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March, 2019

Carla Chammas
Lonti Ebers
Marty and Rebecca Eisenberg
Kathy Fuld
Eric Green
Hilary Hatch
Tina Kim
Jill Kraus
Michael Ringier
Jerry Speyer
Alice Tisch
Dian Woodner
Laurie Wolfert

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WELCOME TO THE MARCH ISSUE OF THE DIRECTOR'S CIRCLE NEWSLETTER

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WELCOME TO THE MARCH ISSUE OF THE DIRECTOR'S CIRCLE NEWSLETTER

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Welcome to the third Director's Circle Newsletter, and a special welcome to our old friend and new member, Dian Woodner. We are thrilled and honored that you have joined us.
I am also reposting instructions for interacting with the other members via this newsletter using PADLET. The simplest way to participate is to add a comment in the comment section below every story. Please remember to identify yourself as your name won't appear automatically unless you join PADLET. It's free, and if you do this, your name will automatically appear when you comment. Here are the very simple instructions to join PADLET:

1.       Access the newsletter by clicking this link or copying the address into your browser:
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I can't seem to let go of this 2011 poster from the Dutch design team Experimental Jetset  which combines Filippo Tomasso Marinetti's famous "Parole in Liberta" collage with John Lennon and Yoko Ono's "War is Over (If You Want It)." It seems to add a welcome "ta da" to the month's news from 35 Wooster Street!

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Colter Jacobson (b. 1975. Lives in San Francisco) is best known for his drawings on discarded pieces of paper, as well as book pages and covers. His newest group of trippy mandalas on the backs of book covers were spotted in the booth of Anglim/Gilbert Gallery at the Independent Art Fair. They made a great juxtaposition with original trippy Mandala-drawing S.F. artist Bruce Conner, also featured in the booth.

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CAULEEN SMITH IN THE HOUSE IN APRIL
As part of the exhibition As If: Alternate Histories from Then to Now opening at The Drawing Center on April 11, the Los Angeles-based artist and filmmaker Cauleen Smith (b. 1967) has made four watercolors whose subjects are science fiction classics, held by a single hand. The way the watercolor has been deployed- in a puddled manner- makes each drawing look something like an artifact, though they are recently made and will feature in the show which will also include drawings by contemporary artists Huma Bhabha, Joe Bradley, Vivian Caccuri, and Keith Mayerson amidst comic books, 'zines, and book covers dating from the early 20th century to the present.

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Two museum-worthy Chelsea gallery exhibitions are must-sees. At David Zwirner on 19th Street, the Robert Crumb exhibition curated by Rob Storr is joined by "The Young and Evil," an exhibition curated by Jarrett Earnest of the work of the circle surrounding the painters Paul Cadmus, and Pavel Tchelitew, the curator Lincoln Kirstein, and the photographer, George Platt Lynes. A look at the mixing of realism and surrealism that American artists were creating pre-Abstract Expressionism, the show also offers a window into pleasures of uncloseted Gay life in mid-century New York.

At Petzel Gallery at  456 West 18th St., the group exhibition entield "Strategic Vandalism: The Legacy of Asger Jorn's Modifican Paintings," (March 5-April 13) brings together contemporary and modern examples of artists who paint on top of or otherwise modify other artists' works. A simple premise that yield surprising juxtapositions- between Julian Schnabel and Francis Picabia, for example. There's a good deal of Hans Peter Feldmann and Enrico Baj as well, plus some surprises by masters like Max Ernst, and lesser-known artists like the British photo-collage expert, John Stezaker. Here's the perfect little Ernst collage that starts the show:

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This month in museum quality drawings...

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This month in museum quality drawings...

