Clarity in Chelsea

What do three current, Chelsea gallery exhibitions have in common? Ellsworth Kelly’s “Reliefs” at Matthew Marks; Tara Donovan’s steel pushpin “Drawings” at Pace 25th Street; and, Jose Manuel Ciria’s self portrait “Rorschach Heads,” at Stux Gallery? The easy answer is that all of the above are beautifully hung, must see exhibits currently on view in New York City. More importantly, in this context, each artist displays exemplary clarity of thought, simplicity of vision, and outstanding execution of concept.

87 year old Ellsworth Kelly’s new works, completed in 2009 and 2010, are monumental in their simplicity. Creating some of his best work to date, Kelly joined two meticulously painted, shaped canvases to create each strikingly beautiful piece. Most consist of geometric, black shapes mounted on rectangular, white panels. Without the distraction of Kelly’s trademark bright flat colors, the work is all about its self-imposed limitations and the exquisite placement of form in space. Ellsworth Kelly, “Reliefs,” at Matthew Marks Gallery, 522 W24 Street, 523 W 24 Street and 526 W22nd Street. Through April 9, 2011.

Since her inclusion in the 2000 Whitney Biennial, Tara Donovan has become internationally famous, working with mass produced objects. In this, her current work, Donovan uses countless numbers of nickel-headed, steel pushpins. She calls her work “Drawings,” but, mounted on Gatorboard, it is perceptually closer to painting, with undulating starbursts and radiating fields of light and dark. The work, like Ellsworth Kelly’s, is simultaneously breathtaking in its aesthetic simplicity, while also mindboggling in its creative complexity. The perfectly placed masses of pins leave the viewer contemplating light, perception, and the beauty of repetition. Like Ellsworth Kelly, Donovan has benefitted from great clarity, and has limited her materials to create singular expressions of her vision. Tara Donovan: Drawings (Pins), Pace Gallery 510 W25th Street; Through March 19, 2011.

Finally, the Spanish artist, Jose Manuel Ciria, has a gorgeous display of large, expressionistic self-portraits at Chelsea’s Stux Gallery. These accomplished paintings are so arresting that a glimpse from the street is enough to draw the viewer into the gallery. The series of giant heads is painted in a combination of aluminum and oil, with a limited palette of blue-greens, reds, ochres and greys. These intensely beautiful figurative works are from Ciria’s “Rorschach Heads III Series.” While explicitly invoking the ambiguity of the inkblot and its emotional implications, Ciria is, at the same time, very clear in his vision and his freshly exciting paint application. Jose Manuel Ciria: The Execution of the Soul, Stux Gallery, 530 W 25^th St, through April 2, 2011.

What do three current, Chelsea gallery exhibitions have in common? Ellsworth Kelly’s “Reliefs” at Matthew Marks; Tara Donovan’s steel pushpin “Drawings” at Pace 25th Street; and, Jose Manuel Ciria’s self portrait “Rorschach Heads,” at Stux Gallery? The easy answer is that all are beautifully hung, must see exhibits currently on view in New York City. More importantly, in this context, each displays exemplary clarity of thought, simplicity of vision, and outstanding execution of concept.

87 year old Ellsworth Kelly’s new works, completed in 2009 and 2010, are monumental in their simplicity. Creating some of his best work to date, Kelly joined two meticulously painted, shaped canvases to create each strikingly beautiful piece. Most consist of geometric, black shapes mounted on rectangular, white panels. Without the distraction of Kelly’s trademark bright flat colors, the work is all about its self-imposed limitations and the exquisite placement of form in space.

Ellsworth Kelly, “Reliefs,” at Matthew Marks Gallery, 522 W24 Street, 523 W 24 Street and 526 W22nd Street.

Through April 9, 2011.

Since her inclusion in the 2000 Whitney Biennial, Tara Donovan has become internationally famous, working with mass produced objects. In her current exhibit, Donovan uses countless numbers of nickel-headed, steel pushpins. She calls the work “Drawings,” but, mounted on Gatorboard, it is perceptually closer to painting, with undulating starbursts and radiating fields of light and dark. The drawings are simultaneously breathtaking in their aesthetic simplicity, while amazing the many gallery viewers with their creative complexity. The perfectly placed masses of pins leave the viewer contemplating light, perception, and the beauty of repetition. Like Ellsworth Kelly, Donovan has benefitted from great clarity, and has limited her materials to create singular expressions of her vision.

Tara Donovan: Drawings (Pins), Pace Gallery 510 W25th Street.

Through March 19, 2011.

