Monday, February 16, 2009

Guston@ L&M Arts


My daughter Gillian was going to fly to Chicago after working for me at Showman Thurs.2/12. Her plane didn’t leave LaGuardia until 7pm, so we had time to go to L&M Arts to see the Philip Guston show. She is a fan of his work, me ...not as much. The show was of about 8 paintings from the early 50’s; when he’s still doing abstract expressionist work. Flat shapes that seem to become cartoon like imagery are working there way into these paintings. I like the way the shapes are conjured up out of the atmospheric gray pink haze. It’s a fun show and L&M is such a good place to see abstract work.
I had been to L&M once before while working on a movie; an art consultant brought me there to look at paintings to copy for the movie. The production company had bought the rights to quite a few paintings and I copied a lot but they still didn’t have enough. We went to L&M on a day that it was closed and had a look around to pick something out, I don’t remember if we did pick anything but I do remember the De Kooning's next to the Pollack's and getting to go to all the floors in the building and look at a lot of contemporary and modern painting; sometimes in semi-darkness(very magical). I had fun recognizing who painted the various pieces. We ended up in a small room on the top floor with a bunch of small paintings sitting on the floor leaning against the wall. I remember there was a Monet and some painting facing the wall, the stretchers looked like they were made of barn wood, the back of the canvas looked as old as time, we turned it around and it was a cubist painting by Picasso from 1910; I thought I was in heaven. I had always wanted go back to L&M with Gillian, as I knew she would love it, and I finally got to.

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