Art Intelligence
In the GalleriesSalmon Falls Artisans Gallery , Shelburne Falls; connecting people to fine art and craft made by over eighty regional artists. Open year round.
At the Museums
The Clark, Williamstown; Romantic Nature: British and French Landscapes, including Thomas Girtin’s c 1790s A Wooded Landscape (right); now - September 30. Monumental sculptures by El Anatsui in the Stone Hill Center; June 12 - October 16; Spaces, photographs by Candida Höfer and Thomas Struth, June 12 - September 5. Also, this summer Pissarro’s People, first major exhibition to focus on the artist’s personal ties and social ideas; June 12 – October 2.
Related posts:
Rural Intelligence Impressions of a Revolutionary: Pissarro’s People
Berkshire Eagle Pissarro’s People at the Clark
Vanderpoel House of History, Kinderhook; The Columbia County Historical Society presents an exhibition, “Home and Away: Columbia County During the Civil War”
Dia-fied: Blinky & Co. at Beacon and Bard
by Scott Baldinger
“Art is not innocent (Oscar) Wilde says ... Violence can be done in its name. Indeed, the twentieth century brought forth many Dorian Grays: fiendishly pure spirits so wrapped up in aesthetics that they become heedless of humanity.” This quote, from a recent New Yorker article by Alex Ross about the Oscar Wilde novel The Picture of Dorian Grey, reminded me of the somewhat dissolute (though definitely not, from any account I’m aware of, similarly sexually oriented) German artist Blinky Palermo, who died in 1977 at age 34 in the Maldives under not completely un-Dorian-like circumstances (most likely a drug overdose). Palermo’s “fiendishly pure,” monochromatic yet stunning aluminum panels that form color patterns suggestive of the West German flag, seem to be, in the sunlit, grandly spacious exhibition galleries of Dia:Beacon, a complete sacrifice to aesthetics—the engagement of the eye over any emotive or coolly ironic expectations.
Born Peter Schwarze, Palermo adopted his new name in the sixties, the legend goes, at the suggestion of a fellow art student who believed he resembled an ex-con and fight fixer who’d been gaining notoriety in New York at the time. (Both of them were studying with the artist Joseph Beuys, who, by some accounts, is credited with giving Schwarze his name.) For young Europeans like Schwarze/Palermo, rakish New York epitomized the “confident flash of things American,” as the critic Peter Schjeldahl notes.
“Artists take us out of our conventional thinking, almost in an outlaw way.They move us to places where we’re not always comfortable or willing or to go,” says Manda Weintraub, an art dealer and lawyer who accompanied me on a recent trip to Dia-Beacon. Despite the Palermo exhibition’s extraordinary scale and polish (photo, left, by Bill Jacobson), there is a feeling of cosmic playfulness, if not mischief, that comes across, not only when looking at Palermo’s work, but from just 
being at Dia:Beacon. Art there is narrowed into components, small and large: thin strings creating almost invisible walls by Fred Sanback; wood boxes configured into repetitive series by Donald Judd; massive wall murals drawn in barely legible pencil by assistants following the instructions of Sol Lewitt, or primal, monolithic stone or steel sculptures, multi-ton objects by 
Michael Heiser and Richard Serra, left. In addition to works that are fun to look at, such as the the warren of rooms devoted to Agnes Martin paintings, these architecturally contextual creations expand the definition of enjoyment by simultaneously toying with, defining and expanding our understanding of what art can be. Set in Dia-Beacon’s massive, pure white galleries in a former Nabisco box factory, the artworks are ocular exercises and spatial games that bolt deep down into our retinas. The message seems to be both manifold and simple: Keep your eyes open to the whole, move beyond your minds’ narrative expectations, look up, down and all around you—all perhaps in the end for no purpose other than to be able to confirm that, to paraphrase Duke Ellington’s remark about music, “If it looks good, it is good.”
The Palermo retrospective has been divided between Dia-Beacon and Bard College’s Center for Curatorial Studies Hessel Museum, a newer, more traditionally elegant space that, like a doting younger sibling looking up to an older, more raffish family member, tries even harder to épater la bourgeoisie with a companion exhibition, If You 
Lived Here, You’d Be Home By Now. As if the wonderful Palermos here were not enough. Curated by Lynne Cooke it is, “an exhibition about the life of the art object in domestic spaces.” Combining neo-geo paintings from the decoratively inclined 1980s (Valerie Jaudon), amusingly cranky Cindy Sherman photos, furniture by Paul Evans, Frederich Kiesler, Charlotte Perriand and Jean Prouve with sometimes 2.5 -3.0 dimensional work by Gerhard Richter, Sigmar Polke, Agnes Martin, Dan Flavin, and others, its challenge to easy viewing is perhaps best expressed by a large black-and-white text painting by Christopher Wool that spells out, “AND IF YOU DON”T LIKE IT, YOU CAN GET THE FUCK OUT OF MY HOUSE.” Despite the violent temperament the Wool work expresses, it, too, looks good, so it must be.
