Marsden Hartley portrait from Paul Dodd series entitled “Artists Heads” 2002, 8×10 inches oil on canvas
I have a small portrait of twenty artists on this page. Rembrandt, Modigliani, Rothko, Cezanne, El Greco, Michelangelo, Gotleib, Pippen, Hartley, Kline, Van Gogh, Giacometti, Matisse, Morandi, Beckmann, Roualt, Velasquez, Klee, Goya, Neel, Dove and Picasso are all there and I hadn’t looked at them in years. They were my favorite artists at the time. Funny how this list has changed over time. More funny how my work has changed. I am reminded how fortunate we are that things don’t stay the same as we move through life.
Georgia O’Keefe “Over Blue” pastel on paper 1918 Memorial Art Gallery
There is no better time to visit Rochester’s Memorial Art Gallery than right now. They are celebrating their centennial and have brought out over two hundred works from storage, many works on paper that are too fragile to stay out in the open. My favorites were a woodcut and beautiful lithograph entitled “Mothers” from Kathe Kollwitz. a cool Roy Lichtenstein offset print, an Ed Ruscha drawing named after his girlfriend “Ultra” Violet, two really nice Motherwalls and a fantastic little caricature by Tiepolo. And there is is this showstopper, an almost one hudred year old pastel from Georgia O’Keefe.
The McKee Gallery in New York represented Philip Guston when he was alive, a rather brave stance at the time. Their current show celebrates the centennial of his birth.
From the press release:
As one of the great artists of the 20th Century who is as current and relevant today, it is hard to imagine that Guston would be 100 years old this year, underlining how revolutionary and prescient his art was. His figurative paintings blew open the caveats of 60s Color Field dogmas and did not embrace the irony of the Pop culture. Guston followed a solitary track: from doing a comic strip as a boy, to political realism, through Abstract Expressionism, he knew how to paint and what to paint—his form and content were matched. From autobiographical to universal subjects, Guston was a humanist, an existentialist, a free man who explored all avenues of his imagination and abilities to record the human condition.
Robert Irwin’s “Untitled” (Sphere) at Albright Knox in Buffalo, New York
Obviously you need to see most visual art to appreciate it. But reading Robert Irwin’s “Seeing Is Forgetting the Name of the Thing One Sees” is almost as good as seeing the art he creates. The book is a collection of conversations with Irwin and the ideas he bats around are big. I knew next to nothing about him before I read the book.
We took the train to DIA in Beacon a while back to see the grounds and entry way Irwin designed there. The Albright Knox in Buffalo has a really good or great piece by most of the big name modern artists. It really is an astounding collection built because someone there had great taste and bought the work as it came to market. I’ve been there many times but had no idea they had three Robert Irwin pieces in their collection, a light piece having been produced and purchased just last year.
In the book Irwin talks about his efforts to move the art beyond the edge of the canvas. This disc, that’s all it is, a perfectly flat round disc with an exquisite coat of paint, is mounted so it hangs in front of a wall lit with four lights with blue gels. If that little museum rope wasn’t at my feet to keep me back I would have gone up there and held this big sphere in my arms.
Janet Williams is one of my favorite painters. We have a pretty good reproduction of one of her pieces, a broom from her “Primordial Household Objects” series, but there is nothing like the real thing. Some of her older paintings can be seen here and she shows her recent work at the Oxford Gallery on Park Avenue.
The focal point of our NYC trip was the Matisse show, “In Search of True Painting,” at the Metropolitan. There were no photos allowed so I have committed the images to my psyche. Matisse is the master of color and form and expression and this show is arranged like a master class in painting. You see versions Matisse did of the same painting hung side by side and you see how he reworked them to better tell the real story. He often photographed his paintings in various stages, the photographs helped him and they are shown here to help us. But just standing in front of these perfect paintings is an exhilarating experience.
When they kicked us out of the Met we took a train up to Harlem to visit a different nephew. He’s finishing law school at Columbia and he had a few suggestions for good soul food in his neighborhood. The Col. Young American Legion Post on 132nd between Adam Clayton Powell and Frederick Douglas sounded like the funkiest so we hiked uptown.
This place was in the basement of an old brownstone and it appeared to be full of regulars. We were asked to sign a guestbook on entry and everything on the menu was ten dollars. Your choice of Oxtail, Whiting Fish, Fried Chicken, Roast Pork or Turkey plus two sides (Collard Greens, Red Rice, String Beans or Cabbage) with some deadly Rum Cake included for dessert. Our waitress called everyone “dear.” I would love to draw everyone in this place, the Modigliani-like woman with the Art Noveau hat, the older woman with the stark white wig, the guy at the bar with the big smile and bad teeth. A four piece band was setting up and the Hammond B3 player told he crowd he had been here fifteen years now. Could this place be an alternate universe Lucia’s Supper Club?
