Roz Chast: Cartoon Memoirs at Norman Rockwell Museum

A New Yorker cover drawing
Credit for this and all other images: Artwork by Roz Chast. ©Roz Chast. All rights reserved.

Who doesn't love Roz Chast? Her quirky take on life, as seen in countless New Yorker cartoons and covers, is the essence of contemporary American neurosis and it makes us laugh in recognition of our own foibles (or, more likely, those of our friends and relatives).

A children's book illustration

So, one recent lovely summer day we took a trip to Stockbridge to enjoy Roz Chast: Cartoon Memoirs at the Norman Rockwell Museum - and were immediately immersed in Roz's world. And I don't just mean immersed via the scads of drawings and artifacts on view. I mean immersed as in, by pure chance, we ran into Roz's cousin Nancy, from Albany, who knew one of my sisters in Jewish youth group about 50 years ago, along with Nancy's husband, and, yes, they were depicted rather accurately in a family group portrait included in the Memoirs on display.

It used to be you wouldn't be surprised to run into one of Norman Rockwell's former child models in Stockbridge - but this was a Roz Chast show in 2015, so we got cousin Nancy instead, and it was even better.

A children's book illustration

The show, by the way, is extensive, beautifully installed, and features a lot more than framed original drawings (many of which are vivid watercolors, so you could call them paintings if you wanted to, but you might get in over your head there, considering the The New Yorker still refers to all its cartoons as drawings, and The New Yorker ought to know).

As I was saying, there are lots of other things to see, including three original hooked rugs (love 'em!), seven handmade mini-books (which can be called artists books and they are wonderful!), four early black-and-white street photographs taken in Brooklyn (not bad, either), a goodly number of intricately painted pysanka eggs (like everything else here, in the signature Chast style), and the aforementioned artifacts, such as a pair of wooden horse-head bookends and other slightly creepy souvenirs of Roz's mother's collecting habits.

Roz Chast in her studio, photo by Jeremy Clowe

There's also a chatty video that was made by NRM Media Manager Jeremy Clowe, which shows Chast in her studio and is in constant cycle on a big TV, with plenty of chairs nearby. I got shooshed more than once by folks watching the video while I talked with Nancy, so I guess they thought it was pretty good. The room with the video features a bunch of framed black-and-white cartoons deployed upon violet walls, which set them off quite nicely. As with just about everything else on view, they are expertly drawn, and hilarious.

An original page for the memoir

The show is built around 120 drawings from Chast's award-winning memoir Can't We Talk About Something More Pleasant?, which are displayed on key-lime green walls. I mention the wall color because it sets off Chast's watercolors so well - and I must point out that her highly refined color sense is much better seen by looking at originals than in reproduction. This underlines the appropriateness of presenting Chast's work in a museum setting - yes, she's an illustrator and a cartoonist and she tells stories and she's funny, but she's also clearly an artist whose work can be aesthetically very beautiful.

A New Yorker cover drawing

I had previously read (really, devoured) the memoir in book form, so I devoted more of my time in the museum to admiring other work - the many New Yorker covers (including trial sketches), as well as a lot of other pictures and picture stories that had been published elsewhere. Just like at a good movie, I laughed, I cried, I got hungry. We left satisfied, and the drive home was lovely, though we did get a little lost.

You will love this show. If you go, plan to spend a lot of time, and definitely bring your reading glasses. Roz Chast: Cartoon Memoirs runs through Oct. 26.

Truro Light: A Journey from Ocean to Bay by Joseph Schuyler

Harbor View, Evening
all images reproduced with this post are photographs by Joseph Schuyler

The spirit of Joseph Schuyler, who died of cancer in January, shines brightly throughout the beautiful book Truro Light: A Journey from Ocean to Bay. Schuyler, a photographer based in Delmar, N.Y., was able to plan the book (his first) but, sadly, did not live to see it published. It's fitting that it tells the story of a journey, and that its subject is a place that held deep personal importance for Schuyler, the second-to-last town out on Cape Cod.

I knew Joe for a long time, so this will not be an objective review, but I can attest that some of my in-laws, who live on the Cape, were enthralled by his poetic vision of an endlessly beautiful natural world. In a succinct, punchy introduction, Schuyler says "my goal is for you to be able to experience for yourself the sense of this remarkable place," and he accomplishes that goal handily, but not without also imbuing our experience with the sense of how he sees and feels about his muse.