Blinky Palermo: Retrospective 1964-1977
Now - October 31
Dia-Beacon
Beacon
Thursday-Monday, 11 a,m. - 6 p.m.
Admission/$10; students & seniors/$7
Blinky Palermo: Retrospective 1964-1977
Now - October 31
If You Lived Here, You’d Be Home By Now
Now - December 16
Hessel Museum of Art at Bard College
Annandale-on-Hudson
Wednesday - Sunday, 1 – 5 p.m.
Admission/free
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Posted by Marilyn Bethany on 08/06/11 at 04:09 AM • Permalink
Cutting Edge Exhibit Down by the Riverside
by Betsy Miller
Picture Shirley Bassey singing her hit song This is My Life in one of her dramatic costumes. Now imagine her singing the same song at different points in her career, all captured on video that has been fragmented by an artist, who further fractures the images with disco ball mirrors and projections on uneven brick walls. This is a rough description of a kaleidoscopic piece by Conrad Ventur, one of 51 artists who will be participating in NADA Hudson, an art exhibition taking place at the Basilica on July 30 and 31.
Heather Hubbs, Director of NADA, the New Art Dealers Alliance, says of the membership, “They are art professionals who share resources, networking, and education opportunities.” The exhibition in Hudson will include sculpture, installations, videos and performance pieces and will occupy nearly 8,000 square feet of indoor space, the theater and over 10,000 square feet of outdoor space as well. Artists from the U.S., Canada and Europe will be showing, several having developed site-specific works for this show.
The site was suggested by NADA Vice President James Fuentes, who heard about it from one of the artists he represents, sculptor Bill Stone, a co-owner of the Basilica. Other principals in the Basilica are Stone’s son, the filmmaker Tony Stone, Tony’s partner, the musician and performance artist Melissa Auf Der Maur, and Bill’s wife, Nancy Stone, a ceramicist.
“It made a lot of sense,” says Hubbs. “The Basilica is across from the Hudson train station. The town is close by, walkable, and has a large number of art galleries. We think it’s an easy way for folks to get out of New York City for a couple days and see some great art.”
Auf Der Maur is hoping to build this event into a destination “like Art Basil Miami.”—a lofty ambition considering that NADA Miami, in its 8th year, attracts 20,000 people annually whereas Art Basel Miami draws 46,000.
Though they’ve already held several events at the Basilica, the co-owners consider the NADA art fair to be their official “soft opening.” They’ve done a lot of prep—installing a crowd-sized restroom, to name just one upgrade. But there is still plenty to be done, including a planned exterior landscaping that promises to link the picturesque 19th-century industrial site to its view, a glorious sweep of the Hudson River and the Catskills. “Nancy [Stone] has an incredible garden in Germantown,” says Auf Der Maur. “She’s planning on making the surroundings here just as spectacular.”
The Basilica has a number of events scheduled for the remainder of this year, including the Hudson MusicFest in August, film nights with Director Q & As, and fundraisers for the Opera House and Walking the Dog Theatre. At the moment, however, the owners are focusing on NADA Hudson, which is expected to draw thousands of people to their doors.
“I read a statistic that 70% of the artists in the New York Art Biennial were from New York State and of those, 50% were based upstate,” Auf Der Maur says. “That says a lot about the New York art scene. We think the art world is gravitating towards Hudson.” Using the Basilica as a hub for this creative community is exactly what the owners have in mind. “We have an incredible investment in this waterfront property. With our blood, sweat and tears, we are hoping to build a beautiful creative community down here.”
NADA Hudson
The Basilica
110 S. Front Street, Hudson
Saturday & Sunday, July 30 & 31; 11 a.m. – 7 p.m.
Admission/free
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Posted by Marilyn Bethany on 07/18/11 at 07:54 AM • Permalink
Impressions of a Revolutionary: Pissarro’s People
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by Robyn Perry
A kind-looking man with a long flowing beard and piercing eyes, Camille Pissarro, father of French Impressionism, was not French at all. He was born into a Sephardic Jewish family on the then-Danish colony of St. Thomas in the Caribbean, and remained a Danish citizen all his life. He was also a radical anarchist.
“Pissarro’s People,” showing June 12 – October 2 at the Sterling and Francine Clark Institute of Art in Williamstown, explores how Pissarro’s outsider status and revolutionary philosophy was a driving force behind the Impressionist movement of the late nineteenth century. Curator Richard Brettell, an international Pissarro expert and, for many years, a grateful summer visitor to the Berkshires from Dallas, paints a new portrait of the Master that, for the first time, reveals his muse.