Jean Michel Basquiat painting at Gagosian Gallery in Chelsea, NY
Every trip to New York, for the last ten years anyway, has included a Saturday romp through the hundreds of commercial galleries in Chelsea. It’s like iTunes shuffle, you never know what you might come across. I had a few destinations in mind as well so we made sure we saw the A.R. Penck paintings at Leo Koenig, the Jean Michel Basquiat show at Gagosian, but I never expected to see Francis Bacon paintings in a gallery down there along with a large Philip Guston I had never even seen in books. I asked if anyone had bought the Guston and they said it wasn’t for sale.
It always surprises me when I see people talking to an art dealer in Chelsea and appearing to be seriously considering the purchase of a piece. Are these scenes staged? Do people actually buy high priced artwork on a whim? Of course they do and that’s what makes the world go ’round.
I wouldn’t be suspecting ulterior motives if we hadn’t stopped in a gallery at the end of 25th Street where someone was sitting at a desk behind an obligatory Mac laptop and three artists’ names were rubbed on the entry above the door. One of the gallery’s walls was painted a toxic shade of yellow and an “L” shaped piece of painted wood was mounted to the right of a hole that had been cut in the drywall where a piece of plywood, about four feet square, was exposed. The tops of a few wood screws were also visible.
New Yorkers are in better shape than we are. They run up and down the stairs of subway stations and walk, walk, walk. When the galleries closed we hiked over to Fifth Avenue and found Nomad, the fancy restaurant our nephew works at. This was a surprise visit so the maître d’ asked us to wait in the lobby and after ten minutes or so someone came out and led us down the stairs to the kitchen. The stainless steel work area was immaculate and dramatically lit. The workers were all standing over a huge, long table. Random inspirational words were printed on on the wall next to a large picture of Mick Jagger. The scene was more intense than any of the galleries we had been in. Our nephew, the artist.
Friday night is Target night at MoMA and admission is free. The place is packed but I have learned how to ignore the large crowds and just enjoy the glimpses of blockbuster shows. I don’t even notice the groups of people who barely look at the art but might take a cellphone shot of it and then move on. We met our friend, Duane, here and there was plenty of room in front of the Malevich paintings in “Inventing Abstraction.” Thanks Target.
Our art binge had only just begun and we needed physical nourishment and rest so we took a downtown train to Chinatown and stopped at a favorite haunt near the Tombs. Duane did a little shopping for a cast iron wok while we were down here but had no luck. We headed out to Brooklyn to listen to some reggae, watch some homemade movies and bed down.
The Amtrak ride along the Hudson is so dreamy especially as you head south on the river side of the train. It perfectly set the stage for our stop in Beacon where the DIA has enshrined major works by an all star cast of big thinking, modern (post 1960) artists. Joseph Beuys, John Chamberlain, Walter De Maria, Dan Flavin, Donald Judd, Blinky Palermo, Cy Twombly, Andy Warhol, Louise Bourgeois, Michael Heizer, Sol LeWitt, Agnes Martin, Bruce Nauman, Robert Ryman, Gerhard Richter, Richard Serra, and the earth artist maestro, Robert Smithson. But the biggest star of all could be Robert Irwin who designed a plan that would retain the original character of the former Nabisco box factory while accommodating its twenty-first century museum function. The place is a marvel, a theater with dramatic visual acoustics.
I’ve been looking at some Robert Ryman images in preparation for our visit to DIA Beacon and I like what I see. The impetus for the DIA trip is the Robert Irwin book that we went crazy over. Irwin designed the repurposed Nabisco box factory on the Hudson for the DIA foundation. He talked about Ryman’s influence in the book and so I tracked Ryman down. I like this Ryman quote from the sixties. “There is never a question of what to paint, but only how to paint.”
It bugs me when people deface trees but I have to admit this little yellow patch on a tree near Eastman Lake looks pretty sensational.
“Fragment of a Head” from Chiapas, Mexico Eighth Century
The Memorial Art Gallery has a really interesting show to celebrate their Centennial. The staff picked local artists and invited them to reinterpret works from their collection. The new work in “Art Reflected” is for sale and it is scattered throughout the gallery, positioned next to or in front of the work of inspiration. This arrangement encourages you to wander into rooms you normally whizz by. Like an Easter egg hunt the show is full of surprises. It reinvigorates the collection.
