BASCHA MON EXHIBITION AT TAPPETO VOLANTE

 

I left NJ early enough to meet my friend Cicely Cottingham on the train - arriving at Penn Station, NY around noon. It was a lovely day - the light was mellow - the air was clear and happily not too hot, and I had the opportunity to have a cherished long-time friend all to myself to catch up on art, life, and politics. We were on our way to Brooklyn (Gowanus) to see Bascha Mon’s first one-person exhibition in NYC in a long time. She and I have known each other for many years and I vividly recollect attending her inaugural show at Lee Ault Gallery about fifty years ago.

The car ride out to Brooklyn gave me an opportunity to see parts of the Borough I had not visited in years and the contrasts were both stunning and jarring. Construction was evident everywhere, the sound of drilling shattering conversations, and again I was struck by the stillness of the wide streets that felt like Midwest plains - a dry flat emptiness of low-lying factories/shops that seemed to extend beyond the horizon into realms of secrets and challenges.

Arriving at an industrial area where the Gallery, Tappeto Volante is located we entered a cosmos of blazing color and swirling shapes installed in a space that did not disavow its machine-based origins. Paintings, drawings on paper, and canvases varying in size from a tiny glowing yellow gem to two larger works affixed with “hitchhikers”- smaller works like magnets hovering around the edges of “the mother ship” - a few able to attach themselves, adding myriad layers of cohesiveness to the work. In some of these paintings you realize dreams have been dissolved into viscous paint and a face, bird or fish will emerge ghostlike haunting the artist’s psyche.

Going into the second room I felt time had been erased when I saw the group of larger, harmonic, and more tonal paintings - many in values of delicate blues and grays produced on a building material - homasote which absorbs and fuses the paint invoking a world bathed in muted light. Flecks of patterning and references to flying fishes, acreages of farmland, and buildings, all co-mingle into Bascha’s wildly hermetic vision. Nature as seen through the eyes of a child discovering it for the first time - but with complexity interwoven with naiveté.

Before going home Cicely and I found a great Pizzeria and gobbled up delicious slices of spinach pizza-the best I ever had topping off a lovely day!

Please click or copy the link for images and more information.

https://tappetovolantegallery.com/

https://tappetovolantegallery.com/exhibitions/bascha-mon-solo-show

THE JUDGE 5/9/24

 

Last night I watched a 2014 film titled THE JUDGE on Netflix which I recommend for its sensitivity and clarity, particularly at this period in history. It has taken me years to finally appreciate the depth and breadth of Robert Downey Jr.'s performances. Along with Robert Duvall who is "the Judge", each character in the movie is beautifully portrayed particularly Jeremy Strong who plays  Robert Downey's intellectually challenged brother exuding an innocence and sensitivity that can make your heart weep at the perpacity of his insights.

This could have been another courtroom drama - with a successful, cynical big-city lawyer son returning to his small Indiana hometown to defend his father who is on trial for actions that could ruin his judicious relationship with the community - but it is more than that..  We are made aware of the love/hate relationship between a perfectionist father and his rebellious, wayward son. Yet there is a tenderness and a spirited machismo to Downey's character; the sunglasses come on and off depending on the persona he is portraying at the moment

THE JUDGE has touched me with its moments of gentleness that penetrate the gloom of anger. Family dynamics are complex.

Definitely worth seeing.

HARLEM RENAISSANCE EXHIBITION AT METROPOLITAN MUSEUM 3/23/24

 

I squeezed my way into the Metropolitan Museum's HARLEM RENAISSANCE exhibition sidling past a crushing crowd of onlookers. I panicked and wanted to rush out barely being able to see the work- which made me whisper to my friend, "I gotta leave - hard to breathe..." Besides my Covid phobic masked face was a peculiarity in this environment. Yet, I was fascinated by the diversity of color, ethnicities, ages, etc that were discussing and viewing the art. FINALLY, I muttered to myself these artists and paintings are being seen. Most of the works in the show involve figuration and narration executed in various modes and techniques. Some were done in the period of Modernism when large abstract paintings were dictated by the critic Clement Greenberg as the supposed “march of history” thereby ignoring a whole slew of artists and their profound works.

https://www.metmuseum.org/.../the-harlem-renaissance-and...

I have been looking at William H. Johnson’s art for many years and expressly came to this exhibition to see his paintings which jumped out at me like a fresh breeze whenever they appeared in a room. His work, imbued with joy and humanity through a uniquely flat, patterned and colorful style is a penetrating look at his African American community infused with flecks of whimsy that never disappoint. Paintings of his parents, family narratives, children delighting in the playfulness of living, as well as adults dealing with life’s vicissitudes are permeated with compassion.

Another artist, Winold Reiss, whose beautifully rendered pastels (having spent 10 years of my own life exclusively drawing with pastels/canvas) of Native Americans and African Americans continues to dazzle me with his combination of incisive dexterity intertwined with a piercing search into his subject’s being.

“…Winold Reiss was a German-born American artist and graphic designer. He was born in Karlsruhe, Germany. In 1913 he immigrated to the United States, where he was able to follow his interest in Native Americans. In 1920 he went West for the first time, working for a lengthy period on the Blackfeet Reservation…Reiss illustrated Alain Locke's historic 1925 anthology The New Negro, an important book about African American culture at the time of the Harlem Renaissance. These included drawings of such key figures as W. E. B. Du Bois, Charlie Johnson (bandleader), and Elise Johnson McDougald. ( Wikipedia)

https://www.nytimes.com/.../winold-reiss-new-york...

Some names in HARLEM RENAISSANCE have become very familiar to us such as Jacob Lawrence, Archibald Motley, and Romare Bearden among others, who are represented in the show. Bearden’s THE BLOCK fills one whole room with 6 ambitious panels allowing for the viewer to experience a NYC street with its neighborhood stores, apartment buildings, and residents - some leaning out the windows, others participating in the drama of street life - engaging in the breath and energy of Harlem’s march of existence.

https://beardenfoundation.org/

In 2015 I went to the Whitney Museum to see Archibald Motley (18891-1981): Jazz Age Modernist - a surprising discovery for me of paintings that are an uneven mix of sensitive portrait studies of family members, blatantly brash, wild hues and other canvases where forms are butting up against one another like a dance, creating tension so tight there is no room to breathe - filled with extravagant gesticulations indicative of the explosive Jazz Age era. All seen through the eyes of a man who articulated the movement through the medium of paint in 1920's Chicago.

I adore opening up to artists whose body of work I barely know - giving me a sense of their person and the times they lived in - a real treat.

Many of Motley's paintings are in this show.

http://whitney.org/Exhibitions/ArchibaldMotley

HARLEM RENAISSANCE is a large exploration of a vital and historically influential period of our time. I recommend a visit and enclose some links and images with wall labels. Use arrows to navigate imagery.

Enjoy!