Heroines of Abstract Expressionism at Fenimore Art Museum

A view of the installation of Heroines of Abstract Expressionism at the Fenimore

all photos provided by Fenimore Art Museum

Heroines of Abstract Expressionism, the current feature show on view through Dec. 31 at the Fenimore Art Museum in Cooperstown, is representative of a recent art-world trend, whereby collectors (rather than curators) initiate major museum shows. It makes sense - with art prices soaring, it's often the collectors who are better able than the museums to bear the cost of assembling a body of work significant enough to draw attention. So, the two camps increasingly work hand in hand to reach the art-savvy public. A harbinger of this trend was the aptly named Sensation, which presented the private collection of Charles Saatchi at the Brooklyn Museum of Art in 1997, to great acclaim and controversy.

While much more sober than sensational, HerAbEx is still a revelatory gem. Created by Southampton collectors Rick Friedman and Cindy Lou Wakefield, who drew from a broader swath of modern American artists in their collection, it puts the focus on 19 women members of the mid-century movement that rewrote the history of modern art. It's a striking and intimate gathering, totaling 34 drawings, paintings, and sculptures, and is accompanied by a fine, slim catalog with several essays and good color reproductions of all the work in the show.

Lee Krasner - September Twenty-Third
ink, crayon and collage on lithographic paper 

Among the 19, there are names that range from the widely celebrated to the largely overlooked. Most of us already know about Helen Frankenthaler, Lee Krasner, Joan Mitchell, Louise Nevelson, Louise Bourgeois, Grace Hartigan, and Dorothy Dehner - all of whom had significant recognition in their lifetimes. But what about Mary Abbott, Perle Fine, and Charlotte Park? These, and others, were new to me here.

A few motifs emerged as I wandered and relaxed in the comfortable upstairs gallery that holds all but one of the pieces (the other, shown here at left, being placed just outside the entrance). Most of the two-dimensional work is on paper (only six pieces are oil on canvas), and all of the work is relatively small in scale (that is, relative to the monumental scale of much of the AbEx masters' output). These limits can be explained by the seriously prohibitive purchase prices of larger works by such noted artists, but also suggests that the women in this group may have worked smaller overall than the men, possibly due to scarcer resources and, almost certainly, more human-scaled egos.

Elaine de Kooning - Cave #24 Red Oxide Wall
acrylic and collage on paper mounted on canvas

It's also worth noting that a large portion of these artists are Jewish - not surprising, considering the time (immediately post-WWII), the place (primarily New York City and Long Island), and a similar demographic among the men of the movement. Additionally, many studied under or were directly influenced by the same people, in particular Hans Hofmann.

A poignant sub-theme of the show is the marital status of these women artists - many were married to major art-world figures (including painters, sculptors, and critics), whose shadows would have been difficult to escape (the solution frequently being divorce). That includes de Kooning (married to Willem, divorced in 1957), Frankenthaler (associated for five years with Clement Greenberg, then married to Robert Motherwell and divorced in 1971), Park (married to James Brooks), Dehner (married to David Smith, divorced in 1951), and Krasner (married to Jackson Pollock until his death in 1956). Some of the label copy in the show (all of it succinct and nicely readable) makes references to those conditions and how gender affected these artists' careers, a sad commentary on their time in contrast to today.

Perle Fine - Untitiled, oil on paper mounted on board

It struck me that quite a few works in the show are not truly abstract, instead plainly representing figures and landscapes - and even including two recognizable portraits. One prominently featured painting (which collector Friedman cites as the start of it all for him and Wakefield) appears abstract at first, with slashing strokes of bold color and calligraphic black marks - only to reveal itself as a direct interpretation of an early cave painting depicting a bull. Cave #24 Red Oxide Wall (shown above, at right) is one of six pieces by Elaine de Kooning included in the show. There are also four by Krasner and three each by Dehner and Nevelson, while the rest of the included artists are represented by just one or two pieces.

Though de Kooning is clearly intended to be the star of the show (and her best works here support that), Krasner was the revelation for me, and her Earth No. 7, a gouache on paper, emerged as my top pick. Other favorites include a luscious pink acrylic on paper by Frankenthaler (seen in the image below), a marvelous untitled bronze by Dehner that felt like a three-dimensional Motherwell painting (also seen in the image below), and a brooding maelstrom of black ink by Joan Mitchell. Those four works alone are well worth the trip to Cooperstown.

