I headed back into New York City on Thursday for an afternoon full of art that included a brisk tour through Chelsea, a (too) quick visit to the Met to finally see that Vermeer show, and an opening reception for a former teacher of mine on the upper east side.

After debarking from NJ Transit at Penn Station, I made a quick stop over at B&H Photo for some supplies and then walked down to 26th Street.  The first gallery on my list today was Galerie Lelong where Sean Scully has a show of his large grid-based abstractions.  The works in this show are immediately recognizable as Scully.  These new paintings are perhaps a little more chromatic in the red oxide and blue shades than I remember from his last show (in 2005), but otherwise are similarly constructed with horizontal and vertical blocks of color.  In one four-part painting he exposes an aluminum panel that looked like it had been brushed to provide some variations in reflectivity.  Some of the paintings have a nice, blended-on-canvas look of brushy flesh colors; some, though, used brush strokes in apparently random directions (not aligned with the grid) reflecting ceiling lights to produce unevenly glossy highlights, an effect that I found distracting from the otherwise meditative works.

Sean Scully @ Galerie Lelong

A couple doors down was a peculiar but compelling show by Teresita Fernandez at Lehmann Maupin.  The works here are made entirely of graphite:  sculptural, chunky, blocks of graphite.  In some pieces, the graphite has been carved and polished into a kind of relief sculpture hung on the wall.  In another, graphite has been somehow machined into a large sculpture of a waterfall with nuggets of graphite on the floor as the foam.  Most interesting, though, was the piece “Epic”, where hundreds or thousands of small nuggets of graphite are affixed to the gallery wall.  Under each nugget is a small streak of graphite drawn onto the wall which can be read as a shadow, but also to me looked like tears or comet tails.

On 25th Street, there are some more David Hockney paitnings at Pace Wildenstein and I think they show even better here than they do uptown; though I love that gallery on 57th Street, these very large works seemed to fit the space better here.  I overheard two people in the gallery mentioning (to someone from the gallery, I think) that they knew Mr. Hockney and were occasional recipients of his “iPhone drawings“, which they were showing off on their iPhone.  I didn’t get a good look at the drawings, however, and didn’t have it in me to butt in, give them my cell phone, and ask if they’d send a few my way.

The most exciting show for me was one that was a surprise — I hadn’t known it was coming and the show hadn’t popped up on one of my standard gallery planning resources.  At Betty Cunningham gallery, there’s a great 2-person show comparing five decades worth of paintings by two artists whose work I always admire:  Philip Pearlstein and Al Held.  As I’ve mentioned before on this blog, I was fortunate enough to meet Mr. Pearlstein at a Carnegie Mellon alumni event earlier this year and I always find looking at his paintings to be worthy endeavors.  Here, you see samples of his work starting from expressionist beginnings in the 1950s progressing through to his signature clear-eyed representational style.  (His latest piece was from 2009, a work that I had seen in progress in his studio; so very cool to now see it finished and on display at the gallery.)

Philip Pearlestein and Al Held @ Betty Cunningham

The first time I learned of the late Al Held’s work was at a show at PS1 back in 2002 where I was blown away by the humongous geometric compositions (probably the largest paintings I’ve ever seen except perhaps for Guernica).  For me, his paintings are like reverse puzzles; I enjoy spending time with them trying to figure out how they “work”. Here at Betty Cunningham, there are only two of his full color “volumetric configurations”, but they’re wonderful to behold.

The gallery has printed a brief essay by Irving Sandler explaining why the juxtaposition of these two very different artists makes sense.  Both started making art around 1950, hung out at The Cedar Tavern, exhibited at co-op galleries around 10th Street, and eventually became life-long friends.  They both rejected action painting early on and both eventually ended up with “hard-edged” styles (Pearlstein, hard-edged realism; Held, hard-edged abstraction).  I would have loved to take some photos of this show, but I made the mistake of asking at the front desk, where an apologetic gallery worker told me that photos weren’t allowed because of the varied ownership of the paintings (another gallery visitor, just moments before, hadn’t asked and had used her iPhone to photograph the whole show in detail.  Sigh.)  Anyway, this is a can’t miss show if you’re going to be in Chelsea before February 13, 2010.

Just down the block at Lohin Geduld Gallery is a nice show of small representational paintings by Joseph Santore.  Like Pearlstein, Santore’s paintings are at least in part about perception:  looking hard, seeing, painting.  The textures on some of pieces have a pleasing “stippled” quality.  A few of the paintings are self portraits, many more of them are complex still life arrangements with an overall abstract quality.  A few charcoal drawings of still lifes take on an almost cubist appearance through their arrangements of lights and darks.

