias Drawings\, a series of abstract paintings on paper executed with a wax-resist technique\, which are prominently featured in this exhibition. Distinguished by their vivid colors and pulsating energy\, the Victorias Drawings directly address the contents of Fodor’s book through titles and imagery referencing pregnancy\, childbirth\, coupledom\, motherhood\, infancy\, martyrdom\, and yonic forms. Created at the height of the abstract expressionist movement\, the Victorias Drawings inspired Dubuffet to author and publish a monographic study on the series\, titled Peintures Initiatiques D’Alfonso Ossorio—the only monograph he would ever write on another artist. In 1951\, the Victorias Drawings were exhibited at Studio Paul Facchetti in Paris and at Betty Parsons Gallery in New York\, formally announcing Ossorio’s departure from his detailed surrealist compositions of the 1940s. \nAlfonso Ossorio & Nandor Fodor: The Search for the Beloved illuminates themes manifest throughout Ossorio’s oeuvre\, including his final major series: the mixed media assemblages known as the Congregations. In the Congregations\, Ossorio brings together such disparate found objects as glass eyes\, shells\, animal bones\, shards of glass\, and driftwood into compositions that reveal the enduring influence of Fodor’s thought. \nAlfonso Ossorio & Nandor Fodor: The Search for the Beloved is Michael Rosenfeld Gallery’s fourteenth solo exhibition on the work of Alfonso Ossorio\, who has been the subject of more solo exhibitions than any other artist in the gallery’s thirty-six-year history. Beginning in 1996 with Alfonso Ossorio – Reflection & Redemption: The Surrealist Decade\, 1939-1949\, Michael Rosenfeld Gallery has consistently presented focused\, thematic exhibitions exploring various facets of Ossorio’s extraordinary career\, while including his work in eighty-eight group exhibitions since 1992. Michael Rosenfeld Gallery represented the Ossorio Foundation from 1996 to 2007. \n\n  \n\n1. Judith Wolfe\, Alfonso Ossorio: 1940-1980 (East Hampton\, NY: Guild Hall Museum\, 1980)\, 43\n2. Nandor Fodor\, The Search for the Beloved\, (New York: Hermitage Press\, Inc.\, 1949)\, 3
URL:https://artinamericaguide.com/event/alfonso-ossorio-nandor-fodor-the-search-for-the-beloved/
LOCATION:Michael Rosenfeld Gallery\, 100 11th Ave\, New York\, NY\, New York\, United States
CATEGORIES:Exhibition
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DTSTART;VALUE=DATE:20241119
DTEND;VALUE=DATE:20250126
DTSTAMP:20260525T220750
CREATED:20241122T192403Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20241122T192403Z
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SUMMARY:18 Women: 50 Years
DESCRIPTION:View the complete exhibition checklist \nMichael Rosenfeld Gallery is pleased to announce 18 Women: 50 Years\, a group exhibition of some of the most innovative artists of the twentieth century\, each of whom has been integral to the gallery’s thirty-five-year history. On view from November 19\, 2024 through January 25\, 2025\, the presentation features over forty works in painting\, sculpture\, collage\, assemblage\, ceramic\, and textile produced between 1918 and 1968 by Magdalena Abakanowicz\, Ruth Asawa\, Mary Bauermeister\, Lee Bontecou\, Claire Falkenstein\, Nancy Grossman\, Blanche Lazzell\, Louise Nevelson\, Agnes Pelton\, Irene Rice Pereira\, Anne Ryan\, Betye Saar\, Esphyr Slobodkina\, Toshiko Takaezu\, Lenore Tawney\, Alma Thomas\, Charmion von Wiegand\, and Claire Zeisler. In the spirit of the large group exhibitions of vanguard artists organized by legendary curator Dorothy C. Miller at the Museum of Modern Art\, 18 Women: 50 Years provides a representative showing of each featured artist and\, collectively\, a survey of the women artists consistently championed by the gallery’s program.\n\nThough much progress has been made in contextualizing women artists within the larger narrative of twentieth-century art\, 18 Women: 50 Years seeks to emphasize the diversity of practices among the artists on view. Featuring traditional oil-on-canvas paintings\, radically nontraditional found-object assemblages\, as well as a rich selection of works executed in mediums traditionally designated as craft and unjustly excluded from fine art settings\, the presentation highlights the originality of these artists’ conceptual\, material\, and stylistic approaches. Each featured artist asserted a singular voice within the arena of modernism and its descendants while resisting the patriarchal strictures of the creative and institutional circles in which they moved. Bringing together standout works representative of a range of movements and milieus\, 18 Women: 50 Years provides a vivid summary of these artists’ incomparable contributions to the history of twentieth-century art.
URL:https://artinamericaguide.com/event/18-women-50-years/
LOCATION:Michael Rosenfeld Gallery\, 100 11th Ave\, New York\, NY\, New York\, United States
CATEGORIES:Exhibition
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;VALUE=DATE:20240905
DTEND;VALUE=DATE:20241110
DTSTAMP:20260525T220750
CREATED:20240829T130620Z
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SUMMARY:Romare Bearden & Nancy Grossman: Collage in Dialogue
DESCRIPTION:Opening Reception: Saturday\, September 7\, 5-8PM \nCollage comes the closest to reality. It is the only way to make the disparate and ill-fitting parts of a life\, an identity\, an elegantly seamless experience. It satisfies both the urgent and the substantive thirst.[1] \n—Nancy Grossman \nI feel that when some photographic detail\, such as a hand or an eye\, is taken out of its original context and is fractured and integrated into a different space and form configuration\, it acquires a plastic quality it did not have in the original photograph…Art\, it must be remembered\, is artifice\, or a creative undertaking\, the primary function of which is to add to our existing conception of reality.[2] \n—Romare Bearden \nMichael Rosenfeld Gallery is pleased to present Romare Bearden & Nancy Grossman: Collage in Dialogue\, an exhibition focused on the artistic exchange between two leading innovators of the medium. Though Bearden was a generation older than Grossman\, the artists initiated their collage practices within a year of each other—Grossman in 1962 and Bearden in 1963—and shared crucial developments in their technique through a continuous dialogue. Brought together through the cultural milieu fostered by their dealer at the time\, Cordier & Ekstrom Gallery\, the two artists remained close friends until Bearden’s death\, forging a vital rapport that shaped their practices and lives. \nThe works presented in Romare Bearden & Nancy Grossman: Collage in Dialogue reveal surprising alignments between the artists’ collage oeuvres despite divergent subject matter and stylistic approaches. Both artists repurposed excerpts from previous artworks into material for new collages and applied various pigments (ink\, acrylic\, watercolor) to elements of many works in order to energize the composition. Where Bearden’s collages explore memory and autobiography within larger cultural narratives\, Grossman’s collages are deeply psychological explorations of the human condition expressed via an open-ended material experimentation. \nBearden and Grossman’s works were shown together in group exhibitions at Cordier & Ekstrom as well as institutional venues beginning in the late 1960s\, around the time that their friendship blossomed. This trend continued throughout the 1970s and 1980s\, most notably in the Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service (SITES) exhibition Collages: Selections from the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden organized by Howard Fox\, which toured the country from 1978–82. The two artists nurtured their friendship through regular studio visits\, enthusiastic support of each other’s exhibitions\, and numerous events related to their shared social circles. Grossman recalls long conversations with Bearden about art\, food\, and life unfolding during their studio visits\, and she cherished the correspondence she received from him. \nA particularly formative exchange between the two artists occurred shortly after 1967\, when Bearden began sharing a studio with Jack Schindler\, a commercial designer. Bearden had been experimenting with various supports for his new body of collage works\, and Schindler suggested he use Masonite to mitigate the warping that occurred as the adhesive dried. Grossman had encountered a similar issue with her own collages around this time\, and Bearden had consulted conservators at The Metropolitan Museum of Art regarding various treatments to stabilize their images. The solution arrived one day in the form of a rain-spotted note taped to Grossman’s mailbox: in Bearden’s hand\, it read\, “Glue paper to the back.” Sure enough\, after adhering papers to the verso in equal weight to the materials on the front\, both sides of the Masonite shrunk in sync and the surface remained flat. \nYears later\, Grossman honored Bearden and his technical revelation through the incorporation of his note into her complexly layered\, large-scale collage Exploding Tongues – Untied Scape (1993)\, which features prominently in Collage in Dialogue. Both Grossman and Bearden maintained a vast cache of found and collected paper materials that held deeply personal significance to them\, and Grossman’s retention of Bearden’s note over twenty-six years is emblematic of the artists’ accumulative tendencies. Exploding Tongues – Untied Scape is titled after experimental filmmaker Marlon Riggs’ landmark video essay dedicated to Black gay love\, Tongues Untied (1989)—an apt tribute given the repeated presence of labels from sardine tins that were gifted to Grossman from her partner\, the art historian Arlene Raven\, rendering the collage a poignant\, recombinant expression of love and friendship. \nFeaturing thirty-five works dating from 1962 to 1993\, Romare Bearden & Nancy Grossman: Collage in Dialogue constitutes a concise survey of the collage oeuvres of both artists. Major examples from Bearden’s Of the Blues series\, a group of collages referencing specific narratives from the history of blues and jazz\, will be featured alongside portrayals of Black culture in the locations that had the greatest impact on his life\, namely New York City\, Pittsburgh\, and North Carolina. The Grossman collages on view fall roughly into two categories: abstracted landscapes and renditions of the figure. The latter comprise featureless\, masculine forms posed in positions of restraint\, and directly relate to her iconic leatherbound head sculptures\, as she repurposed the patterns used to cut the leather into collage media. Grossman’s “landscapes” typically take the form of horizontally oriented\, allover compositions with varying levels of formal density and often bear references to her personal life in the form of old maps\, tickets\, letters\, and photos. A fractured quality runs throughout both artists’ collage oeuvres; seams\, tears\, and disjointed scales between elements are emphasized\, rather than ameliorated\, transmuting the dissonance of lived existence into a new\, harmonious whole. \nWhere the structures of Bearden’s collages are informed by his deep\, comprehensive knowledge of Western art history—especially the Old Masters and traditional African material culture—Grossman’s compositions are direct descendants of modernism\, often evoking abstract expressionist landscapes or surrealist renditions of the figure. Notably\, both artists began their careers as painters and evolved into multimedia practices in pursuit of a truer vision of their lived experience. Indeed\, the formal relationship between their work was perhaps best summarized by the artist Nayland Blake in the catalogue for Grossman’s 2012 career retrospective\, when he wrote that Bearden’s collages create “poems of the black body and urban space. Grossman’s collages start from a similar place but veer off in the direction of a planar mosaic. While Bearden appeals to our urge to reconfigure the fragmented space into narrative… [Grossman’s] collages are not windows to be seen through\, even when she presents imagery of a landscape; we are meant to see the land itself as skin\, creased and permeable.”[3] \nAugmenting the artworks on view in Romare Bearden & Nancy Grossman: Collage in Dialogue will be a vitrine dedicated to archival materials featuring correspondence\, exhibition ephemera\, and personal photos as well as an illustrated map charting the locales Bearden and Grossman frequented throughout the decades\, providing illuminating context to these artists’ enduring friendship. \nMichael Rosenfeld Gallery has championed the work of Romare Bearden and Nancy Grossman for over thirty years\, featuring both artists in numerous solo and group exhibitions. Romare Bearden & Nancy Grossman: Collage in Dialogue is the third exhibition the gallery has dedicated to Romare Bearden\, after Fractured Tales: Intimate Collages (2006)\, for which a catalogue was published\, and the critically acclaimed Romare Bearden (1911–1988): COLLAGE\, A Centennial Celebration (2011). After taking on representation of Nancy Grossman in 1997\, Michael Rosenfeld Gallery mounted five solo exhibitions: Loud Whispers\, Four Decades of Assemblage\, Collage\, and Sculpture (2001)\, which was accompanied by a catalogue publishing new scholarship by Lowery Stokes Sims; Drawings (2007); Combustion Scapes (2011); The Edge of Always (2014); and My Body (2022). \n[1] Nancy Grossman\, artist statement for It’s Only a Paper Moon: The Universe as Collage\, Shirley Fiterman Gallery\, Borough of Manhattan Community College\, City University of New York\, August 16 – September 28\, 1994. \n[2] Romare Bearden\, “Rectangular Structure in My Montage Paintings\,” Leonardo 2 (January 1969)\, 17-18. \n[3] Nayland Blake\, “Misrecognized\,” in Ian Berry\, ed. Nancy Grossman: Touch Life Diary\, exh. cat. (Saratoga Springs\, NY: The Francis Young Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery\, 2012)\, 106
URL:https://artinamericaguide.com/event/romare-bearden-nancy-grossman-collage-in-dialogue/
LOCATION:Michael Rosenfeld Gallery\, 100 11th Ave\, New York\, NY\, New York\, United States
CATEGORIES:Exhibition
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DTSTART;VALUE=DATE:20240406
DTEND;VALUE=DATE:20240727
DTSTAMP:20260525T220750
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SUMMARY:Richmond Barthé: A New Day Is Coming\, Curated with Isaac Julien
DESCRIPTION:Michael Rosenfeld Gallery is proud to present Richmond Barthé: A New Day Is Coming\, a solo exhibition of sixteen sculptures by the Harlem Renaissance master Richmond Barthé (1901–1989) curated with renowned artist and filmmaker Isaac Julien (b.1960). The exhibition will survey the most productive decades of Barthé’s career\, from 1929 to 1966\, with an emphasis on the works of the 1930s and 1940s that established him as a foremost sculptor of his era. A New Day Is Coming also debuts a new film by Julien\, which he describes as an “archival meditation” on Barthé and his work composed of historical documentary footage discovered during research for Once Again . . . (Statues Never Die) (2022)\, an immersive\, five-screen film installation commissioned by the Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia. \nA quintessential artist of the Harlem Renaissance\, Barthé created a pioneering body of sculpture that elevates the Black subject. Much of Barthé’s oeuvre reflects his penchant for allegory and an embrace of classical realism that rendered him a stylistic outlier of his generation. He consistently sought to convey a universal sense of heroism reflective of the African diaspora through his sculpture\, producing a refined body of bust-length portraits and full-length figures portraying a variety of individuals\, including historical luminaries\, archetypal\, religious\, and mythological subjects\, and contemporary celebrities from the dance and theater worlds. While the Black male figure was a prevailing focus of Barthé’s practice\, a consideration of his larger oeuvre reveals a career-long investment in depicting subjects of both genders with authority and empathy. Often working from memory\, Barthé used his superior technical ability to imbue his sculptures with a sense of movement and emotional interiority\, affectingly capturing the spiritual essence of his subjects. A New Day Is Coming will feature several of the artist’s most celebrated sculptures\, such as Feral Benga (1935)\, which portrays Parisian cabaret dancer François “Feral” Benga; Julius (c.1940)\, a portrait of Julius Perkins\, Jr.\, a child actor and musician active in Harlem; Stevedore (1937) a heroic representation of the working everyman; Black Madonna (1961)\, an iconographic interpretation of the Holy Mother as a Black woman; and The Negro Looks Ahead (1944)\, a symbolic rendition of Black fortitude. \nThough Barthé was never open about his sexuality\, his frequent portrayals of the male nude were recognized as expressions of homoerotic desire by his friends and peers in the art and literary world. During his years in New York (1929–1948)\, Barthé became a key figure in an elite milieu of creatives and intellectuals who discretely incorporated gay themes into their work\, including poets Claude McKay\, Langston Hughes\, and Countee Cullen\, cabaret performer Jimmie Daniels\, playwright Harold Jackman\, and photographer Carl Van Vechten. Barthé formed particularly important friendships with the poet Richard Bruce Nugent and Harlem Renaissance philosopher Alain Locke\, the latter of whom considered Barthé’s sculpture a consummate embodiment of the New Negro Movement’s mandate to uplift the collective consciousness of Black America. \nBoth Locke and Nugent are important figures in Isaac Julien’s filmography. His breakthrough film Looking for Langston (1989) is a lyrical montage of real and imagined sequences exploring the lives and work of Harlem’s gay cultural luminaries of the 1920s and their descendants in the 1980s; the film features excerpts from Nugent’s short story “Smoke\, Lilies\, and Jade” (1926) as well as archival footage of Locke and Barthé. Once Again . . . (Statues Never Die) is\, in many ways\, a sequel to Looking for Langston\, taking up many of the same themes and subjects. Structured around a conversation between Locke and Albert C. Barnes\, an important collector of African sculpture and founder of the Barnes Foundation\, the film poetically weaves a thematic exploration of Black queer desire into its timely meditation on the collection and display of African material culture in European and American institutions. Locke and Barthé’s relationship is a primary touchpoint in the film’s arc\, and Barthé’s sculptures figure prominently in the film. \nA New Day Is Coming will feature several casts from editions Barthé produced in the 1940s through the 1960s\, as well as standout examples of his unique painted plaster sculptures dating from 1935 through 1966. The exhibition will also include several editions cast in the final decade of Barthé’s life drawn from the collection of art historian\, curator\, artist\, and Barthé scholar Samella Lewis (1923–2022)\, who was close friends with the sculptor. In 1985–86\, Dr. Lewis assisted Barthé in casting new editions of many of his most accomplished sculptures—a project funded by another important friend and patron\, the actor James Garner. Reproductions of archival photographs commemorating highlights of Barthé’s life and career will be installed throughout the gallery\, providing a historical backdrop to the presentation. These photos will complement two large-scale Inkjet prints by Julien capturing a moment in Once Again… Statues Never Die in which the film’s characters contemplate Barthé’s Black Madonna (1961). \nRichmond Barthé: A New Day Is Coming is mounted in conversation with multiple recent and ongoing museum exhibitions. In 2022\, the Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia opened Isaac Julien: Once Again . . . (Statues Never Die)\, an immersive\, five-screen installation by Julien commissioned by the Foundation on the occasion of their centennial. Installed among the screens were three of the Barthé sculptures featured in the film\, eight works of African art from the Foundation’s collection\, and a selection of works by contemporary sculptor Matthew Angelo Harrison. In 2023\, the Tate Britain opened the traveling career retrospective Isaac Julien: What Freedom is to me\, which featured seven of the artist’s major film installations\, including Once Again . . . (Statues Never Die); the exhibition is currently on view at its final venue\, the Bonnefanten Museum in Maastricht\, The Netherlands\, through August 17\, 2024. \nOnce Again . . . (Statues Never Die) is also featured in the 2024 Whitney Biennial\, Even Better Than the Real Thing\, open through August 11\, 2024. Among the Barthé sculptures augmenting this iteration of the work is a cast of Barthé’s Stevedore (1937) on loan from Michael Rosenfeld Gallery. The installation also features two Barthé sculptures owned by the Whitney\, African Dancer (1933)—which was included in the museum’s First Biennial Exhibition of Contemporary American Sculpture\, Watercolors\, and Prints in 1933—and The Blackberry Woman (1932). Notably\, when the museum acquired The Blackberry Woman in 1932\, Barthé became the first Black artist to enter their collection. Finally\, two of Barthé’s most renowned sculptures\, The Boxer (1942) and Feral Benga (1935–36)\, are currently on view in The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s much-anticipated historical survey The Harlem Renaissance and Transatlantic Modernism\, open through July 28\, 2024. \nRichmond Barthé: A New Day Is Coming is Michael Rosenfeld Gallery’s first solo exhibition on the artist\, who has been an important presence in the gallery’s program for nearly thirty-five years.
