(An Appropriate Distance)

 

FROM THE MAYOR'S DOORSTEP

I'm awfully late with this, but I do want to get a plug in for "Wilfredo Lam: The Imagination at Work," currently offered under the joint auspices of Pace and Gary Nader at Pace's headquarters, 510 West 25th Street in Chelsea (through December 21).  Even if the color schemes of many of the works on view tend heavily toward tans or grisaille, at their pointy-headed best they offer an eerily pleasant change of pace from the brightly and often garishly colored world outside.   Read More 

I really liked the display at The Art Show this year of Oscar Bluemner's work by Menconi + Schoelkopf. But, like last year's show by this same gallery of John Marin, it turns out that The Art Show booth was only a smaller prelude to a much larger show of Bluemner's work held after The Art Show closed and back at the gallery's headquarters on the Upper East Side. So I held my fire until I could see the larger gallery show, and found a delicious entertainment that I can highly recommend.

Titled "Bluemner and the Critics,"it' s on through December 17 and has a catalogue by Roberta Smith Favis – who is not to be confused with the New York Times critic of nearly the same name, but is instead a longtime professor at Stetson University in Florida, and first curator of the fabulous Bluemner collection given to Stetson by the artist's daughter Vera Kouba. Read More 

Well, and so Stanley Whitney is still with us.  When I walked by Lisson (on my way to Berry Campbell, further along West 24th Street), I glanced through Lisson's big windows and spied within "Stanley Whitney: Twenty Twenty" (through December 18).  According to the online installation shot accompanying my first review of Whitney's work – discussing his show at Team in 2012 – neither the colors nor the compositions of his larger and more prepossessing paintings have changed that much in the past nine years.   But hey, they look great – in fact, so terrific that I couldn't resist walking right into Lisson to examine them in more detail. Read More 

Though I've reviewed the paintings of Stanley Boxer (1926 – 2000) many times, mostly it has been his work from the '80s and '90s that I discussed, the pictures covered with glittering, glistering accretions of matière. Only occasionally have I glanced at let alone reviewed his work from the early 1970s, but these are the paintings now featured in "Stanley Boxer: The Ribbon Paintings (1971- 1976)" at Berry Campbell in Chelsea (through December 23).  And they form a wonderful chapter in pure painting.

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In 2021 I skipped "The Armory Show."  Its ratio of annuals to perennials in recent years has been roughly 200:10 at best   -- and I consider a work "perennial" if to me it has staying power, whether it is new or old. At "The Art Show," staged by the Art Dealers Association of America at the Park Avenue Armory (and held this year for the first time in November), the ratio is more like 70:10. This makes it for me much more worthwhile. I'm afraid I'm picky, though, – so when I say I found ten booths out of seventy worthy of praise, and several  more at least worthy of mention, that signifies enthusiasm for me!

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At Yares Art on Fifth Avenue is a stupendous show.  It is entitled "Kenneth Noland: Context is the Key -- Paintings: 1958-1970" (through January 22, 2022).  I don't know quite what "context" Yares refers to.  Certainly the socioeconomic and political troubles of that far-off era, while they may seem trifling in retrospect, were no less dire at the time than our current evils seem today. Maybe the gallery is thinking in esthetic terms of the '60s as a period when the sun of modernism wasn't yet as nearly obscured by the clouds of anti-modernism, the way it is today. Whatever. Anyway, it's a helluva show.

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This has been what might be called a miraculous year for Peter Bradley. After decades of being nearly if not entirely ignored, his painting has been included in no fewer than three exhibitions.  One was a show of contemporary artists organized by Hilton Als, the New Yorker theater critic. Second was a tribute to the "De Luxe Show," an interracial exhibition organized by Bradley in 1971 (I reviewed this tribute on September 5).  Third (in Karma's space at 22 East Second Street, through November 13) is the one I review below.  It is a solo show of nine pictures made by Bradley over the past six years.  They range in size from medium to large and though I didn't relate equally to all of them, on the whole I'd call this an exceedingly  handsome show – a real tour de force for a man of 81.  Read More 

White I am recuperating, I have been reading Fierce Poise: Helen Frankenthaler and 1950s New York, and finding it challenging.  The author, Alexander Nemerov, is a lot younger than I am, which means I am having to work to get the most out of his prose.

Still recuperatilng -- making progress -- but two shows I can recommend, sight unseen -- Peter Bradley and Kenneth Noland -- will get around to them in due time. Meanwhile, here's the basic data (on the Events page of this website).

I am sorry to report that I have been suffering from some sort of a stomach bug for the past week or so.  It may even have contributed to the bleakness of my report on "The Medici" last week.  As I think it unfair to continue to take out my negative emotions on helpless pictures and sculpture, I have decided to foreswear reporting on the art scene for the next few weeks – or until I have this bug of mine firmly in the rear-view mirror. Think of it as the summer vacation I never got around to taking.

I do have a small amount of reading matter to offer – written not by me, but by several of my readers.

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