I also particularly liked a trio of paintings that evoke the brash, calligraphic style of Franz Kline: A captivating double-sided oil on paper by Michael West (she changed her name from Corinne Michelle West at the suggestion of Arshile Gorky) and an oil by Perle Fine (shown above, at left).

Overall, Heroines of Abstract Expressionism provides a great opportunity to see work by many worthy artists in a worthy setting, and for curious folks who haven't yet come to appreciate abstraction, it offers a window into that world. The show is meant to travel, but an agenda hasn't yet been set.

From left, works by Helen Frankenthaler, Dorothy Dehner, Louise Nevelson, and Mercedes Matter are seen in Heroines of Abstract Expressionism at the Fenimore.

Group shows galore

Installation view of Upstate Artists at The Laffer Gallery (photo provided)

It's the time of the year when galleries, both commercial and public, put on those crowd-pleasing shows with lots of artists and, often, smaller/more affordable work for gifting opportunities.

I'm aware of four such exhibitions currently on view at quality venues, as follows:

• Thompson Giroux Gallery, Chatham - The appropriately named En Masse 2019 includes small works by more than 80 artists, and will be up through Jan. 12. This intimate gallery shows a lot of top-notch work, and the list of artists included here reflects that. 
• Albany Center Gallery, Albany - Featuring one piece each by more than 140 artists, this annual members show was judged for prizes by Union College curator Julie Lohnes, and will be on view through Jan. 10. Full disclosure: I am one of the included members.
• Saratoga Arts, Saratoga Springs - The arts council's annual members show is up through Jan. 4, with an online descriptions that cites "close to 230 pieces of artwork ranging from painting, drawing, printmaking, functional art and sculpture displayed chromatically in salon style," which sounds to me like an overwhelming feast for the eyes.
• The Laffer Gallery, Schuylerville - Upstate Artists is an annual juried group show, this year selected by Jon Gernon, and on view through Jan. 12. With only 30 artists, it will be the least cluttered of this set, but still abundant enough.

Combined, these shows include more than 500 works by nearly as many artists (no doubt with some overlap), much of it at the highest level you'll find anywhere.

So, if you need a little break from the holiday rush and, especially, if you can use a gift of a work of art, check them out. Remember, supporting local artists and local art venues is a gift that truly keeps on giving.

Embody at Mandeville Gallery

Firelei Baez - given the ground (the fact
that it amazes me does not mean I relinquish it)
acrylic and oil on canvas

There's always a mystery to strong group shows - does the curator start with a theme and then find artists that fit it, or does she start with some art she likes, and then discover the theme as it emerges? At shows like this I find myself asking, what do these artists have in common, and what brought them together? Is it taste? Meaning? Technique?

In the case of Embody, an outstanding exhibition on view at Union College's Mandeville Gallery through Jan. 19, curator Julie Lohnes has provided a number of intriguing threads to follow - and though I can't claim to have unraveled them all, it's great fun to try. She has also answered the origin question in a short essay at the front of a handsome catalog produced for the show (which the gallery provides free to visitors) - but where's the fun in that?

Chitra Ganesh - Sultana's Dream: Justice is Virtue, linocut

Going on with my search, I note that many of the ten included artists are from far-flung places - Haiti, Japan, Nigeria, Dominican Republic, and Iran among them - while those from the U.S. seem to have significant non-European ethnic ties: A strong indicator that the unifying principle of the show relates to expression of ethnic identity.

As the title implies, the works in Embody are all figurative, but the treatment of the human figure varies widely here, as does the range of techniques applied, from painting and fabric sculpture to drawing and several forms of printmaking. Still, it all pulls together, maintaining equilibrium.

One key to this delicate balance is that the overall quality of the work in the show is very high (though not perfectly consistent - a couple of pieces didn't quite hold up for me). That such a diversity of forms doesn't devolve into a mishmash is a credit to Lohnes's sharp curatorial vision. This consistency even stretches across shows - I recall, for example, one of the first shows she produced at the Mandeville was a 2014 solo by Jaune Quick-to-See Smith, who would have fit quite cleanly into this group.

Amir H. Fallah - The Light Within, acrylic on panel

Upon careful viewing, it becomes apparent that collage is the unifying element among this disparate swath of artists, even if most are not actually creating collages at all. The layering of images and conjunction of parts is more direct in some works, more subtle in others, but it's there, always. At the same time, there are, in equal parts, extremely vivid colors (especially in paintings by Amir H. Fallah, Firelei Baez and Didier William, in digital collages by Stacey Robinson, and in mixed-media prints by Saya Woolfalk) and superbly managed monochromes (in linocuts by Chitra Ganesh, mixed-media drawing by Simonette Quamina, and lithographs by Toyin Ojih Odutola). Being partial to neither, I enjoyed it all.