URL:https://artinamericaguide.com/event/richmond-barthe-a-new-day-is-coming-curated-with-isaac-julien/
LOCATION:Michael Rosenfeld Gallery\, 100 11th Ave\, New York\, NY\, New York\, United States
CATEGORIES:Exhibition
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DTEND;VALUE=DATE:20240324
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SUMMARY:The Art of Assemblage
DESCRIPTION:“The assembler is especially akin to the modern poet…in using elements which (unlike ‘pure’ colors\, lines\, planes\, or musical tones) retain marks of their previous form and history. Like words\, they are associationally alive.”[1] \n—William C. Seitz \nMichael Rosenfeld Gallery is pleased to announce The Art of Assemblage\, a group exhibition organized in homage to The Museum of Modern Art’s groundbreaking 1961 exhibition of the same name curated by William C. Seitz. Presenting a selection of works that mirror and expound upon Seitz’s medium-defining exhibition\, the gallery’s iteration of The Art of Assemblage demonstrates the incisiveness and prescience of his thesis. Featured artists include Mary Bauermeister\, Lee Bontecou\, Bruce Conner\, Joseph Cornell\, Arthur Dove\, Melvin Edwards\, Claire Falkenstein\, Ilse Getz\, Nancy Grossman\, Edward Kienholz\, Yayoi Kusama\, Conrad Marca-Relli\, Louise Nevelson\, Alfonso Ossorio\, Betye Saar\, Lucas Samaras\, Richard Stankiewicz\, Lenore Tawney\, Laurence Vail\, and Vaclav Vytlacil. The Art of Assemblage is on view concurrently with the solo exhibition Hannelore Baron. \nIn Seitz’s lengthy catalogue essay chronicling the evolution of modern assemblage practices\, the curator identifies Kurt Schwitters’ Dadaist “collages\, objects\, environments\, and activities” as an inciting development in the medium’s history\, explaining that his works embody “an impatience with the line that separated art from life”[2] that is characteristic of assemblage’s leading practitioners. Seitz emphasizes the importance of the inter- and postwar impulse to create art from the materials of daily life using English critic Lawrence Alloway’s essay on “junk art”—published in the same year that The Art of Assemblage opened—which situates the assemblage aesthetic within the context of modern commodity culture: \n“Junk culture is city art. Its source is obsolescence\, the throwaway material of cities\, as it collects in drawers\, cupboards\, attics\, dustbins\, gutters\, waste lots\, and city dumps. Objects have a history: first they are brand new goods; then they are possessions\, accessible to few\, subjected\, often\, to intimate and repeated use\, then\, as waste\, they are scarred by use but available again. …Assemblages of such material come at the spectator as bits of life\, bits of the environment. The urban environment is present…as the source of objects\, whether transfigured or left alone.”[3] \nSeveral works in Michael Rosenfeld Gallery’s exhibition constitute prime examples of the “junk art” aesthetic pioneered by the postwar avant-gardes on both coasts. Works such as Bruce Conner’s Buffalo Bag (1959) and Edward Kienholz’s America My Hometown (1963) arrange symbolically loaded detritus into sculptures that evoke themes of a decaying empire. Also dating to 1963 is Lee Bontecou’s wall-mounted sculpture of welded and painted steel\, soot\, and velvet; baring her signature bandsaw “teeth” through a barred window\, Untitled reflects the prevailing anxieties of the Cold War era as well as the feelings of containment and despair inspired by her Wooster Street studio’s proximity to the Women’s House of Detention. Abstracted anatomical references likewise structure Nancy Grossman’s My Terrible Stomach (1964/2015)\, an agglomeration of castoff materials originally created for her 1964 exhibition at Krasner Gallery. After the show closed\, the work—then titled Black Knight—was kept in an unsafe location and many of its parts were torn off by vandals. Grossman revisited the sculpture in 2015\, adding several new parts\, endowing the work with “a cornucopia of mementos for an insatiable appetite\,” as she put it\, and retitling it after a 1961 poem by artist Walasse Ting. \nRichard Stankiewicz’s Double Booger for a Little John (1961) is an exceptional example of his double-faced “head” sculptures composed of found and welded metal objects. Stankiewicz worked in an improvisational\, process-based method\, experimenting with various arrangements according to the forms of his materials in a process mirroring that of Melvin Edwards\, whose freestanding Monochromo (1964) embeds a single\, shining piece of chrome in an otherwise rust-brown metal composition\, establishing a play on the word of the title. \nNotably\, The Art of Assemblage includes one of the artworks featured by Seitz in MoMA’s exhibition\, Laurence Vail’s Out of My Window (c.1945). Active in the Parisian intellectual circles of the 1920s\, Vail was associated with Marcel Duchamp and Man Ray\, and married to Peggy Guggenheim. Out of My Window is exemplary of Vail’s rococo and often humorous aesthetic\, infusing the accretive process of assemblage with a Surrealist bent. The exhibition also features an influential American counterpart to the European Surrealists\, Joseph Cornell\, who was an important presence in Seitz’s exhibition. Cornell’s iconic Taglioni’s Jewel Casket (1941) is a counterpart to the 1940 version of the same title in MoMA’s collection that was also included in The Art of Assemblage. An homage to the Romantic era ballerina Marie Taglioni\, Taglioni’s Jewel Casket is perhaps best described by Kynaston McShine (another important MoMA curator)\, who understood Cornell’s boxes as “journeys into an enchanted universe that also has the reality of this world.”[4] Similarly\, the gallery’s exhibition features Arthur Dove’s George Gershwin-“Rhapsody in Blue\,” Part I (1927)\, a work closely related to Dove’s Portrait of Alfred Stieglitz (1925)\, also in MoMA’s collection and included in the 1961 Art of Assemblage. A dynamic homage to Gershwin’s masterpiece\, Dove’s painting assemblage embodies the composer’s description of his iconic jazz composition as “as a sort of musical kaleidoscope of America—of our vast melting pot\, of our unduplicated national pep\, of our blues\, our metropolitan madness.”[5] \nDemonstrating the impact Cornell’s box assemblages had on the generations of American artists that followed him is Lucas Samaras’ Box #63 (1967). Resembling a devotional container in the vein of the medieval European reliquaries he studied as a student of art history\, Samaras’ Box #63 is animated by the psychedelic palette of the 1960s\, comprising an elaborately adorned box containing an enigmatic assortment of objects including animal bones\, a fork\, and a glass orb. Alfonso Ossorio’s Helix (1968) was executed in the following year with a similarly overwhelming admixture of brightly colored components. The work is an outstanding example of his “Congregations”—the term he preferred visionary body of assemblages\, which he understood as a multiplicity of unique entities coming together to form a spiritually charged whole. \nThough the focus of The Art of Assemblage is the middle decades of the twentieth century\, a small selection of works from the 1970s and 1980s offers a glimpse into the evolution of the medium as it was adopted and reinvented by artists from a widening variety of backgrounds and circles. Lenore Tawney’s Thesaurum (1970) places an ostrich egg atop a wooden gear fragment and a stack of found papers; enshrined in a box lined with vertically inserted feathers\, Tawney’s assemblage invokes a host of associations pertaining to the cycle of life and death and the soul’s transitive journey within it. Conversely\, Louise Nevelson’s Untitled (c.1973) is a towering\, densely packed assortment of found wood objects all painted in the artist’s signature matte black. Providing a relief-like quality to her architecturally enclosed constructions\, Nevelson’s uniform\, monochromatic treatment of each individual part frees them of their histories as utilitarian objects\, allowing their incorporation into a new\, unified object. \nFinally\, an important assemblage by Betye Saar\, Red Table (1983)\, takes an altar-like format\, alluding to the ancestral rituals she was exploring at the time. The work exists as both a freestanding sculpture and a component of a few of Saar’s larger installations\, manifesting the thematic undercurrent of her works from this period articulated by Jane H. Carpenter in a statement that mirrors Seitz’s own observation about the earliest Dada assemblagists: “for Saar\,” Carpenter writes\, “understanding blackness as an ancestral relationship to Africa was not just suggested through a set of visual signs: it became an artistic process that wedded art to life.”[6] \nThe Art of Assemblage features works by gallery artists Mary Bauermeister\, Claire Falkenstein\, Nancy Grossman\, and Alfonso Ossorio\, as well as works by artists for whom the gallery has mounted solo exhibitions\, namely Betye Saar and Lenore Tawney. \n[1] William C. Seitz\, The Art of Assemblage\, exh. cat. (New York: The Museum of Modern Art\, 1961) p.17 \n[2] Seitz\, The Art of Assemblage\, 87 \n[3] Lawrence Alloway\, “Junk culture\,” Architectural Design 31 no. 3 (March 1961) 122 \n[4] K.L. McShine in William Seitz\, The Art of Assemblage (New York: The Museum of Modern Art\, 1961)\, p.68 \n[5] George Gershwin\, quoted in I. Goldberg\, George Gershwin: A Study in American Music (New York: Ungar\, 1961)\, 139. \n[6] Jane Carpenter\, Betye Saar: The David C. Driskell Series of African American Art: Volume II (Petaluma\, CA: Pomegranate Communications\, Inc.\, 2003)\, 30
URL:https://artinamericaguide.com/event/the-art-of-assemblage/
LOCATION:Michael Rosenfeld Gallery\, 100 11th Ave\, New York\, NY\, New York\, United States
CATEGORIES:Exhibition
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SUMMARY:Hannelore Baron
DESCRIPTION:Michael Rosenfeld Gallery is pleased to present Hannelore Baron\, a solo exhibition of collages\, box assemblages\, and monoprints dating from 1970 to 1986. Focusing on the artist’s singular visual language of signs\, symbols\, and ciphers\, Hannelore Baron will provide an in-depth look at her personal iconography and material sensibility. A dedicated display featuring a selection of the unique cutouts the artist used to make the monoprints integral to her compositional approach will provide a special insight into her technical processes. Presenting thirty-eight collages\, fifteen box assemblages\, and three monoprints\, Hannelore Baron will be accompanied by a fully illustrated exhibition catalogue publishing new scholarship by art historian\, professor\, and curator Anne Koval. \nEvocative of the textual remnants of an ancient\, lost language\, urban graffiti\, or children’s drawings\, Baron’s poetic vocabulary of formal motifs and inscriptions imbue her collages and assemblages with a sense of enigma. As Ingrid Schaffner\, curator of Baron’s 2002 retrospective organized by the Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service (SITES)\, observed\, “Each of her intimately scaled works appears vast\, filled with the quiet energy and visionary power of medieval manuscript illuminations. Indeed\, Baron’s art might be considered a form of illumination for modern times\, aptly rendered in the language of abstraction.”[1] Many of Baron’s repeated symbols—such as stars\, flowers\, birds\, windows\, and bound figures—resemble a form of pictographic writing\, a quality that is complicated by her frequent application of linework that possesses the qualities of script but denies any attempt to decipher it. This ambiguity\, she explained\, was intentional: “The writing that covers much of the surface is deliberately illegible because it represents all the words that have been written to tell the unimaginable and explain the unexplainable.”[2] \nComposed of weathered and worn found materials\, Baron’s box assemblages may be understood as personal shrines or theaters of emotion\, serving\, as critic Lyle Rexer wrote “as reliquaries for this secret language\, surrounding it with the dark tones of the personal history she sought to play down.”[3] The earliest boxes date to 1968\, when she began making assemblages from discarded wood\, driftwood\, and wire while working as a volunteer teacher at the Yonkers Jewish Community Center\, which provided her access to woodworking tools. Produced alongside her collages\, the boxes soon came to reflect the refinement of her formal strategies and compositional acumen\, arraying a wide range of materials\, including her own collages and monoprints\, within a variety of box formats. Often reflecting her concerns with secrecy\, privacy\, and containment\, Baron’s boxes constitute receptacles of the “fragments and splinters of civilization\, remnants that testify to significance for memory and the creativity of that which is left behind\,”[4] as critic Fredric Koeppel writes. \nThe cryptic language that imbues the surfaces of Baron’s boxes with “meanings never fully disclosed\,” as Lyle Rexer put it\, likewise illuminates the carefully arranged elements of her collage works. Baron’s collages often incorporate fragments of threadbare fabric\, which invite the viewer to consider the subtle textural variations that lend each composition a sense of tactility and intimacy. “The materials I use in the box constructions and cloth collages are gathered with great care\,” Baron explained in a 1981 interview. “The reason I use old cloth…is that the new materials lack the sentiment of the old and seem too dry in an emotional sense.”[5] Most of the works on view in Hannelore Baron combine collage with delicate ink linework and expressive monoprint processes. Elements resembling doors and windows often suggest the presence of miniature rooms or chambers populated by her careful arrangement of symbolic motifs. Meticulously layered to bring out certain qualities of her materials and foreground the mystic formal language that unites them\, Baron’s collages\, as Koval writes\, “read like ancient palimpsests\,”—the term for a manuscript wherein writing has been erased to make room for a new passage\, but still retains traces of the original text. “Palimpsest texts are often made unreadable with the most recent writing obscuring its precursor\, to further embed narratives from the past\,”[6] Koval observes. \nIn addition to an exemplary selection of collages and box assemblages\, Hannelore Baron will offer a special insight into one of Baron’s technical processes with three vitrines dedicated to the metal and paper cutouts the artist used to print many of the enigmatic symbols found in each body of work. The origins of this unique approach date to the mid-1970s\, when Baron read an article in National Geographic describing an archaeological dig that unearthed “very thin pieces of copper in the shapes of people… they were eroded and broken up into parts.”[7] This inspired her to develop her own printing process: after cutting a desired shape from paper or a thin sheet of copper\, which she sometimes wrapped with string or cloth\, Baron would ink the cutout and then create a print with a handpress that she kept in the basement of her home in the Bronx. After the prints were finished\, she would incorporate them into her collages and assemblages with glue and an iron. Over the course of her career\, Baron created nearly ninety cutouts that she used repeatedly in a variety of configurations. Typically taking the form of humanoid and avian figures bound by ropes\, these printed forms often elicit themes of imprisonment and restraint. The avian imagery that began to appear in Baron’s work starting in the early 1980s was also brought about by a piece of reportage: after a major oil spill off the coast of Brittany\, images of struggling\, oil-covered birds proliferated throughout the media\, becoming a devastating emblem of environmental crisis as well as\, for Baron\, “the small and defenseless that will be crushed in the rush toward ever greater material comfort and deadlier wars.”[8] \nThe compassion\, fear\, anger\, and meditative contemplation embodied in Baron’s work often hints at the anxieties she carried with her throughout her life as a result of the traumas she endured as a Jewish child in Nazi Germany; however\, she was often reluctant to discuss these experiences\, as she felt this would limit interpretations of her artwork. Replete with nuanced material juxtapositions that augment her complex symbolic language\, Baron’s works constitute “an art of concealment and protection\,” as she put it\, and an extended study of their component parts reveals the thoroughly cosmopolitan range of influences that continually informed her practice. Fascinated by Tantric art\, illuminated pages of the Koran\, Coptic textiles\, Persian miniatures\, botanical prints\, Native American burial garments\, Asian philosophies\, abstract expressionism\, the early drawings of Joseph Beuys\, and more\, Baron nurtured a keen understanding of these far-flung interests through a voracious reading habit and frequent visits to New York City’s museums. \nThe works on view in Hannelore Baron represent the most productive period of her career. A largely self-taught artist who began making work in the 1950s\, Baron’s foray into collage and assemblage occurred in the late 1960s. Baron lived a quiet life as a homemaker\, carving out a space for her art practice within her daily routine and executing the vast majority of her works at her kitchen table in the solitude of night. By the late 1970s\, she had attracted critical acclaim and gallery representation\, and her work began to make its way into public collections. Emblematic of the thematic continuity of Baron’s oeuvre\, nearly all of her works are untitled\, emphasizing her preoccupation with an illegible language that\, despite its unreadability\, elicits its own meaning and mood. Ultimately\, Baron’s work communicates\, as Anne Koval writes\, “in a private visual language that spoke beyond the ordinary\, to reach those who would pause\, look\, and listen.”[9] \nMichael Rosenfeld Gallery has been exhibiting the work of Hannelore Baron (1926–1987) since its founding. The gallery became the exclusive representative of the Baron estate in 2016\, mounting Hannelore Baron: Collages in 2021. \n[1] Ingrid Schaffner\, Hannelore Baron: Works from 1969 to 1987\, exh. cat. (Washington\, DC: Smithsonian Institution Travelling Exhibition Service\, 2001) p. 1. \n[2] Hannelore Baron\, undated Artist’s Statement\, Gallery Schlesinger. \n[3] Lyle Rexer\, “In a Small and Dark Art\, A World of Grief\,” The New York Times\, January 19\, 2003 (section 2\, 38) \n[4] Fredric Koeppel\, “Hannelore Baron: Fragments Shored Against Ruins\,” Hannelore Baron: Fragments Shored Against Ruins\, exh. cat. (Memphis\, TN: Art Museum of the University of Memphis\, 2002) p.8-9 \n[5] Hannelore Baron in a 1981 interview with her son\, Mark Baron (Michael Rosenfeld Gallery Archive on behalf of Mark Baron) \n[6] Anne Koval\, “all the words that have been written\,” in Hannelore Baron\, exh. cat. (New York: Michael Rosenfeld Gallery\, 2024) (forthcoming). \n[7] Hannelore Baron\, undated typed Artist’s Statement\, Gallery Schlesinger Limited\, Estate of Hannelore Baron. \n[8] Hannelore Baron\, undated typed Artist’s Statement\, Gallery Schlesinger Limited\, Estate of Hannelore Baron \n[9] Anne Koval\, “all the words that have been written\,” in Hannelore Baron\, exh. cat. (New York: Michael Rosenfeld Gallery\, 2024) (forthcoming).