My brother, John, has a really nice piece here but as a celebration the show is a bit stuffy. One hundred artists for the one hundred years would have added to the merriment. If they had asked I would have given my reflection of this beautiful Mayan, stucco “Fragment of a Head” from the eighth century.
Judd Williams charcoal/graphite drawings at Axom Gallery in Rochester, NY
Jim Thomas ran a gallery on Prince Street about ten years ago. It was a beautiful space for art. One of the more memorable shows we saw there was Judd Williams. I feel in love with his charcoal drawings. Judd taught painting, printmaking, sculpture and figure drawing at Rochester Institute of Technology and Jim taught there as well. The Axom Gallery on Anderson, run by Rick and Robin Muto with their daughter Margot is one of the finest spaces for art in the city now and and they are currently featuring Judd Williams. Boo Poulin, a student of Judd’s, and I were drooling over these charcoal and granite drawings at the opening, wondering how Judd got such even tones of grey and Boo went directly to the source. Judd explained how he masked areas and layers graphite by rubbing and manipulating and then drawing with rich black on the grey. They are really wondrous.
Scenes like this, scattered throughout the woods, always draw my attention. It would be such a drag if all the trees stood upright. Natures battlefields make the woods so much more interesting than parks or people’s well tended property. Trees die and sometimes take out others when they go. Micro bursts of wind take out whole sections of the woods. Lightning brings down the tallest trees. Our hiking and ski paths get rearranged by the carnage. It’s all very dramatic like big bold rough and tumble charcoal drawings or Franz Kilne paintings.
Bleu Cease, Peter Monacelli, Kurt Kurt Feuerherm and Kristine Bouyoucos at Maker Mentor 2013 show at Rochester Contemporary
WXXI hosted the Rochester premier of the “The Central Park Five” at the Little Theater last night. There was a reception beforehand in the café and we planned to attend but we were so close to finishing the wood trim around in our new room that we stayed and slugged it out. Our methods have evolved through experience and most importantly our mistakes. We measure twice and cut once and we sneak up on tight fittings by cutting pieces a little large, trying them and then fine tuning. And Peggi and I are a damn good team when it comes to ripping long pieces the Sears table saw that we inherited from our former neighbor, Leo Pfeiffer.
We finished in time to make it to the opening of Makers/Mentors at Rochester Contemporary. The mentor, Kurt Feuerherm, was my mentor as well back in the seventies and his influence was evident in the work of the three makers, evident in the three makers, Peter Monacelli, Kristine Bouyoucos and Patricia Dreher. I managed to glom on to a photo op with three of the featured artists. California-based Patricia Dreher was not in the house but her Stinson Beach Winter Light Series and several paintings of the Port of Oakland were beautiful. This is an especially strong show. Pete Monacelli’s abstract interpretations of downtown Rochester, entitled “Midtown Transfiguration,” are outstanding and Kurt’s abstract landscapes are sensational.
Pete normally teaches at MCC on Thursdays so last night’s opening was a field trip for his students. Their assignment was to take in the show and interview Kurt Feuerherm.
Pete Monacelli’s drawing with Paul Dodd’s painting on drywall
We started a little project in our basement last August and have been in construction mode for so long now that art projects have taken a back seat and the slight posts here have grown even slighter. Bearing down with the drywall primer I almost covered the Pete Monacelli directions for creating our window trim. I wiped off my work, took this shot of the collaboration for reference and then painted it out with white. Pete helped us with our project and has an opening of his art work next Thursday at RoCo as part of the Maker/Mentor series. His mentor, Kurt Feuerherm, was my also my mentor when I cobbled together an art degree from SUNY at Empire State.
We have half of the flooring down in our new room and that was just enough for me to set up an easel this weekend. I broke into my art supply box today for a new stick of charcoal. The box had been tucked away when we piled our belongings under a big tarp back in November. The Lowel lights that I used to use for drawing have been serving as shop lights months but I put one of them back in art service on Sunday.