Sand Trees

Schuyler's vision as a photographer has always been eclectic - he was widely known for work in black and white that recorded decades of productions by Albany's Capital Repertory Theatre, did catalog work, sold pictures to commercial stock agencies, and regularly exhibited fine art prints - and that is also true in this book. We see landscapes, nature details, architecture, and abstracts along the journey, and in a signature Schuyler touch, a lot of the pictures are taken in low light, rather than the blazing sun that draws so many to this ocean shore.

This journey is as much imaginary as real, more like the experience described by Thoreau than a contemporary trek, and it is very sparsely populated - people appear only tiny or in silhouette, roads are entirely absent, and the things we make show up in just a few of the photos. Even animals occupy a small place here, though when they do appear they clearly belong, such as a big green frog in a pond, and a quartet of naked nestlings, mouths agape.

Clamming

What Schuyler captures best is the atmosphere, from foamy waves to misty marsh to limitless tidal flat, and the quiet that pervades these uncivilized locales. As we follow him on his journey, he stops to point out delights we may have missed - numerous shots peppered through the book present patterns in the sand, evocative cloud shapes, phenomena of light, reflections in the water. He delights in all things, and we can't help but share in that delight.

Low Tide, Head of the Meadow

Schuyler also has a way with transformation - one of my favorite images (on the back cover of the book) shows a tidal pool at sunset, in which the pool appears to be a giant jellyfish hovering below the surface of the bay beyond. All the special qualities of the moment are captured with consummate technique in a picture that both embodies and transcends the subject.

Speaking of technique - it is always a topic when talking about photographs, but this book thankfully does not even bring it up. Suffice it to say that Schuyler was schooled and skilled in photographic art and technology, and he became a sought-after expert on SLR digital photography when it was still in its early phase (circa 15 years ago). I believe the pictures in this book are all from digital capture, and they use it to excellent effect, especially in low light.

Ballston Beach Fire

One thing I love about Truro Light is that it also delves into darkness, but doesn't create a dark feeling. To some, this may make Schuyler less of an artist, but I respect the integrity of a person who remained true to his own quite sunny disposition and chose to present his world from that point of view. And indeed, the work is, as the title says, about the light in all its changes across Truro's mile-wide scope.

Freshwater Lily

Schuyler spent 10 years taking these pictures and no doubt a lot of great shots had to be cut, but the structure of the book demands that each picture contribute to the overall flow, which is organized in sections (Oceanside, Inland, Pamet Harbor and so on). Not to nitpick, but I found it bogged down a bit in the middle, where a sequence of eight flower details seemed unnecessary (though still beautiful). Perhaps I was just too impatient to get to the other shore.

View from Tom's Hill

As I am writing this, I am in a cafe in the mid-Cape area. A local man sitting nearby was curious about the book, so I let him have a look. When he handed it back, he simply said he would be buying several copies, and would make sure the local library picked one up, too. I sure wish Joe had been here for that. If you want to pick up a copy, please support your local independent bookstore - it will be available there or (if you must!) at Amazon.

Low Tide, Pamet River

Maxfield Parrish at the Fenimore Art Museum

Maxfield Parrish - Masquerade oil on board 1922
High Museum of Art, Atlanta

If you think an exhibition of work by an early-20th-century illustrator with broad commercial appeal is not to be taken seriously, think again. Maxfield Parrish: Art of Light and Illusion, on view at Cooperstown's Fenimore Art Museum through Sept. 7, is a knockout.

Girl on a Swing oil on paper
The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Parrish was the most popular and highest paid commercial artist of his time and, judging from the art, artifacts, and facts on display here, he earned it. While skill alone never makes great art, it can't hurt - and Parrish had enough skill for ten great artists. Initially educated through his artist father's tutelage and a seminal two-year European sojourn as a teen, Parrish first took an architecture degree, then went to study under Howard Pyle, himself a memorable illustrator of the day, before embarking on a career that revolutionized the field of commercial art reproduction.

The Storm oil on canvas 1907
The Addison Gallery

Parrish got his start illustrating children's books, quickly establishing a knack for fantasy and fun, while executing flawless representational techniques. Some of the early work in this exhibition demonstrates a prodigious ability for black-and-white rendering, whether in line or texture, as well as some of the most impressive hand lettering you will see this side of a medieval manuscript.