URL:https://artinamericaguide.com/event/hannelore-baron/
LOCATION:Michael Rosenfeld Gallery\, 100 11th Ave\, New York\, NY\, New York\, United States
CATEGORIES:Exhibition
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SUMMARY:Mary Bauermeister: Fuck the System
DESCRIPTION:Michael Rosenfeld Gallery is pleased to present Mary Bauermeister: Fuck the System\, a memorial exhibition organized in collaboration with the artist’s family. The first solo exhibition to open since her passing in March 2023\, Fuck the System surveys the diverse\, interdisciplinary oeuvre Bauermeister executed across seven decades. \nTaking its title from an assemblage executed at a key turning point in Bauermeister’s career\, Fuck the System features works from each of her major series\, including examples of rarely exhibited pastels\, light boxes\, and easel sculptures. A child of totalitarian Germany who rejected the Constructivist mandates of the country’s postwar schools of art and design\, Bauermeister’s art and worldview were explicitly anti-tradition from the beginning of her career. The artist’s fascination with paradox and its potential to reveal fissures in the foundations of entrenched conventions is apparent throughout her work\, which both embodies and challenges contradictory binaries\, often vacillating between uncontrolled apostrophe and methodical structure\, Zen-like serenity and impassioned rage\, introversion and extroversion. This fluid approach to thinking about art manifests in a variety of ways; many of her works deal with the nature of optical and ideological perception while approaching the trappings of established hegemonies and contemporary trends with equal skepticism. \nFuck the System will constitute the first public exhibition of Bauermeister’s earliest mature body of work\, a series of abstract\, psychedelic pastels dating to the 1950s. These expressive compositions reveal the magnitude of Bauermeister’s limitless imagination\, which would soon nurture the environment where the first Fluxus happenings took place between 1960 and 1961 in her Cologne studio. The avant-garde that gathered there included John Cage\, Christo\, Merce Cunningham\, Nam June Paik\, David Tudor\, and others who would go on to form a vanguard scene of musicians\, dancers\, and performance artists who thrived in New York throughout the 1960s\, a milieu now known as Neo-Dada. \nThough a majority of the works Bauermeister produced between 1957 and 1962 are material in nature—in contrast to Neo-Dada’s emphasis on ephemeral\, time-based art—they nevertheless reflect a philosophy advanced by Cage and carried on by his disciples\, in which any perceptible boundaries between art\, nature\, and lived experience are rejected in favor of a holistic creative enterprise wherein all three arise and interact within the same realm. Fuck the System will feature two standout examples of Bauermeister’s honeycomb pictures\, in which casein or a synthetic paste is layered atop a support and impressed with rhythmic motifs\, recalling the tessellations of its namesake\, pockmarks on the surface of the moon\, and droplets of rain breaking the surface of a pool of water. Other works from this period include “dot pictures” which\, at first glance\, appear to be splatter paintings in the vein of gestural tachisme\, but closer consideration reveals countless deliberately placed circles of pigment that variously condense and disperse across the canvas\, often resembling views of deep space or microbes drifting about a solution on a microscope slide. As curator Kristen Skrobanek has observed\, these works indicate infinite expansion into micro- and macrocosmic realms\,[1] a line of thinking that would spawn several of Bauermeister’s most critically acclaimed and widely exhibited series\, such as her plastic straw pictures\, lens boxes\, and stone assemblages\, all of which carry on the themes of aggregation\, sequential progression\, and a deliberate confusion between manmade and natural materials\, found and fabricated objects. \nBauermeister’s artistic innovations in these years led to her first museum exhibition in 1962\, organized by legendary museum director Willem Sandberg for the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam. The exhibition would be prodigious for Bauermeister\, as it brought about her conception of the lens boxes: “The night before the opening\,” Bauermeister remembered\, “I dreamt that each of my paintings was a walk-in space. I essentially walked into my paintings\, and so later I started to build boxes.”[2] Another momentous outcome of the Stedelijk exhibition was Bauermeister’s decision to move to New York\, which was inspired by her exposure to the work of Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns in an exhibition Sandberg curated concurrent with her own solo show; convinced that the city could offer her an environment of artistic freedom Germany could not\, Bauermeister began what would become a ten-year residence in New York in October 1962. She enjoyed nearly immediate success in New York\, obtaining representation by Gallery Bonino in 1963 and witnessing the acquisition of her works by the Museum of Modern Art\, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum\, and the Whitney Museum of American Art the following year. \nBauermeister’s productivity accelerated in the wake of these successes\, and she readily expanded her established series while initiating new ones\, such as the “Lichttücher\,” or\, “light sheets\,” wherein scraps of found linen are sewn into abstract geometric patterns or words\, after which the cloth is mounted to a lightbox. Indeed\, light is a central component in Bauermeister’s oeuvre both conceptually and in practice; she cultivated a nearly career-long interest in crystallography\, and her most widely exhibited series of works\, the lens boxes\, array magnifying lenses of various sizes and strengths within and outside of wooden boxes that usually frame a drawn or painted composition. As art historian Wilfried Dörstel has observed\, “Each of her works records\, as it were\, the passage of a moving\, changing systemic event\, whose beginning and end we don’t know – an infinite and intense moment\, and a passage also in the sense that immaterial matter passes through matter\, light through glass or lenses\, cosmic through terrestrial\, the invisible through the visible.”[3] In addition to implicating the continually fluctuating nature of human perception\, Bauermeister’s lens boxes exemplify the combination of image and object that characterizes much of her work\, yet they do so without affirming the obsolescence of two-dimensional art—rather\, they bring it into the third dimension\, and thus the contemporary world.[4] \nFuck the System highlights several major works from these series alongside examples of an under-exhibited body of work begun in the mid-1960s and carried on through the 1970s\, which expounds upon Bauermeister’s concerns with the literal and figural apparatuses of artistic production and display: her series of wooden easel sculptures. Working with a hired carpenter\, the artist produced a series of easels designed to refuse their functional capacity. In such works as Corner Easel (1969–70)\, Bauermeister renders a longstanding instrument of traditional painting as a useless object meant for contemplation. Some easels display mirrors and other objects replete with mimetic implications\, including Bauermeister’s own word drawings. Text figures prominently in Bauermeister’s work from the early 1960s onward\, and many of the words\, phrases\, and numerals in her drawings introduce a philosophical quandary\, pun\, or idiom that further stratifies its interpretive possibilities. “I like to write on works because it’s a way of relativizing them again\,” she explained. “I’m suspicious of any firm statements.”[5] \nIn keeping with her predilection for matrices of interrelated themes\, many of Bauermeister’s works are structured by a “motif chain\,”[6] wherein forms\, images\, and concepts are nested within each other in order to erase any pretense of circumscription. Untitled (Stone Labyrinth) (1965)\, for example\, bears offset prints of previous stone progression works placed among the real stones of the composition\, emphasizing the work’s interlaced meanings and integrated material conditions with the world at large. The stone works are perhaps the best examples of Bauermeister’s interest in mathematics; since childhood she was fascinated by the Fibonacci sequence and other mathematical principles that correspond to the processes of organic life\, and many of her serial works are structured by such axioms. \nWhile the selection of works on view in Fuck the System emphasizes Bauermeister’s works of the 1950s–1970s\, the longevity of the artist’s investigations into the ideas that originated early in her career will be evident in works from recent decades\, such as the stone progression Septett [Septet] (2014–19)\, the straw picture Untitled (Strohhalm spirale) [Untitled (Straw spiral)] (2015)\, and V.I.P. Family (1967–2017)\, a lens box the artist revisited over the course of fifty years. Though they engage the same concepts and materials as her earlier works\, the network of ideas they offer and their relationship with earlier works and social contexts remain in flux. As Bauermeister explained in a 2014 interview with Hans Ulrich Obrist\, “[As] an artist in a bourgeois society\, you have to be an anarchist\, and during turbulent times\, you have to structure things: our role changes.”[7] \nFuck the System (Dürer Madonna) (1972) is thus an apt eponym for the exhibition\, as the assemblage encapsulates Bauermeister’s attitude toward the art establishment\, the art historical tradition\, and her place within them. Created on the cusp of her return to Europe\, Fuck the System (Dürer Madonna) plays off the gesture of the Christ child in the Northern Renaissance master’s late fifteenth-century painting at the National Gallery in Washington\, DC. Bauermeister’s rendition of the Western art tradition’s most famous feminine person and deity—and the most eminent bearer of her own name—embodies her complex interactions with the art world and its discontents. Titled with a profanity that bears a bivalent meaning depending on its context (i.e.\, a crass term for a procreative act or an emphatic statement of objection)\, the assemblage comprises plaster spheres that appear to warp its painted image in the same way one of her lens boxes would; hanging from the spheres are paintbrushes inscribed with the titular phrase as well as another of the artist’s key maxims\, “yes – no – maybe\,” indicating the embrace of infinite interpretive possibilities. \nMichael Rosenfeld Gallery has represented Mary Bauermeister (1934–2023) since 2018. Fuck the System is the gallery’s second solo presentation of her work; in 2019\, the gallery mounted Mary Bauermeister: Live in Peace or Leave the Galaxy. \n[1] Kerstin Skrobanek\, “Stone Towers and Magnifying Glasses – Mary Bauermeister’s Years in New York\,” Mary Bauermeister: The New York Decade\, exh. cat. (Northampton\, MA: Smith College Museum of Art\, 2014) p. 40-41 \n[2] Mary Bauermeister in “Hans Ulrich Obrist in Conversation with Mary Bauermeister\, 22 December 2014\,” 1+1=3\, The Art Worlds of Mary Bauermeister\, exh. cat. (Kiel\, Germany: Kunsthalle zu Kiel\, 2022) p. 55 \n[3] Wilfried Dörstel\, “The Ten Thousand Beings Have Their Characteristic Structure\, But They Do Not Formulate It\,” in Mary Bauermeister: “all things involved in all other things\,” ibid\, 47-50 \n[4] Kerstin Skrobanek\, “Needless Needles and Infinite Layers – On Mary Bauermeister’s Work\,” in Mary Bauermeister: “all things involved in all other things\,” exh. cat. (Cologne: Galerie Schüppenhauer\, 2004) p. 31 \n[5] Mary Bauermeister in conversation with Hans Ulrich Obrist\, ibid\, 56 \n[6] Skrobanek\, The New York Decade\, ibid\, 39-40 \n[7] Mary Bauermeister in conversation with Hans Ulrich Obrist\, ibid\, 58
URL:https://artinamericaguide.com/event/mary-bauermeister-fuck-the-system/
LOCATION:Michael Rosenfeld Gallery\, 100 11th Ave\, New York\, NY\, New York\, United States
CATEGORIES:Exhibition
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DTSTART;VALUE=DATE:20230907
DTEND;VALUE=DATE:20231105
DTSTAMP:20260525T220750
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SUMMARY:Norman Lewis: Give Me Wings To Fly
DESCRIPTION:“[Norman Lewis’ works on paper] are visually unique\, intellectually demanding\, and extremely beautiful in the deliberateness of their hybridity and ambiguity. …The artist’s concern for his viewers\, as well as himself\, is profoundly embedded into the generosity by which Norman Lewis embraced\, demanded\, and believed in the power of art to alter the world intuitively and purposefully.”\n—Ruth Fine \nMichael Rosenfeld Gallery is pleased to present Norman Lewis: Give Me Wings To Fly\, the gallery’s sixth solo exhibition dedicated to the artist. A vital member of the first generation of abstract expressionists\, Norman Lewis (1909–1979) executed hundreds of works on paper throughout his career\, considering the medium to be of equal importance to his pursuits on canvas or board. Give Me Wings To Fly features sixty works dating from 1935 through 1978 that collectively trace the major developments of the artist’s visual language and reveal his immense range in subject\, technique\, and style. The exhibition will be accompanied by an online catalogue publishing new scholarship by art historian and Norman Lewis expert Ruth Fine. Now an independent curator\, Fine retired from her position as a curator at The National Gallery of Art in 2012\, after four decades at the museum. In 2015\, she curated the critically acclaimed traveling exhibition Procession: The Art of Norman Lewis\, organized for the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (PAFA). \nBorrowing its title from a 1954 ink drawing included in the exhibition\, Give Me Wings To Fly constitutes a succinct microcosm of Lewis’ body of works on paper\, highlighting standout compositions from each phase of the artist’s career. The staggering range of Lewis’ technical and stylistic experimentation is perhaps most evident in his paper oeuvre\, which ranges from elegantly spare explorations of calligraphic linework to densely atmospheric\, allover compositions executed in oil\, gouache\, and pastel. Lewis often used his works on paper as arenas for the exploration of new compositional processes and formal vocabularies\, rendering this expansive body of work a vital key to understanding his overarching artistic concerns. \nOrganized according to the major stylistic turns in Lewis’ career\, Give Me Wings To Fly attests to Lewis’ friend\, the sociologist Julian Euell’s observation that he was “a master at working in several idioms at the same time.” The earliest works on view are a rare group of representational pastels dating to 1935 that portray a selection of the traditional West and Central African artifacts Lewis admired in the Museum of Modern Art’s African Negro Art exhibition of the same year. These drawings are installed alongside vitrines displaying a selection of Lewis’ sketchbooks on loan from the artist’s archive\, allowing visitors to follow the evolution of his prevailing motifs from their nascent conception to their fully developed execution in the adjacent galleries. \nThe artist’s gift for simultaneously investigating multiple formal and conceptual concerns within a single period of his career—and sometimes\, within a single work—is demonstrated by a group of drawings representative of Lewis’ initial foray into abstraction. Disillusioned with the Social Realist mode that defined his early career and inspired by the European cubists and surrealists he had been studying\, Lewis executed a series of drawings inspired by architectural designs specific to his Harlem surrounds. Doors\, windows\, fire escapes\, stoops\, gates\, and other structures provided the formal basis for several compositions of varying levels of abstraction executed from 1945–46\, and the kernels of what would become Lewis’ visual vocabulary are apparent in these pivotal drawings. \nLargely self-educated\, Lewis was endlessly curious and maintained a large personal library of books on a wide variety of subjects ranging from Bauhaus architecture\, English and French literature\, Classical music\, East Asian calligraphy\, mystic ritual\, and more. Like many of his New York School peers\, jazz was also a constant source of inspiration for Lewis\, who frequented jazz clubs and maintained an expansive collection of records. His spiritual and intellectual engagement with blues\, bebop\, and free jazz is evident in his approach to abstract expressionism\, wherein specific themes are amplified\, expanded upon\, and embellished as a musician would riff on a melody—a tendency that lent itself to the immediacy inherent to the medium of drawing. \nThe transcendent results of the artist’s diverse interests and methodical explorations of abstraction’s evocative power are perhaps most observable in the exacting\, minimalist ink drawings from the late 1940s and 1950s on view. Lewis’ lyrical\, spare compositions of this period reveal his burgeoning interest in Chinese calligraphy\, which approximately coincided with his adoption into the Willard Gallery stable of artists in 1946. Known for its program of American abstractionists with an interest in the philosophies and aesthetics of East Asian cultural traditions\, Willard Gallery brought together such luminaries as Mark Tobey and Morris Graves\, whose travels to China and Japan deeply influenced their artistic sensibilities\, and Japanese émigré painter Genichiro Inokuma\, with whom Lewis developed a close friendship. \nAs the 1950s and 1960s progressed\, Lewis expounded on his major stylistic concerns\, resulting in a proliferation of works that deeply investigate or inventively combine his distinct abstract vocabularies. Give Me Wings to Fly highlights quintessential examples of Lewis’ energetic “little people” compositions\, wherein repeated linear motifs indicative of the figure are arranged in a variety of contexts. In his atmospheric compositions\, ethereal swathes of pigment are often applied to indicate dimensional space such as land\, city\, or seascapes\, conjuring images that simultaneously evoke cloud formations and a human torso\, or the rise and fall of ocean waves and mountain ridgelines. Similarly\, the artist’s stylized linework often indicates the presence of a figure\, glyph\, or audial event\, such as the frenetic syncopations of bebop and the branches of a barren tree. \nThough he resided in Manhattan all his life\, Lewis held a deep appreciation for the natural world\, maintaining a lush indoor garden of potted plants in his studio and keeping pet birds. Arboreal and botanical motifs recur throughout his oeuvre\, as do ornithological references often intended to be read as metaphors for sociopolitical struggle. Despite remaining dedicated to abstraction from the 1940s onward\, Lewis’ activism and political views are apparent in numerous works\, including the totem-themed line drawing Too Much Aspiration (c.1953)\, an untitled composition from 1968 centered on a semi-abstract linework indicative of a line of hands grappling in a game of tug-of-war\, and an atmospheric work from 1974 featuring a sequence of ascending rectilinear edges executed in a palette of red\, black\, and green—the colors of the Pan-African flag. \nIn the years 1929 to 1932\, Lewis worked as a merchant sailor for a line of commercial freighters\, and this experience sparked an enduring interest in nautical subjects. Thematic explorations of the sea extend across his entire career\, eventually culminating in his final series of compositions\, known as the Seachange works\, several examples of which are on view. The echoing\, ovoid motif centered in these works was inspired by the artist’s travels to Greece in the summer of 1973\, when Lewis and his wife Ouida visited the artist Jack Whitten at his summer residence in Crete. Lewis’ sketchbooks from this visit reveal a resurgent interest in themes referencing the ocean and\, specifically\, a desire to capture the movement and sound of seaside winds in a visual format. These works are also read by many art historians as a metaphor for Lewis’ newfound hopes for American society in the wake of the hard-won freedoms brought about by the civil rights activists and politicians who advocated for justice and racial equality in the preceding decades. \nNorman Lewis: Give Me Wings To Fly is Michael Rosenfeld Gallery’s third solo exhibition on the artist since taking on representation of the estate in 2014. The gallery has been a vocal champion of Lewis’ art for over thirty years: his work was regularly featured in the gallery’s celebrated African American Art: 20th Century Masterworks series (1993–2003)\, and the gallery has mounted five previous solo exhibitions dedicated to Lewis\,  two of which were also dedicated to his works on paper: Norman Lewis: Intuitive Markings\, Works on Paper\, 1945–1975 (1999); Norman Lewis: Abstract Expressionist Drawings\, 1945–1978 (2009); Norman Lewis: PULSE\, A Centennial Exhibition (2009); Norman Lewis: A Selection of Paintings and Drawings (2016); and Norman Lewis: Looking East (2019).
URL:https://artinamericaguide.com/event/norman-lewis-give-me-wings-to-fly/
LOCATION:Michael Rosenfeld Gallery\, 100 11th Ave\, New York\, NY\, New York\, United States
CATEGORIES:Exhibition
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DTSTART;VALUE=DATE:20230401
DTEND;VALUE=DATE:20230708
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SUMMARY:Bob Thompson: Agony & Ecstasy
DESCRIPTION:Thompson realized that vitality was the only answer to the mystery of being… The mystery of vitality beyond analysis is the central achievement of art because it has always proved that humanity is capable of creating living works that do not lose force when their maker meets the big darkness of death. […] Thompson was an artist of big and foreboding passion\, a man whose involvement with his era could be humorous but was never about trying to elevate himself above the human shortcomings and frailties inherent in life [1]\n—Stanley Crouch \n[In] a twisted sort of way I am doomed to be buried alive in cadmium orange\, red\, yellow light with flowers on my grave of magenta violet\, and my casket being the canvas for forcefully having to wrap\, walk and slide into it every day like the wan Prussian blue shore…[2]\n—Bob Thompson \nMichael Rosenfeld Gallery is pleased to announce Bob Thompson: Agony & Ecstasy\, a solo exhibition and career survey. Presenting major works from each year of the artist’s mature practice\, 1958–1966\, the exhibition demonstrates the extreme polarities of Thompson’s oeuvre\, in which a broad range of art historical references converge through his portrayal of subjects both deeply personal and heroically universal. In addition to over fifteen paintings and a selection of works on paper\, Bob Thompson: Agony & Ecstasy includes a special installation of archival photographs and sketchbooks\, offering an in-depth look at Thompson’s artistic process. \nIn a tragically brief life\, Bob Thompson (1937–1966) created a complex body of work structured by his own symbolic lexicon\, fauvist palettes\, and compositional devices drawn from the European Old Master tradition. As inspired by the improvisational riffs of jazz as he was by the formal devices of Fra Angelico\, Poussin\, and Tintoretto\, Thompson’s viscerally executed paintings conjure a psychedelic allegory of his own experience. During the years he lived in New York\, the artist was deeply immersed in the avant-garde scene of Manhattan’s Lower East Side\, participating in Fluxus happenings\, befriending poets Allen Ginsberg and LeRoi Jones (Amiri Baraka)\, and frequenting legendary jazz clubs\, especially the Five Spot and Slugs’ Saloon. \nTitled after Irving Stone’s 1961 biographical novel of Michelangelo Buonarotti\, Bob Thompson: Agony & Ecstasy demonstrates the impassioned fervor with which Thompson pursued his vision in defiance of prevailing social limitations; where the Renaissance sculptor saw an angel in a slab of marble and carved until he set him free\, Thompson saw himself in the canon of Western painting and revised\, collaged\, and electrified its components until the spark of life manifested on his canvas. Put in modern terms\, Thompson was a quintessential Beat[3]\, as Thelma Golden submits in her text for the artist’s 1998 retrospective at the Whitney Museum of American Art\, especially as it was defined by Lisa Philips’ exhibition on the movement mounted at the museum three years earlier\, which included Thompson’s 1965 portrait of Ginsberg: \nThe search for alternative consciousness\, the mystical side of the Beats\, goes hand in hand with their gritty realism and rebellion. These two sides—the ecstatic and the horrific\, the beatific and the beaten\, define the poles of the Beat experience.[4] \nBy turns volcanically hot and fluorescently cool\, the kaleidoscopic palettes of Thompson’s paintings embody the hallucinatory ethos of his moment while the formal schema drawn from the historical masterworks he obsessively studied ground his subjects in familiar narratives of tragedy\, adoration\, and rebellion. Often set in a pastoral countryside or dense woodlands\, Thompson’s scenes are populated by Madonnas and saints\, monstrous birds\, anthropomorphic donkeys\, shadowy men in fedoras\, and more. “Thompson’s distortion of natural form and his transgressions of category\, such as human and animal\,” writes curator Slade Stumbo\, “destabilize notions of the real and evoke a sense of a dream state which is furthered by the fantastic setting that is absent of any reference to any actual place. Thompson’s overarching theme in this work becomes the movement between realms\, metamorphosis.”[5] \nHighlights of Bob Thompson: Agony & Ecstasy include five large-scale paintings dating to a landmark year in the artist’s practice\, 1963\, which exemplify his radical approach and constitute a culmination of his travels in Europe from the spring of 1961 to the fall of 1963—his first journey to the continent. Dramatic tableaux of enigmatic interactions and sparse\, set-like environs that focus attention on the figures of such works as Untitled (The Proofing of the Cross) and The Nativity revise the central action of their 15th-century referents to compose a scene that embodies the artist’s own desires and fears. Thompson’s extensive engagement with the works of Spanish Romanticist Francisco Goya reaches its pinnacle in The Struggle\, The Dentist\, and Tribute to An American Indian\, which appropriate select forms from Goya’s Los Caprichos (1799)\, a set of eighty prints composed as an allegory for the follies of Spanish society; executed during an inflection point in the Civil Rights Movement\, many of Thompson’s works suggest a parable of racial identity shaped by the blood-soaked history of his home nation. \nA child of the Jim Crow South and husband in an interracial marriage\, Thompson felt the sociopolitical upheavals of his moment with heightened intensity. Structured by his own deeply personal symbolic vocabulary\, Thompson’s rhapsodic compositions offer dramatic narratives centered on the extreme emotional states of his lived experience. Encapsulating the overarching trajectory of his career while providing a primer on his complex set of references and symbols\, Bob Thompson: Agony & Ecstasy celebrates this unparalleled artist’s oeuvre while deepening our understanding of his life and art. “I paint many paintings that tell me slowly that I have something inside of me that is just bursting\, twisting\, sticking\, spilling over to get out\,” Thompson once wrote in a letter to his sister. “Out into souls & mouths & eyes that have never seen before. The Monsters are present now on my canvas as in my dreams.”[6] \nBob Thompson: Agony & Ecstasy will be accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue featuring new scholarship by Classicist Allannah Karas\, Assistant Professor at the University of Miami\, and Diana Tuite\, Visiting Senior Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at the University of Iowa’s Stanley Museum of Art. Tuite is the curator of the critically acclaimed retrospective Bob Thompson: This House Is Mine at the Colby College Museum of Art in Waterville\, Maine\, which recently concluded its nationwide tour at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles after stops at the Smart Museum in Chicago and the High Museum in Atlanta. \nBob Thompson: Agony & Ecstasy is Michael Rosenfeld Gallery’s sixth exhibition focused on Thompson and the first solo exhibition mounted since acquiring the estate in 2019. A concurrent exhibition featuring works from public and private collections\, Bob Thompson: So let us all be citizens\, will be on view at 52 Walker from April 20–July 8\, 2023. Michael Rosenfeld Gallery’s relationship with the work of Bob Thompson dates to 1996\, when the gallery took on representation of the estate and mounted Bob Thompson: Heroes\, Martyrs & Spectres. Three more solo exhibitions followed: Fantastic Visions (1999)\, Meteor in a Black Hat (2005)—which traveled to the Haggerty Museum of Art at Marquette University in Milwaukee—and Naked at the Edge. Following twenty-three years of representation\, Michael Rosenfeld Gallery acquired the Estate of Bob Thompson in 2019\, a tremendous procurement that included all remaining works in the family’s possession\, numerous artist sketchbooks and the artworks’ intellectual property rights. \n[1] Stanley Crouch\, “Still Ahead\,” Bob Thompson: Meteor in a Black Hat\, exh. cat. (New York: Michael Rosenfeld Gallery\, 2005) p. 6–7 \n2 Bob Thompson\, from a letter to his family quoted in Gylbert Coker\, The World of Bob Thompson\, exh. cat. (New York: The Studio Museum in Harlem\, 1978) p. 21 \n3 Thelma Golden\, Bob Thompson\, exh. cat. (New York: Whitney Museum of American Art\, 1998) p. 22 \n4 Lisa Philips\, “Beat Culture: America Revisioned” in Beat Culture and the New America\, 1950–1965\, exh. cat. (New York: Whitney Museum of American Art\, 1995) p. 33 \n5 Slade Stumbo\, “Seeking Bob Thompson: Chasing Seagulls\,” in Seeking Bob Thompson: Dialogue/Object\, exhibition catalogue (Louisville: Hite Art Institute\, University of Louisville\, 2012)\, 19–20. \n6 Bob Thompson\, from a letter to his sister quoted in Gylbert Coker\, The World of Bob Thompson\, exh. cat. (New York: The Studio Museum in Harlem\, 1978) p. 21–22
URL:https://artinamericaguide.com/event/bob-thompson-agony-ecstasy/
LOCATION:Michael Rosenfeld Gallery\, 100 11th Ave\, New York\, NY\, New York\, United States
CATEGORIES:Exhibition
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DTEND;VALUE=DATE:20230326
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SUMMARY:Harold Cousins: Forms of Empty Space
DESCRIPTION:Michael Rosenfeld Gallery is pleased to announce Harold Cousins: Forms of Empty Space\, the first solo exhibition of the artist’s work in the United States in fifteen years. Comprising thirty metal sculptures executed between 1951 and 1975 as well as a group of related works on paper\, the presentation is the gallery’s first exhibition dedicated to Harold Cousins (1916–1992) since taking on representation of the artist’s estate in 2020. Beginning with his first mature metal sculptures\, Harold Cousins: Forms of Empty Space charts the formation and evolution of Cousins’ major sculpture series\, including his forests\, drawings in space\, Gothic cathedrals\, and plaiton works.
