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Judith Godwin, Seated Figure, 1955
oil on canvas
210.82 x 119.38 cm (83 x 47 in.)
National Gallery of Art, Washington, Gift of the Artist

A generous gift to the Gallery from American artist Judith Godwin (b. 1930), Seated Figure (1955) is the first work by her to enter the collection. Seated Figure is a striking arrangement of pale blue, royal blue, and black planes outlined in white and gray that evoke a figure's head, back, knee, and leg folded into a chair. Angular lines, extravagant drips, and vigorous brushwork energize the composition and transform the static motif of a seated figure into a dynamic image. The work shows both Godwin's mastery of the gestural style of abstract expressionists like Franz Kline and the influence of Martha Graham's expressive bodily gesture. Completed when Godwin was 25 years old, Seated Figure is a powerful example of second-generation abstract expressionism by one of the movement's female practitioners.

November 2 − December 1
Art Students League: The Phyllis Harriman Mason Gallery

Postwar Women is The Art Students League’s first exhibition to explore the vital contributions of these alumnae on the international stage. On view at The Phyllis Harriman Mason Gallery from November 2 to December 1, 2019, Postwar Women challenges the misperception that great art produced by women artists is somehow an exception rather than the rule. Curator Will Corwin investigates the history of innovative art academies like The League that promoted democratic ideologies, which in turn created artistic opportunities for women of all social classes. This ground-breaking exhibition features over forty artists active between 1945-65, tracing the complex networks these professional women formed to support one another and their newfound access to art education. Postwar Women presents work by some of the prominent artists of the 20th Century like Louise Bourgeois and Helen Frankenthaler, but more importantly it calls out the women who were not credited enough: Mavis Pusey, Kazuko Miyamoto, Olga Albizu and Helena Vieira da Silva – challenging a new generation of visitors and art students to KNOW YOUR FOREMOTHERS.

Featured Artists:
Berenice Abbott, Mary Abbott, Olga Albizu, Janice Biala, Isabel Bishop, Nell Blaine, Regina Bogat, Louise Bourgeois, Vivian Browne, Elizabeth Catlett, Dorothy Dehner, Elaine de Kooning, Monir Farmanfarmaian, Perle Fine, Helen Frankenthaler, Judith Godwin, Terry Haass, Grace Hartigan, Carmen Herrera, Eva Hesse, Faith Hubley, Lenore Jaffee, Gwendolyn Knight, Lee Krasner, Blanche Lazzell, Marguerite Louppe, Lenita Manry, Marisol, Mercedes Matter, Kazuko Miyamoto, Louise Nevelson, Charlotte Park, Joyce Pensato, Irene Rice Pereira, Mavis Pusey, Faith Ringgold, Edith Schloss, May Stevens,  Yvonne Thomas, Lynn Umlauf, Maria Vieira da Silva, Merrill Wagner, Joyce Weinstein, Michael West

Exhibition invitation for Inspired, curated by Kimberley Goff of the Elaine Benson Gallery. Exhibition is at Center for Jewish Life in Sag Harbor, NY.

New York City Gallery Openings Video. Christine Berry introduced exhibition: Dan Christensen: Early Spray Paintings (1960s)

The Museum of Modern Art is set to reopen after its big expansive and restoration—and when it does, it’s crown jewels, the permanent collection will be reimagined. Old hits are still there, but new discoveries are also worked in. Film and architecture are integrated into the galleries. And the curation, as the New York Times reported, seeks to make room for “detours, anachronisms and surprise encounters.”

As the public gets ready for the new MoMA, here are photos that give a sense of how its new art history fits together.

Image: Ben Davis

SYD SOLOMON AT THE RINGLING  Camouflage and Calligraphy

For Sarasota’s art aficionados and culture vultures, the works of acclaimed abstract expressionist Syd Solomon are well known. And for locals, his time here remains a source of cultural pride and a milestone in the area’s artistic history. But a new exhibition opening this December at The Ringling Museum—Syd Solomon: Concealed and Revealed—proposes to dive deeper into the artist’s early life and inspiration than ever before, presenting a definitive origin story for a man who became a local legend.