Finally, the Spanish artist, Jose Manuel Ciria, has a gorgeous display of large, expressionistic self-portraits at Chelsea’s Stux Gallery. These accomplished paintings are so arresting that a glimpse from the street is enough to draw the viewer into the gallery. The series of giant heads is painted in a combination of aluminum and oil, with a limited palette of blue-greens, reds, ochres and greys. These intensely beautiful figurative works are from Ciria’s “Rorschach Heads III Series.” While explicitly invoking the ambiguity of the inkblot and its emotional implications, Ciria is, at the same time, very clear in his vision and his freshly exciting paint application.

Jose Manuel Ciria: The Execution of the SoulStux Gallery, 530 W 25th St, through April 2, 2011.

Thursday, March 3, 2011

Something About Betty

From 1993 through 1998, I was fortunate to study painting and drawing with Sands Point’s Betty Holliday.

Betty Holliday, an eccentric Long Island beauty, graduated with her Masters in Art History from Harvard. She was also proud to have studied with American modernist painter, Vaclav Vytlacil, the renowned instructor who taught at the Art Students League in New York City. After embarking on a career as a successful painter and photographer, Holliday, an excellent and popular teacher, instructed scores of Long Islanders in drawing and painting the figure in space.

Betty Holliday, who counted Louise Nevelson among her colleagues, became well known in the art community when an early ink drawing was shown in a 1956 juried exhibition, “Recent Drawings USA,” at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Besides Holliday, the well received show included Ellsworth Kelly, Josef Albers and Larry Rivers. She also gained renown for taking photographs and writing art reviews for Art News magazine. After her marriage to a Long Island surgeon, Betty settled into an eccentric, art focused life in a rambling ranch house near the water in Sands Point. The marriage didn’t last, but the art making continued until huge canvas portraits and immense figurative drawings took over every room in the house.

Holliday was said to be the master of expressive line, using boldly swooping gesture to capture the dejection of a figure or the sexuality of a flower. In 1981, when Holliday was at the peak of her artistic endeavor, Helen Harrison, writing in the New York Times, aptly described Holliday as, “….an artist for whom drawing is the esthetic cornerstone, the basis for everything she creates and expresses. Whether using oils, acrylic, watercolor, charcoal or ink, she is first and foremost a draftsman….As Monet used color, so Miss Holliday uses line to weave a tapestry of pictorial richness that shifts back and forth between representation and abstraction.” (NY Times, Dec. 6, 1981).

For many years, Betty Holliday taught drawing and painting at the Roslyn Museum of Fine Arts in Long Island, and in her home studio in Sands Point. I took advantage of both, and I can still hear her voice in my head, commenting on space, line and composition. “Never say, I like it,” – “that’s meaningless,” she said. Instead, “…ask yourself what have I said, how have I said it? What is the scale? What are the materials?” “A work of art,” Holliday emphasized, “is a failure unless it appears to have always existed on the page or canvas.” The result, she said, must look as thought it happened. “Art that looked as though it had been constructed is a failure.”

Holliday taught from the 1960’s through the 1990’s leaving a legacy of artistic integrity on Long Island. She passed away on April 3, 2011.

Fair Use or Abuse? - by Ennid Berger

absolutearts.com Portfolio

In law, it’s called “fair use.” In art, “appropriation.” With either appellation, the issue is the same – is it acceptable to copy someone else’s original image and make it your own? My position is that blatant copying without regard for the rights of the original artist should be prohibited. As a photographer, I shudder to think of another artist taking my image and re-photographing it to create a new work of art.

Some famous contemporary artists are well-known for copying the works of others and calling it “appropriation art.” Sherrie Levine and Richard Prince have made a living by either photographing other artists’ photographs and using them as their own (Levine), and/or enlarging the image and claiming it as an original (Prince). Richard Prince is perhaps more visible to the general public. Most recently a French photographer, Patrick Cariou, filed a copyright infringement suit against Richard Prince, accusing him of “borrowing” at least twenty photographs for use in a series of collage/paintings. Mr. Prince also made the news last year when it was revealed that his cowboy images were re-photographed from “Marlboro Man” cigarette ads. In a 2005 interview in “New York Magazine,” Prince claimed that using other people’s images was, “sort of like beachcombing.” 