Still on 25th Street, Gallery Henoch has a show of wonderful representational paintings by Kim Cogan.  Some of the pieces are straightforward rooftop cityscapes, painted with Cogan’s brushy style.  More exciting, though, are the high contrast scenes of specific city locales at night, such as Grocery at Dusk.  Here, Cogan’s painterly style excels at capturing the temperature of the light and its reflection and makes you want to keep looking at the painting.  In a few of the pieces, the same figure makes multiple appearances.  Several paintings show scenes from within what appear to be small New York apartments and one, Passengers Manhattan Bound, offers a fisheye perspective of three subway riders directly opposite the artist.

Kim Cogan @ Gallery Henoch

Just upstairs from Henoch in what was formerly Von Lintel is the new incarnation of George Billis Gallery and the gallery is using the new space to its advantage.  The larger walls allow for larger work; there’s more floor space so you can step back a bit (the old space was sort of shoe-horned into an awkward floorplan); and, the extra room that Von Lintel had used for flat files is now additional exhibition space.  Further, by being directly above Gallery Henoch, you now have two reliable galleries that feature representational painting in the same building.  Presently, George Billis has several shows going in the various rooms.  In the front, Enrique Santana has some highly detailed (i.e., every window is painted in the skyscraper) cityscapes full of reflected light.  In one of the back rooms are some charming three dimensional watercolor-on-paper-on-panel landscape-based painting/sculptures by Russ Havard.

I thought I’d give the Caroll Dunham show a chance at Barbara Gladstone, but I couldn’t make it past the image you see upon first entering the gallery.  Ugh.

I’ll mention one last show from Chelsea:  Richard Serra at Gagosian‘s 21st Street location.  Two of Serra’s signature massive cor-ten steel sculptures fill the gallery and as usual, they don’t fail to impress.  I entered the first piece, “Open Ended”, and actually felt a sense of dizziness as the twisted walls reshape your impression of up and down.  The lighting was dark in the gallery and so on this piece I didn’t notice as much variation in the surface of the steel as you often find in Serra’s work.  After a few long “hallways” and a few twists that seem to spiral towards a “center”, you find yourself in the middle of the sculpture.  Strangely, though, you can keep going in the same direction and you’ll eventually find yourself exiting on the other side of the piece.  It’s not that great a trick when you look at the work in a photo from above, but it is a surprise as you’re walking through it that you can keep “spiraling” and yet still make your way out of the sculpture (hence, “Open Ended”).  The second work, “Blind Spot”, leads you towards a dead end and you’ll have to turn around and retrace your steps.  I love reaching the center of these Serra sculptures, especially if there’s nobody else around — you feel like you’re in a world of your own, protected by a massive steel shield (though perhaps at least a little conscious that you’re hoping there’s no way this thing can tip over).  Blind Spot seemed to have more interesting variations of rusty red and oxidized green/blue color.  Unlike in some past exhibitions, however, a security guard (who followed me closely for some reason — I couldn’t have looked suspicious!) said that no touching of the work was allowed.  It’s a shame, as the rough texture and massive size just call out for a brush of the hand.

Richard Serra @ Gagosian 21st St

Finally, I was finished with Chelsea and I realized that the Met closes at 5:15 on Thursdays and so I had better hustle to the Upper East Side.  Fortunately I found a cabbie on his last drive of the day who took a good route and was at the Met in no time.  Still, I realized that I would have to zoom through the Robert Frank “The Americans” show if I wanted to see Vermeer (I’ll have to get the book, I suppose, to spend more time with that historic collection of photos from fifty years ago).

You never know if seeing a famous painting in person will live up to your expectations.  Some of the Vermeers at the Met don’t (I’ve never been a fan of “Study of a Young Woman”, for instance).  But “The Milkmaid” does.  It’s a beautifully painted piece with exquisite handling of light and shadow.  The woman has a real physical presence.  The wicker basket in the shadow is amazingly painted and the pebbly bread actually looks crusty.  Hockney would make a case that Vermeer used a camera obscura or other lens device.  It’s no big deal to me if he did or he didn’t; either way, this is one of those paintings that are even better in person than they are in reproductions and I’m glad I got to see it while it was in town.