URL:https://artinamericaguide.com/event/harold-cousins-forms-of-empty-space/
LOCATION:Michael Rosenfeld Gallery\, 100 11th Ave\, New York\, NY\, New York\, United States
CATEGORIES:Exhibition
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DTSTART;TZID=America/Halifax:20221119T100000
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SUMMARY:Postwar Abstract Painting: “Art is a language in itself”
DESCRIPTION:Postwar Abstract Painting: “Art is a language in itself” features a rich selection of works by some of the most eminent artists working in abstraction in the decades following World War II. This group exhibition explores the era’s remarkable proliferation of approaches to non-representational imagery. Exemplary paintings from a range of movements as diverse as the artists themselves comprise a vibrant survey of abstract art in the United States\, offering a scintillating visual conversation on the reciprocal histories of abstract art in the second half of the 20th century.  \nThe title of the exhibition is drawn from a statement by Norman Lewis (1909–1979) first published in 1950: “Art to me is the expression of unconscious experiences common to all men\, which have been strained through the artist’s own peculiar associations and use of his medium. In this sense\, it becomes an activity of discovery…not only for the artist but for those who view his work. Art is a language in itself\, embodying purely visual symbols which cannot properly be translated into words\, musical notes\, or\, in the case of painting\, three-dimensional objects…” \nFeatured artists include Charles Alston\, Norman Bluhm\, Ilya Bolotowsky\, James Brooks\, Giorgio Cavallon\, Jay DeFeo\, Beauford Delaney\, Burgoyne Diller\, Claire Falkenstein\, Perle Fine\, Fritz Glarner\, Michael Goldberg\, Hans Hofmann\, Norman Lewis\, Conrad Marca-Relli\, Robert Motherwell\, Alfonso Ossorio\, Richard Pousette-Dart\, Milton Resnick\, Theodoros Stamos\, Alma Thomas\, Jack Tworkov\, Esteban Vicente\, William T. Williams\, and Hale Woodruff.
URL:https://artinamericaguide.com/event/postwar-abstract-painting-art-is-a-language-in-itself/
LOCATION:Michael Rosenfeld Gallery\, 100 11th Ave\, New York\, NY\, New York\, United States
CATEGORIES:Exhibition
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DTSTART;VALUE=DATE:20220908
DTEND;VALUE=DATE:20221106
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SUMMARY:William T. Williams: Tension to the Edge
DESCRIPTION:Michael Rosenfeld Gallery proudly presents Tension to the Edge\, its third solo exhibition featuring the work of William T. Williams (b.1942). On view from September 8 through November 5\, 2022\, the exhibition will focus on the artist’s large-scale abstract paintings created between 1968 and 1970 as well as a related group of works on paper from the same period. Created during an era of significant social\, political\, and personal turmoil\, the works on view in William T. Williams: Tension to the Edge address the upheavals of their moment through Williams’ distinctive language of hard-edged abstraction. The centerpiece of the exhibition is a stunning selection of five wall-sized paintings\, four of which have not been seen since 1969; though they were painted nearly fifty years ago\, Williams’ singular treatment of form\, surface\, and color render these works as fresh and groundbreaking as they were at the time of their creation. \n“The paintings that I was doing in the late 1960s had a number of devices that I thought spoke to [the political climate of the time]\,” Williams states. “The paintings were contained. I never allowed forms to go off the edges—I wanted this sense of containment and suppression. …I’ve said from the very beginning that my work is autobiographical: it speaks to those experiences that I’ve had as a human being but also more specifically as a Black human being. The work has always been about that.”[1] The paintings featured in Tension to the Edge constitute the genesis of the “diamond-in-a-box” motif that would become a formal and thematic continuum in the artist’s oeuvre. Williams has referred to the diamond-in-a-box device as a “stabilizing force” that structures the chaos he sought to convey within these works—a reflection of the tumultuous conditions of the era. \nWhile their monumental scale and meticulously sharp lines situate Williams’ paintings in conversation with the ascendant minimalist painters of the decade\, the artist’s self-contained\, architectural approach to composition\, masterfully nuanced textures\, and complexly interlocking geometries set them apart from contemporaneous trends in nonobjective painting. Perhaps the most important difference between Williams and his minimalist contemporaries is Williams’ prevailing concern with conveying specific personal or spiritual qualities in his work. His paintings exist as a composite of collective or individual memories and auratic impressions; the artist cites church services and family outings to the Apollo theater in Harlem as experiences that shaped his early conceptions of “presence\,” that is\, a site where spiritual expression and the physical environment coalesce. The chaotic barrage of light and color that characterizes the environment of the Far Rockaway waterfront was also a primary source of inspiration for the chromatic relationships in these works\, evoking a kaleidoscopic impulse that dovetailed with his abiding interest in the Fauves. The bodily relationship between painting and viewer has likewise been an enduring concern in Williams’ art\, and the works in Tension to the Edge demonstrate his earliest mature efforts in creating paintings with a clear physical power\, embodying\, in his words\, “place as a specific type of poetry.” \nThe intentionally discordant\, complexly juxtaposed palettes of the paintings in Tension to the Edge testify to Williams’ status as the foremost colorist of his generation. The artist was especially interested in the potential for certain colors and chromatic contrasts to evoke a specific emotional response and deliberately avoided the harmonic arrangement of complementary hues\, boldly undermining the established principles of color theory. The artist often embraced conflicts between his paintings’ formal structure and their palette\, finding the resulting “dissonance” an apt metaphor for the sociopolitical conditions of the times. Eliding the eye’s transition from one color to another within each work are the cleanly demarcated lines of unpainted canvas—an effect produced by Williams’ assiduous use of tape\, which he applied to ensure the pigments lay alongside each other\, rather than blending at the edges. Thus\, whatever effects arise from his colors’ interaction is a phenomenon that occurs within the mind’s eye (rather than on the canvas itself). \nWorking out of his newly leased loft on Broadway and Bond Street—where he continues to work today—Williams sketched the composition of each work directly onto the canvas with a pencil and straightedge\, using the diamond form as a starting place. Williams allowed his intuition to guide the compositional process\, making no erasures or revisions to his layout before moving the canvas from the floor to the wall or a roller bridge for painting. The individual planar forms of each composition thus exist as iterative elements of the foundational diamond shape\, much like the rhythmic improvisations of a jazz musician riffing on a standard theme. Indeed\, jazz has remained a primary source of inspiration for Williams throughout his career\, and his studio was located just blocks from the city’s vanguard jazz clubs at the time. The paintings on view in Tension to the Edge further reflect important painterly influences that would shape the evolution of Williams’ style\, namely the hard-edge abstractions of Al Held (Williams’ graduate instructor at Yale)\, the minimalist paintings of Kenneth Noland (whose studio was one floor below Williams’)\, and the fauvist works of Henri Matisse. \nLeading a dynamic career of over fifty years\, Williams continues to expand a prolific oeuvre defined by methodical experimentation and an enduring dedication to the cultural aesthetics that have guided his life and work. Beginning with the earliest paintings created in his NoHo loft and concluding in the months before his first solo exhibition—mounted by Reese Palley Gallery in March 1971—the years in which the works in Tension to the Edge were created not only witnessed the arrival of Williams’ artistic maturity but also coincide with the period in which Smokehouse Associates\, the artist collective to which he belonged\, was active. Formed by Williams with Mel Edwards\, Billy Rose\, and Guy Ciarcia\, the group worked to revitalize a variety of public spaces in Harlem\, completing several outdoor abstract wall paintings and leading a much-needed cleanup effort. These undertakings naturally influenced Williams’ studio practice during these years and prompted his extended consideration of how changing an individual element of a picture can affect the whole: \n“The [Smokehouse paintings] had to do with two ideas that were in my head: the idea of physical environment\, and the notion of change within a physical environment—how one incident of change can produce a whole change in a community. One house gets fixed up. One lot gets cleaned up. And wanting that kind of social involvement\, wanting to do something. I didn’t want theories about it\, I wanted to physically do it. And I want other people to physically engage in doing it. …The whole idea of how this stuff can mushroom. That’s very much what I was coming out of. People that I knew\, that was the way that things happened. It’s a collective thing that makes change. \nBut what Smokehouse did was\, one\, finding another group of artists that had an interest in the notion of public art and doing things outside. But also\, it allowed the [idea of the] city as a museum or the city as a gallery. …And that was an engagement to have that discussion\, and have that discussion in an environment\, and specifically Harlem during the latter part of the 60s\, where there were more buildings that were being abandoned and more empty lots than I remember when I was growing up in Harlem. I think that this idea of [changing] one space\, and that change in that space changes the environment\, and changes people’s minds\, and makes them hyperaware of their environment. And if they can go past something you’ve done and have a moment of reflection\, just about self\, then that work of art or that experience is worthwhile.”[2] \nTension to the Edge will coincide with the much-anticipated release of Smokehouse Associates\, a history of the wall paintings completed by the collective\, which will be co-published by The Studio Museum in Harlem and Yale University Press. Edited by Studio Museum curator Eric Booker\, the book includes contributions by Booker\, James Trainor\, and Charles Davis II\, as well as a roundtable conversation with Ashley James and the artists. With previously unpublished images\, ephemera\, and a rich chronology\, Smokehouse Associates will serve as a sourcebook that expands the narrative of public art and social practice in the United States. \nTension to the Edge will also coincide with Michael Rosenfeld Gallery’s presentation at The Armory Show 2022 (September 9–11\,  Booth 317)\, the centerpiece of which will be one of Williams’ major diamond-in-a-box paintings from 1968. \n  \n[1] William T. Williams in conversation with Courtney J. Martin\, May 9\, 2017\, in William T. Williams: Things Unknown\, Paintings\, 1968–2017\, exhibition catalogue (New York: Michael Rosenfeld Gallery LLC\, 2017)\, 12. \n[2] Williams in an interview with halley k harrisburg\, July 1\, 2022
URL:https://artinamericaguide.com/event/william-t-williams-tension-to-the-edge/
LOCATION:Michael Rosenfeld Gallery\, 100 11th Ave\, New York\, NY\, New York\, United States
CATEGORIES:Exhibition
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SUMMARY:Summer At Its Best
DESCRIPTION:Michael Rosenfeld Gallery is pleased to present Summer At Its Best\, a group exhibition that celebrates the halcyon days\, sultry nights\, and scenic vistas of our most beloved season. On view from June 24 through August 5\, 2022\, Summer At Its Best traces nearly a century of American painting\, sculpture\, and works on paper\, providing visions of the season’s fleeting passions\, leisurely idylls\, and chromatic richness. The exhibition borrows its title from a 1968 painting by Alma Thomas included in the show that encapsulates the spirit of the presentation in both form and concept: arraying daubs of saturated\, warm colors in rhythmic sequences across the canvas\, Thomas masterfully captures the flitting light and vivid palette of summer’s landscape. \nSummer At Its Best offers an abundance of juxtapositions that reveal unexpected harmonies in the eclectic selection of works on view. Expressionistic gestures inspired by the rise and fall of the sea are the prevailing formal and thematic concerns of ceramicist Toshiko Takaezu’s Ocean’s Edge vessels from the early 1990s\, as well as Beauford Delaney’s fauvist portrayal of a day spent sailing off the coast of Maine (1951) and Norman Lewis’ masterful abstraction of the sea’s upheavals\, Seachange (1976). A standout example of Delaney’s swirling\, allover paintings of pure light is situated in conversation with a Joseph Cornell box of the late 1950s\, where an anthropomorphic sun excerpted from the compulsive collector’s library of printed matter beams down over a collage dedicated to the souvenirs of distant travelers. Other exhibition highlights include Heaven (1967) by Benny Andrews\, a psychedelic scene of an otherworldly paradise that anticipates the fantastical landscape of his monumental 1975 collage painting Utopia\, the sixth and final work in his landmark Bicentennial Series. Reginald Marsh’s depiction of Coney Island’s clamorous midsummer crowds presents a roiling\, baroque scene of urban leisure\, which is offset by more intimately-scaled seaside works by Milton Avery\, James Daugherty\, Dorothy Dehner\, Louis Elshemius\, Robert Gwathmey\, and Fairfield Porter. \nMasters of abstraction Sam Gilliam\, Jack Tworkov\, Michael Goldberg\, Mark Tobey\, and William T. Williams provide vision-encompassing canvasses of high-keyed color and exacting materiality\, while a “bush” bronze by Harry Bertoia (1915–1978) and a verdant\, hedge-sized Norman Bluhm (1921–1999) painting provide overtones of flourishing botanical life. Bask in the sunshine of solar-themed works by American Surrealists Boris Margo and David Hare (1917–1992)\, or contemplate the mathematically precise concretism of a major diptych by Alfred Jensen (1903–1981)\, Twin Children of The Sun #14 (1974). Emphasizing the profusion of life brought about by its titular season\, the exhibition is bookended with floral-themed works by Blanche Lazzell\, Charles Ethan Porter\, William Zorach\, and—in her singularly inventive way—Yayoi Kusama. \nFive artists included in Summer At Its Best are the subject of major institutional exhibitions open across the country this summer. Bob Thompson: This House Is Mine is on view at the High Museum of Art in Atlanta\, Georgia through September 11\, 2022\, and has received resounding critical acclaim at each of its previous venues. Originally curated by Diana Tuite for the Colby College Museum of Art in Waterville\, Maine\, the exhibition is accompanied by a comprehensive catalogue published in association with Yale University Press. \nOn view at The Glass House in New Canaan\, Connecticut through November 21\, 2022\, is a stunning group of paintings by Charles Ethan Porter as a primary component of the exhibition David Hartt: A Colored Garden. In conjunction to this exhibition\, Hartt has designed and planted a circular garden on the property’s south lawn\, populated by sequentially blooming flowers that correspond to the varieties represented in the nine Porter works hanging in the House’s Painting Gallery. \nMichael Rosenfeld Gallery’s successful exhibition Be Your Wonderful Self: The Portraits of Beauford Delaney\, which opened at the gallery in September 2021\, has traveled to the Ogden Museum of Southern art in New Orleans\, Louisiana\, where it will be on view through July 17\, 2022. An accompanying catalogue of the exhibition with a comprehensive chronology and new scholarship by Delaney scholar Mary Campbell is now available. \nCelebrating Sam Gilliam’s sixty-year career based in Washington\, DC\, the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden recently opened Sam Gilliam: Full Circle\, an exhibition of the eighty-eight-year-old artist’s most recent body of paintings; open through September 11\, 2022\, the new works are contextualized among select historical works demonstrating his recursive yet unfailingly innovative practice. \nFinally\, Art and Race Matters: The Career of Robert Colescott opens at the New Museum in New York\, New York Thursday\, June 30\, closing October 9\, 2022. Curated by Lowery Stokes Sims and Matthew Weseley for the Contemporary Arts Center in Cincinnati\, Ohio\, Art and Race Matters comprises over fifty Colescott paintings and works on paper representative of the breadth of the artist’s career\, in which “he combined appropriation with transgressive attitudes in a way that nobody else has done\,” Sims asserts. \nAfter a year of intensive looks at some of our most pioneering artists\, we are pleased to offer this respite dedicated to the joys and pastimes of the season. Summer At Its Best includes work by Benny Andrews (1930–2006)\, Milton Avery (1885–1965)\, Mary Bauermeister (b.1934)\, Harry Bertoia (1915–1978)\, Norman Bluhm (1921–1999)\, Robert Colescott (1925–2009)\, Joseph Cornell (1903–1972)\, James Daugherty (1887–1974)\, Elaine de Kooning (1918–1989)\, Willem de Kooning (1904–1997)\, Dorothy Dehner (1901–1994)\, Beauford Delaney (1901–1979)\, Thornton Dial (1928–2016)\, Louis Eilshemius (1864–1941)\, Claire Falkenstein (1908–1997)\, Jared French (1905–1987)\, Sam Gilliam (1933–2022)\, Michael Goldberg (1924–2007)\, Morris Graves (1910–2001)\, Robert Gwathmey (1903–1988)\, David Hare (1917–1992)\, Alfred Jensen (1903–1981)\, Lee Krasner (1908–1984)\, Yayoi Kusama (b.1929)\, Blanche Lazzell (1878–1956)\, Norman Lewis (1909–1979)\, Boris Margo (1902–1995)\, Reginald Marsh (1898–1954)\, Agnes Pelton (1881–1961)\, Charles Ethan Porter (1847–1974)\, Fairfield Porter (1907–1975)\, Esphyr Slobodkina (1908–2002)\, Toshiko Takaezu (1922–2011)\, Alma Thomas (1891–1978)\, Bob Thompson (1937–1966)\, Mark Tobey (1890–1976)\, Jack Tworkov (1900–1982)\, William T. Williams (b.1942)\, and William Zorach (1887–1966). \nMichael Rosenfeld Gallery is located at 100 Eleventh Avenue (at 19th Street)\, New York\, NY\, 10011. Gallery hours are Tuesday–Saturday\, 10AM–6PM and Monday–Friday\, 10AM–6PM during July and August. For additional information or images\, please contact Nicole Martin\, Communications Associate at 212 247 0082 or nm@michaelrosenfeld.com.