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Yayoi means "March"  in Japanese. This is why when Yayoi Kusama was born on March 22, 1929 her parents gave her that Spring-like name.
Kusama's goal was to take over the world with her polka-dotted point of view; one could argue that she has, at least in the international art discourse. Her work is both respected, and wildly popular, with little distinction made between the works she makes now, and the ones that she produced earlier in her long and prolific career to date.
But the fact is, some periods in Kusama's career were better than others, particularly for works on paper. When Kusama came to the U.S. at the end of the 1950s, instead of taking money (there were currency restrictions still in place in Japan from WWII) she took by her estimation hundreds of works on paper, many featuring early examples of her "infinity net" pattern drawn with fine lines in black ink on dark, charcoal backgrounds, or expressed as polka dots on otherwise blank paper.
Once in New York, Kusama discovered , and began to use less traditional mediums. Notably, she discovered fluorescent paints and markers. Rather than starting on an entirely new series of drawings, Kusama went back into her ink and charcoal works from the early 1950s , embellishing their delicate ink net patterns with brightly colored, "mod" paints. These works weren't exhibited (or probably even sold) in the 1960s, but one of Kusama's art dealers from the mid 1960s, Richard Castellane, bought or received a large number of works which periodically come on the market.
This work is one of them from the back room of the Anthony Meier Gallery in San Francisco. It is dated "1954" on the back of the drawing which is no doubt when it was first drawn. However, since the fluorescent paints on it were not commercially available until after the patent for its technology was granted in 1957, and certainly not in postwar Japan, its date is more accurately 1954-64. Not incidentally, this is the greatest period for Kusama's works on paper.

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MARY WEATHERFORD'S favorite drawing (this month)

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MARY WEATHERFORD'S favorite drawing (this month)

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During my first studio visit to Laura Owens in Los Angeles in, I think, 1997, (!) she told me about Mari Eastman, a student of hers whose work she admired. I have followed Mari Eastman's career as a painter but had not heard about her very recently. (She lives in Chicago and teaches at the School of the Art Institute). Interestingly, when asked what her favorite drawing (this month!) was, Mary Weatherford immediately cited Mari's work. Below is Mary's favorite drawing for the month of March:

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Most artists draw, especially painters, but a precious few draw all the time, anywhere they are. Robert Crumb does this, and we can see and enjoy his stream of drawings in notebooks and more recently, scribbled on napkins and placemats. Henry Taylor draws all the time too, but you have to be in his presence while he is doing it in order to see these works. Henry draws as an aide memoire as well as to amass source material for his multi-figure works that are not drawn from live models or photos. Henry is a social artist, so drawing becomes a social activity as well, a way to put his portrait subjects at ease, and also to make friends and introduce himself. When he travels, he carries around notebooks and pencils. If he doesn't have these to hand, he'll use anything. He'll also draw anywhere; on a street in Havana surrounded by kids, at a party, or in a meeting. Here is a page from one of his recent notebooks:

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This past summer, I was asked to write an essay on the recent work of American painter Joe Bradley. I adore Joe's paintings which sometimes make me laugh out loud, but paid less attention to his voluminous drawing practice. Since coming to TDC, I am thinking and breathing drawing all the time, and Joe's work in this medium has come alive to me. Just as there are a number of different kinds of Bradley paintings, there are several types of Bradley drawings. The ones in pencil or charcoal are crude and angry, but strong and memorable. Many seem at first glance to ape children's drawings, a fact that Joe acknowledges by sometimes  slipping a couple of his kids' drawings into his exhibitions every now and then. But one cannot be an ironist without a fundamental understanding of what is being ironized. Bradley is keenly aware of the compromised state of abstraction in 2019, so he tempers his expressionism with subtle visual jests.

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After an astonishing run-up, actually an outpouring of support from many Director's Circle members and others from the art community including most of the major New York galleries, artists, and collectors, TDC is hovering close to being SOLD OUT of seats for our April 24 Gala honoring the collector /philanthropists Louisa Sarofim and Janie C. Lee, and the artists Amy Sillman and Nathaniel Mary Quinn.
To purchase tickets please go to:
http://www.drawingcenter.org/en/drawingcenter/20/events/24/special-events/2191/2019-benefit-gala/

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Have you seen the movie... Velvet Buzzaw?

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Have you seen the movie... Velvet Buzzaw?

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I don't know if you have noticed, but in all movies about contemporary art, the curator is a murderer, a pedophile, or just an arrogant, entitled, insensitive boob (see the well-received movie Junebug for example, or the more recent Swedish film, The Square). Art dealers don't fare much better (The television show Girls comes to mind. In one episode Laurie Simmons, an artist and the creator of the show's mom, plays a kind of motherly/awful Barbara Gladstone character). But never did a pop culture art movie implicate THE ART.