Vermeer's The Milkmaid @ The Met

After “closing” the Met down, I grabbed a relaxing dinner at a reliable Italian restaurant just a few steps away, Giovanni’s.  I’ve been there perhaps a half-dozen times over the years and the food always ranges from quite good to excellent; the servers are attentive even if I’m by myself and under-dressed; and the panna cotta is amazing!  Alas, the place is very expensive to my New Jersey acclimated wallet — well, it’s expensive even to a New Yorker’s wallet, but it happens to be in a great location for where I needed to be and served the kind of food I was in the mood for.

My final art-related stop of the night was to the opening reception at James Graham & Sons Gallery on East 67th Street for John Zinsser’s new show, “Art Dealer Archipelagos”.  I took Zinsser’s (highly recommended) class at The New School some 8 or 9 times starting in September 2001 and he’s largely responsible for my interest in visiting New York galleries so often.  This show is very different formally from anything else I’ve seen of his.  Most of his past work (that I’ve seen, anyway) has explored the interaction of (typically) two colors of paint, either in large alkyd enamel abstractions on canvas that evoke a specific lineage in art history or in smaller works on paper such as his Bible Studies paintings with titles drawn from biblical passages as a way to explore how titles link the content with the meaning of abstract paintings.

Here, Zinsser turns to drawing in two separate sets of work.  The first, and the focus of the exhibition, are the “archipelagos”, some two dozen works on paper, each depicting a fictional island named after a historically important New York Gallery.  “Towns” on these maps are labeled with the names of artists who have had solo shows at the gallery at some time in the past.  The shapes of the land masses are made up but are informed by the atlases the artist consulted in researching this project.  The hand-drawn “typography” is meant to mimic that found on a typical real-world map.  The galleries included are ones that would have either had personal significance to Zinsser in his 25 years of New York City gallery-going or are ones that were historically important in shaping the post-war New York art world.  Since my own experience with the galleries of Manhattan goes back only to 2001, it was interesting to note how many of the galleries represented are no longer in existence and how those that are have changed significantly, either in terms of ownership or in terms of the kind of art they show.  I’m more familiar with Sonnabend gallery, for instance, as a place that puts on top tier photography exhibitions (Hofer, Becher, which are on the map) than as one that would show Winters, McCracken, or Dunham (I like the fact that Koons is an island unto himself).

John Zinsser @ James Graham and Sons

The other set of pieces in this show are the Auction Lot drawings, hand-drawn replications of pages from various art auction catalogs.  One of these works that I particularly enjoyed was Zinsser’s “Al Held” page, which echoed nicely a painting I had seen earlier at Betty Cunningham.

I asked John which of the two kinds of drawings in this show were more fun to work on and he hesitated — probably more from the banality of my question than its profundity — and then ditched, saying that the catalog works were fun but that the focus of the show is the archipeligo with the catalog drawings there to round things out.  I suppose it’s like asking a parent which child they like better at the eldest’s graduation — you can’t expect a good answer.

Feeling guilty about my earlier panna cotta and also refreshed after descending from the hot and steamy third floor gallery (perhaps appropriate for a show about an island archipelago?), I decided to walk back to Penn Station.  Progress was swift except for my flawed decision to “see what Times Square looks like tonight”.  The city is getting ready for Christmas.  It was one of those nights that make you miss being in the city with people out and about but not *too* many people, a comfortable outdoor temperature and a lot going on… until I almost stepped on a rat.  OK, it was actually a mouse.  We have them in Jersey, too.

I walked past MoMA on the way back to Penn Station.

Today was the first day of the Art20 fair at the Park Avenue Armory and I used the occasion to visit several shows on 57th Street as well.  I had hoped to make it up to the Met to catch Vermeer, but with the wind whipping away under threatening gray skies and a need to get to Trenton by 6pm for an opening, I had to save Johannes for another day.

It’s rare that I’ll return to see the same exhibition at a museum more than once.  In 2002, however, the Gerhard Richter retrospective at MoMA really blew me away.  I recall visiting that show at least three times — there was so much to see and so much variety.  So it was with much excitement that I approached the Marian Goodman Gallery (24 W 57th) for what was Richter’s first NY show in four years.  The first room is full of “White Paintings” (which started out as green paintings): large paintings that have been squeegeed over with white paint.  I couldn’t shake the feeling, though, that whatever was underneath the white might have been more interesting than the result, though one that was less green and more mauve had my eyes searching for gestalt.

Gerhard Richter -- Abstraction, lacquer behind glass

In the second room, some more familiar looking Richter abstractions of squeegeed, contrasting colors shared the space with lacquer-behind-glass paintings.  The glass works are arranged as diptychs in the gallery, though not on the web site, and the are probably the most enjoyable pieces in the show as they were something different, with the 2-part arrangements giving your mind something to do in puzzling together the composition.