In 1863, a group of painters who would become the Impressionists (including Monet, Renoir and Pissarro) broke away from the strict rules of the French Academy of Fine Arts, the star-maker machine of the time, and filled their own salon exhibition with “refused” paintings. Their show was better attended than the academic salon, if only because people came to mock the work on display. “Impressionist” was an epithet, a curse. Over the next twelve years, the initial independent salon was followed by a series of eight more Impressionist exhibitions (Pissarro was the only artist to exhibit in all nine), and dealer Paul Durand-Ruel exported the work to London and New York, because, as he said, “The American public does not laugh. It buys!”
Impressionism is characterized by visible brush strokes, emphasis on the qualities of light rather than form, a concern with daily life, ordinary surroundings, color and movement. Part of the advance was technical: by the late 19th century, paint came in a tube, enabling artists to take their easels outside, into glittering sunlight. Reacting to the advent of photography, the Impressionists also intuited that their strength was in more, not less, subjectivity. The show at the Clark gives back to the work something of its original shock value by coloring content with intent.
Pissarro, primarily known as a landscape painter, did, in fact, paint portraits; he just didn’t paint portraits that lionized his subjects, including his famous friends. He painted the local washerwoman, workers in the fields and at open-air markets, his family: these were the people he most admired. With his profound dedication to portraying the world around him, now we might call him a realist. “Pissarro’s People” links Pissarro’s figurative work with his social and economic ideals. Not only was he from the New World, he was on a mission to create a new world order, based on individuality, equality, and work, rather than capital or class. “Pissarro’s People” also makes evident his wide influence among his peers, both Impressionists and Neo-Impressionists. His revolutionary way of looking at the world shaped protégés such as Cezanne, Van Gogh, Gauguin, Matisse and Seurat.
Lional and Joachim Pissarro with Claire Durand-Ruel Snollaerts
During the course of the show previews, Camille Pissarro’s great grandsons, brothers Lionel and Joachim Pissarro (the latter an art history professor at Hunter College) came to see the exhibition, along with Claire Durand-Ruel Snollaerts, great great-granddaughter of Impressionist dealer Paul Durand-Ruel. Touring the galleries, Snollaerts pulled out a tiny flashlight from her purse. “Ouvres la bouche!” she laughed, then handed it to Joachim, who inspected the surface of “The Harvest” (1882), below. He talked of his ancestor’s “technical anarchy,” pointing out that Pissarro was a revolutionary experimenter and innovator in a whole range of media, not just oil on canvas, which only his wealthiest patrons could afford. He also made lithographs, etchings, drawings, gouache and tempera (all included in the current exhibition), to reach a wider, more economically diverse audience.
For the first time ever, Turpitudes Sociales (Social Disgraces, 1890), a series of pen-and-ink drawings Pissarro created as a book for the civic education of his nieces, hangs alongside his other art, revealing the political zeal that drove him to a new way of seeing. The revolution to which Pissarro devoted his life and work occurs before the viewer’s eyes. In addition to images that convey “gaiety, clarity, spring festivals, golden evenings, or apple trees in blossom,” as the contemporary reviewer Armand Silvestre characterized the first Impressionist exhibition, the Clark’s show enables the viewer to see the artist himself.
Pissarro’s People
The Sterling and Francine Clark Institute of Art
Williamstown
Now - October 2
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Posted by Marilyn Bethany on 06/20/11 at 01:33 PM • Permalink
Carolyn Blackwood, the Accidental Artist
It’s not her fault that she trips into careers. She hadn’t intended to become a lead singer for jazz bands, she just fell into it while in graduate school. Same with the years she spent as a tv producer in France. And now photography: It’s not her fault that the skies over the Hudson River, the view from her office/pied de terre/home-away-from-home in Rhinecliff, are, as she puts it, “biblical.”
“I had been taking pictures for years,” says Carolyn Marks Blackwood, whose real career, Magnolia Mae Films, which she co-owns with Gaby Tana, produced 2008’s The Duchess, and, coming out next fall, Corialanus, directed by and starring Ralph Fiennes with Vanessa Redgrave. “A few years ago, the Morton Library in Rhinebeck asked me to put 10 pieces in a group show.” It was there that Blackwood’s images of the Hudson River caught the attention of the esteemed critic and curator Barbara Rose, who asked if she could include some of Blackwood’s work in a show on modern luminism, The Magic Hour, that she was curating at a New York gallery. “It’s as if I’d been playing softball in a field in Rhinebeck, and somebody said, ‘Would you like to play for the Yankees?’ ”
The Alan Klotz Gallery in Chelsea is now Blackwood’s gallery, where her first solo show in New York opens this week. It is also where an art director from Knopf happened upon an image of Blackwood’s, which is now on the cover of New Yorker poet Deborah Digges’ posthumously-published book, The Wind Blows Through the Doors of My Heart. Blackwood has used a shortened version of that title for her show.
