Report from the Front
Art criticism, sometimes with context, occasional politics. Published in hard copy 2-4 times a year. New shows: "events;" hard copy rates & how to support the online edition: "works."
Gradually, I am getting back into circulation – but so late into the autumn that I have a lot of catching up to do. Not least among the shows I have managed to see and very much enjoyed was "Friedel Dzubas: Affective Color" at Yares Art (closed November 2). Read More
(I am delighted to welcome our roving correspondent, David Evison, back to (An Appropriate Distance) From the Mayor's Doorstep. His review this time is of the latest show of John Adams Griefen at the Galerie Born Berlin -- through October 26).
Griefen has for many years made paintings which should not be photographed because he shows us that they are for eyesight alone. Of course we need reproductions, be it to promote, sell or to remind. But look at "Hotspur" (2019) in this exhibition! Its bright crimson is Read More
As some readers of this column may already have deduced, it is on an extended summer hiatus. This hiatus was only briefly interrupted when Piri Halasz gave a talk for the Pollock-Krasner House and Study Center in East Hampton on August 18. The talk seems to have gone over well (as nearly as she could tell).
On her way to the talk, she was able to stop off at the Parrish Art Museum in Water Mill, and see "Abstract Climates: Helen Frankenthaler in Provincetown" (through October 27). She couldn't have done it without the aid of the invaluable Katie Crum, who took her around the entire show in a wheelchair. Big thanks to Katie! Particularly since the entire show is a treat for the eyes. The first five of the 31 paintings on display were done in 1950-51, when Frankenthaler was still attending Hans Hofmann's art school and learning her trade, but the remaining 26 exemplify an absolutely peak period in her long and distinguished career, the late 1950s on through the 1960s. This was when she was just transitioning from her frenziedly energetic & vital Dionysian period to her more serene, detached and harmonious Apollonian one. Piri is so glad she saw this marvelous show, and urges everybody who wants a truly beautiful and moving esthetic experience to go and see it for themselves-- all three roomy galleries of it!
Piri is now clearing the decks for her expected knee surgery on August 26. She doesn't know how long her rehab will take, but still plans to be back on the job again whenever in the autumn she feels entirely comfortable patrolling those hard grey pavements of New York
Berry Campbell has so many interesting exhibitions that I have to ration my visits there. However, this show was a standout. Covering nearly four decades in the career of one of Canada's most illustrious painters, it was entitled, "William Perehudoff: Architect of Color" (closed May 24). Read More
FMD is indeed fortunate to have a review of "Frank Bowling," the massive retrospective at Tate Britain (through August 26). It was written by David Evison, the British sculptor, whose most recent exhibition has just closed in Beijing. Read More
I am so sorry to have to report that John McLean, the British painter, has died at the age of 80 from the Parkinson's disease that he had suffered from for years. Read More
"Epic Abstraction: Pollock to Herrera" opened at The Metropolitan Museum of Art on December 17, 2018, but is "ongoing." By this the Met means that it isn't one of its usually admirable big loan shows but only a rehanging on those galleries that the museum previously devoted to its permanent collection of first- and second-generation abstract expressionists. Read More
On the Hudson River, north of Kingston, stands the picturesque town of Saugerties (population 19,000). On its outskirts lives Peter Bradley, the painter, in a handsome 18th century stone house. Downtown Saugerties is home to Emerge, a pocket-sized gallery that is currently housing a real humdinger of a show, "Peter Bradley: New Work" (through June 30). Though this show contains only six paintings, and the largest is only a little over 6 feet tall, every one's a winner. Read More
Recently, I joined the milling throngs visiting the Museum of Modern Art on a free Friday evening to view "Joan Miró: The Birth of the World" (through June 15). On view are approximately 60 works by the master Spanish surrealist (1893-1983), almost all from the museum's permanent collection, and tracing his career from 1917 to the mid-1950s.
I suppose he qualifies as a hero to postmodernists because he belonged to an underprivileged ethnic minority. But hey, if they want to make a fetish of him, it's quite okay with me. For he was a wonderfully wise, witty and whimsical artist -- one of the all-time greats. Read More
Since the spring of 2018, I have been pondering Mayor Bill de Blasio's plan to "diversify" New York City's three specialized or "elite" public high schools by getting the state legislature in Albany to abolish the Specialized High School Admissions Test (SHSAT) that is required under the Hecht-Calandra Act of 1971 for all students who wish to enter these high schools.
De Blasio's argument is that these tests prevent all but a very few African American and Latino children from being invited to attend these schools, and that such de facto segregation makes a mockery of the city's professed claims to be truly liberal and democratic.
He wants to diversify the student bodies of these schools by increasing the number of African American and Latino children enrolled in them even if these children don't perform well enough on the SHSATs to be admitted on the same basis as the white and Asian-American children who currently occupy almost all of the seats at these schools.
This places me in a quandary.