Dominating the Searing Wing, Concealed and Revealed brings not only several of Solomon’s paintings to the museum, but also several artifacts from the artist’s early life, most importantly his service in World War II and professional start as a graphic designer and calligrapher in Sarasota, on loan from the Solomon Archive. His son, the artist Mike Solomon, has been working on the archive for five years now, and even he has been surprised by what they’ve found. “The general knowledge was always there,” he says, “but the surprise was in the details, and how it connected to his painting.” When the elder Solomon served in World War II, his camouflage designs hid men, tanks and supplies from German air raids following the Normandy invasion. Fake trees on wheels disguised Allied planes resting on makeshift airstrips. And when Solomon and his fellow soldiers liberated the French town of Roye, they held a big celebration with a parade and a printed poster. That original poster will be on display. And when Solomon moved to Sarasota in 1946, he turned his talents to signage for local businesses and layout work for local newspapers. “And a lot of the look of Sarasota in the ‘40s, in terms of advertising and signage, he made,” Mike says. But more than that, both of these experiences—Solomon the camouflagist and Solomon the calligrapher—would greatly influence the celebrated abstract expressionist he became. “For the people who think they know Syd Solomon’s work, they’ll realize it’s a lot more complex than they thought,” Mike says. “It wasn’t just about nature. It’s expressionism. It’s a personal, autobiographical thing.” Syd Solomon: Concealed and Revealed opens at The Ringling this December.

Approaching the Quogue Gallery, I was immediately drawn in by Susan Vecsey’s painting, visible through the side entrance along Jessup Avenue in Quogue, NY. It was awash with warm, radiant color; a vast field of peachy orange. I had seen Vecsey’s work before, in Chelsea at Berry Campbell gallery, and was intrigued with how it would look in this setting in The Hamptons.

I passed through a forecourt with greenery, slate steps and a silvery sculpture by Hans Van De Bovenkamp and stepped into the gallery’s north exhibition space to see Vecsey’s solo show simply titled “Paintings” as it eases into its final week before closing on October 2, 2019. Inside, this impressive painting, Untitled (Orange/Purple/Gold), 2017, greeted me with its vast sky of orange. A circle of the same hue pushed towards the top edge, glowing with a whitish halo. The horizon was marked by a swath of deep purple infused with ultramarine, and a band of ochre yellow suggested sand. I was reminded of our Long Island beaches, in the light of late afternoon on a summer day.

In the early 1960s, Yvonne Thomas (1913-2009) was one of many painters seeking a more rational, methodical alternative to the untethered, intuitive and often outsize gestures of Abstract Expressionism. The French-born Ms. Thomas — who came to the United States as a child and was a regular on the New York art scene after 1950 — made a series of modest but radiant proto-Minimalist works that, as seen in this moving show, “Windows and Variations: Paintings From 1963-65,” may be the best of her career.

Until around 1960, Ms. Thomas’s loose patches of color had been relatively generic, a de Kooning-infused form of Abstract Expressionism, albeit sensitive in its paint-handling and palette. But gradually she simplified: reducing the numbers of colors and limiting her shapes to a repeating pattern of lozenges or, often, fat, short brush strokes that suggest a form of counting.

Leaning this way and that, these elements floated in horizontal rows before fields of related hues. In “Transition” (1963), for example, yellow ocher, green and black repeatedly change places, defining shiny strokes and then matte background areas, almost in a kind of dance. In “Variations,” also from 1963, shades of red prevail fore and aft, but additions of white and black create shifting lights, shadows and shimmers. The repetition of identical elements would be foundational to Minimalism, but Ms. Thomas was less strict and more expressive. She kept her hand in, adding a fresh directness of touch, and the results give her a place in the still-emerging saga of postwar American abstraction.

ROBERTA SMITH

Art and Antiques

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View Works by Charlotte Park

10 x 10
Ten Slides Ten Speakers

Art Ovation, Sarasota, Florida
October 3, 2019
5:30 - 7:00 pm

Frank Alcock, Karen Arango, Bill Buchman, Jetson Grimes, Cooper Levey-Baker, Joan Libby-Hawk, Steve Phelps, Shakira Refos, Mike Solomon, Javier Suarez