The issue of “fair use” and image appropriation is once again in the news. The Associated Press has raised objections to the re-use of its now famous photo of President Obama which has been distributed everywhere by street artist Shepard Fairey. Fairey has "turned the tables," and is suing the AP, asking for a declaration that he used the photo only as a reference, and that he is protected under the fair-use exception to copyright law. This exception, according to Section 107 of the United States Copyright Law, protects the limited use of copyrighted materials for purposes including criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship and research. It seems to me that this overly-broad exception to the law is sometimes interpreted to mean that, with the right legal representation, it becomes permissible to copy and re-use someone else’s work.

absolutearts.com Portfolio

Integrity in Art - by Ennid Berger

absolutearts.com Portfolio

     In times when thoughts of money are paramount for many, I wonder whether there is still a place for art created in the spirit of creation rather than art created for profit. In that light, I was recently fortunate to attend screenings of two documentaries about the creations of the Swiss kinetic sculptor, Jean Tinguely. Tinguely spent twenty years in the forests of Fontainebleau collaborating with his wife, the artist Nikki de Saint Phalle, and a coterie of sculptors and welders, creating a magical Cyclops, a giant seventy-five foot high head. This was not art as Product in the Warholian sense, or as more currently promoted by the artist/financial wizard, Damien Hirst.  This was self indulgent, donation dependent, creative, unsaleable art. The head itself was donated to and accepted by the government of France and is currently overseen by a private foundation. Tinguely’s giant rusted structure rose in the forest, true to the intent of its creator; it was art for art’s own sake. The head is replete with interior references to the work of other artists like Kurt Schwitters, Marcel Duchamp and Louise Nevelson, and it is filled with inclusions by Tinguely, Saint Phalle, Larry Rivers, Arman, Rico Weber, Giovanni Posdeta and Robert Rauschenberg.  

     Today, Tinguely’s rusted and rough satire stands true as a comment on the overproduction of material goods in our consumer driven society. This monolith in the forest reminds us that art can be other than the slick, manufactured look favored by a plurality of contemporary mid level galleries and art purchasers. Perhaps, even more appropriate to the theme of art as business, Tinguely’s large construction, “Homage to New York,” was assembled in 1960 with the intent of self-destructing in the sculpture garden of the Museum of Modern Art.  Its explosion and eventual burning was a variation on a theme for this artist who created a series of sculptures in the 1950’s that spewed forth abstract paintings when viewers inserted a coin into the appropriate slot.  In Tinguely’s own words, "art is a form of manifest revolt, total and complete....We're against all forms of force which aggregate and crystallize an authority that oppresses people...we oppose all forms of force emanating from a managing, centralizing political poser."  I am not sure if today's materialistically driven art world retains the possibility of arts as a revolutionary statement of ideals.

absolutearts.com Portfolio

Web Presence

 As an artist, I was deluged with advice that I needed an Internet presence.  The result was that I spent months photographing my artwork, measuring it, titling it, writing about it, editing the images, loading them into my photo applications, and finally, publishing the images to my websites.  At first it was very satisfying to be able to see my images online and to know that I could answer the, "Do you have a website?" question with a positive, "I do."

I was an innocent in the web of online art.  I have since realized the truism that having a website, or two, on the internet, is like having a book on a library shelf.  Someone has to want to read my statements, look at the images, respond to the artwork, perhaps purchase a print.  As a result, I find myself drawn deeper and deeper into an area of art that I previously knew nothing about - the myriad of large group websites, both in the US and internationally, that cater to people who want to get their artwork seen on the World Wide Web.  Some are free, some charge a fee. Some are open to all, some require application and review.  Most are in English, however, I do occasionally find myself corresponding in Italian (which I don't speak or write).  I have been drawn into this secondary web and it is endless.  On the plus side, there is an international community of artists who I am in contact with, and who respond to my work with great enthusiasm.  On the downside, I have found that each website has different uploading requirements for resolution and size that require me to customize my images.  All of this web activity is somewhat addictive, tremendously time consuming, and makes me wonder if my hours would be better spent creating art.

Taking Photographs

I get a thrill when I take a photograph. It’s something about the moment of capture.  There is a transcendent connection flowing from my finger pushing the shutter release, through the camera, to the subject and back around again. I love the moment of acquisition, when I know I’ve got it. 

Everybody likes taking pictures. We have become a world of photo enthusiasts. What is interesting to me is that, like in life, each person has a different perspective. I’m always looking at composition, how everything fits together. Other people focus on telling a story, remembering the moment, or preserving the face of friends and family. 

Digital photography has been both a blessing and a curse. The immediacy and the ability to manipulate results are incredible, but the no film advantage becomes not quite so wonderful when you’re traveling with a high resolution camera and you end up with multiple image cards. (Traveling with a portable hard drive is an option). Making prints is no longer automatic, and as a result, I feel the loss of tactile pleasure; I no longer receive a shiny sheaf of freshly printed photos, still slightly smelly from emulsion, sitting in a falling apart paper envelope. I miss those days.