URL:https://artinamericaguide.com/event/summer-at-its-best/
LOCATION:Michael Rosenfeld Gallery\, 100 11th Ave\, New York\, NY\, New York\, United States
CATEGORIES:Exhibition
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SUMMARY:Nancy Grossman: My Body
DESCRIPTION:Reception for the Artist: Thursday\, April 28\, 2022 / 6-8PM* \nGrossman’s pieces come much closer to armor and prosthetic than to restraint and fetish…Nature gives us one face and we make ourselves another. Her horns\, harnesses\, zippers\, straps\, reins\, and skins mark us as beasts but not animals…Strapped in\, strapped on\, we confront the massive brutality of the world’s misrecognitions.[1]—Nayland Blake \nMichael Rosenfeld Gallery is pleased to present its fifth solo exhibition featuring the work of Nancy Grossman (b.1940)\, which focuses on the artist’s oeuvre-spanning engagement with the figure in sculpture\, collage\, printmaking\, painting\, and drawing. Encompassing over five decades of her career\, Nancy Grossman: My Body surveys the major developments in the artist’s treatment of the human form\, which she conceives of as an arena in which the intricately related themes of agency\, otherness\, vulnerability\, and identity play out in both collective and individual terms. \n“The body of work which I’ve produced in the last thirty years may simply revolve around my own body\,” Grossman wrote in 1991. “But then I may be\, for all intents and purposes\, a Heavenly body or the Wizard of Oz.”[2] Invoking the cosmic perspective in which her practice is grounded\, Grossman describes a guiding principle of her early and middle career in this poetic statement\, which conveys the immutable status the human form holds in her work. Using the body as a touchstone\, Nancy Grossman: My Body showcases an interdisciplinary selection of works representative of the artist’s figural practice. \nDemonstrating the longevity of the artist’s interest in the figure\, Grossman’s early oil and pastel works render the body as entangled masses of expressionistic brushstrokes radiating outward in a perpetual state of disintegration\, merging figure and ground in varying degrees of legibility. The artist created her earliest drawings of bound figures struggling against their tethers in these years as well\, anticipating the theme of bodily compromise that would undergird much of her output in the following decades. As art historian Arlene Raven observes: “[Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818)] is a tale of awakening female sexuality with feminist and humanist underpinnings…As well\, it is an early—although hidden—narrative about the ‘female as other.’ The novel on which so many macabre films are based is also one of the most poignant descriptions of (self) creating monstrosity. Monstrosity has been a designated trait of nondominant peoples throughout history and a culturally-enforced psychological self-image for unruly women.”[3] \nShelley’s monster is indeed a useful allegory for looking at Grossman’s work\, not only in terms of the social constructs she often addresses\, but also when considering her formal approach; collage has been a vital aspect of the artist’s practice since 1962. Accordingly\, My Body exhibits examples of Grossman’s series of dyed paper collages from the 1970s\, which depict men of herculean proportions in various positions of restraint. Grossman discovered that soaking paper cut-outs in water and dye\, letting them dry\, and repeating the process imbued the material with a weathered texture that resembles skin\, especially when organized in a schema reminiscent of human musculature. Held in place by suture-like lines of masking tape and streaked with stains resembling bruises and veins\, these collages render their subjects as powerfully brawny yet helpless amalgamations of flesh. \nWhile much of Grossman’s work deals with the strictures and inadequacies of gender constructs\, the artist comes at the subject obliquely\, using her own unique set of symbols and metaphors: “Whenever I wanted to say something specific\, personal…I would use a woman’s image\,” she explains. “But if I wanted to say something in general\, I would use a man. It’s as if man was our society. Yet I don’t feel I have to conform to a political identification although\, naturally\, I’m a feminist. But if we have to split hairs\, I’m a humanist.”[4] This approach allows for a layered reading of Grossman’s figural works\, permitting her subjects to be read variously as stand-ins for the viewer\, the artist herself\, or society as a whole. The figures in her work are often manifestations of an interior identity\, emotional state\, or collective ethos the artist seeks to express in bodily terms. In the case of her celebrated series of leather-covered heads begun in the late 1960s\, the artist considers these sculptures to be self-portraits\, as she conceived of them at a time in her life when she felt isolated and vulnerable. Constructed from a wooden base over which she often applies epoxy\, invented eyes\, teeth\, horns\, and other accoutrements\, these sculptures invoke the barriers the individual creates to protect themselves from society’s conflicts\, which\, in turn\, limits their capacity for self-expression. \nFollowing the successful reception of her head sculptures\, Grossman began a body of work centered on similarly leather-clad heads with guns strapped onto their faces\, establishing a potent new format for expressing the violence humans inflict on one another\, not only with literal weapons but with words or their gaze. Initially conceived in 1973\, Grossman thought the motif an apt allegory for a 1976 lithograph commissioned in commemoration of America’s Bicentennial\, and she continued to create variations on the theme throughout the 1980s and 1990s. Nancy Grossman: My Body includes several examples of the artist’s “gunhead” works. Rounding out the exhibition\, a concise selection of Grossman’s dramatic multi-figure works from the 1980s situate subjects of both sexes in dreamlike settings. The figures in these works are neither masked nor restrained—quite the opposite\, in fact; taking theatrical postures of frustration\, aggression\, or repose\, the subjects of these tableaux convey either intense emotion or utter detachment\, establishing a complex relational dynamic between them. Masterfully capturing herself in form and feeling\, the portrait is a compelling testament to Grossman’s artistic philosophy. “In a way I [use] the figure to express some metaphor: That you are still confronted with the figure itself and the feeling in the pit of your stomach. A kind of kinetic recognition. Empathy\, if you will…And the feeling has to do with a sense of being human. My own sense\, naturally\, and the sense that I have of being a human being among other humans in the world.”[5] \nMichael Rosenfeld Gallery LLC is the exclusive representative of Nancy Grossman. \nMichael Rosenfeld Gallery will also present a solo exhibition of Nancy Grossman’s figural works at Frieze New York (May 18–22\, 2022\, Booth D10). \nThe gallery will host a Meet & Greet with the Artist Friday\, May 20 from 5–7PM. \n*Gallery attendance will be limited to 125 people at any one time. Masks are required and we appreciate your patience for entry. \n[1] Nayland Blake\, “Misrecognized” in Ian Berry\, ed.\, Nancy Grossman: Tough Life Diary\, exhibition catalogue (Saratoga Springs\, NY: The Frances Young Tang Museum and Art Gallery at Skidmore College; Munich: DelMonico Books\, 2012)\, 107. \n[2] Nancy Grossman\, artist statement\, June 28\, 1991\, published in Nancy Grossman: Loud Whispers\, Four Decades of Assemblage\, Collage and Sculpture\, exhibition catalogue (New York: Michael Rosenfeld Gallery\, 2001) 43. \n[3] Arlene Raven\, Nancy Grossman\, 106-08. \n[4] Grossman in an interview with Cindy Nesmer in Art Talk: Conversations with Twelve Women Artists (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons: 1975) reprinted in Nancy Grossman: Tough Life Diary\, 221.\n[5] Grossman in an interview with Dee Ito\, The School of Visual Arts Guide to Careers (New York: McGraw-Hill\, 1987)\, n.p.
URL:https://artinamericaguide.com/event/nancy-grossman-my-body/
LOCATION:Michael Rosenfeld Gallery\, 100 11th Ave\, New York\, NY\, New York\, United States
CATEGORIES:Exhibition
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SUMMARY:Manhatta: City of Ambition
DESCRIPTION:I was asking for something specific and perfect for my city\,\nWhereupon lo! upsprang the aboriginal name[1] \nNow I see what there is in a name\, a word\, liquid\, sane\, unruly\,\nmusical\, self-sufficient… \n—Walt Whitman\, from “Mannahatta”[2] \nFollowing the success of our exhibition at Art Basel Miami Beach 2021\, Michael Rosenfeld Gallery is pleased to present Manhatta: City of Ambition\, a group show featuring a broad selection of artists central to the gallery program\, open now at our gallery in Chelsea. Inspired by Paul Strand and Charles Sheeler’s avant-garde film Manhatta (1920–21) the artists featured here offer scintillating visions of urban life\, exalting the struggles and triumphs of a densely-populated metropolis rebuilding itself in the wake of global catastrophe. In addition to the diverse selection of paintings\, works on paper\, and sculptures in the exhibition\, we are screening Manhatta on a continuous loop in a dedicated alcove of the gallery. Manhatta: City of Ambition will be on view through March 26\, 2022. \nTo view the complete exhibition checklist\, click here. \nBrought together in commemoration of the film’s centennial\, the works on view in Manhatta: City of Ambition celebrate urban centers as loci of inspiration. A freestanding metalwork sculpture by Harry Bertoia (1915–1978) dating to 1956 evokes the modernist architectures of skyscrapers while demonstrating the formal possibilities of sheet metal—a material favored by many sculptures in the postwar decades for its abundance and versatility. Transcendentalist Painting Group leader Raymond Jonson’s (1891–1992) tributes to the grand architectural achievements of early 20th century Chicago\, City Lights (1933) and City Ultimate (1936)\, are on view alongside Howard Cook’s (1901–1980) iconic rendition of the Brooklyn Bridge\, The Bridge No. 1 (c.1951)\, an ode to the feat of modern engineering that connects the New York’s two most densely populated boroughs. Three works by Norman Lewis (1909–1979) dating to each decade of his mature career provide succinct insight into the evolution of the artist’s style; a lifelong resident of Harlem\, Lewis variously portrays the frenetic bustle and tranquil glow of midcentury New York through his signature calligraphic line and sublimely atmospheric abstraction. William T. Williams (b.1942) likewise pays homage to the historic neighborhood in his process-based abstract painting Time of Song (1993)\, an exemplary work from his 111 ½ Series\, named for the Harlem address where his family regularly gathered for many years. Charles Alston’s (1907–1977) landmark 1948 painting Harlem at Night combines the multi-perspectival structures of Cubist abstraction with the improvisational rhythms of jazz\, resulting in a vibrant\, serene nocturne punctuated by a constellation of glowing windows and streetlamps. \nThe modernist marvel of the electrified cityscape was an enduring theme throughout the art of the 20th century\, and this trope is represented by three works with live electrical components: Red Grooms’ (b. 1937) monumental\, elaborately painted sculptures Flatiron Building and Rockefeller Center\, both dating to 1995\, as well as Irene Rice Pereira’s (1907–1971) Glass Construction (c.1942)\, an amalgam of colored glass panes illuminated by a lightbox. In Savoy Dancers (1931)\, Reginald Marsh’s (1898–1954) sinewy figures animatedly dance in Harlem’s famous dance hall—one of the few racially integrated social clubs in the city at the time—as the crowded scene around them recalls the drama and bacchanalia of the Baroque frescoes the artist cited as primary sources of inspiration. George Tooker’s (1920–2011) ecstatic vision of urban fantasy set in Washington Square Park\, Fountain (1949–50)\, is a masterful multi-figure composition from the artist’s early career\, including an intensely psychological set of symbols and a radiant palette executed in his signature egg tempera medium. Beauford Delaney (1901–1979) likewise portrays an idyllic scene of Lower Manhattan in an exemplary work from his Greene Street period in Untitled (Greene Street)\, 1950\, where the block on which he lived and worked for 24 years is expressionistically rendered in the artist’s signature\, fauvist-inflected palette. \nBenny Andrews’ (1930–2006) large relief painting\, 6 Floor Walkup (1974)\, palpably conveys the emotional and psychological ethos of residential life on the Lower East Side—then a working-class neighborhood—where\, per city regulations\, six stories was the tallest a building could be without installing an elevator. An early painting by Claire Falkenstein (1908–1997)\, Counterpoint (1941)\, exemplifies the artist’s early experiments in organic abstraction\, in contrast to Charmion von Wiegand’s (1896–1983) Gouache #162 Prismatic Lattice: Tragic Square (1962)\, which arrays a set of variously colored squares according to a complex numbering system the artist developed using various ancient divination texts of the Far East. The neoplastic grid of the Prismatic Lattice works reflects the influence of von Wiegand’s friend and mentor\, the De Stijl pioneer Piet Mondrian\, whose enduring impact is likewise observable in Romare Bearden’s (1911–1988) highly geometric\, primary hued rendition of a Pittsburgh street scene\, Spring Way (c.1968). \nIn Edmund Lewandowski’s (1914–1998) Industry (1942)\, workers toil in a factory scene set in the artist’s native city of Milwaukee; Lewandowski sought to elevate the sleek\, complex forms of modern industrial machinery as well as the workers who operated them\, who he considered to be exemplars of American progress. Ralston Crawford (1906–1978) addresses similar themes related to economy and labor in his clean-lined composition Unloading the Cargo; dating to the same year as Industry\, Crawford’s painting emphasizes simplified geometric forms to the point of near-abstraction\, successfully describing a scene of dockside industry in midcentury New Orleans. A group of intimately-scaled collages by Joseph Stella (1877–1946) dating to the interwar years take up similar themes of human-machine labor and its humanistic implications; referred to as his “Macchina naturale” works\, the collages comprise found scraps of printed matter arranged to evoke the modernist dichotomy between man and machine\, industry and nature. While Stella’s Macchina naturale works are connected to his activities in New York’s Dadaist circles\, the artist also belonged to a movement known as the Precisionist School of painters\, whose members favored highly controlled\, sleekly finished compositions depicting regional American subjects; other artists who were active in the Precisionist scene included Crawford\, Lewandowski\, and\, most prominently\, Manhatta co-auteur Charles Sheeler. \nStrand and Sheeler’s Manhatta is considered by most film historians to be the first avant-garde film produced in America. Unlike its Dadaist counterparts in Europe\, which are steeped in the political despair of the continent’s interwar years\, Manhatta constitutes a “Whitmanian [celebration] of the common\,” writes experimental film historian Juan A. Suárez\, which “conceived the modern material world as a hieroglyph of spiritual principles—‘art\,’ democracy\, ‘Americanness.’”[3] Guided by intertitles bearing excerpts of Walt Whitman poems\, the 11-minute film comprises a series of non-narrative\, documentary vignettes structured to suggest the progression of a single day\, opening and closing with shots of New York Harbor at dawn and sunset\, respectively. Strand and Sheeler shot the film at various locations across five square blocks of Lower Manhattan\, capturing the spectacle of the island’s waterways\, architectures\, and inhabitants over several months of 1920–21. Using rhythmic montage and extreme camera angles to convey the surging pulse of the city’s throng and the vertiginous perspectives of its skyscrapers\, the filmmakers effectively convey the themes of Whitman’s verse while incorporating influences from contemporaneous avant-garde painting movements\, including Cubism and the Ashcan School. Both Strand and Sheeler were protégés of Alfred Stieglitz\, and many of Manhatta’s sixty-five static shots resemble the sharp focus and richly varied tonal scale of a platinum print. Created in an era when the movie camera was still an expensive novelty—the 35mm French Debrie on which it was shot cost Strand $1600—Manhatta ultimately constitutes a moving portrait of the island. \nPremiering at the Rialto Theater off Times Square on July 24\, 1921\, Manhatta was highly influential to an entire generation of filmmakers in the United States and Europe\, spawning a new genre of experimental film known as the “City Symphony.” This category now includes some most important works of interwar cinema\, such as Walter Ruttmann’s Berlin: Symphony of a Great City (1927)\, Alberto Cavalcanti’s Nothing But Time (1929)\, Dziga Vertov’s Man with a Movie Camera (1929)\, and Jean Vigo’s On the Topic of Nice (1930). Manhatta was digitally restored in 2008\, as most extant copies were jittery\, scratched celluloid prints that had been overexposed due to years of screenings and poor storage practices. Thanks to the efforts of multiple institutions specializing in film preservation\, all 11\,223 frames of the digital copy on view at the gallery have been corrected to replicate the crystal-clear\, steadily shot film audiences saw in the 1920s. Enhanced by Whitman’s rhapsodic words\, Manhatta’s silvery impressions of the city’s achievements in architectural innovation\, industrial expansion\, and urban community perfectly reflect the thematic concerns of the other artworks on view. \nArtists on view in Manhatta: City of Ambition includeCharles Alston (1907-1977)\, Benny Andrews (1930-2006)\, Romare Bearden (1911-1988)\, Virginia Berresford (1904-1995)\, Harry Bertoia (1915-1978)\, Howard Cook (1901-1980)\, Ralston Crawford (1906-1978)\, Beauford Delaney (1901-1979)\, Joseph Delaney (1904-1991)\, Burgoyne Diller (1906-1965)\, Aaron Douglas (1899-1979)\, Claire Falkenstein (1908-1997)\, Fritz Glarner (1899-1972)\, Sidney Gordin (1918-1996)\, Red Grooms (b.1937)\, George Grosz (1893-1959)\, Hananiah Harari (1912-2000)\, Raymond Jonson (1891-1982)\, Jacob Lawrence (1917-2000)\, Edmund Lewandowski (1914-1998)\, Norman Lewis (1909-1979)\, Reginald Marsh (1898-1954)\, Irene Rice Pereira (1907-1971)\, Joseph Stella (1877-1946)\, Mark Tobey (1890-1976)\, Abraham Joel Tobias (1913-1996)\, George Tooker (1920-2011)\, Charmion von Wiegand (1896-1983)\, Abraham Walkowitz (1880-1965)\, Charles White (1918-1979) and William T. Williams (b.1942). \nTo learn more about the film Manhatta\, click here.\nTo learn more about the Manhatta restoration project\, click here. \n[1] Prior to colonization\, a loose association of Munsee-speaking peoples known as the Lenape populated much of the northeast coast of the present-day United States\, including lower New York state. The Munsee name for the 16-mile-long island formerly home to an essential grove of hickory trees is “manaháhtaan.” Though it was renamed twice in the 17th century\, first by the Dutch and then the English\, the Lenape’s name for the island\, slightly modified to “Manhattan\,” endured the colonialist razing\, even after the people to whom it belongs were driven from it. \n[2] Walt Whitman\, “Mannahatta\,” in Leaves of Grass (Boston: James R. Osgood and Company\, 1881–1882) p. 360. \n[3] Juan Antonio Suárez\, “City Space\, Technology\, Popular Culture: The Modernism of Paul Strand and Charles Sheeler’s Manhatta\,” Journal of American Studies\, Vol. 36\, Iss. 01 (April 2002) 96.