Perhaps the most difficult work in the show to grasp is a set of fabric sculptures by aricoco (Ari Tabei). These wearable pieces seem to want to be part of a performance, rather than exhibited in static poses. It was also terribly difficult to resist touching their multifarious textures and fasteners. Woolfalk's mixed-media digital prints struck me as the most accessible, with their seductively contemporary palette and smooth inkjet surfaces. The most compelling pieces in the show for me were two monumental drawings by Quamina that include torn assemblage and raw, textural graphite rubbings (a technique we all know from childhood that's not often seen in fine art). I also got a kick out of Robinson's slick Afrofuturist collages, which most literally exemplify the curator's stated source of inspiration for assembling this collection of artists.

In all, it's a hugely pleasurable and engrossing exhibition that's sure to compel a couple of good trips around the Mandeville's unique circular gallery space, housed inside an extraordinary building at the center of campus, the Nott Memorial.

William Didier - Kochon Sa a Lou / This Pig is Heavy

collage, acrylic and wood stain on panel

Quick Take: Ken Ragsdale at LGAP and Upstate Invitational at Laffer Gallery

Ken Ragsdale - A New Crop 2018, digital photograph

Two shows worth a look are going to end soon - maybe you can find a way to squeeze them in around the holiday crush.

Ken Ragsdale: Memory as Process Revisited, at the Lake George Arts Project's Courthouse Gallery through Dec. 6, is a mini-retrospective of one of the Capital Region's best-liked artists. Ragsdale is popular for several reasons, but that doesn't mean his work isn't challenging.

This collection of about 20 pieces includes a few earlier works, among them a charming tiny drawing from 1984, but the core of the show is a strong series of more recent, large framed photographs made in Ragsdale's signature style, in which he creates elaborate sets in white paper, then bathes them in washes of colored light before recording them with a camera. Ragsdale is drawing from visual memories of his childhood in the rural Northwest to create strikingly concrete (yet dreamlike) scenes of subtle, slow destruction.

This show is a great opportunity to get a sense of Ragsdale's process while enjoying a larger group of his work than has been exhibited in the area in quite some time.

Audrie Sturman
Vine 4, clay

In Schuylerville, Eric Laffer has accomplished the nearly impossible feat of keeping a fine art gallery going for about eight years, and his effort shows no signs of flagging. The Laffer Gallery is a beautiful space that consistently hosts strong shows of work by mostly regional artists, with a mix of painting, sculpture, ceramics, prints, and photography. The artists in the gallery's 7th Upstate Invitational, currently on view through Dec. 1, were selected by juror Laura Von Rosk from last year's annual juried group show at Laffer, an interesting arrangement whereby Laffer has delegated curatorial choice within his own space (this year's juried show, selected by Jon Gernon, will open on Dec. 7).

The featured artists, Fern Apfel, Robyn Morgan Giddings, and Audrie Sturman, hang well together, as all place great emphasis on form and color. Giddings and Apfel are painters with direct or indirect elements of paper collage, while Sturman is a ceramic sculptor working at a notably large scale for her medium. Sturman's many tower-like structures in this show are muscular and brash, with great textures and brightly glazed or painted surfaces.

Robyn Morgan Giddings
Stuffed 2, mixed media on canvas

Among the three, I am most impressed by Apfel, who I've followed for a long time, and who seems in recent years to have burst through into a marvelous world of abstraction. In her layered images, old-time ephemera are given new life with the vibrant colors of today. Nearly photographic realism contrasts with built-up areas and edges of paint to create complexity in these compositions.

Giddings' flat, often patterned painting approach emphasizes simplified interior elements (usually furniture) and combines them with photographic prints depicting items of clothing or flowers. I found this work rather decorative, and indeed it seems to be quite intentionally and unashamedly so. Overall, the Invitational is a highly appealing display in a very sophisticated, yet welcoming space. If you love art and haven't been to Laffer Gallery yet, you are long overdue.

Fern Apfel - The Monkey Applauds, acrylic and pen on board

2019 Exhibition by Artists of the Mohawk Hudson Region at The Hyde Collection

Mixed groups of individual works are a staple of this year's Mohawk Hudson Regional.