But Parrish would gain his greatest success as a colorist, perfecting a layering technique in painting that lent itself to stunningly vivid lithographic reproduction; this paved the way to his becoming the most popular artist in America - his 1925 Daybreak was said to be present in one-quarter of all homes - and creating a style that remains iconic today.

A Good Mixer oil on artist board 1924
This painting was owned - and imitated - by Norman Rockwell

Some would dismiss that style as inconsequential fluff from a sillier time - and there's truth in that thought - but Parrish's best paintings are so perfectly constructed, so masterfully rendered, and so unabashedly seductive as to be, frankly, irresistible. He was also extremely influential, as the show points out on a wall panel citing George Lucas, Andy Warhol and others as acolytes and collectors of Parrish's work.

Guest Curator Megan Holloway Fort intelligently organized the show in a cycle, beginning with a fine landscape painting by Parrish's father, and concluding with several landscapes that represent Maxfield's later-in-life commitment to fine art rather than illustration. Along the way, she includes a good variety of examples of Parrish's working photographs, drawings, props, and cutouts, providing an intriguing lesson about a craftsman so meticulous that he regularly machined metal and wooden forms to use as source material for photographs he shot and developed himself as guides to his paintings.

Ecstasy Mazda Lamps calendar lithograph 1930

Pithy quotes abound in the exhibition notes: A New York Times critic wrote that everything Parrish did was "an exercise in conspicuous virtuosity"; Holloway describes the "theatricality, fantasy, sentimentality, and good humor" of Parrish's oeuvre; and Parrish describes himself as "a machinist who paints." He also said, perhaps too tellingly, as he quit the illustration trade in 1936: "It's an awful thing to be a rubber stamp."

So, after achieving the financial success he sought, Parrish dedicated himself to painting landscapes; and the ones presented here are just marvelous. I found myself craning in to scrutinize every detail - the closer I got, the more there was to see, masterfully materialized in color, texture, and line. In the end, it was very difficult to leave this immensely satisfying show.

Potpourri oil on stretched paper 1905

Summer Shows to See

Van Gogh and Nature will be at The Clark through Sept. 13

Just like that, July 4th is over and it feels like summer will be soon be a distant memory, too. A bunch of museum exhibitions ought to be part of those memories, if you can organize it, with Van Gogh and Nature at the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute topping the list.

Roz Chast's style is unique

Other shows not to be missed include:
Roz Chast: Cartoon Memoirs at the Norman Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge, Mass., through Oct. 26. The sardonic and self-deprecating New Yorker cartoonist is about as far from the Saturday Evening Post as you can get - which is why I can't wait to see this show in Rockwell's house.

Near Stockbridge is Boston Sculptors Gallery at Chesterwood 2015, featuring 24 Boston-area sculptors' responses to the work, estate, and gardens of Lincoln Memorial sculptor Daniel Chester French, through Oct. 12.

A pop-up book by Andy Warhol at WCMA

The Late Drawings of Andy Warhol at The Hyde Collection through Sept. 27 and Warhol by the Book at the Williams College Museum of Art through Aug. 16. Warhol lovers can get their fill this summer. WCMA, always an under-the-radar favorite of mine, also offers a spate of other cool shows, including a spotlight on their stellar collection of works by Maurice and Charles Prendergast, a dive into history titled Imagining the Trojan War, and a featured exhibition of James McNeil Whistler.

Notice: A Flock of Signs by Kim Beck at Art Omi

The Fields Sculpture Park at Art Omi, which features about 80 long-term sculptural installations along a winding nature path, adds new works every year; I am long overdue for a revisit, and recommend it for all ages who have yet to go.

A Burchfield watercolor
that inspired his wallpaper design

Also on my to-do list are a show about Charles Burchfield's wallpaper designs at the Arkell Museum in Canajoharie; Lit at the Albany County Airport Gallery; and the 2015 edition of Artists of the Mohawk-Hudson Region, set to open this week at the University at Albany Art Museum.

If you feel a bit overwhelmed with all these options, you are not alone - I haven't gotten to any of these shows either. But today, we are heading out to Cooperstown for yet one more must-see: Maxfield Parrish: The Art of Light and Illusion at the Fenimore Art Museum, on view through Sept. 7. Watch this space for a review of that exhibition to come soon. And be sure to enjoy your summer, however you spend it, because it surely will not last!

Maxfield Parrish - What better art for a summer's day?