In the back room are some more white paintings as well as a few smaller works that have representational elements, such as this one, which to me reads as landscape (even in its portrait orientation).

Overall, I left this show somewhat disappointed, not because of any real problem with the work or with the installation, but only because I didn’t feel any of that same excitement that came with the MoMA show.  Whether that’s due to changes in my own appreciation of art or in changes to Richter’s work, I can’t tell.

In the same building, the Michael Rosenfeld gallery has a wonderful small show of paintings by abstract expressionist Norman Lewis (1909-1979).  This gallery consistently puts on museum-quality shows with a focus on “expanding the canon of American art” and “increasing the visibility of under-recognized American artists”, often African-Americans.  I wasn’t very familiar with Norman Lewis, but loved the bold colors in works like Fireflower and Pink Boogie, where brushstrokes  read like stick figures and the painting feels like a jazzy dance party.

Norman Lewis, Pink Boogie

There’s a lot more color to be found in the Fuller Building at David Findlay Jr Fine Art where a show by John Opper (1908-1994) calls up ideas from Rothko (turned on its side, perhaps) and Clyfford Still (here).

At DC Moore (724 Fifth Ave), Jane Wilson exhibits some simple but lovely brushy landscapes that capture the skies (and seas, and horizons) of the northeast in mostly pastel tones.  Compositions focus mostly on the sky with just a touch of the horizon to provide some grounding contrast.  Brushstrokes inflect the sky with cloudy texture and capture fleeting effects of moving light.

Jane Wilson, Drifting Sunshower

Continuing with my colorful day but perhaps moving out of the influence of Rothko and away from abstraction, I visited the David Hockney show at Pace Wildenstein 57th Street.  This is Hockney’s first New York show of new paintings in twelve years and it features landscapes — part plein air and part studio work — that describe the English countryside in startling, but pleasing colors.  My favorite was “More Felled Trees on Woldgate”, a work full of bright greens, blues, oranges, purples, and pinks.

David Hockney, More Felled Trees on Woldgate

After finishing up with the galleries in the 57th Street area I headed up to the Park Avenue Armory at 67th Street where the Art20/Modernism art fair is up through Monday.  This is the first year that the art of the twentieth century show was combined with the modernism design fair.  Although I went into the show worried that I wouldn’t care at all about the design component, it in fact provided a nice change of pace with galleries that focus on wall-based works of fine art alternating with spaces dedicated to objects of design (lamps, tables, chairs, etc).  Though most of the design objects felt dated to me (in a sense that I wouldn’t want to live with them the way I would a similarly dated painting), it was visually stimulating to have them as part of this show.

Armory view from the entrance, Bernard Goldberg Gallery

There was a lot to enjoy at the fair (though if you thought a down economy might make buying art cheap, think again!).  There were a number of good Marsden Hartley still lifes scattered throughout but mostly concentrated at BG.  One of my favorite artists, Oscar Bluemner, was present in at least three different galleries.  At Jonathan Boos, a  Bluemner oil painting (which are rarely available) could be yours for the low, low price of (cough, cough) $925,000.  A much smaller work on paper at Levis Fine Art went for $85,000 while a sketch whose margins were filled with detailed notes about color and composition was listed at $75,000 at Michael Borghi Fine Art.  A very nice example of a Sol Lewitt ribbon gouache on paper, priced $38,000, can be found at the Converso space.

I started to head towards the Metropolitan Museum of Art to see Vermeer and Robert Frank, but realized I would never make it down to Trenton if I didn’t reverse course and get back to the PATH train pronto, so I’ll save those shows for another time.

After a long drive down the Turnpike and then over into Trenton, I attended the opening reception for “Point of View” at Gallery 125, where I have one painting in the show.  The reception was packed and the show is full of creative, quality work (including paintings by friends Florence Moonan and Joy Kreves, who both happen to be former members of Artists’ Gallery).  Usually, the first question I get about my paintings is how long they take to make, but nobody asked me that last night:  instead, at least four people asked whether I used a roller to make the marks on my paintings (nope, they’re all hand painted stroke by stroke!).  I received some very positive feedback about the colors in this piece, which made it a nice way to end a color-full day of art.

Opening Reception at Gallery 125

My painting, Passages (acrylic on panel, 24×24), is included in the group show “Point of View” at Gallery 125 in Trenton, NJ (125 South Warren Street).  The show runs from Friday, November 13, 2009, through February 6, 2010.  The opening reception is Friday, November 13, from 6-9pm.

Passages, acrylic on panel, 24x24, 2009