The Annual Exhibition by Artists of the Mohawk Hudson Region has rotated to The Hyde Collection in Glens Falls this year and, as ever, it is a must-see show for followers of the local scene. Now in its 84th year, the Regional will be on view at the Hyde through Dec. 4.

Charles Geiger's oil on linen Cactus
received the top award at this year's Regional.

Juried by Victoria Palermo, a longtime standout artist from the Adirondack region, this year's edition has a curated feel - Palermo didn't aim to select the best or most representative artworks so much as she sensed an overall direction of the submissions - a huge haul of more than 1,500 works by 365 artists - and pulled together a sweeping version of how she saw that vast body.

The main theme is climate, though numerous works unrelated to that theme are also included. A total of 92 pieces by 83 artists made the cut (many more artists than usual, but still maintaining a high level of quality). One result of that selection is that very few artists are represented by more than one piece. Instead, the show is largely organized in ensembles that build relationships and contrasts among the individual artists' works. While this approach can set your head to spinning, and may always not honor each artist sufficiently, it does make for a stimulating and rich presentation.

Rebecca Murtaugh is represented in the Regional
by a group of five ceramic sculptures.

The 2019 Regional is installed throughout the Hyde's many galleries (except the central one, where a fine traveling exhibition of prints by Picasso, Braque, and Léger holds pride of place through Jan. 5), an arrangement that can be disorienting at first, but which rewards persistent wandering with many strong experiences. A press release explains that artworks centered on the environment are exhibited in Feibes & Schmitt Gallery, the stairwell of the Museum’s education wing, and Rotunda Gallery. Submissions selected for the exhibition that aren’t related to climate are in Hoopes Gallery and Hyde House.

Jane Feldblum's mixed-media Winter Garden
is displayed on an antique chair at the Hyde.

In particular, the pieces in Hyde House are placed among the museum's impressive, historical permanent collection, providing sometimes intriguing, sometimes confounding collisions of style, material, and period. Past Regionals have included similar pointed installations, both here and at the Albany Institute of History & Art, providing a nice twist that I always enjoy. For a historic house museum to make space for such intrusions, even to the extent of displacing specific objects from its collection, is truly generous.

It's worth noting that Palermo's selections seem to include more three-dimensional work than most Regionals (no surprise there, as she is a sculptor herself), and far fewer photographs than usual (a bit confounding, as I have no reason to think she is biased against that medium). The photo-based works she chose lean toward the abstract, colorful, and process-oriented - just one is a straight, black-and-white landscape print.

John Yost's three-monitor video portrait
re-creates the look of 19th-century photography.

There are also several videos, always a plus when presented right, and the Hyde did a good thing by projecting three of these in rotation on a big wall opposite handy benches. An additional video submission (shown here at left) is tucked into a very quiet nook, but it won the Hyde purchase prize, so it's clear they meant no harm there.

Scott Brodie's acrylic on canvas
Project Lamentation Discard:
Decommissioned after Electric Shock
is oddly sentimental.

I also feel compelled to point out that the complex installation of this sprawling show feels natural, whereas the last Hyde Regional felt over-curated to me. We live in a time of curation - restaurants, clothing stores, cruise lines and so on all use the term now for carefully chosen and organized experiences. In the art world, too much curation can feel like a subjugation of the art itself. Call me old-school, but I still want the artists to lead, not their interpreters (including critics like me).

But curation is, of course, necessary. And, properly done, it can avoid the pitfall of undermining the individual pieces for the sake of a more overarching vision. I think this show reaches far, but still gives the individual artists enough room to breathe, enough space in which to be taken in directly by the viewer. That said, the viewer will need to take the time and effort to allow that interaction to happen.

Ryan Parr's oil on canvas Green Wall
transforms its subject using scale and perspective.

Among the chosen are many familiar names from past Regionals (including 2016 juror Michael Oatman), but many new names appear as well. This may not be the point of such a traditional format, but it sure feels right.

I was struck this week to realize that I've witnessed nearly half of the rather long history of the Regional (including a period in which I submitted regularly and was included often). In light of that extended view, I can state without a doubt that this Regional represents quite a robust peak in local artistic output. Perhaps, as the main theme might suggest, artists are inspired by a sense of urgency. Or maybe this is just a good place to be if you want to pursue art, which is never an easy task. Whatever the reason, it is cause for celebration.

Go, enjoy the show and, in particular, keep an eye out for more from this very impressive lineup of creators, who also just happen to be your neighbors.