“Anonymous Model” charcoal drawing by Paul Dodd 2012
Many years ago, more than thirty, I worked for the Rochester Police Department as a graphic artist. I had access to the mug shots, which at the time were kept in filing cabinets, and I used them in flyers that I produced on a small AB Dick press. The mugshots were real photos pasted on the files. David Bowie’s had already been ripped off his rap sheet. I was hired under a grant and my job duties were slim. I would read the New Yorker at work and visit Brad Fox who was a watchman at the County office building next door. For me there is nothing worse than a job without tasks and deadlines but the mugshots were cool. I had already taken some of mine own back in Indiana outside the trailer we lived in. And I took another batch at the Bug Jar in ’98. I used a Kodak one megapixel camera, reduced the photos to bit-mapped halftone pixels and tiled the print-outs on our HP Laser Jet. At a holiday party on Saturday Martin Edic told me the shot of him from this show is his favorite photo of himself.
I feel as though people wish I would paint something else They have told me as much but I really am not obsessed with mugshots. I don’t even look at the crime the people are charged with. I just like the raw range of expression, from defiant to vulnerable, and it’s fun using them as sources.
First Friday, Rochester’s gallery night, has become a victim of of its own success. It been a shot in the arm for the local art scene but the overcrowding made it impossible to find the good art. Every night would be gallery night in a perfect world.
Last week we were sitting in our neighbor’s living room listening to Wreckless Eric and Amy Rigby on First Friday but we easily got our art fix this weekend. Art dealer, Deborah Ronnen, who threw the wildly successful Culver Road Armory Bash last year has a knockout show of Contemporary African American printmakers at Nazareth College. There are some big names here and for few thousand dollars you could take home a Kara Walker, Alison Saar, Mickalene Thomas, Martin Puryear or the Trenton Doyle Hancock pictured above that reminded me of Anne Havens work. Or how about some beautiful quilt like prints from the sensational Gee’s Bend artists?
Our neighbors let us borrow the Australian movie, “Ten Canoes.” They had recommended it to us and took it out of the library for us so we offered to return it and their short stack of books and movies. We stopped at gallery in the tunnel to the old Central Library building to see Scott McCarney’s prints that were done in response to the 2007 car bombing of Baghdad’s historic book district. Scott’s book art, enlarged and reproduced here as prints are stunning.
Most artists wear multiple hats. Jaffe who plays and tunes pianos also creates portraits of musicians in marquetry. His show at the Genesee Co-Op Federal Credit Union is a delight on multiple levels. Jaffe often sits in with with Margaret Explosion.
Kevin Teare “Psychic to the Stars”, 2000. Oil on Linen. 60 inches x 62 inches
I was an art major in Bloomington, Indiana for one year and then I hung around town for a few more. It was a pretty cool town for music but it had very little art other than the Calder sculpture in front of the opera school. Kevin Teare played drums in a local band, MX-80 Sound, and had an art opening in a small gallery there. Glenn O’Brien writing in Interview said of MX-80 is either the most Heavy Metal Art Band or the most Arty Heavy Metal Band. The art show was one of the last things I remember doing in that town and it was one of the coolest. Kevin salvaged and painted wooden skids and leaned them against the white walls. They were beautiful. The photo above is a detail from his painting, “Psychic to the Stars”, 2000. Oil on Linen. 60 inches x 62 inches.
Almost November and we’re still harvesting tomatoes, red peppers, jalapeños, eggplant and spinach. We came back from the garden with two bags full this morning. That “cooler by the lake” thing that we have going in the Summer works in reverse during the Fall so we’ve managed to miss the hard frosts. I’m looking for an eggplant recipe in a separate window and will report back.
I love the idea of an “art bank” or I should say my idea of what an art bank could be since I have no idea what this place is all about. We had dinner at El Rincón in Sodus and spotted this sign on the main drag. I looked it up online and found remnants of a collective that fell apart years ago and has since let their domain name expire.
I’m thinking of a place where art truths and treasures are stored and protected. Last night in painting class Fred Lipp told Peggi “You can take that to the bank.” He was on a familiar roll, the one where he convinces you to trust your eye and not your mind (or the plan you started with). You trust your eye when things are right on. You just know before thinking about it, and when there is something wrong, as in “I’m not sure about this passage… is there something wrong with it?” For that there is this truth: “If the question comes up, the answer is yes.” Every town should have an establishment that protects these foundations.
In my other life I am funky sign aficionado and I love it when people use plumbing gear to make a sign. This thing could withstand the wrath of Hurricane Sandy. I love the flush left, initial cap, red lettering and the fact that sign is off center on its rounded corner frame. I love how the “r” in “for” happily teeters on the stem of the “l” in “sale.” The painter took real delight in this effort and appears to have not wanted his task to end judging but the size of the exuberant “e” at the end of “sale.” Most of all I love the way the lettering sits on the bottom edge of the sign.