“Have you seen the documentary, Bill Cunningham New York?,” Blackwood asks. “As he’s accepting the order of arts and letters from the French Ministry of Culture, he says, ‘He who seeks beauty will find it.’ ” Blackwood’s beauty, like Cunningham’s, is all about knowing where and how to look. Everyone knows that birds are beautiful. But in Blackwood’s photographs, taken in fields immediately following the harvest, when the flocks descend en masse to feast on seeds, the birds create patterns against the sky that are at once exquisite and menacing. Similar patterning marks her luridly colorful images of fish in overcrowded tanks at the Dutchess County Fair, and her overhead close-ups of the ice on the Hudson as it breaks up around the Rhinecliff dock. Through Blackwood’s lens, the ice looks, as one critic infamously said of Duchamp’s Nude Descending a Staircase, like an explosion in a shingle factory. Only here, the shingles are made of glass.
All of these—fish, ice, birds—are in the new show, but the centerpiece is that biblical sky. There is no context to those images, no down here is the ground, up there is the sky. She presents the sky one little painterly chunk at a time. The way Blackwood sees it, those heavens are no placid paradise.
The Wind Blows Through My Heart, Carolyn Marks Blackwood Photographs
Alan Klotz Gallery
511 W. 25th Street, Suite 701, New York
May 12 - June 25; opening reception, Thursday, May 12, 6 - 8 p.m.
Related posts:
A New View of the Hudson
Carolyn Marks Blackwood Talks About Her Film
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Posted by Marilyn Bethany on 05/07/11 at 08:05 AM • Permalink
New Galleries Open in the Berkshires
Debut receptions at The White Gallery in Great Barrington and Sohn Fine Art in Stockbridge on Saturday, April 30
Over the past eight years, Tino & Susan Galuzzo have made The White Gallery in Lakeville, CT, a cultural hub in northwestern Connecticut. Now, they are expanding into Great Barrington with a second location in a restored 19th century farmhouse on South Main Street (above). “Our Lakeville space is very intimate, very homey, and this new space is much more open,” says Tino, who is especially excited about being able to show large paintings and sculptures. “We’ve always show outdoor sculpture, and we have a lawn to show it here, too, but now we have space for it inside as well.”
The White Gallery’s opening exhibit features contemporary glass art by Adam Waimon and paintings (right) by David Dunlop, who is one of the stars of the the Lakeville gallery. “David has such a huge following from his PBS series, Landscapes Through Time with David Dunlop ,” says Tino. “His work has evolved from the landscapes he’s famous for. Now, he’s making what I call cityscapes. They’re more abstract, but they are incredibly beautiful really appeal to a broad range of collectors.
The Galuzzos are very civic-minded dealers (they annually host “Blue & Gold at the White,” an exhibit of work by students at the public Housatonic Valley Regional High School), and they are joining forces with Berkshire Taconic Community Foundation for their Great Barrington debut. “We will donate a portion of all sales in the month of May to Berkshire Taconic’s Neighbor-to-Neighbor Fund,” he says. “Susan believes strongly in this program because it provides direct assistance to people in crisis when they need it most. She likes the simplicity and effectiveness of it. We want everyone in the Berkshires to know that we are committed to being part of the community.”
Cassandra Sohn (left) is reaching out to the community at Sohn Fine Art at 6 Elm Street in Stockbridge. While the inaugural exhibit features her large, abstract seascapes—un-manipulated and poetic images (below) taken in Ko Chang, Thailand—she is asking regional artists to submit work for a summer show called ‘A Summer Ramble”, which will honor the 19th century Berkshires poet William Cullen Bryant. In fact, Sohn will be holding a workshop and organizing an exhibit this summer at the William Cullen Bryant Homestead.
Sohn Fine Art will do double duty as Sohn’s studio and as a printing center for other artists. “We can do iris and giclée prints 44 inches wide and as long as you want,” says Sohn, who teaches photography at IS 183 Art School of the Berkshires and Berkshire Community College. “We can do prints on anything—watercolor paper, metallic paper, fabric. Our goal is to help artists bring their vision to life.”
The White Gallery
924 Main Street, Great Barrington, MA; 413.528.3631
Opening reception Saturday, April 30, 5 - 7 p.m.
Sohn Fine Art
6 Elm Street, Stockbridge, MA; 413.298.1025
Opening reception Saturday, April 30, 5 - 9 p.m.