This group of prints and paintings, organized around the theme of landscape,
is part of the 84th Annual Regional at The Hyde Collection.

Running at 61

That's me finishing strong at the Nick's Run to be Healed 5k in Clifton Park

photos by William Laviano

About a year ago I published a post entitled Running at 60, in which I described some of the challenges of recreational running as an older person, and within which I set a new challenge for myself: To get a first place age-group finish in the annual Dunkin' Run (a favorite, as it is right in my neighborhood). I also promised to provide an update here on that quest.

Well, forgive my bragging, but Mission Accomplished. However, quite unexpectedly, this proved to be unexpectedly unsatisfying. The reason being, I'd been trying (and failing) for about two years to break 26 minutes in a 5k race - and this year's Dunkin' Run was no exception, as I clocked a 26:15. Also, the next nearest competitor in my age group was minutes behind me - so finishing first really had no meaning.

The happy 2nd- and 3rd-place finishers

After that, I felt even more motivated to try to break that pesky 26 minutes, and I trained a little harder than usual for my next race, enjoying some beautiful late summer trail runs with a friend who used to be much faster than me but - well, he's older now, so we can run together these days.

The results are proof that working harder can help you achieve success. On Sept. 27, on a perfect afternoon in Clifton Park, I ran my best 5k race yet, finishing in an official time of 25:52, good enough for second place in the 60-and-over division, while my running partner took third. Though the organizers were only giving awards to the first-place finishers at that race, I went away feeling like I'd taken home a trophy (but without the need to store it). Now THAT was my true Mission Accomplished!

So, what's next? Considering that the person who came in first in that Clifton Park race was minutes ahead of me (and my same age), maybe I can try to get better at this. Anybody think I can break 25 minutes?

UPDATE: A couple of weeks after posting this piece, I entered a 5k race in North Greenbush, sponsored by RPI. I'm not sure how, but I finished in 25:04 (to my astonishment). Clearly, the goal for next year is to break 25. Winter training, here I come!

Pulse at Carrie Haddad Gallery

Pulse artists include, from left, Jeanette Fintz, Dai Ban, and Ginny Fox

photo provided by gallery

An outstanding show of abstract art is currently on view at Carrie Haddad Gallery in Hudson, but you'll need to get there soon, as it closes on Sept. 15. Pulse: Color & Form in a Visual Rhythm features the paintings of Jeanette Fintz, Jenny Kemp, and Ginny Fox, and the sculptures of Dai Ban. The four artists works are successfully mixed in the installation, but the gallery's several rooms also provide areas that focus on each artist individually, a best-of-both-worlds scenario.

Dai Ban - If You Touch Me, I Will Push You to the End
precision board, lacquer paint

I was already familiar with two of the artists (Fintz and Kemp), but the bodies of work presented here were mostly new to me so, along with the discovery of Ban and Fox, the show felt very fresh. Fintz is given pride of place among the selection, with her latest large-scale paintings displayed in the big front room of the gallery - and, frankly, they deserve it. Blending tight, mathematically precise forms with free, liquid washes, in a scaled down desert palette, Fintz's layered images are both striking and subtle. They draw from the impact of form and size, but also from the lasting power of complexity. Truly great stuff.

Ginny Fox - C18-9, acrylic on two panels

Ban's wall-mounted constructions hark back in form and color to both early and late Modernism, evoking Russian Suprematists as well as '60s minimalists, but they still feel contemporary, perhaps due to their elegantly crafted shapes and surfaces. Built of thick planes combined into angular reliefs, then finished with flat pigment or bright metal leaf, his pieces are lively explorations of dancing motion. The evocative titles he gives these works add a surprising emotional element, further placing them squarely in the present. 

Jenny Kemp - Raised, acrylic on linen panel

Kemp paints in parallel stripes, often curving them into sensual shapes that evoke body parts or other natural forms, but the work remains essentially geometric. Her masterful use of color relationships helps give these works the depth required to fascinate. Seeing her paintings in this exhibition gave me solace for having missed Kemp's solo show at Union College's Mandeville Gallery last year, though, to her credit, these are newer works. She moves fast and is definitely one to try to keep up with.

Forgive me for saying it, but I feel Fox is the weak link here. Her smeared and scraped acrylics seem to have some depth, but I doubt they could hold any serious viewer's attention for very long.

Jeanette Fintz - Permanently Temporary #1, acrylic on canvas