URL:https://artinamericaguide.com/event/manhatta-city-of-ambition/
LOCATION:Michael Rosenfeld Gallery\, 100 11th Ave\, New York\, NY\, New York\, United States
CATEGORIES:Exhibition
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DTSTART;VALUE=DATE:20210908
DTEND;VALUE=DATE:20211224
DTSTAMP:20260525T220750
CREATED:20210830T195545Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20211020T181900Z
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SUMMARY:Be Your Wonderful Self: The Portraits of Beauford Delaney
DESCRIPTION:“[Beauford] Delaney repeatedly turned to art to annihilate the boundaries of fixed identity in ways that were not simply aesthetic…but also spiritual. Such ecstatic annihilations ran between his purely abstract paintings and his portraits\, animating his figurative and non-figurative work alike.”[1] —Mary Campbell \n“[I] have worked terribly hard…and much has sundered and exploded\, but now it coalesces with lava-like smoke and fluid color\, sometimes a veritable flame\, other times subdued essences…yes\, I am again painting in my old feeling—tense\, difficult\, but compulsive\, and I love it.”[2] —Beauford Delaney\, 1964 \nMichael Rosenfeld Gallery is pleased to announce its third solo exhibition of paintings by Beauford Delaney (American\, 1901–1979)\, which will contextualize the artist’s highly personal portraiture practice in relation to his compelling body of non-objective abstractions. \nFeaturing 25 portraits and 7 abstract works\, Be Your Wonderful Self: The Portraits of Beauford Delaney explores the preeminent status portraiture held in the artist’s life and work\, following the trajectory of his career from his “Greene Street” period in New York through his ardent embrace of pure abstraction after his relocation to Paris in 1953. By exhibiting Delaney’s portraiture alongside his abstractions\, the exhibition seeks to reveal the common intention with which the artist approached both genres of painting\, which came to dominate his artistic output for the remainder of his working years. Be Your Wonderful Self will be accompanied by an expansive catalogue\, publishing new scholarship by Mary Campbell\, Associate Professor of Art History at the University of Tennessee\, Knoxville\, and an illustrated chronology featuring an extraordinary selection of previously unpublished archival photos and ephemera. A special section of the publication will be dedicated to statements from such historical and contemporary voices as James Baldwin\, Richard Long\, Julie Mehretu\, Georgia O’Keeffe and Amy Sherald\, who describe the indelible impact Delaney’s work had on their practices and the broader evolution of 20th century modernism. \nThe scope of Be Your Wonderful Self encompasses Delaney’s mature career\, beginning with his masterful early portrait of a young James Baldwin\, Dark Rapture (1941)\, and terminating with his penetrating 1972 depiction of Jean Genet. Though its acclaim is well-earned\, Delaney’s technical mastery often eclipses his singular ability to capture individual temperament in his portraits—a capacity often augmented by the artist’s sincere and unconditional engrossment in his sitters. His distinctive formal approach to portraiture melds abstraction and figuration in such a way that the physical description of the sitter is secondary to their psychological essence; by emphasizing specific characteristics of their form (often including clothing or expression) Delaney renders each subject as an iconographic manifestation of their interior self. His bold fauvist palette and meticulously textured surfaces\, which range from densely encrusted to ethereally sheer\, unifies subject and background in a way that overshadows their corporeal presence\, rendering each painting a new\, holistic embodiment of its subject. Delaney often worked from memory when painting portraits\, an approach that imbues his pictures with a particular subjectivity rooted in the artist’s emotional and psychic relationship with his subjects; far from a narcissistic impulse\, Delaney embraced this approach as a means to making the imperceptible connection between artist and subject visible through a combination of formal exaggeration or simplification expressed through a meticulous chromatic exactitude.   Delaney’s abstractions were likewise conceived in his studio without a physical referent present—usually with the walls and other works in the space covered by white bedsheets to enhance the effects of the natural light—and testify to the intense drive for aesthetic experimentation he felt unable to adequately express in his figural works. Considered by the artist to be individual expressions of ineffable emotional or cosmic profundities\, the abstract works often acted as a receptacle for the overflow of creative passion that overwhelmed the artist after settling in Paris. By exhibiting these parallel bodies of work in conversation with each other\, Be Your Wonderful Self seeks to reveal the conceptual crux that unifies them\, namely the arresting treatment of tone and atmosphere inherent to the artist’s entire oeuvre. As critic and poet Jean Guichard-Meili wrote in a review of the artist’s 1964 exhibition at Galerie Lambert\, “Only a methodical and extended exercise of vision will permit [the abstract paintings] to be sensed and savored amid and beneath the network of color tones…the movements of internal convection\, the vibrations of underlying design. The portraits do not differ from the other works…Background\, clothing\, hands\, face are the pretext for autonomous harmonies.”[3] \nBiographically\, Delaney was as affable as he was generous\, often living in poverty due to his charitable nature. The artist’s good friend Henry Miller once summarized Delaney’s benevolent disposition: “He has made many\, many friends throughout his career\, and he never ceases to make new ones. He is not just a friend he is the friend\, the one who gives his all. Poor though he has been\, he has never given the impression of being miserable. He has always given to more than he received—that is to say\, himself.”[4] Delaney’s figurative paintings demonstrate his indiscriminate eye for subjects\, which variously depict family\, casually encountered acquaintances from all walks of life\, and friends from his wide circle of artists\, writers and other cultural luminaries. Though many in his social network were individuals of exceptional acclaim\, Delaney’s genuine warmth and interest extended to everyone he befriended regardless of social status\, including Larry Wallrich\, a Greenwich Village bookstore employee that became a lifelong friend\, and to whom the titular phrase of this exhibition was directed in a 1953 letter from the artist. \nAn abiding devotee of abstract expressionism\, Delaney felt compelled to pursue his interest in non-objective imagery in the mid-1950s\, after the artist’s relocation to Paris instilled in him a new sense of artistic freedom. Upon settling among the Parisian avant-garde scene of American expatriate artists that included Baldwin\, Bob Blackburn\, Harold Cousins and Sam Francis—the latter of whom\, along with Monet\, Delaney would credit as influential to his early abstractions—Delaney embraced this new mode of expression\, which became the prevailing approach to his practice in the years that followed. Though they bear no linear or formally descriptive elements\, Delaney’s abstractions contain the same level of meticulous individualism in composition\, palette\, and surface quality as his portraits\, manifesting a highly expressionistic handling of surface to elicit an energetic sense of movement and formal interplay. \nIndeed\, despite constituting such a drastic stylistic leap in comparison to his Greene Street period\, the abstractions’ place alongside Delaney’s portraiture in the timeline of his career reveals an ideological consistency in the artist’s conception of painting\, which he understood as an endeavor to embody light through paint with the same universal illumination with which it makes the world itself visible. “My work intensifies itself and some of the years of groping begin to take root in color and form\,” Delaney wrote to Miller in 1964. “The human situation invades and pours. I am humbly dedicated and try to find orchestration for this deluge…One tries to speak through the brush the tangible and intangible feelings. They permit the vast panorama of things before\, present\, and future.”[5] \nMichael Rosenfeld Gallery LLC is Special Advisor and Representative of the Estate of Beauford Delaney. \nMore information on Beauford Delaney (1901–1979). \nMichael Rosenfeld Gallery will also be presenting a solo exhibition of Beauford Delaney’s abstract works at Frieze Masters (Spotlight\, Booth H1\, October 13–17\, The Regent’s Park\, London). \nAll works © Estate of Beauford Delaney\, by permission of Derek L. Spratley\, Esquire\, Court Appointed Administrator \n[1] Mary Campbell\, “Beauford Delaney in Ecstasy\,” in Be Your Wonderful Self: The Portraits of Beauford Delaney\, exhibition catalogue (New York\, NY: Michael Rosenfeld\, 2021).\n[2] Beauford Delaney\, Letter to Henry Miller\, May 21\, 1964\, quoted in David Leeming\, Amazing Grace: A Life of Beauford Delaney (New York\, NY: Oxford University Press\, 1998)\, p. 162.\n[3] Jean Guichard-Meili\, trans. Richard A. Long\, Arts\, December 16–22\, 1964\, p. 27.\n[4] Henry Miller\, Letter to Darthea Speyer\, September 26\, 1972\, in Galerie Darthea Speyer Records\, Archives of American Art\, Smithsonian Institution\, Washington DC.\n[5] Beauford Delaney\, Letter to Henry Miller\, May 21\, 1964\, quoted in David Leeming\, Amazing Grace: A Life of Beauford Delaney (New York\, NY: Oxford University Press\, 1998)\, p. 163.
URL:https://artinamericaguide.com/event/be-your-wonderful-self-the-portraits-of-beauford-delaney/
LOCATION:Michael Rosenfeld Gallery\, 100 11th Ave\, New York\, NY\, New York\, United States
CATEGORIES:Exhibition
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DTSTART;VALUE=DATE:20210601
DTEND;VALUE=DATE:20210731
DTSTAMP:20260525T220750
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SUMMARY:Alternative Worlds: Mary Bauermeister\, Lee Bontecou\, Claire Falkenstein\, Yayoi Kusama & Alma Thomas
DESCRIPTION:“Each new day\, science provokes us to readjust and adapt to a new view of our environment. Penetration into the microcosmic and the macrocosmic reality unquestionably brings into being heroic generalizations which affect our lives to the minutest detail.” [1] —Claire Falkenstein \n  \nMichael Rosenfeld Gallery is pleased to present Alternative Worlds\, a group exhibition featuring five artists whose practices center repetitive mark-making\, a deep interest in the intricacies of the natural world\, and the poetic rhythm inherent to the act of artistic creation. Musing on our understanding of the earth\, its place in the universe\, and our own humanity\, Mary Bauermeister (b.1934)\, Lee Bontecou (b.1931)\, Claire Falkenstein (1908-1997)\, Yayoi Kusama (b.1929)\, and Alma Thomas (1891-1978) each cultivated bodies of work whose central themes and technical approaches mirror each other in unexpected ways. Though each artist forged their own unique artistic voice with largely disparate styles and materials\, common thematic undercurrents pervade: advancements in scientific understandings of the universe and biological life\, evolving social justice issues resulting from the major political developments of the time\, a preoccupation with the visual effects of repetition and formal rhythm\, and an insistence on interpretive subjectivism. Spanning the second half of the twentieth century through the present—beginning with a Kusama net drawing dating to 1953 and ending with a text-based Bauermeister work created in 2019—Alternative Worlds converges a multitude of perceptual possibilities at once aggregate and open-ended. \n“Worldscapes” is a term Lee Bontecou coined in the early 1960s to describe the variegated forms she perceived in the matte black swathes of soot that became an important compositional feature of her artworks. Though the term belongs to Bontecou\, it is an apt descriptor for all works on view in Alternative Worlds\, as each artist sought to convey a unique\, imagined field of vision formally or conceptually grounded in the stylistic language each developed throughout her career. While Bontecou is most known for her innovative abstract wall relief assemblages featuring a central void\, the selection on view emphasizes the artist’s career-spanning interest in environmentalism and social justice: a series of drawings featuring sharp-edged botanical subjects coalesce into scenes of ecological disaster and a group of works featuring horizontal stripes and bandsaw blades resembling gritted teeth evoke themes of imprisonment and despair (Bontecou’s Greenwich Village studio was a few blocks from a women’s prison). \nThemes of institutionalization and containment are likewise apparent in the works of Yayoi Kusama\, whose skeins of biomorphic forms simultaneously appear hemmed in and endless. Repetitive patterns of nets\, dots\, and cellular forms define the artist’s allover aesthetic\, an impulse she has harnessed as both an artistic practice and a therapeutic approach to alleviating symptoms of her atypical psychology. Kusama’s ongoing desire to convey an infinitesimally detailed yet vision-encompassing experience is manifested in the works on view in Alternative Worlds\, where the evolution of her obsessive patterning prompts the viewer to delve into the realm of the artist’s endless imagination. \nA similar engagement with nature is apparent in the work of Alma Thomas\, whose scintillating abstract paintings embody the artist’s appreciation for the interplay of botanical hues and organic patterns observable in the verdant flora of Washington\, D.C.\, where she lived for most of her adult life. In her iconic work from the 1960s\, rhythmic daubs of color arranged in vertical stripes are often set against a painted ground. These vibrant compositions consist of small strokes of paint\, applied like musical staccato notes to manifest an improvisational\, jazz-like rhythm. Thomas executed numerous paintings inspired by rays of sunshine illuminating and passing through leaves and blossoms. “Color is life\,” she once stated. “Light is the mother of color. Light reveals to us the spirit and living soul of the world through colors.” \nThe effects of light and its refraction were also a key source of inspiration for Mary Bauermeister\, whose lens boxes serve as receptacles for the artist’s thoughts and ideas. Dubbed “the mother of Fluxus\,” Bauermeister’s long and multidisciplinary career is united by an approach to art making that relies on the participation of the viewer and a predilection for found objects. Both her assemblage works and text-based drawings contain visual\, linguistic and philosophical paradoxes that require an active observation\, conjuring a space where the viewer is challenged to contemplate their perception of art and the world around them. \nThe cosmic relationship between inner and outer realms is also a prevailing concern in the works of Claire Falkenstein\, whose stylistic vocabulary recursively explores the formal qualities of positive and negative spaces. Primary among the works on view are examples of the artist’s Sun and Fusion series\, created in the middle decades of the 20th century\, which feature structures of interlacing\, calligraphic and curvilinear forms composed of welded metal and glass. The formal tropes of Falkenstein’s sculptures are reflected in a series of works on paper she referred to as her Moving Point drawings\, whose compositions extend the dynamic play of forms observable in her three-dimensional works; comprising single points of varying size and proximity\, each drawing was designed to evoke the impression of movement in space. \nThrough the careful composition of richly detailed visual fields\, Bauermeister\, Bontecou\, Falkenstein\, Kusama\, and Thomas construct artworks that are simultaneously holistic and integrated within the viewer’s own physical and visual space. Although these artists worked within distinct geographic and social scenes\, formal harmonies abound when viewing their work in direct juxtaposition. Yet more revelatory is the affinity of conceptual frameworks each engaged to describe the vision they wished to impart through their work. At a time when exponentially accelerating ecological change further amplifies the threat of environmental collapse\, advancements in space exploration render the colonization of new worlds ever more possible\, and the explosion of readily accessible digital spaces allow the previously imperceivable experiences of the disenfranchised to circulate in the public eye\, the works on view in Alternative Worlds provide space to observe\, dwell\, and imagine visionary realms both fraught and serene. \nTo learn more about Alternative Worlds and to view the exhibition checklist\, click here. \n\nMichael Rosenfeld Gallery\nEstablished in 1989 by Michael Rosenfeld\, the gallery opened its doors to promote the breadth of American art and those artists—known or unknown—that contributed to the establishment of surrealism\, social realism\, abstract expressionism\, figurative expressionism and geometric abstraction. Michael Rosenfeld Gallery is located at 100 Eleventh Avenue\, New York\, NY\, 10011. Gallery hours are Tuesday through Saturday\, 10AM–6PM. The gallery will be closed in observance of Independence Day from July 3 through July 5\, after which the gallery will be open Monday through Friday\, 10AM–6PM. \nPress Inquiries\nDan Munn\, Director of Communications\npress@michaelrosenfeld.com\, 212.247.0082 \n[1] Claire Falkenstein\, “Statement by the Artist\,” from Claire Falkenstein\, exhibition catalogue (Fresno: Fresno Arts Center\, 1969)\, n.p.
URL:https://artinamericaguide.com/event/alternative-worlds-mary-bauermeister-lee-bontecou-claire-falkenstein-yayoi-kusama-alma-thomas/
LOCATION:Michael Rosenfeld Gallery\, 100 11th Ave\, New York\, NY\, New York\, United States
CATEGORIES:Exhibition
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SUMMARY:Distinctive/Instinctive: Postwar Abstract Painting
DESCRIPTION:Featuring Charles Alston\, William Baziotes\, Norman Bluhm\, James Brooks\, Elaine de Kooning\, Jay DeFeo\, Beauford Delaney\, Claire Falkenstein\, Sam Gilliam\, Michael Goldberg\, Adolph Gottlieb\, Hans Hofmann\, Alfred Jensen\, Yayoi Kusama\, Alfred Leslie\, Norman Lewis\, Conrad Marca-Relli\, Joan Mitchell\, Alfonso Ossorio\, Richard Pousette-Dart\, Milton Resnick\, Alma Thomas\, Mark Tobey\, Jack Tworkov\, Charmion von Wiegand\, William T. Williams and Hale Woodruff. \nTo schedule your visit\, click here.
URL:https://artinamericaguide.com/event/distinctive-instinctive-postwar-abstract-painting/
LOCATION:Michael Rosenfeld Gallery\, 100 11th Ave\, New York\, NY\, New York\, United States
CATEGORIES:Exhibition
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DTSTART;VALUE=DATE:20210116
DTEND;VALUE=DATE:20210228
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SUMMARY:Hannelore Baron: Collages
DESCRIPTION:To download the online exhibition catalogue\, click here. \n“Everything I’ve done is a statement on the\, as they say\, human condition\, and so on.  The way other people marched to Washington\, or set themselves on fire\, or write protest letters\, or go to assassinate someone\, well I’ve had all the same feelings that these people have had about various things and my way out\, because of my inability to do anything else for various reasons\, has been to make the protest through my artwork hoping that it will reach the same ends.  And it probably will have the same effect which means nothing at all. \nBut it clears my conscience.  I feel that as long as I know all the things that have happened and are happening (which) I consider totally terrible\, I feel that if I keep silent I am part of this terribleness and if I make a statement I’ve done my share.  And that’s why I’m doing them.” [1] —Hannelore Baron\, 1981 \nMichael Rosenfeld Gallery is pleased to present Hannelore Baron: Collages\, a solo exhibition dedicated to the collage work of Hannelore Baron (1926-1987). This exhibition\, scheduled to be on view from January 16 to February 20\, features twenty intimate and meticulously-composed collages from the 1980s. In her collage work that masterfully combines experimental printmaking techniques with found materials\, Baron condensed a wide range of influences and an expansive concern for the human condition into intimately-scaled expressions of thought and feeling. She wrote of her work: “The thoughts and feelings that underlie the collages are those of concern with the social issues and problems of the century\, as well as the precariousness of existence at any time.” [2] \nInspired by ancient art\, texts and textiles\, religious iconography\, and the disciplines of anthropology and archeology\, among other influences\, Baron created an impressive and prolific body of work in collage. She was drawn to the medium\, using a wide range of materials\, because she enjoyed “the fact that there is the use of actual material that combines to form an image. It is not a painting showing torn cloth and paper\, but the very cloth and paper itself.” She used carefully gathered collage materials to create her deeply personal compositions\, drawn to the look and feel of used fabrics. She explained: “The reason I use old cloth…is that the new material lacks the sentiment of the old\, and seems too dry and hard in an emotional sense.” She further expressed that “the collages are spotted\, scribbled and torn\, and made of paper and frayed cloth pieces that become ever more worn and precious in a process of recycling where eventually they form a new and complete expression.” \nBaron felt that the deliberate use of found materials created a “spontaneous but preserved and cared-for work.” She also incorporated printmaking techniques\, including monotypes made with cut-out forms inspired by prehistoric art\, that appealed to her for their unpredictable results. Many of the collages feature embellishments of an almost archaic form of pictographic writing which Baron deliberately meant to be ambiguous: “it can represent all that was ever written or just be seen as scratches that mark the otherwise pristine surface of the paper to make it more acceptable to me.” As a commentary on the universal meaning of language\, Baron further explained of this element in the collages: “The writing that covers much of the surface is deliberately illegible because it represents all the words that have been written to tell the unimaginable and explain the unexplainable. The writing also commemorates all that has passed and not been noted\, though basically\, in my opinion\, none of it matters very much since all has remained more or less the same\, despite the many meaningful words scattered all about is.” \nHannelore Baron: Collages is accompanied by a fully-illustrated online catalogue\, featuring a 1981 interview conducted between Hannelore Baron and her son\, Mark Baron. This interview is one of several discussions the two had together that illuminate key components of Baron’s practice in collage and assemblage. Reflecting on this interview experience with his mother\, Mark Baron recently stated: “I recorded these interviews with my mother in 1981. Though casual as could be (with one recorded in my very noisy Volkswagen\, on the way to a flea-market)\, I believed recording her thoughts\, about her art and her life\, was important. Honesty and openness were her norm. I’m happy that\, after forty years\, this interview is being published for the first time.” \nAbout the Artist\nHannelore Baron (1926-1987) is celebrated for her intimate collages and assemblages that\, as Michael Brenson wrote in a 1989 New York Times review\, “suggest both the condition of entrapment and the possibility of release.”[3] The compassion\, anger\, dissent\, humor\, and silence that animate her work hint at her traumatic experiences as a child in Nazi Germany. However\, she was often reluctant to discuss this part of her life out of concern that it would limit interpretations of her artwork. Influenced by ancient religious texts\, Egyptian art\, Coptic textiles\, Persian miniatures\, botanical prints\, and archeological finds\, Baron was concerned about the human condition\, including her own — and she stated\, “I am a total contradiction.” [4] \nBaron was born Hannelore Alexander in 1926\, in the small German town of Dillingen\, not far from the French border. She experienced a childhood fractured by violence and displacement. In 1941\, the United States consulate granted the Alexander family an emigration quota number\, and they were able to make their way to New York. Shortly upon her arrival\, Baron enrolled in the Straubenmuller Textile High School in Manhattan. Although she did not study art formally after high school\, her acquaintance with John Heliker\, who taught painting at Columbia University\, enabled Baron to bring her artwork to him for regular critiques. In 1947\, she met bookseller Herman Baron; they married in 1950 and had two children\, Julie and Mark. \nIn the late 1950s\, Baron started to incorporate collage elements into her painting\, and her work was exhibited at various venues in New York. A member of the National Association of Women Artists\, she began making assemblages from found wood\, driftwood\, and wire in 1968\, when a volunteer teaching position at the Yonkers Jewish Community Center gave her access to woodworking tools. The following year\, she had a solo exhibition at Ulster County Community College in Stone Ridge\, New York\, and she became the director of the short-lived Tyndall Creek Gallery in Riverdale. She continued to explore new ways of combining media in the 1970s; Baron developed a sculptural technique for making monotypes by shaping copper into cut-out forms (i.e. heads\, figures\, birds) and then inking both sides to result in mirror image printing. She also employed a “transfer drawing” technique that was popularized in the 1920s by Paul Klee. In Baron’s hands\, “mixed-media” meant more than the convergence of a variety of materials and approaches in a given work. She had a singular capacity for drawing out the visual\, textural\, and conceptual continuities among her elements. In her work\, a family resemblance is visible among wood and paper\, paper and textile\, wood and cloth. \nBaron understood her art as a form of political expression\, and this aspect became more explicit in the 1970s with several series that incorporated motifs of torn flags\, war-time letters\, children’s games\, and anti-war protests. After several exhibitions at Kathryn Markel Gallery\, Gallery Schlesinger-Boisanté (New York) organized its first solo exhibition for Baron in 1981 and\, a year later\, arranged an exhibition of her work in her childhood town of Dillingen. The gallery would go on to represent and consistently exhibit her work throughout the decade. \nIn 1987\, Baron\, who had battled several types of cancer in her lifetime\, died at the age of 60. Her early experiences of terror and persecution had continued to torment her as an adult in the form of depression and claustrophobia\, but they also informed her concern for the disempowered\, her mistrust of nationalism\, and her fierce criticisms of war and environmental destruction. Translating her political beliefs into abstract forms\, Baron created “an art of concealment and protection\,” one that remains as poignant and necessary today as it was in the late twentieth century. \nCommercial solo exhibitions have been presented consistently since 1969 with her first major museum survey in 1989 at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. In 2002\, Hannelore Baron: Works from 1969 to 1987 traveled to eight national venues; curated by Ingrid Schaffner for SITES (Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Services)\, the exhibition was accompanied by a fully-illustrated catalogue. That same year\, the Art Museum at the University of Memphis presented Hannelore Baron: Fragments Shored Against Ruins. \nOver the decades\, Baron’s work has been contextualized in groundbreaking museum exhibitions including The Poetic Object (San Antonio Museum of Art\, San Antonio\, TX\, 1988); Deep Storage: Collecting\, Storing\, and Archiving Art (Haus der Kunst\, Munich\, Germany\, 1997); Six Centuries of Prints and Drawings (National Gallery of Art\, Washington\, DC\, 2004); The Keeper (New Museum\, New York\, NY\, 2016); The Warmth of Other Suns (The Phillips Collection\, Washington\, DC\, 2019; curated by Massimiliano Gioni and Natalie Bell and organized by the New Museum); and “Good Artists\,” curated by Jenny Holzer for Artistic License: Six Takes on the Guggenheim Collection (Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum\, New York\, NY\, 2019). In 2020\, she was featured in Women to the Fore at the Hudson River Museum (Yonkers\, NY) and Out of Place: A Feminist Look at the Collection at the Brooklyn Museum (Brooklyn\, NY). Baron’s work has also been included in a number of recent group exhibitions at Michael Rosenfeld Gallery\, including Collage: Made in America (2017)\, The Time Is N♀w (2017)\, Art of Defiance: Radical Materials (2019) and Paper Power (2020). Upcoming in February 2021\, Baron’s work will be on view in Portable Sculpture at the Henry Moore Institute in Leeds\, UK. \nBaron’s work is represented internationally in over thirty public collections that include the Albright-Knox Art Gallery (Buffalo\, NY); Art Institute of Chicago (IL); Brooklyn Museum (NY); Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum (New York\, NY); Israel Museum (Jerusalem); Los Angeles County Museum of Art (CA); The Museum of Modern Art (New York\, NY); Museum of Fine Arts\, Boston (MA); National Gallery of Art (Washington\, DC); San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (CA); Smithsonian American Art Museum (Washington\, DC); and Whitney Museum of American Art (New York\, NY). \nMichael Rosenfeld Gallery is the exclusive representative of the Estate of Hannelore Baron. \nMore information on Hannelore Baron (1926-1987). \nTo view the online exhibition catalogue\, click here. \nTo schedule an appointment to view the exhibition at the gallery\, click here. \n[1] Hannelore Baron\, interview with Mark Baron\, 1981\, transcript\, Estate of Hannelore Baron\, New York\, NY.\n[2] Hannelore Baron\, artist statement\, n.d.\, Estate of Hannelore Baron\, New York\, NY. All subsequent quotes by the artist are taken from this text\, unless otherwise indicated.\n[3] Michael Brenson\, “Pieced-Together History: Hannelore Baron’s Collage\,” The New York Times\, June 2\, 1989.\n[4] Baron\, interview.