In the recent feature, Velvet Buzzsaw, available on Netflix, it is the critic's time in the barrel. Jake Gyllenhaal plays a slimey, black-clad aesthete who almost begs to be swatted like a fly raised on a diet of Artforum paper scraps.  (In a recent interview, Gyllenhaal claims to have modeled his performance on Jerry Saltz, but I don't see it). The most satisfying element of Velvet Buzzaw by most accounts, is that it is the art itself that wrecks havoc on curators, dealers, and collectors.  Opinion is mixed about the film, with artists, tellingly, liking it more than the rest of us.  Although I wouldn't call it exactly scary, like most horror movies, it gets a little bit gory, particularly at the end, when blood is splashing around like paint on a Pollock.

https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/velvet_buzzsaw

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/velvet-buzzsaw-art-world-satire_us_5c59cd77e4b09293b208b747

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There are a lot of strong shows in NYC this month, but arguably the hottest ticket is the small but well-chosen Jean Michel Basquiat survey, unexpectedly housed in Peter Brant's new private museum on East 6th Street off of First Avenue in the East Village. Formerly a power station which the artist Walter de Maria converted into a studio, the space has been tastefully renovated by Richard Gluckman. The Basquiat show has been curated by the Basquiat expert Dieter Burchhart and was previously on view at the Louis Vuitton Foundation in Paris.  "Jean Michel Basquiat", (March 8 - May 15), Brant Foundation: 421 East 6th Street. Viewing is by reservation only but there is no admission fee. https://brantfoundation.org/basquiat-tickets/

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Why is British Fashion so good, all of a sudden?

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Why is British Fashion so good, all of a sudden?

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There is no better sign of cultural apolocalypse than the notion that great fashion is coming out of GREAT BRITAIN, but maybe BREXIT is inspirational for designers like Grace Wales Bonner, who was mentioned in February's newsletter; Simone Rocha; and the sublime Duro Olowu, whose Spring Collection stuns. If you are on instagram, I highly recommend following Duro who regularly posts his inspirations.
https://www.instagram.com/duroolowu/?hl=en

Duro's connections to the contemporary art world are myriad; his fashion seems informed by his friends David Adjaye and Chris Ofili among many others. His most public art connection might be that he is married to Studio Museum Director Thelma Golden. Duro, though, has curated several exhibitions himself, the last one at the Camden Art Centre in London. Rumor has it that he is preparing an exhibition of his work that will open at the MCA in Chicago and travel to the Brooklyn Museum. I for one can't wait.

https://www.vogue.com/fashion-shows/spring-2019-ready-to-wear/duro-olowu

http://simonerocha.com

https://walesbonner.net/collections/womenswear

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This 1962 work by Bruce Conner looks like lots of work from that time. From the mid 1950s through the mid 1960s, many artists were experimenting with a hybrid of poetry and drawing using the medium of typewriting.  Henri Chopin in Paris, Dom Sylvester Huidard in London, Carl Andre in New York, Augusto and Haraldo de Campos in Brazil, and many other artists were experimenting with the typewriter to create the perfect union of poetry and images.
But my research into Bruce Conner's work in preparation for his retrospective at MoMA several years ago revealed that his cache of typewriter works on paper aren't merely stabs at concrete poetry; many of them are musical scores. Conner was obsessed with music, listened to it and followed it throughout his adult life. He was deeply familiar with Cagian and Fluxus experiments with sounds, and at the moment that this work was created, he was writing music and recording it sometimes on staff paper, other times on plain paper, and often incorporating the typewriter. This might be one of those. It is part of a group of particularly interesting drawings by Bruce Conner that Anglim/Gilbert Gallery brought to the Independent Art Fair along with work by contemporary artist Colter Jacobsen.

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MEET REBECCA BRICKMAN TDC's new Director of Development

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MEET REBECCA BRICKMAN TDC's new Director of Development

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Rebecca comes to TDC after almost five years with our friends at MoMAPS1. She grew up in Scarsdale, studied art at Bard College, and has always harbored a special love for works on paper, particularly collage. We are thrilled to have her on board.

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Synergy, Continued: Suzanne Demisch and Friends

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Synergy, Continued: Suzanne Demisch and Friends

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Suzanne  Demisch is an interior designer extrodinaire with an expertise in 20th century French design. Her gallery at 30 West 12th Street is a treasure trove of furniture and objects by designers like Maria Pergay and Pierre Paulin. This month, Demisch has curated an exhibition that integrates artists' collections into her display. Called "A Specific Eye: Seven Collections," (March 4 - April 6) it includes collections amassed by Bob Gober and Don Moffat, Huma Bhabha and Jason Fox, Ugo Rondinone, and the late photographer, Saul Leiter.

http://www.demischdanant.com