URL:https://artinamericaguide.com/event/hannelore-baron-collages-january-16-february-20-2021/
LOCATION:Michael Rosenfeld Gallery\, 100 11th Ave\, New York\, NY\, New York\, United States
CATEGORIES:Exhibition
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DTSTART;VALUE=DATE:20201031
DTEND;VALUE=DATE:20201201
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SUMMARY:Facing Self: The Artist Revealed
DESCRIPTION:To view the online exhibition\, click here.“I felt that if the themes in my early paintings\, those very specific psychological concerns\, were as significant as I thought they were\, then I had a rationale for figurative painting. That was a time when a figure painter needed a justification for not doing Abstract Expressionism… Abstraction symbolized immediate experience for the Abstract Expressionists. It did just the opposite for me. Since I was so obsessed with myself\, so troubled by my relation to the world that seemed vague or even chaotic\, it was natural that so-called figurative style – a style that could give me an image of myself – would seem more immediate. An abstract style suggested a world more distant\, a world I wanted to reach. . . Say you draw a picture of your own face. It takes an enormous amount of abstract thinking to get your hand to do what you want it to do. And the result is a visual abstraction made from the tangible reality of your face. So there is a great deal of abstraction involved in that self-image. It’s the same with any image an artist makes. They are all abstraction from the self. They all reflect that artist’s sense of self. All art is figurative\, in a certain way. . . But every figure of the self is a disguise. Everything humans make is an attempt to make a mirror. The face in a painting is a mask. It covers a reality that is ultimately ungraspable. . . Despite this ideal of complete integrity\, of art absolutely at one with itself\, my earliest paintings show that I was satisfied only when I could see a kaleidoscope of possibilities. That’s why I could never keep abstraction out of my figurative work.”\n—Pat Steir\, quoted in Carter Ratcliff\, Pat Steir Paintings (New York\, NY: Harry N. Abrams\, Inc.\, 1986)\, 10. \nThe artist – as sole creator – determines how they will be seen\, viewed and remembered through self-portraiture. Consciously or not\, as Alfonso Ossorio declared\, “Every artist projects a philosophy in everything he does.” [1] By carving out their own sense of identity with a language and style uniquely their own\, they determine what that framework will be and how it will be used to communicate how they want to be seen\, viewed and remembered. Whether through abstraction – using light\, color\, texture and emphatic brushwork – or employing a more figurative\, representational mode – self-portrayal is a unique and singular expression that tells a complete story of the artist and their intentions. \nFully in control\, artists also determine the lens through which they will be seen – whether with critical introspection\, wit and humor or cool detachment. Artists choose their style\, palette\, setting\, emotional state\, pose and accoutrements to symbolic effect – ones that describe\, enhance or aggrandize their sense of self for themselves and for the world at large. The artist chooses what to reveal and what to leave\, instead\, to the imagination. They include objects or companions in order to express what is important to them as a record of time. Sometimes the moment represents a very finite time in a very specific place and thus\, we could watch the artist grow if we wanted to\, observing the toll of age over the years as life continued onward. Other times\, this moment of being is one that is projected or imagined\, one that transcends time and place – a version of the artist in a space that is not so readily recognizable and familiar. \n\nBy conveying their own vision of themselves\, artists affirm their sense of personhood as well as artisthood. The artist juggles a dual identity – of both person and artist – while also shaping how they are being viewed and remembered as they cement their legacy for themselves and others. Together with\, and in addition to\, this duality\, artists also use self-portraiture as a vehicle for self-exploration as a way to simultaneously distance or bridge self from “other” – real from artificial – thereby further compounding the notion of identity. In so doing\, they adapt and employ their form to take on different roles\, like an actor. Robert Arneson\, known for his many daring experiments in self-portraiture\, explained: “You’re modeling in the most traditional manner. So you use yourself\, but this self is not the inner self. You end up acting\, becoming someone else although you use your own features.”[2] Like Pat Steir\, he noted\, “I never did a self-portrait. I always use a self-portrait as a mask.”[3]Self-portraiture has evolved throughout art history thanks to the advent of photography and technological advancements. There are more ways of seeing\, reflecting and projecting back to ourselves and the viewer than just the mirror. Through cellular phones and the ubiquitous proliferation of selfies\, the camera has dramatically influenced where\, when and how we depict ourselves. During times of critical introspection – as an individual and as a collective whole – we all want to be seen and heard. In contemplative\, poignant and penetrating self- portraits Benny Andrews\, Robert Arneson\, Aaron Berkman\, Willem de Kooning\, Beauford Delaney\, Nancy Grossman\, Leon Kelly\, Franz Kline\, Boris Margo\, Alfonso Ossorio\, Theodore Roszak\, Raphael Soyer\, Pat Steir\, Louis Stone and Bob Thompson immortalize themselves. Their depictions remind us to look at ourselves\, to recognize who we are\, and to give us direction when the path ahead doesn’t always seem clear. Now\, more than ever\, our voice and our vision matters. \n[1] Alfonso Ossorio\, in Forrest Selvig\, “Oral history interview with Alfonso Ossorio\,” November 19\, 1968\, transcript\, Archives of American Art\, Smithsonian Institution\, http://www.aaa.si.edu/collections/ oralhistories/transcripts/ossori68.htm.\n[2] Robert Arneson\, quoted in Jonathan Fineberg\, A Troublesome Subject: The Art of Robert Arneson (Berkeley: University of California Press\, 2013)\, 13.\n[3] Arneson\, quoted in Fineberg\, 98.
URL:https://artinamericaguide.com/event/facing-self-the-artist-revealed/
LOCATION:Michael Rosenfeld Gallery\, 100 11th Ave\, New York\, NY\, New York\, United States
CATEGORIES:Virtual Events + Viewing Rooms
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DTSTART;VALUE=DATE:20200926
DTEND;VALUE=DATE:20210124
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SUMMARY:Benny Andrews: Portraits\, A Real Person Before the Eyes
DESCRIPTION:“I start out\, I make a mess… I have to throw myself off so I don’t copy what is right on top of my mind. Because if I just draw out or paint on something\, I’m just copying what’s in my mind. I’m trying to get deeper than that into my unconscious… I start out with a face and when I get a face that conveys a feeling to me of a real person\, and I mean in feeling—I don’t mean in realistic photographic likeness\, but I mean feeling. When I get some that looks like a real face then I’m on my way… A cardboard person\, no matter how real their surroundings are\, [is] still cardboard. So\, that’s what I’m trying for… some kind of strength. Whatever it is depends on whatever I’m trying to say—happiness\, love\, all those kinds of things. But if I get a real person before the eyes\, then I’m on my way.”[1] —Benny Andrews\, 1968 \nMichael Rosenfeld Gallery is pleased to present its third solo exhibition for Benny Andrews (American\, 1930–2006)\, showcasing portraits—a vital and constant genre throughout the artist’s oeuvre. Scheduled to open on Saturday\, September 26\, 2020\, Benny Andrews: Portraits\, A Real Person Before the Eyes will feature 35 portraits\, represented by paintings and works on paper created between 1957 and 1998. The exhibition will be accompanied by a fully-illustrated color catalogue with new scholarship by Jessica Bell Brown\, Associate Curator for Contemporary Art\, The Baltimore Museum of Art; Connie H. Choi\, Associate Curator\, Permanent Collection\, The Studio Museum in Harlem; and Kyle Williams\, Director of the Andrews-Humphrey Family Foundation. \nBenny Andrews: Portraits\, A Real Person Before the Eyes traces Andrews’ commitment to portraiture\, beginning in 1957 with Andrews’ seminal collage painting Janitors at Rest\, and including portraits of fellow artists Marcel Duchamp\, Ludvik Durchanek\, Norman Lewis\, Ray Johnson\, Alice Neel\, and Howardena Pindell\, and also of his father George C. Andrews\, and wife\, Nene Humphrey. While Andrews created portraits of people he knew\, as well as of himself\, portraiture also served as a vehicle through which he could metaphorically express the personification of ideas\, thoughts\, emotions and values. \nIn his deeply humanizing portraits\, Andrews employed his signature and pioneering use of paint and collage to build surface in order to create depictions composed of fleshy tactility\, extending his sitters into three-dimensional space as a way of reinforcing their human presence and defining their distinct characteristics\, since “collage provided him with a degree of depth and breadth not found in painterly realism.”[2] Indeed\, his discovery of collage and texture was a way to construct surface in order to affirm his interest in both the individual and shared experience of humanity. His powerful depictions of people—both named and unnamed—reinforce his deep connection to the emotional soul of mankind. \nSearching for a visual language to capture the immediacy of everyday life and the quotidian nature of his subject matter\, Andrews first developed his “rough collage” technique\, combining scraps of paper and cloth with oil paint on canvas\, as a student. He honed this technique in a breakthrough period during his studies at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago\, when\, in 1957\, he was struck by the school’s African American janitors and created the pivotal Janitors at Rest\, which first introduced collage into his painting. This critical component would inform the rest of his artistic career. The work—begun during his last year of school—became a turning point for him as he began to completely devote himself to painting. At the same time\, he began studying with the painter Boris Margo (1902-1995)\, “the instructor who had encouraged him to paint what he knew\, what he felt.”[3] Indeed\, Andrews was inspired by the janitors and their environment\, studying their faces and experimenting with their materials—like towels and toilet tissues. The artist wrote: \n“I placed the two little wads of tissues on a stool in front of my newly stretched canvas and sat back and started to think\, Who are these men? They are the school janitors to us\, Black and White\, but in their minds they were much more. Yet here I am trying to think of some way to express my feelings for them that transcends the superficial jobs that they are stuck with\, but how? I started fingering the two wads of paper and I thought\, ‘Why not paste it on my canvas with no prescribed idea of designs or even picture\, just paste it on at random. I know it is representative of an environment that they exist in\, so if I put that on my canvas\, and started playing around with ideas of them and so forth\, maybe I’ll come up with an idea that is not so commonplace.’ I did that and then I started painting their faces. I smeared paint. I kept turning the canvas around\, and I even went back to the men’s room a couple of times to talk with them that afternoon. I started working with collage that way\, and I have been using it ever since.”[4] \nIn her essay for the exhibition’s catalogue\, Jessica Bell Brown writes of Andrews’ remarkable portraits: “Taken together\, these works signal what it means to be at once the beholder and image-maker\, to open new portals for irreducible sensibilities unique to those being portrayed. Andrews’ empathetic brush has over the course of time straddled the line between inventiveness and observation\, and honed the ability to truly grapple with all the complexities of identity and self-making. In this contemporary moment of evident and renewed socio-political reckoning\, Andrews’ portraits are faithful models for holding space for the expansiveness of subjectivity and personhood in American art.”[5] \nIn 2009\, Michael Rosenfeld Gallery LLC became the representative of the Benny Andrews Estate and this exhibition has been organized with their cooperation. \nMore information on Benny Andrews (1930-2006). \n  \nIn light of the current public health crisis and to prioritize the well-being of our staff & visitors\, the gallery is currently open by appointment only. We ask all visitors to wear a mask when inside the gallery. \nTo schedule your visit\, click here.
URL:https://artinamericaguide.com/event/benny-andrews-portraits-a-real-person-before-the-eyes/
LOCATION:Michael Rosenfeld Gallery\, 100 11th Ave\, New York\, NY\, New York\, United States
CATEGORIES:Exhibition
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SUMMARY:Paper Power
DESCRIPTION:Cut\, Crumpled\, Drawn\, Torn\, Glued\, Layered\, Painted\, Folded\, Saturated\, Creased\, Stained\, Dyed\, Scratched\, Erased\, Scrubbed\, Printed\, Stamped\, Peeled… Exploring the Materiality of Paper
URL:https://artinamericaguide.com/event/paper-power/
LOCATION:Michael Rosenfeld Gallery\, 100 11th Ave\, New York\, NY\, New York\, United States
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SUMMARY:Globalism Pops BACK Into View: The Rise of Abstract Expressionism
DESCRIPTION:“Now that America is recognized as the center where art and artists of all the world must meet\, it is time for us to accept cultural values on a truly global plane.”[i]\n—Federation of Modern Painters and Sculptors\, New York\, 1940 \n“All genuine art forms utilize images that can be readily apprehended by anyone acquainted with the global language of art. That is why we use images that are directly communicable to all who accept art as the language of the spirit\, but which appear as private symbols to those who wish to be provided with information or commentary.”[ii]\n—Adolph Gottlieb\, 1943 \nMichael Rosenfeld Gallery is pleased to present Globalism Pops BACK Into View: The Rise of Abstract Expressionism. The exhibition\, scheduled to be on view from November 21\, 2019 to January 25\, 2020\, will feature a selection of paintings and sculpture by the modernist artists who converged in New York City in the early 1940s and embraced artistic and political globalism. Globalism Pops BACK Into View was inspired by a series of critical articles published in The New York Times in June 1943 that used the term “globalism” for the first time to underscore the views of these artists. The exhibition contextualizes a world-altering time when New York became the center of contemporary art—a time made particularly pertinent again by the isolationist and nationalist views that have now come to the fore in the political and social world of the early twenty-first century. \nThe exhibition will include works by Charles Alston\, William Baziotes\, Romare Bearden\, Harold Cousins\, Dorothy Dehner\, Jimmy Ernst\, Claire Falkenstein\, Herbert Ferber\, Michael Goldberg\, Arshile Gorky\, Adolph Gottlieb\, David Hare\, Hans Hofmann\, Richard Hunt\, Gerome Kamrowski\, Lee Krasner\, Ibram Lassaw\, Norman Lewis\, Seymour Lipton\, Boris Margo\, Roberto Matta\, Gordon Onslow Ford\, Alfonso Ossorio\, Jackson Pollock\, Richard Pousette-Dart\, Theodore Roszak\, Mark Rothko\, Charles Seliger\, Janet Sobel\, Theodoros Stamos\, Bradley Walker Tomlin\, Laurence Vail and Hale Woodruff. \n“‘Globalism’ Pops into View” is the title of an article by conservative critic Edward Alden Jewell that was published in The New York Times on June 13\, 1943. Jewell linked globalism to a group of modernists exhibiting in New York while denigrating their work. Among them were artists later called abstract expressionists\, who were already expressing their intention to create their own personal and distinctive visual vocabularies\, using the language of abstraction\, to communicate global symbols that reach for universal meaning to viewers throughout the world. Among the major sources of their work is the Jungian belief of myth as archetype\, symbolic of the universal unconscious\, as well as cubist structure and the surrealist method of psychic automatism. \nJewell was responding to work by artists\, particularly Gottlieb and Rothko\, who participated in the Third Annual Exhibition of the Federation of Modern Painters and Sculptors. The progressive collective wrote: “We condemn artistic nationalism which negates the world tradition of art at the base of modern art movements…Since no one can remain untouched by the impact of the present world upheaval\, it is inevitable that values in every field of human endeavor will be affected. As a nation we are being forced to outgrow our narrow political isolationism. Now that America is recognized as the center where art and artists of all the world must meet\, it is time for us to accept cultural values on a truly global plane.”[iii] \nThe artistic community of early 1940s New York was outspoken in its rejection of political and artistic isolationism\, turning instead to abstraction. Artist Barnett Newman was one of the most prolific critics of regionalism and in his 1942 essay “What About Isolationist Art?” he railed against the regionalists as “enemies of world progress” and predicted the rise of such anti-globalists again in the future. In general\, the modernists were spurred by the 1943 publication of the best-selling book One World by Wendell Willkie. They were also encouraged by their own camaraderie and by the many modernist exhibitions in New York\, held at the Museum of Modern Art and at several galleries\, including Peggy Guggenheim’s Art of This Century and the Betty Parsons Gallery. Their development was also greatly advanced by the many leading European modernist artists who came to New York City to escape the War. In addition\, their art was shaped by their knowledge of a varied combination of international sources in a number of fields outside modernist art\, including philosophy and psychology; myth\, particularly through the ideas of Carl Jung and Friedrich Nietzsche; tribal art and culture; poetry\, especially the French symbolists; Chinese and Japanese art and ideas; the natural sciences; and more. The synthesis of all these connections stimulated their search for significant content with global relevance—and made it possible. \nOn June 2\, 1943\, Jewell delivered his review of the federation’s exhibition\, in which he expressed perplexity\, particularly regarding paintings on view by Rothko and Gottlieb. The two artists had\, in turn\, issued a statement in response to Jewell\, asserting that\, while “no possible set of notes” could explain their work\, “There is no such thing as good painting about nothing…The subject is crucial and only that subject-matter is valid which is tragic and timeless.”[iv] In his article “‘Globalism’ Pops into View\,” Jewell opined that “So far Globalism seems to guarantee a rather bleak and cheerless future” and yet at the same time recommended that Rothko and Gottlieb’s statement “best not be picked to pieces\, especially by the simple-minded\, for it might explode\,” concluding “I intend to stick to Globalism\, for the time being at least\, let the chips fall where they may.”[v] \nThe term globalism is used to describe “attempts to understand all the interconnections of the modern world—and to highlight patterns that underlie (and explain) them.”[vi] The current art world has emphasized internationalism\, stressing consideration of art from diverse countries. Conversely\, more than 75 years ago\, when the art world was so much smaller and the city of New York was at its center\, the global reach of the American artists who congregated there was crucial for the development of their ideas and resulting art. \nGlobalism Pops BACK Into View: The Rise of Abstract Expressionism was conceived by art historian Barbara Cavaliere\, who will contribute new scholarship to a fully-illustrated color catalogue. This exhibition represents an interest that Michael Rosenfeld Gallery has explored in numerous exhibitions over its thirty-year history\, championing the work of many of the artists on view. Michael Rosenfeld states: “Abstract expressionism of the 1940s was my entry point into American art and remains a personal passion of mine. I am grateful to Barbara Cavaliere for sharing her expertise and insight into this integral period in the narrative of abstract expressionism.” \nBarbara Cavaliere is an art historian\, critic\, and writer whose special interest has been abstract expressionism since she studied with Lawrence Alloway in the early 1970s. In 1975\, Cavaliere co-curated Subjects of the Artist: New York Painting\, 1941-1947 at the Whitney Museum of American Art downtown branch with Robert Hobbs and others. Cavaliere’s friendships with many of the New York-based artists of the time has given her firsthand knowledge and understanding of them\, and she has published numerous catalogues\, articles and reviews about them. In addition\, for the past four decades\, Cavaliere has been editing art books and writing audio guides for many museums\, the majority for The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Throughout her career\, she has sustained her special fascination with and study of 1940s abstract expressionism and its context. \nMichael Rosenfeld Gallery\nMichael Rosenfeld Gallery is recognized for modern & contemporary art. Established in 1989 by Michael Rosenfeld\, the gallery opened its doors to promote the breadth of American art and those artists—known or unknown—that contributed to the establishment of surrealism\, social realism\, abstract expressionism\, figurative expressionism and geometric abstraction. Michael Rosenfeld Gallery is located at 100 Eleventh Avenue\, New York\, NY\, 10011. Gallery hours are Tuesday through Saturday\, 10:00 AM–6:00 PM. \nPress Inquiries\nDan Munn\, Communications Associate\ndm@michaelrosenfeldart.com\, 212.247.0082 \n  \n[i] Catalogue for The Federation of Modern Painters and Sculptors Inc.\, Third Annual Exhibition\, Wildenstein Gallery\, New York\, NY\, June 3-26\, 1943.\n[ii] Adolph Gottlieb\, from from “The Portrait and the Modern Artist: Adolph Gottlieb and Mark Rothko appear on WNYC radio\,” October 13\, 1943.\n[iii] Catalogue for The Federation of Modern Painters and Sculptors Inc.\, Third Annual Exhibition\, Wildenstein Gallery\, New York\, NY\, June 3-26\, 1943.\n[iv] Adolph Gottlieb and Mark Rothko\, letter to Edward Alden Jewell; reproduced in Edward Alden Jewell\, “‘Globalism’ Pops Into View: Puzzling Pictures in the Show by the Federation of Modern Painters and Sculptors Exemplify the Artists’ Approach\,” The New York Times\, June 13\, 1943\, X9.\n[v] Jewell\, “‘Globalism’ Pops Into View.”\n[vi] Joseph Nye\, “Globalism Versus Globalization\,” The Globalist\, April 15\, 2002\, https://www.theglobalist.com/globalism-versus-globalization/\, accessed November 2019.
URL:https://artinamericaguide.com/event/globalism-pops-back-into-view-the-rise-of-abstract-expressionism/
LOCATION:Michael Rosenfeld Gallery\, 100 11th Ave\, New York\, NY\, New York\, United States
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SUMMARY:William T. Williams: Recent Paintings
DESCRIPTION:Opening Reception\nThursday\, September 5\, 2019 / 6–8PM \nMichael Rosenfeld Gallery is pleased to present its fourth solo exhibition for William T. Williams (American\, b. 1942)\, showcasing a new body of paintings. Scheduled to be on view from September 6 to November 9\, 2019\, William T. Williams: Recent Paintings will feature 35 paintings from the 465 Series\, the first series of paintings completed by Williams in his rural Connecticut studio. A masterful colorist\, his new work continues to expand our understanding of abstraction and positions Williams as one of the great abstractionists of his generation. \nWilliam T. Williams: Recent Paintings will be accompanied by a fully-illustrated color catalogue with new scholarship by Jonathan P. Binstock\, Mary W. and Donald R. Clark Director of the Memorial Art Gallery (MAG)\, Rochester\, NY and an interview conducted by Hans Ulrich Obrist\, Artistic Director at Serpentine Galleries\, London. \nThe work of William T. Williams resonates with cultural history and personal memories of a childhood spent in the urban environments of New York as well as the southern landscapes of rural North Carolina\, where he was born. Returning to country life\, the artist’s recent relocation of his studio from New York City to the natural environment of Connecticut embodies a renewed vision toward painting. There\, he has reinvented his studio practice in a soaring\, light-filled\, renovated barn\, replete with large windows that overlook an ever-changing landscape. William T. Williams: Recent Paintings will be the first exhibition of the new body of work produced under the natural light and rhythms of Williams’ new studio. This environment\, immersed in nature\, has had a profound effect on the artist’s recent work\, whose richly-hued abstractions reflect the shifting dynamics of seasonal and atmospheric change. \nThe dynamism of these natural ebbs and flows permeates Williams’ paintings\, creating discernible shifts felt palpably through composition and color. The complex palettes of this life-long colorist will be showcased\, from the vibrant and bold to the muted and somber. Working at a smaller\, more intimate scale than ever before\, Williams has experimented with the combination of multiple canvases. The seriality of the paintings offers a meditative form of time-keeping\, a cyclical repetition that structures and documents his daily routine in the studio. Their multi-color grid compositions of layered paint recall the quilts that were prominent in the Williams’ household. This modular approach of “patch-working” individual panels together employs varying configurations of contrasting forms and colors to generate dialogues within each work. \nThe work of William T. Williams is deeply influenced and inspired by jazz\, and the artist has referred to his method of working through distinct series as that of a “theme and variations.” On the occasion of William T. Williams: Recent Paintings\, the artist has developed a jazz playlist of 30 favorites. The playlist includes iconic tracks that are in frequent rotation in the artist’s studio by jazz legends such as John Coltrane and Miles Davis and contemporary musicians and composers like Jason Moran\, Ron Carter\, Karen Patterson and Wynton Marsalis. Williams observed recently\, “I start out every day with Coleman Hawkins\, because that brings me back to a specific time\, and there’s a tone that he has in his music that I really love… When I’m working\, I listen to different musicians for different things… Each musician brings different nuances to the environment which affects my own thinking. Music is a constant in my studio.” \nThe 465 Series extends on the techniques and formats explored in the 111 ½ Series\, which Williams has described as a record of “place as a specific type of poetry.” Similarly bearing reference to the artist’s address\, this new series continues the artist’s consistent exploration of tactility\, gesture\, color and mark-making. The paintings’ titles include personal and autobiographical references that reflect on a composite of experiences and memories from throughout his life. Together\, they illuminate how abstraction became the mode through which Williams felt free to explore both representational and symbolic imagery in his work. \nAbout William T. Williams\nThe work of William T. Williams (b. 1942) ranges in style from his early geometric abstractions\, to almost-monochromatic explorations of texture\, to an abstraction that derives its force from productive tension among colors and forms. While he has consistently tested the limits of his earlier styles and developed new approaches\, his meticulous attention to the process of art making has remained constant. A master of brushwork and color\, Williams creates his paintings in series\, working through a labor-intensive process that often includes drawings\, watercolors and prints. \nFrom the outset of his career\, Williams’ art was characterized by bold color and daring compositions that paid homage to and challenged the abstraction that had come before it. He emerged at a time when abstract expressionism was in decline\, while pop art\, color field painting\, and minimalism were on the rise. Concurrent with this aesthetic transition were social and political transformations that saw artists\, intellectuals\, and activists challenging the exclusionary practices of New York’s white- and male-dominated art institutions. These critiques came in multiple forms\, including an approach to art that favored figural representation embedded in a politics of struggle and an assertion of identities misrepresented by or excluded from American culture. Such images were a necessary correction to a history of omission and caricature\, but they risked being received by the art establishment in a way that affirmed its tendency to ignore work by abstract artists who were also African American. \nLiving in an artist loft building on Broadway that over the years included neighbors Kenneth Noland\, Joel Shapiro\, Janet Fish\, and William Copley\, Williams believed that abstraction offered him greater creative and expressive freedom than figural representation\, but he was also wary of the potential cold\, impersonal aspect of painting that was merely about painting. Williams thus developed an approach that rendered the abstract representational\, not only through titles replete with autobiographical references\, but also in the shapes he incorporates. Jazz became an important site of convergence where memory\, history\, and a black American abstract tradition met\, and quilting was for Williams another manifestation of an African American tradition of abstraction. His artwork often incorporates the diamond shape as a visual motif that functioned “as a stabilizing force\, a form that interacts compositionally with what’s around it. But it goes back to the quilts of my childhood\, the patterns and forms I grew up with.” \nThe synthesis between personal/cultural narrative and abstraction that Williams developed early on in his career was met with deserved success. Born in rural North Carolina\, Williams moved to New York with his family as a youth. He attended the School of Industrial Art (now the High School of Art and Design) and received an associate degree at New York Community College\, before enrolling at Pratt Institute in 1962. At Pratt\, he studied with some of the foremost figurative painters of the day including Richard Lindner\, Philip Pearlstein and Alex Katz\, but it was painter Richard Bove who encouraged Williams to work from intuition and memory rather than from observation. The resulting abstract work found support amongst his professors whose encouragement led Williams to pursue graduate studies at Yale University. The graduate department at Yale provided a rigorous theoretical foundation and studio practice for the artist as the faculty included George Wardlaw\, Jack Tworkov\, Al Held\, Lester Johnson\, and others. \nWilliams completed his MFA at Yale in 1968 and moved to New York. In 1969\, the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) purchased his Elbert Jackson\, L.A.M.F. Part II (1969). That same year\, he was included in the Whitney Biennial and he organized X to the Fourth Power at the newly opened Studio Museum in Harlem. In 1968\, Williams formed the muralist collective Smokehouse Associates along with Mel Edwards\, Guy Ciarcia\, and Billy Rose; they were active in Harlem from 1968 to 1970. Williams conceptualized the artist-in-residence program at The Studio Museum\, which remains to this day a core mission objective and functions in its original iteration according to the guidelines that Williams instituted. In 1971\, Reese Palley Gallery\, New York mounted Williams’ first solo exhibition and he began teaching at Brooklyn College of the City University of New York (CUNY)\, where he was on faculty for four decades\, inspiring hundreds of students including Nari Ward and Arthur Simms. In 1965\, he spent a summer in Maine as a student at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture\, returning as faculty in 1971\, 1974\, 1978\, and 1979; the latter year he served as Director Pro Tem. In 1975\, Bob Blackburn invited Williams to make a print at the Printmaking Workshop; over the next 22 years\, Williams collaborated with Blackburn to produce 19 editions\, as well as a number of unique print projects. In keeping with this ongoing interest in printmaking\, Williams has also collaborated on prints with the Brandywine Workshop and Lafayette College’s Experimental Printmaking Institute (EPI). In 1977\, he participated in the Second World Festival of Black Art and African Culture (Festac ’77)\, held in Lagos\, Nigeria\, which marked his first time in Africa. The trip\, especially the movements of patterned clothing he saw on the street\, had a profound effect on his art\, and Williams began a series of paintings inspired by this African tradition of abstraction. Williams has continued to revise\, adapt\, and transform his style\, and this dynamism combined with a consistent set of formal and thematic concerns has contributed to the longevity of his luminous career. \nWilliams has been the recipient of numerous awards and fellowships\, including: the Individual Artist Award in Painting from the National Endowment for the Arts (1970)\, a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship (1986)\, The Studio Museum in Harlem Artist’s Award (1992)\, a National Endowment for the Arts Regional Fellowship (1994)\, a Joan Mitchell Foundation Grant (1996)\, the Brandywine Workshop’s James Van Der Zee Award for lifetime achievement in the arts (2005)\, the North Carolina Governors Award for the Fine Arts (2006)\, the Alain Locke International Award from the Detroit Institute of Arts (2011)\, and the Skowhegan Governors Award for Outstanding Service to Artists from the Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture (2017). Recently\, Williams was inducted into the newest class of National Academician members at the National Academy Museum & School in New York (2017) and he is the recipient of the 2018 Pratt Institute Legends Award and the 2019 Lifetime Achievement Award at the 30th Annual James A. Porter Colloquium\, Howard University\, Washington\, DC. Williams was also the first African American contemporary artist to have his work (Batman\, 1979) included in The History of Art by H.W. Janson. \nFor over forty years\, Williams’ work has consistently been shown at home and abroad. Representation in groundbreaking exhibitions includes L’Art Vivant Aux Etats-Unis (Fondation Maeght\, Saint-Paul-de-Vence\, France\, 1970); The Structure of Color (Whitney Museum of American Art\, 1971); To Conserve a Legacy: American Art from Historically Black Colleges and Universities (Addison Gallery of American Art\, 1999); What is Painting?  (MoMA\, 2007); Blues for Smoke (Museum of Contemporary Art\, LA\, 2012) and Witness: Art and Civil Rights in The Sixties (Brooklyn Museum\, 2014). In 2016\, he was featured in the inaugural exhibition at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of African American Art and Culture (Washington\, DC) and in 2017\, his contributions as part of the mural collective Smokehouse Associates were examined in Smokehouse\, 1968-1970 at The Studio Museum in Harlem. \nRecent solo presentations of the artist’s work include William T. Williams: Theme and Variations at the Morris R. Williams Center for the Arts\, Lafayette College in Easton\, PA (2009) and William T. Williams: Variations on Themes at The David C. Driskell Center for the Study of the Visual Arts and Culture of African Americans and the African Diaspora\, University of Maryland in College Park (2010). In 2017\, Michael Rosenfeld Gallery presented its first solo exhibition for Williams\, William T. Williams: Things Unknown\, Paintings\, 1968-2017\, which celebrated five decades of work and featured an overview of the artist’s most major painting series. The exhibition was accompanied by a fully-illustrated catalogue with engaging conversations between the artist and Thelma Golden\, Director and Chief Curator of The Studio Museum in Harlem\, and Courtney J. Martin\, Deputy Director and Chief Curator at Dia Art Foundation. At Frieze New York this year\, Michael Rosenfeld Gallery presented William T. Williams: 1970\, an exhibition that focused on the pivotal year 1970 and highlighted a selection of seminal paintings and never-before-exhibited works on paper from the artist’s first mature series\, Diamond in a Box. \nWilliams is represented in over thirty public collections\, including the Detroit Institute of the Art (MI); Fogg Museum (Harvard Art Museums\, Cambridge\, MA); The Menil Collection (Houston\, TX); The Museum of Modern Art (New York\, NY); Nelson A. Rockefeller Empire State Collection (Albany\, NY);  North Carolina Museum of Art (Raleigh); Philadelphia Museum of Art (PA); Sheldon Museum of Art\, University of Nebraska (Lincoln); The Studio Museum in Harlem (New York\, NY); Whitney Museum of American Art (New York\, NY); and Yale University Art Gallery\, Yale University (New Haven\, CT). \nMore information on William T. Williams (b. 1942) \nThe work of William T. Williams can be seen in the following current and upcoming museum exhibitions: \nSoul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power\, The Broad\, Los Angeles\, CA\, March 23–September 1\, 2019; de Young Museum\, Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco\, San Francisco\, CA\, November 9\, 2019–March 15\, 2020 \nBlack Refractions: Highlights from The Studio Museum in Harlem\, Kalamazoo Institute of Arts\, Kalamazoo\, MI\, September 13–December 8\, 2019 \nThe Shape of Abstraction: Selections from the Ollie Collection\, Saint Louis Art Museum\, St. Louis\, MO\, September 17\, 2019–March 8\, 2020 \nGenerations: A History of Black Abstract Art\, The Baltimore Museum of Art\, Baltimore\, MD\, September 29\, 2019–January 19\, 2020 \nWith Pleasure: Pattern and Decoration in American Art\, 1972-1985\, The Museum of Contemporary Art\, Los Angeles\, CA\, October 27\, 2019–May 11\, 2020 \nMichael Rosenfeld Gallery\nSince 2016\, Michael Rosenfeld Gallery has been the exclusive representative of William T. Williams. Michael Rosenfeld Gallery specializes in 20/21 century art. Established in 1989 by Michael Rosenfeld\, the gallery opened its doors to promote the breadth of American art and those artists—known or unknown—that contributed to the establishment of surrealism\, social realism\, abstract expressionism\, figurative expressionism and geometric abstraction. Michael Rosenfeld Gallery is located at 100 Eleventh Avenue\, New York\, NY\, 10011. Gallery hours are Tuesday through Saturday\, 10:00AM–6:00PM. \nPress Inquiries\nDan Munn\, Communications Associate\ndm@michaelrosenfeldart.com\, 212.247.0082
URL:https://artinamericaguide.com/event/william-t-williams-new-work/
LOCATION:Michael Rosenfeld Gallery\, 100 11th Ave\, New York\, NY\, New York\, United States
CATEGORIES:Exhibition
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DTSTART;VALUE=DATE:20190615
DTEND;VALUE=DATE:20190803
DTSTAMP:20260525T220750
CREATED:20190523T155033Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20190618T141229Z
UID:54119-1560556800-1564790399@artinamericaguide.com
SUMMARY:Spiritual by Nature
DESCRIPTION:Michael Rosenfeld Gallery is pleased to present the group exhibition Spiritual by Nature\, featuring a selection of works by artists directly inspired by the natural world and informed by Eastern thought and spirituality. This exhibition will include the work of Ruth Asawa\, Mary Bauermeister\, William Baziotes\, Lee Bontecou\, Beauford Delaney\, Claire Falkenstein\, Alfred Jensen\, Norman Lewis\, Richard Pousette-Dart\, Theodore Roszak\, Charles Seliger\, Toshiko Takaezu\, Lenore Tawney\, Alma Thomas\, Mark Tobey and Charmion von Wiegand. Working across a range of media and drawing on personal aesthetic vocabularies\, these artists strove to find a universal language to express their singular visions of the world at large. Eight of the artists on view are currently represented in Artistic License: Six Takes on the Guggenheim Collection at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum\, New York\, NY. Artistic License is the first-ever artist-curated exhibition mounted at the Guggenheim and the inclusion of these artists is a testament to their continuing relevance and impact.
URL:https://artinamericaguide.com/event/spiritual-by-nature/
LOCATION:Michael Rosenfeld Gallery\, 100 11th Ave\, New York\, NY\, New York\, United States
CATEGORIES:Exhibition
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